A few days ago, France’s Marine Le Pen was convicted of embezzling millions in European Union funds and banned from seeking public office for five years. The response from her far-right allies was familiar: cries of “witch hunt,” denouncements of judicial overreach, and claims of persecution by liberal elites.
It’s the same playbook used by Donald Trump in his legal battles. Benjamin Netanyahu is currently using it to deflect attention from the unfolding Qatargate scandal (and from every other one of his astounding array of scandals). It’s the script Romania’s far-right followed after candidate Calin Georgescu’s electoral victory was overturned by the courts amid accusations of financial misdoing and Russian interference on his behalf. One after another, these figures claim an unelected “deep state” conspires against a champion of the people.
They have discovered that breaking the law – and then waging war against the institutions tasked with enforcing it – is not a political liability but a strategic asset. They have created a narrative in which courts and law enforcement are not impartial arbiters of justice, but unelected enemies of the people.
This narrative is potent precisely because democratic institutions, by design, are not elected. Courts, prosecutors, and intelligence services cannot be subject to the ballot box while keeping their mission pure (despite bizarre experiments with this model in the US, where sheriffs, prosecutors and even judges are in some places elected).
The idea is as old as democracy itself. From Aristotle to James Madison, influential political thinkers have argued for checks on the direct power of the masses to guard against mob rule – often emphasizing the importance of independent courts and the rule of law as essential buffers against impulsive or unjust majoritarian decisions.
That makes society’s gatekeepers vulnerable to demagoguery. Populists don’t just resent these institutions; they revel in fighting them. They seek out conflict with the judiciary because it allows them to present themselves as victims of an elite conspiracy, constrained by eggheads from serving the people in the manner they desire.
Populists use legal battles to rally support
The rule of law – meant to protect democracy from the excesses of power – is thus portrayed as a tool of tyranny. And today’s demagogues calculate that majorities will back them, ignorant of or indifferent to the possible abdication of their own basic rights.
Trump may have articulated this ethos best in 2016, when he said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.” That wasn’t just a boast – it was a manifesto that says rules don’t matter.
“I am not a crook,” Richard Nixon famously declared. But in the new populist paradigm, being one isn’t a disqualifier – it’s a credential. The more the courts try to hold them accountable, the more these leaders claim victimhood and rally support. Every indictment, every raid, every court ruling cements the soap opera of persecution. The system, they claim, is afraid – not of their crimes, but of their ideas.
And when this nonsense gathers enough support, sometimes the courts relent: the legal systems in both the US and Israel have given Trump and Netanyahu astounding “discounts” on their malfeasance. Regular citizens would very likely have been behind bars for much less by now. This, obviously, makes a mockery of equality before the law. But this is what’s demanded when they argue that “lawfare” shouldn’t block the “will of the people.”
The term implies the unjust weaponization of legal mechanisms for political ends. While that may sometimes occur, mostly the legal mechanisms are simply pursuing credible accusations of misconduct. To note perhaps the most obvious of the cases, Trump really did try, in tragicomically vulgar fashion, to overturn the 2020 election; his comeback, despite that, is an unprecedented American disgrace.
The problem is less that the legal system is being politicized but that a whole political class is inciting the public against the legitimacy of an apolitical judiciary.
Le Pen’s ‘Witch Hunt’ Narrative
Le Pen's conviction is a case in point. For years, she railed against the corruption of France’s political class. Now, after being caught with her own hand in the till – funneling €4.1 million in EU funds to her party machine – Elon Musk and Trump spring to her defense, claiming that her prosecution is proof the liberal elite cannot tolerate dissent.
“The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech and censor their Political Opponent, this time going so far as to put that Opponent in prison,” Trump wrote, deploying his trademark Germanic capitalization pathology. “FREE MARINE LE PEN,” he added, though she is not in jail.
Netanyahu, for his part, has gone even further. With Israel still reeling from the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and navigating a precarious war in Gaza, he has not only refused to distance himself from aides under criminal investigation – he’s cast them as hostages of a political cabal. He accused the police, the judiciary, the attorney-general, and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Service) of conspiring to topple him, holding his aides as “hostages.” All this, while evading responsibility for national security failures and blocking a formal inquiry into the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history.
In Romania, Georgescu’s disqualification from the presidential race has been framed by American populists like Vice President JD Vance as proof that liberal Europe is “running in fear” of its voters.
This is a global movement – a slow-burning insurrection that seeks to replace the checks and balances of liberal democracy with elected autocracy. Subsequent elections can be gamed, as first Russia’s Vladimir Putin and now Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan have done. That, too, is undoubtedly Netanyahu’s plan.
This didn’t come from nowhere. It reflects a profound failure by liberal democracies. For decades, a consensus of globalist elites – centered in cities, educated in elite institutions, fluent in the language of markets and human rights – believed they were delivering prosperity and progress. Instead, manufacturing jobs vanished, societies were altered by unchecked immigration, and ordinary people were left behind. Meanwhile, the far Left’s cultural overreach alienated even people who actually lean liberal. Terms like “birthing people” became symbols of elite detachment.
Populists thrive in such an environment because they offer anger, identity, and revenge. The damage is societal. It teaches voters that the state is the enemy, that laws are malleable, and that only loyalty to a false messiah matters. This is dissolving the trust on which pluralistic societies depend, edging us closer to a world in which truth is whatever the strong say it is, and justice is just another form of partisanship. Unless liberal democrats can find a way to win the hearts of most people, it will only get worse.
The writer is the former chief editor of The Associated Press in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books about Israel. Follow his newsletter, “Ask Questions Later,” at danperry.substack.com.