Current Events: What should the world think when a majority of the people in a country support a Genocidal regime?

How should a nation whose majority support extremists be treated?

It depends.

If such a country is a non-Western nation-state, then that will make the entire country a terrorist country and genociding them by a “civilized” state will be acceptable.

If such a country is a “Western” nation-state, the will of the majority is sacred. That is what seems to be the implication of the extraordinary admission by head of the US State Department, Anthony Blinken.

US State Secretary Anthony Blinken said on 4 May that the genocidal actions undertaken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza are "a reflection of where a large majority of Israelis are in this moment.”

“This is a complicated government. It’s a balancing act when you have a coalition. And if you’re just looking at the politics of it, that’s something that he has to factor in,” Blinken said at an event in Arizona.

"What’s important to understand is that much of what [Netanyahu is] doing is not simply a reflection of his politics or his policies; it’s actually a reflection of where a large majority of Israelis are in this moment,” the top US diplomat said.

Last month, a survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute revealed that three-quarters of Jewish Israelis support Netanyahu's much-anticipated ground invasion of Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah, where about 1.3 million Palestinians are sheltering after being violently displaced from their homes.

Surveys conducted over recent months have shown a similar trend despite growing pressure to see Netanyahu removed from office.

In January, opinion polls showed that Israelis overwhelmingly agreed that “the best way” to obtain the release of captives held inside Gaza was “military pressure” against Hamas, falling in line with the same rhetoric Netanyahu and his war chief have been repeating daily since 7 October.

Polls have also shown a stern objection to delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza, even if the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is “replaced.”

The problem of seeing a majority electing demonstrably authoritarian, supremacist bigots is the true test of the limits and flaws of democracy. In the past, when such processes happened in non-Western  nation-states, it is often blamed on corruption and processes being flawed. Turkey, for example, over 4 decades voted for a conservative party and a conservative leader. The West dismissed these elections, because they simply thought of all Turkish people as backward, incapable of embracing "true democracy". 

However, with rise of extremist politicians through democratic processes, the West is now facing a moment of truth about democracy. In the past, when democracy did not represent any problems at home, Western leaders used it abroad as a political instrument to intimidate and subjugate other nations.