It’s a reflection of the state’s earlier aspirations—the justification it used to overthrow the preceding authoritarian state.

The problem is, the more drastic the social and political changes are that the new regime is trying to enact—and the more entrenched the preceding regime was—the more tempting it is to lean on authoritarian vanguardist methods to cut through the pushback. But once they start down that path, the means inevitably become the ends and everything winds up back where it started.