Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times

If you aren’t feeling a sense of dread on the eve of the midterm elections, you haven’t been paying attention.

We can talk about the conventional stakes of these elections — their implications for economic policy, major social programs, environmental policy, civil liberties and reproductive rights. And it’s not wrong to have these discussions: Life will go on whatever happens on the political scene, and government policies will continue to have a big impact on people’s lives.

But I, at least, always feel at least a bit guilty when writing about inflation or the fate of Medicare. Yes, these are my specialties. Focusing on them, however, feels a bit like denial, or at least evasion, when the fundamental stakes right now are so existential.

Ten or 20 years ago, those of us who warned that the Republican Party was becoming increasingly extremist and anti-democracy were often dismissed as alarmists. But the alarmists have been vindicated every step of the way, from the selling of the Iraq war on false pretenses to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Indeed, these days it’s almost conventional wisdom that the G.O.P. will, if it can, turn America into something like Viktor Orban’s Hungary: a democracy on paper, but an ethnonationalist, authoritarian one-party state in practice. After all, U.S. conservatives have made no secret about viewing Hungary as a role model; they have feted Orban and featured him at their conferences.

At this point, however, I believe that even this conventional wisdom is wrong. If America descends into one-party rule, it will be much worse, much uglier, than what we see in today’s Hungary.

Before I get there, a word about the role of conventional policy issues in these elections.

If Democrats lose one or both houses of Congress, there will be a loud chorus of recriminations, much of it asserting that they should have focused on kitchen table issues and not talked at all about threats to democracy.

I don’t claim any expertise here, but I would note that an incumbent president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterms. The only exception to that rule this century was in 2002, when George W. Bush was able to deflect attention from a jobless recovery by posing as America’s defender against terrorism. That record suggests, if anything, that Democrats should have talked even more about issues beyond economics.

I’d also say that pretending that this was an ordinary election season, where only economic policy was at stake, would have been fundamentally dishonest.

Finally, even voters who are more worried about paychecks and living costs than about democracy should nonetheless be very concerned about the G.O.P.’s rejection of democratic norms.

For one thing, Republicans have been open about their plan to use the threat of economic chaos to extract concessions they couldn’t win through the normal legislative process.

Also, while I understand the instinct of voters to choose a different driver if they don’t like where the economy is going, they should understand that this time, voting Republican doesn’t just mean giving someone else a chance at the wheel; it may be a big step toward handing the G.O.P. permanent control, with no chance for voters to revisit that decision if they don’t like the results.

Which brings me to the question of what a one-party America would look like.

As I said, it’s now almost conventional wisdom that Republicans are trying to turn us into Hungary. Indeed, Hungary provides a case study in how democracies can die in the 21st century.

But what strikes me, reading about Orban’s rule, is that while his regime is deeply repressive, the repression is relatively subtle. It is, as one perceptive article put it, “soft fascism,” which makes dissidents powerless via its control of the economy and the news media without beating them up or putting them in jail.

Do you think a MAGA regime, with or without Donald Trump, would be equally subtle? Listen to the speeches at any Trump rally. They’re full of vindictiveness, of promises to imprison and punish anyone — including technocrats like Anthony Fauci — the movement dislikes.

And much of the American right is sympathetic to, or at least unwilling to condemn, violence against its opponents. The Republican reaction to the attack on Paul Pelosi by a MAGA-spouting intruder was telling: Many in the party didn’t even pretend to be horrified. Instead, they peddled ugly conspiracy theories. And the rest of the party didn’t ostracize or penalize the purveyors of vile falsehoods.

In short, if MAGA wins, we’ll probably find ourselves wishing its rule was as tolerant, relatively benign and relatively nonviolent as Orban’s.

Now, this catastrophe doesn’t have to happen. Even if Republicans win big in the midterms, it won’t be the end for democracy, although it will be a big blow. And nothing in politics, not even a full descent into authoritarianism, is permanent.

On the other hand, even if we get a reprieve this week, the fact remains that democracy is in deep danger from the authoritarian right. America as we know it is not yet lost, but it’s on the edge.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece has acknowledged that state intelligence was monitoring an opposition party leader with a wiretap. Credit…Costas Baltas/Reuters

ATHENS — Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced on Monday that Greece would ban the sale of spyware, after his government was accused in a news report of targeting dozens of prominent politicians, journalists and businessmen for surveillance, and the judicial authorities began an investigation.

The announcement is the latest chapter in a scandal that erupted over the summer, when Mr. Mitsotakis conceded that Greece’s state intelligence service had been monitoring an opposition party leader with a traditional wiretap last year. That revelation came after the politician discovered that he had also been targeted with a spyware program known as Predator.

The Greek government said the wiretap was legal but never specified the reasons for it, and Mr. Mitsotakis said it was done without his knowledge. The government has also asserted that it does not own or use the Predator spyware, and has insisted that the simultaneous targeting with a wiretap and Predator was a coincidence.

Mr. Mitsotakis has rejected allegations that he was personally running a Predator spyware scheme. “It’s an unbelievable lie,” he said. He insisted that Greece’s intelligence service was not using Predator, but said someone outside the government might be.

On Monday, he said in a televised interview: “We will be the first country to tackle this problem and enact legislation that will explicitly ban the sale of such software in our country. No other country has done it. All countries have the same problem.”

Governments the world over are struggling to regulate the use of cybersurveillance tools, the most prominent of which is Pegasus, a premium offensive cybersurveillance spyware made by the Israeli spyware company NSO Group. Predator is gaining prominence globally as a cheaper and less regulated alternative. The powerful weapons infiltrate smartphones, swoop up their contents and turn them into listening and recording devices.

They have been used to hack the phones of employees at El Salvador’s leading news outlet, El Faro, and the devices of high-ranking Palestinian diplomats. According to recently leaked emails, spyware has also been deployed by the Mexican government to compromise the phones of journalists and an activist.

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies say they need the spyware to maintain an edge over criminals and terrorists, but regulating their use and ensuring that they are not used against political opponents and journalists has proved to be difficult, even in Europe, where protections are supposed to be strong. Last year, The Biden administration blacklisted Pegasus, barring American companies from doing business with NSO, because, it said, the company had acted “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”

Much about the situation in Greece remains murky. The authorities have characterized the use of Predator as illegal, though not its sale. Mr. Mitsotakis offered no details about how a ban on spyware sales would work, or how it would affect spyware use.

For months the Greek authorities ignored calls from journalists and opposition parties to investigate Predator’s maker, Intellexa, which moved its headquarters to Greece from Cyprus in 2021.

The Greek investigative reporter Thanassis Koukakis revealed he was hacked last year with Predator, and also claimed that he was monitored by the Greek intelligence service, an allegation that has not been officially confirmed but is the focus of a judicial investigation.

The socialist party leader Nikos Androulakis, who is a member of the European Parliament, said that the Parliament’s technical services office in Brussels had found that his phone was targeted with a text message carrying Predator malware. Mr. Androulakis did not take the bait.

An investigation has begun into Mr. Androulakis’s case.

Mr. Mitsotakis acknowledged that Greece’s state intelligence service had been monitoring Mr. Androulakis with a traditional wiretap under a special warrant. The surveillance had been ordered ostensibly for reasons of national security. The monitoring ended without any action by the authorities.

On Sunday, the Greek newsmagazine Documento reported that a shady surveillance network answering to Mr. Mitsotakis had targeted Antonis Samaras, a former conservative prime minister; the current foreign and finance ministers; and other cabinet members perceived as potential rivals to Mr. Mitsotakis in a possible leadership challenge. (The next Greek elections must be held before summer 2023.)

According to the report, the surveillance had been conducted out of the Greek state intelligence service and had made use of Predator. The newsmagazine cited as its sources two unnamed people who had key roles in the surveillance, but did not offer evidence to back the allegations.

The accusations sparked a political uproar, with the government’s spokesman, Giannis Oikonomou, saying they were based on no evidence and describing the magazine’s publisher, Kostas Vaxevanis, as a “national slanderer.”

Mr. Vaxevanis, an investigative journalist who is broadly perceived as having close ties with the leftist opposition party Syriza, said he had hard evidence, including recorded conversations, and would reveal all in due time. On Monday, he visited Greece’s Supreme Court after the prosecutor ordered an investigation into the claims.

Syriza’s spokesman, Nasos Iliopoulos, denounced the authorities for not offering convincing answers regarding the work of Greek intelligence and for not investigating Intellexa.

The claims in Documento came after a European Parliament committee investigating the use of surveillance malware called on the Greek authorities to conduct a deeper inquiry.

The results of a Greek parliamentary investigation were inconclusive, with lawmakers from the governing party finding no evidence of wrongdoing. The opposition called it a cover-up.

Niki Kitsantonis reported from Athens, and Matina Stevis-Gridneff from New York.