"Managed democracy" - like Russia, Hungary, Turkey - is really fascism lite

I was introduced recently to the phrase "managed democracy", also known as "guided democracy". This refers to a formally Democratic government which actually functions as a de facto autocracy, holding ostensibly free elections to legitimize power, which are actually drastically "managed" through the suppression, arrests and even sometimes the mysterious deaths of major opposition politicians, as well as misinformation campaigns and the widespread intimidation and repression of the electorate and the mass media, such that the result of the election is never in any doubt.
Vladimir Putin's Russia is probably the prime example of a managed democracy, joined earlier this year by Victor Orbán's Hungary after Orbán's re-election in a severely curtailed election.
And now, of course, we have the re-election of Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who has clearly learned his lessons well from his precursors. In fact, given the lengths that Erdogan went to to ensure his victory, and given how cowed the local populace is after 15 years of his autocratic rule, the result was remarkably close, and might even be seen as something of a moral victory for the opposition.
Anyway, "managed democracy", it's a thing. It might otherwise be called "fascism lite", but as long as the word "democracy" is in there, there is very little anyone can do about it.