“Authoritarian” is fairly meaningless in this context. All societies and political structures rely on authority to maintain social control to greater or lesser extents. What is the difference between a tax collector and an armed robber? Both demand money from you and threaten violence if you don’t give it to them. The main (and some would say only) difference is in authority. The tax collector has authority, the robber does not.
Where does liberal “democracy” derive its authority from? Most liberals will claim that it comes from the approval of the people or the democratic mandate (same thing, really). Why then do studies repeatedly show that there is no correlation between popular opinion and policy? Why do the majority of Americans want public health care and yet it never passes?
There is no democratic mandate in liberal democracy, it certainly doesn’t result in policy that represents the real will of the people. The people can vote a guy out? And what? Replace him with a different dude who won’t do what the people want?
What happens if someone picks up a gun and tries to oppose the “democratic” consensus anyway in a liberal democracy? Do you just sit by and let the state be destroyed? No, the democratic state uses its own authority to oppress this opposition.
There is no such thing as a distinction between “democracy” and “authoritarian”. It’s a meaningless buzzword. The opposite of a democracy is an autocracy or an oligarchy, not “authoritarian”. That’s just something westerners fling at other people’s democracies which they don’t like for daring to vote for something against US interests and want to see them blown up and millions killed and displaced. Every state seeks to preserve itself and so every state will use authority when it is faced with potential destruction. This is not inherently a bad thing, it obviously depends on the government in question, and who is trying to destroy it, and why. People always justify the use of authoritarian means used by whoever they support, and then those who are intellectually dishonest pretend that somehow their use of authority isn’t “authoritarian”.