Tag Archives: democracy

Can Unions Rebuild Our Democracy?

Alex Han/In These Times

Can Unions Rebuild Our Democracy?United Auto Workers members attend a solidarity rally as the UAW strikes the Big Three automakers on September 15, 2023, in Detroit, Michigan. (photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

19 march 24 (RSN.org)

Our institutions have failed to protect democracy. Can unions take up the fight?

For so many of us, these are mostly dark times interrupted by brief windows of hope — and the road ahead is daunting. No matter how this year’s presidential election plays out, the contest’s ultimate winner will surely be pessimism, one of the few things Americans across the political spectrum seem to be in alignment on: pessimism for the future, pessimism for possibilities of transformation, pessimism for the idea that justice will win the day.

We exist in a political system built on institutions seemingly unable to fulfill even the basic function of producing policies that huge majorities of Americans support, like lower prescription drug prices, less debt, increasing the minimum wage, a cease-fire in Gaza. It’s no wonder that public polling shows, according to the Pew Research Center, that “Americans’ views of politics and elected officials are unrelentingly negative, with little hope of improvement on the horizon.”

There’s little evidence that our political system is anything but broken, and confidence in these failing institutions — from Congress to the news media to organized religion to the Supreme Court to the White House — continues to decline.

The necessary conversations in our movement spaces are mostly quite simple: What’s left? What’s worth salvaging? What can we carry with us? For those of us who see the power and potential of organized workers, the questions are sharper: What has our crumbling democracy meant for working people? Where are the centers of power within our labor movements? And, most importantly, can unions and workers ultimately change the horizons we’re walking toward?

(It is important to note that — from Starbucks Workers United to the United Auto Workers—we’ve seen some hopeful examples recently of unions setting such new horizons.)

One of our biggest challenges in answering these questions is that our politics — within labor, within our social movements — don’t seem to evolve; they only stumble from crisis to crisis. We exist in an interconnected landscape that previous generations could never have imagined, but the algorithmically fueled engines of online interaction seem to divide and distract as much as they connect. The panopticon of social media has actually served to atomize us, endangering the very idea of collective experience and action.

It would be a mistake to simply blame our pitfalls on technology. For all our talk of solidarity, we have to be honest with ourselves that our movements so rarely live up to anything that truly resembles and honors it. Part of this conundrum is a familiar dynamic — for many of us on the “practical Left,” our view of the world has been defined by what we are not and the forces we are arrayed against. But the answers aren’t as simple as saying “what we are for” and “what we are against,” which can force us into cycles of reaction.

Our response must be a refusal to allow our imaginations to be limited by our immediate needs — and recognize instead that the steps toward building a better world require setting our sights and horizons higher than mere survival.

We desperately need these new horizons, and we need to raise them beyond the contours of our practicality.

Demonizing enemies is an adequate organizing strategy for the nihilist Right, which aims to hold onto power for the good of a handful of elites. If our project is not just defending democracy — but demanding and creating it — then we require a different approach.

We should open ourselves to seeing the signs of a bigger horizon wherever we can find them. Is the demand for a shorter workweek one that can help us lift our eyes? Can we imagine reconstructing our unions and organizations into ones that can respond to our real needs and hopes?

Labor is, indeed, the source of all wealth. The collective actions of those who provide that labor are the building blocks of democracy — and the way to construct new horizons.

How AI and democracy can fix each other

Divya Siddarth | TED Democracy

• November 2023

We don’t have to sacrifice our freedom for the sake of technological progress, says social technologist Divya Siddarth. She shares how a group of people helped retrain one of the world’s most powerful AI models on a constitution they wrote — and offers a vision of technology that aligns with the principles of democracy, rather than conflicting with them.

About the speaker

Divya Siddarth

Social technologist, political economistSee speaker profile

Divya Siddarth is building a world where technological progress and democratic participation don’t have to trade off.

DEMOCRACY IS FLATLINING AROUND THE GLOBE. A SECOND TRUMP TERM WOULD FINISH THE JOB

TUE, 2/6/2024 – BY CARL GIBSON (Occupy.com)

The future of democracy — not just in the United States, but around the globe — may very well hinge on whether former President Donald Trump is elected or defeated this November.

It’s important to understand that Trump is not an aberration, but rather the American iteration of the global far-right project to replace democracy with authoritarianism throughout the world. His brand of hyper-nationalism combined with the intense consolidation of executive power follows the same playbook as fascistic leaders in other countries, like Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, and Javier Milei in Argentina, among others. 

Trump, however, presents a unique threat to democracy as a whole that the world leaders in the aforementioned paragraph do not. If elected to lead the third-largest country, the largest economy, and the most well-funded military in the world, Trump’s election to a second term would be a green light to fascists around the world that the era of democracy has come to an end. It would embolden the worst elements of society throughout the world and mobilize fascists to further entrench themselves in their respective countries’ governments.

TRUMP 2.0 WOULD EFFECTIVELY RE-ESTABLISH MONARCHY

In 1787, as the US Constitution was being assembled, Philadelphia socialite Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?” Franklin famously replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” While electing Donald Trump to a second term wouldn’t abolish the Constitution outright, he has already signaled he would be in favor of “termination” of articles of the Constitution. Franklin’s response to Powel signaled that he knew transitioning from monarchy to democracy would require constant effort, and that monarchy could once again become the dominant form of government without a vigilant public.

Trump’s quip that he would govern as a dictator “but only on day one” is uncharacteristic of dictators, who typically cling to power as long as possible and frequently alter the nature of their governments to ensure their rule in perpetuity. Like other far-right authoritarian leaders around the world, Trump would have the title of president, but would rule as a king. He has a multitude of contemporary examples to draw from.

In 2017, for example — just a year after a failed coup attempt — Turkey’s voters narrowly approved a referendum Erdogan pushed for that changed Turkey’s government from a parliamentary democracy to an executive presidential system. In 2018, he became the first president with new sweeping executive powers. He was recently elected to another five-year term last year, extending his rule to more than two decades. 

Vladimir Putin has done the same in Russia, where a constitutional change in 2020 allowed him to reset the two-term limit for presidents back to zero. Rather than stepping down this year as planned, Putin could remain in office until at least 2036. And Chinese President Xi Jinping’s party eliminated presidential term limits in 2018, paving the way for Xi to potentially remain in office for the rest of his life. The 69-year-old won a third term in office last year, making him the longest-tenured Chinese head of state since Mao Zedong. 

Should he win the November election, Trump would take the presidential oath of office at age 78, so him remaining in office for multiple terms would be unlikely given his advanced age. However, the profound damage that a second Trump term would do to democracy would be felt for decades — particularly by racial minorities.

A SECOND TRUMP TERM COULD END MULTIRACIAL DEMOCRACY IN THE US

It’s important to establish that American democracy in particular has been only for the privileged few for most of the United States’ existence, as the genocide of Native Americans proved along with the enslavement of Black people. Even after the end of the Civil War, the right of Black people to have a say in government was routinely denied and curtailed — often by force — by both white supremacist vigilantes and government officials. 

The passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and the eventual election of the first Black president still hasn’t ended the assault on democratic rights that many Black Americans today still face by law enforcement and state legislatures. As this publication has previously explored, Nazi Germany borrowed many ideas from the antebellum-era United States to create the framework for an aryan ethnostate.

Trump himself has not said anything about rolling back gains for African Americans, but his allies have started to test the waters of an anti-civil rights campaign in earnest. During a 2023 gathering of more than 20,000 far-right activists dubbed “America Fest,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk attacked both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. 

“MLK was awful,” Kirk said at the gathering, which was headlined by figures like Donald Trump Jr., former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida). “He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he didn’t actually believe.”

“I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it and I’ve thought about it,” he continued. “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”

The United States’ status as a multiracial democracy makes it one of just a small few around the world, as many Western democracies are ethnically homogeneous. And even in ethnically homogenous democracies, fascism has proven its resilience when countries are faced with an influx of new residents who don’t look like the majority racial group.

After the Syrian refugee crisis of 2015, for example, Germany and Sweden set themselves apart by accepting more refugees than most of their European neighbors, taking in more than one million refugees and over 100,000 refugees, respectively. Denmark accepted more than 35,000 refugees from Syria. A 2020 study found that many of the refugees settled in Germany are thriving, with roughly half of them finding a job by late 2020 and support for immigration high among the German populace. 

But in recent years, the diversification of those countries has led to racist and nationalist backlash. In Germany, the Nazi-adjacent Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party recently held a meeting with neo-Nazis and other white nationalist groups to discuss mass deportation plans. The Guardian reported that some participants in that meeting included members of Austria’s Identitarian Movement, which subscribe to the racist “Great Replacement theory” that immigrants are being deliberately sent to “replace” whites as the dominant racial demographic. That meeting prompted mass protests across the country. One protest was even joined by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

In Sweden, a nascent fascist movement rooted in anti-immigrant fervor has also been steadily building power. The Sweden Democrats, which has roots in neo-Nazi organizing in the 1980s and 1990s, has gone from a fringe group to a legitimate political party, winning gains in Sweden’s 2022 parliamentary elections. While Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson was elected Prime Minister in 2022, his coalition depends on the support of the Sweden Democrats.

Meanwhile, Denmark’s racism has become apparent when contrasting its treatment of predominantly white Ukrainian refugees with how it treated Syrian refugees. Denmark’s government implemented a policy of seizing gold and jewelry from migrants who came from war-torn Middle Eastern countries like Syria and Iraq, but exempted Ukrainian refugees from that law. This prompted condemnation from human rights watchdog group Euro-Med Monitor.

While examples like these are still few and far between, electing Donald Trump to the presidency could help strengthen and enable other racist politicians around the world who seek to implement racial hierarchies in other western democracies. 

One stark contrast between Trump and Biden is Biden’s commitment to multiracial democracy. His campaign has emphasized the importance of diversity as a strength, not only with respect to his decision to make a Black woman his vice president and his appointment of a Black woman to the Supreme Court for the first time in US history, but in other actions as well. 

As a Democratic president, Biden exercised his power over the Democratic National Committee to elevate South Carolina — which has a sizable population of Black voters — above the predominantly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire in the presidential primary process. He’s used his presidential pardon powers to clear the records of thousands of people with small marijuana convictions (a crime for which Black people have been disproportionately prosecuted), helping them obtain jobs and housing and rebuild their lives. And despite the Supreme Court tossing out his $400 billion plan to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student debt per borrower, Biden has found other pathways to implement debt cancellation. This has a profound impact particularly on Black Americans, who are more likely than whites to have to borrow money to pay for college given the generational wealth gap. 

The 2024 election isn’t just about whether Americans truly want to live in a multiracial democracy as opposed to a monarchy with a racial hierarchy — it’s about whether we want to live in a world where democracy and equal rights for people of all backgrounds is respected. The results of November’s election will have a rippling effect for years to come, if not decades.

Carl Gibson is a journalist whose work has been published in CNN, USA TODAY, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, Barron’s, Business Insider, the Independent, and NPR, among others. Follow him on Bluesky @crgibs.bsky.social.

Record Low in U.S. Satisfied With Way Democracy Is Working

BY JEFFREY M. JONES

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • 28% are satisfied, down from the prior low of 35% after Jan. 6 Capitol riot
  • 38% of Democrats, 17% of Republicans are satisfied
  • Americans with less formal education are less satisfied

January 5, 2024 (news.gallup.com)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new low of 28% of U.S. adults are satisfied with the way democracy is working in the country. The current figure is down from the prior low — 35% measured shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by rioters trying to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

The latest results are based on a Dec. 1-20, 2023, survey.

Gallup has asked Americans about their satisfaction with U.S. democracy nine times since 1984. The high point came in the first reading, when 61% of Americans were satisfied with the way democracy was working. It was nearly as high, at 60%, in 1991.

However, Americans’ satisfaction showed signs of deterioration in 1992 — often referred to as the year of the “angry voter” — in the wake of an economic recession and congressional scandals exemplified by members writing scores of bad checks from the House bank. By June 1992, when insurgent third-party candidate Ross Perot led presidential preference polls, 36% of Americans were satisfied with the way democracy was working. Later that year, incumbent President George H.W. Bush was defeated for reelection, and the reelection rate for members of the U.S. House was one of the lowest in the past 50 years.

American satisfaction rebounded in 1994-1998 surveys, including 52% satisfied in 1998 after the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach then-President Bill Clinton. The increase may have reflected greater satisfaction with the way things were going in the country, generally, during a period of strong economic growth.

Gallup did not ask the question again until 2021, though two CNN surveys from 2010 and 2016 each showed 40% satisfaction ratings. These results suggest Americans in the 2010s were once again disillusioned with the way democracy was working, perhaps due to continued gridlock in Washington amid growing budget deficits, ongoing gun violence, racial tensions and illegal immigration.

The more recent declines of the past two years (to varying degrees for different partisan groups) may reflect economic unease amid higher prices, disapproval of the jobs President Joe BidenCongress and the Supreme Court are doing, increasing hostility between the political parties, former President Donald Trump’s persistent political strength, and concerns about election security, voting rights and the independence of the courts and the justice system.

Republicans Least Satisfied With Democracy

Among major U.S. subgroups, Republicans (17%) are least likely to say they are satisfied with the state of democracy, and Democrats (38%) are most likely. Political independents fall about midway between the two party groups, at 27% satisfaction.

All three party groups are less satisfied now than they were in 2021, when 47% of Democrats, 21% of Republicans and 36% of independents were satisfied shortly after Biden took office.

Typically, partisans have been more satisfied with the way democracy is working when a president from their preferred party has been in office. Between 1984 and 1992, spanning the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, Republicans expressed greater satisfaction than Democrats in each of the four surveys conducted.

All of the more recent surveys have been conducted in years when a Democratic president was in the White House. Democrats have been more satisfied than Republicans in all of those except one: the 1998 survey conducted after the Republican-led House impeached Clinton.

Satisfaction with democracy also differs sharply by education. Americans with postgraduate education tie Democrats as the subgroup most likely to be satisfied, at 38%. Meanwhile, roughly three in 10 adults who attended college, but not graduate school, are satisfied, and 21% of those who did not attend college are.

Americans without a college education show the steepest decline in satisfaction since 2021 among key subgroups, dropping 15 percentage points from 36%.

In past surveys, Americans with no college education have typically been the least satisfied with U.S. democracy.

Bottom Line

Americans are preparing to elect the next president at a time when they are less happy about the state of U.S. democracy than at any point in at least 40 years. The 2024 election is expected to match a historically unpopular incumbent president with a former president whom voters previously rejected for a second term. While conditions seem ripe for a successful third-party challenger, it remains unclear whether such a candidate can win within the U.S. electoral system.

To stay up to date with the latest Gallup News insights and updates, follow us on X.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.

View complete question responses and trends (PDF download).

Democracy works — we just need better leaders

Lindiwe Mazibuko | TED Democracy

South Africa transitioned to democracy in the 1990s with a visionary constitution, but the promises of that constitution are largely unfulfilled to this day. Public leader Lindiwe Mazibuko explores how poor leadership failed to deliver a better life for the country’s citizens — and shares her mission to cultivate a new generation of ethical leaders who can revitalize democracy in South Africa and beyond.

About the speaker

Lindiwe Mazibuko

Public leaderSee speaker profile

Lindiwe Mazibuko is the former Parliamentary Leader for the opposition Democratic Alliance in South Africa.

Book: “Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy”

Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy

Claire ProvostMatt Kennard

As European empires crumbled in the 20th century, the power structures that had dominated the world for centuries were up for renegotiation. Yet instead of a rebirth for democracy, what emerged was a silent coup – namely, the unstoppable rise of global corporate power.
Exposing the origins of this epic power grab as well as its present-day consequences, Silent Coup is the result of two investigative journalist’s reports from 30 countries around the world. It provides an explosive guide to the rise of a corporate empire that now dictates how resources are allocated, how territories are governed, and how justice is defined.

(Goodreads.com)

Is Democracy Committing Suicide?

Does Democracy Fail Every Time Human Beings Try It? And Is it Failing Again Today?

umair haque

umair haque

Published in Eudaimonia and Co

Sep 2, 2023 (eand.co)

Image Credit: Maddie McGarvey

Here’s a tiny question. Is the age of democracy drawing to a close? Now, before you accuse me of exaggerating, or baiting you, let me assure you — it’s a question I mean to ask, and I think we should all be asking.

We tend to think of democracy as something like a grand, permanent turning point in history. Before, there was not democracy, and then — bang! — our forefathers and mothers discovered, or created, this wonderful and noble thing, and, like the internet or antibiotics, it was here to stay forever.

Is it? The truth is subtler. Feudalism lasted millennia. Tribalism, millennia before that. Empire, another millennia. And so maybe democracy is not something like a permanent turning point. Perhaps it was just an experiment — which has failed. Just as it has so many times before in history. Athens. Rome. The French Revolution — Napoleon’s coronation just 15 years later. Has democracy ever lasted, when you think about it? In fact, every single time in history democracy has been tried — people seem incapable of it (and discussing why is the point of this essay), hence soon enough, within a few centuries, if that long, it collapses right back into tyranny, war, and strife.

Are we being arrogant when we suppose that pattern won’t repeat itself in our time? Why should we think we are above it? Perhaps what we are learning today, all over again, is that enough people are simply incapable of the demands of democracy — no matter how hard the rest of us, who are usually a minority, try to educate, civilize, or liberate them, as equals, citizens, and peers. Perhaps enough of us will always reject those principles, which are altogether too noble and idealistic, for those of supremacy, superiority, violence, and power. Perhaps enough of us can only ever see others as rivals, subjects, and possessions to be had — and themselves as victims and martyrs, who deserve to be chieftains and rulers. Perhaps no good goes unpunished — and of all these, democracy is the greatest of all.

(First, a caveat. I’m not saying “democracy’s going to die!!” Not at all. What I am suggesting is that we should consider the idea, at this point, that democracy isn’t something like a permanent phase change — solid turning to liquid, forevermore — but maybe something more like a verdict upon ourselves — on which the jury’s out.)

Let’s unearth that for a second. When did this age of democracy really begin? Was it in 1776 — when America became the world’s first constitutional democracy — or was it in 1971, when America finally ended segregation? Was it in 1789, with the French Revolution, which culminated in a dictatorship — or in the 1940s, when colonialism was dismantled? Perhaps you see my point. Democracy is a thing which has always struggled to grow and evolve and become a truer version of itself. We have never really had anything resembling a “real” democracy, to any reasoning person, until very, very recently in history — so recently, in fact, that it’s scarcely the blink of an eye.

So democracy is a living, breathing thing. Does that mean it can “die”? In fact, it means something much more striking. For that reason, democracy has a strange and unique power. The power to destroy itself.

How many other things have the power to destroy themselves? Not many. A hammer, axe, mountain can’t. Even many living things can’t, like trees and microbes. There are very, very few things in existence with the power to destroy themselves. Only, if we think about, things with intent can commit suicide. And unfortunately for us, democracy is just such a thing.

And that brings me to why I think the age of democracy might be drawing to a close. It seems to me — and it should seem to you, if you reflect upon it — that more and more people today appear incapable of democracy. They are using democracy only to destroy itself. Democracy isn’t “dying”, as the headlines go — it is committing suicide.

Let me give you a statistic that might surprise you (or not, depending). Trump is still neck and neck with Biden in the polls. Even after being indicted. Despite the obvious harm to themselves and their own, the job losses, the kleptocracy, the corruption, the fascism, and so on. But that is hardly the only example. In Sweden, a party with Nazi “roots” (LOL) came to power — and then immediately dissolved the Environment Ministry. The far right is in power in Italy, where lesbian parents are being stripped of their parental status on birth certificates. Then there’s Hungary, Poland, Turkey, India, China, and so on. I could go on.

Do you see what I mean? Many people — more and more people, in fact, every day — are incapable of democracy. Not mentally incapable, as in they can’t “handle it.” But incapable in another, truer way. To be capable of democracy is first of all to understand why one should want it. But today people do not. They prefer authoritarians and tyrants and demagogues, for the sake of self-preservation, over the preservation of democracy.

Now, at this juncture, the kind of person I am describing will object, and cry: “but what you are talking about is democracy in action! You fool, you are talking about the exercise of democracy! It is the voice of the people! The vox populi has spoken!” Ah, but that’s not what democracy is at all. That’s mere majoritarianism. A democracy is something much more powerful than that. What is it, really? It is first and foremost a set of rights. That give us powers, and therefore liberate us. Those rights are inalienable for a reason — because when they are excised, removed, shattered, and destroyed, a democracy is undone. And yet a democracy can do just that, if it is foolish enough, and in that way, destroy itself. And that is precisely what the world is doing now. It is taking rights and powers away from people. Which ones? All kinds. I already mentioned Italy’s targeting of gay parents. In America, women have been stripped of bodily autonomy. Again, the examples are endless.

What is really being destroyed today are the fundamentals of democracy itself. They consist of three things. Equality, personhood, and freedom. Not just for you, or the chosen few. For everyone, or no one at all. Those are the qualities which rights really grant us. And yet those are the three things which more and more people wish to deny others, to take apart, to destroy. But when those things are destroyed, a democracy is no longer a democracy at all. It is something else entirely. What, precisely?

We see democracies around the globe degenerating in a now familiar, almost funny, pattern, because it is so predictable. First comes plutocracy. Then oligarchy. Then kleptocracy. And finally authoritarianism and fascism and theocracy, various flavors of tyranny and ruin. That is the pattern, the sequence, of how a democracy implodes and collapses. It doesn’t die — it commits suicide, one slash of the razor blade at a time. Who is the world’s finest exemplar of that precise pattern today? Sadly, America. It has raced through these five stages in the space of a few decades. And now it is hovering around the bottom. Yet more and more nations seem hell-bent on following America down into the abyss, where democracy goes to commit suicide.

Why is that? Well, it is primarily because people have lost faith in democracy’s promise — to ever improve their lives. That is the social contract offered by a democracy — and the truth is it is a fragile one. It is the same one Athens and Rome promised, too. But because it is a very, very difficult thing to deliver — perpetual prosperity, abundance, and plenty — democracy is also a vulnerable thing, historically scarce, easily broken, tending not to last. Rome couldn’t deliver it — bang! Emperors rose, as living standards fell for the enraged plebes. Athens couldn’t deliver it — wham! Citizens turned to tyrants.

And here we are again, we are in just such a juncture of history. In America, incomes have been flat for half a century. Hence, today, living standards are cratering — everything from longevity to mortality to happiness to suicide is going in the wrong direction, ruinously fast. In Europe, incomes have been flat for the last two decades or so — hence, it’s not as badly in decline as America, but it’s not that far behind, either: people are using democracy to destroy itself, there, too. And so on.

(Then there’s technology, too. It seems as if we’re replacing democracy with algorithms now. And who needs democracy when you have algorithms managing every aspect of your life for easy, simple pleasure, always a tap away — even if it’s the cheap thrill of hate, spite, and ruin? But that is what algorithms do now: they manage all of us. They manage our information — Twitter, Google. They manage our sociality — Facebook, WhatsApp. They manage our feelings, our self-worth, our esteem — Instagram and Tinder. They manage our entertainment — Netflix. They manage our consumption and finances and jobs — Amazon, Uber, credit ratings.

But algorithms are not the idols we have made them out to be. They are just sets of preferences aggregated by someone else’s preference. And yet they are a cheap, easy substitute for democracy, precisely because they give us the feeling of self-governance and self-directedness, without the work and trouble necessary to really accomplish it. They replace selfless virtue with egoistic self-absorption, thinking with immediate gratification, reflection with reaction, contemplation with resentment, and, perhaps worst of all, ideas with numbers. But I digress. The point is simple. Algorithms are replacing the structures, institutions, and norms of genuinely democratic societies, with something more like a kind of soft, hidden authoritarianism.)

Yet that is precisely what people seem to want today. When more and more people use democracy to destroy itself, what are they really doing? They are not “acting democratically”, but precisely the opposite. They are saying that democracy is too much of a struggle and a challenge, too much work and effort, too dangerous and threatening. It’s not that they can’t be bothered with it — it is that they genuinely do not want it. Let me put that more sharply, so you understand what I really mean. In today’s extremist movements, people are revoking their consent to the foundational principles of democracy — equality, personhood, and freedom, as shared, universal goods, which are inalienable and inherent in all people. In that way, today, we differ from Rome and Athens — because they never developed those principles, or consent to them, nearly so far as we have today. What a shame, then, to regress, yet again.

What is to be done about all this, then — democracy committing suicide, as it has so many times before? Perhaps history, as ever, is our guide. Perhaps democracy is a failed experiment, every time in history that it has been tried, for a very good reason. People are simply not capable of it — enough of them, at any rate. People simply do not have the courage, wisdom, or strength necessary to really make this noble experiment last — they turn on it savagely the moment that it’s promise seems to waver for even a moment.

Perhaps, then, if the world goes on as it is, for much longer, the best you and I can hope for is protection and safety from such people. People who want to remove and excise away our personhood and equality and freedom — with genuine harm and viciousness and violence. And maybe that can only be found in systems where such foolish people do not have the power to corrupt and corrode the principles inside democracy in the first place — for those of us who desire equality, freedom, and personhood.

Perhaps the best we can hope for — ever — is a kind of rule of the wise and courageous and just over the foolish and ignorant and violent — which is to say, a benevolent sort of aristocracy, of a Platonic or Socratic kind. I should hope otherwise. But there is something inside me which says that one of the great lessons of this age might just be that whenever human beings attempt democracy, we are learning all over again — history and the devil hold hands and laugh.

Umair
September 2023

Is democracy doomed? The global fight for our future

If you think democracy is some kind of inevitable, default setting for the world, then you aren’t going to have it for very long, says historian and author Timothy Snyder. From World War I to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Snyder dives into the structures that uplift and tear down political systems, offering a historical perspective on the current state of democracy around the world as well as the patterns of thought that lead to tyranny. Learn more about a new approach to democ…

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If you think democracy is some kind of inevitable, default setting for the world, then you aren’t going to have it for very long, says historian and author Timothy Snyder. From World War I to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Snyder dives into the structures that uplift and tear down political systems, offering a historical perspective on the current state of democracy around the world as well as the patterns of thought that lead to tyranny. Learn more about a new approach to democracy that could help create and protect a future of freedom. (This conversation, hosted by TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, was part of an exclusive TED Membership event. Visit ted.com/membership to become a TED Member.)

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About the speaker

Timothy Snyder

Historian, authorSee speaker profile

Timothy Snyder helps us forecast the future by understanding the past.