TIME MAY AS WELL BRING EVIL AS GOOD
Time for justice is on our minds and dashed yesterday, a verse and a look at time for the destruction of democracy.
Thinking of time and democracy, I had a question about how quickly a democracy, like that in America, can devolve into an authoritarian dictatorship. I found an interesting essay online by John Keane who apparently is an Australian professor. He also posts on Twitter (X) prodigiously if you wish to follow him. I found I learned a fair amount by reading his work. Below are some excerpts from his essay.
DEMOCRACY
How Democracies Die, Fast and Slow
“The troubling truth is that democracy can be destroyed in multiple ways, in different tempos”
April 10, 2023
John Keane
@jkeaneSDN
This essay was first published in Eurozone On February 21, 2023, in a slightly different format.
John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and Forschungsprofessur at the WZB, Berlin. His latest books are The Shortest History of Democracy (Old Street Publishing, 2022) and The New Despotism (Harvard University Press, May 2020).
Catastrophism
News sensationalism feeds the conviction of journalists and other commentators that democracy is headed for hell. Setting aside the many exceptions and positive countertrends of our age—democratically well-governed cities and resilient judiciaries, women’s unflagging struggles for dignity, and success stories such as in India, where democracy took root because it was the best way of guaranteeing dignity to many millions of poor citizens in a post-colonial society of multiple faiths and languages—they are sure democracy is “backsliding” towards a cliff edge. Catastrophism is their thing. It portrays the death of democracy as an instant drama: uncertainty grips things by the neck, the familiar rapidly falls apart, and liminality triumphs; history happens in quick time. According to this first view, power-sharing democracies typically suffer sudden death, in puffs of smoke, street fighting and rat-a-tat gunfire.
Catastrophists have a point. During the past decade, examples of the quick death of democracy are easily found. They include the surprise military coup d’état against President Mohammed Morsi in Egypt in 2013, and the constitutional coups and military overthrow of elected governments in Thailand, Myanmar, Niger, Chad, Mali, Guinea, and Sudan. The sudden reversal of democratization processes triggered by outside military intervention, or threats of armed invasion, are also on the list: Israel’s crushing of the electoral victory of Hamas in the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006; Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine; and the United States’s military support for King Hussein’s clampdown on an opposition-dominated parliament in Jordan.
Recent insurrections against democracy also seem to confirm the catastrophist view of democide. These mob rebellions are as spooky as they were unexpected. Nobody anticipated that Washington would witness a well-organized assault on the Capitol by a mob hellbent on overturning an election result, cheered on from the top by a defeated president and his buddies. Or that in Frankfurt, in a dawn police raid, a prince, allegedly backed by a 20,000-strong network of far-right extremists known as Reichsbürger—among them a celebrity chef, a judge, doctors, an arms dealer, and ex-police officers and soldiers—would be arrested on suspicions of leading a plot to storm parliament and violently overthrow the elected government to establish a new German Kaiserreich. And few predicted that in Brasília thousands of pro-Bolsonaro citizens would invade and occupy the Three Powers Square—or that these angry citizens, calling for military intervention, would, with the help of local police, storm the presidential palace, where they destroyed works of art, hurled broken furniture through windows, ransacked ceremonial rooms in the Supreme Court, stole computer equipment containing sensitive information, and activated sprinkler systems to flood parts of the Congress building.
Gradualism
Journalists with a taste for headline drama pounce on these events. Hyping things up by likening them to Hitler’s botched 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, they say democracy is “backsliding” towards an abyss. Their exaggerations have merit, reminding us of democracy’s great fragility: how it takes at least a lifetime, or longer, to build but can be undone in einem Augenblick [in the twinkling of an eye]. But the sensationalist, sudden death stories told by journalists and others do us a disservice. The troubling truth is that democracy can be destroyed in multiple ways, in different tempos. These different rhythms need to be identified and understood, not because of some perverse fixation on morbidity but, rather, to equip friends of democracy with an early warning detector, to help them anticipate and deal with its degradation, and work for its defence and renewal in nuanced and plural ways.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Consider, to begin with, the key fact—long ago emphasized by Juan Linz and other scholars—that the death of democratic institutions by gradual cuts is more common than catastrophists suppose. High-level dramas that unfold allegrissimo [(music) A direction in musical notation indicating that the piece should be played very fast and lively] and furioso [ with great force or vigor. used as a direction in music] reflect only one of democide’s rhythms. It turns out that the death of democracy can happen lentissimo [(as a direction) at a very slow tempo] through protracted, steady accumulations of high-level political grievances and knife-edged manoeuvres.
Gradualist interpretations of democide emphasize the cunning and creativity of political actors and the indeterminacy of events. The downfall of democracy is never a foregone conclusion. Serendipity can come to democracy’s rescue: a demagogue suddenly dies, an earthquake happens, a bank collapses, there’s defeat in war; things can always go in more than one direction. To paraphrase Marx, democide happens because it is chosen by political actors in political circumstances not of their choosing. Critically important, runs the gradualist argument, are the bitter contests between political forces favouring the maintenance and/or reform of a democratic political system and saboteurs who don’t care about its fate, or who actively yearn for its overthrow. The explanation notes that in any given crisis of democracy—1920s Weimar Germany and Poland, Bolivia in late 2019, Peru 2023—the political dynamics are normally stormy, radically confusing, and often terrifying, always riddled with uncertainty.
Paralysed by unsolved problems, a democratically elected government grows unpopular. There are loud calls for its resignation. In the shadows, anti-government forces hatch plans for its deposition. Disloyal opposition rallies. There are wild rumours, fears of outside military intervention, talk of conspiracies, street protests that turn violent. With mounting civil unrest, the police, intelligence services, and army grow agitated. The elected government responds by granting itself emergency powers, proroguing the parliament, reshuffling the military high command, and imposing media blackouts. Things come to the boil. The forces promoting disorder and the enemies of democracy take heart. As the government totters, the army moves from its barracks onto the streets to quell unrest and takes control. The slow-motion drama stops. Democracy is buried in the grave it slowly dug for itself.
Populism and its demagogues
An elections-centred variant of the gradualist explanation of democide counts as a third interpretation of how democide happens. It emphasizes that democracy perishes when a democratically elected populist government strategically manipulates and cunningly wrecks the institutions of constitutional democracy. Drawing on recent cases such as Hungary, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Singapore, and Turkey, in The New Despotism I show that ballots can be used to ruin democracy just as effectively as bullets. Around a decade is required for such high-level political games of thrones and populist demagoguery to wound free and fair elections, parliamentary integrity, independent courts, watchdog media, and other institutions of monitory democracy.
Innocent bystanders at first find the dynamics puzzling because the zombification of accountable government is done in the name of democracy. Left unopposed, the outcome is nonetheless deeply anti-democratic: a distinctively twenty-first century-type of “captured” and corrupted “mafia state,” as described by the Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar, led by a demagogue and dominated by a wealthy state and corporate “poligarchs,” a strangely despotic form of phantom democracy built with the collaboration of pliant journalists, docile judges, and millions of loyal voters. The transformation typically happens in fits and starts, at first gradually, in slow motion. Then it gathers pace. Lentissimo gives way to prestissimo [(especially as a direction) in a very quick tempo].
The turbulence is typically inspired and led by demagogues, populist saboteurs of democracy skilled in the arts of gradually dismantling governing arrangements, including free and fair elections, in the name of democracy. It’s an old dynamic. Scholars of the Ancient Greek world such as Moses Finley have long noted the democracy-threatening role played by “mis-leaders of the people.” From the time of the French Revolution, demagoguery also plagued the age of electoral democracy—think of figures such as Juan Manuel de Rosas in Argentina from the late 1820s all the way through to the fiery, folksy “Kingfish” Huey Long in the 1930s United States. Meanwhile, today, in the era of monitory democracy, populist demagoguery remains an auto-immune disease. Acting in the name of “the people,” even claiming that they are “the people” (Jean-Luc Mélenchon), demagogues howl against “the establishment” and denounce “corrupt elites.” They call upon “the people” to put an end to their miseries by daring to do heroic things like “bring down the regime.” Populist power grabber Kais Saied cleverly recycled “al-sha’b yureed,” the keywords of the 2011 Tunisian revolution, during his 2019 election campaign speeches, for example. The rhetoric sounds and feels quintessentially democratic. Yet today’s specialists in the arts of political seduction of the disaffected are false friends of democracy.
After winning the first election, populists are tempted to move faster to outflank and politically crush their opponents. The pace of change accelerates. Backed by rubber bullets, water cannon, and the whiff of tear gas, the government of “the people” begins cracking down on protesters. Helped by cunning media tactics and much talk of a “corrupt” opposition, it prepares for the next election. Elective despotism (Thomas Jefferson) is on its agenda. Elections become rowdy plebiscites. Politics is no longer give-and-take bargaining and fair-minded compromise. It degenerates into spectacle, dirty tricks, and vote harvesting by a demagogue-led government. Ruling by cheating (András Sajó), the Grand Redeemer promises “the people” improvements in their daily lives. There is much talk of solutions to the headaches and heartbreaks of joblessness, inflation, dysfunctional transport systems, and poor healthcare. Potlatch politics thrives. Generous material gifts transpire—as in the month prior to the 2022 Hungarian elections, when Viktor Orbán’s government reportedly spent around 3 percent of GDP on payments to targeted voters, including big bonuses to 70,000 members of the army and police, tax refunds to nearly two million employees, and an extra month’s benefits to 2.5 million pensioners.
Every other populist trick in the book is played: threats and bribes in backroom meetings; dinner deals with business oligarchs and media tycoons; court victories; state-of-the-art dog whistling, troll factories and message bombing; calculated silence and brute force. The point is to suck life from power-sharing democracy committed to the principle of equality. The government of “the people” is driven by an inner urge to destroy monitory democracy—the checks, balances, and mechanisms for publicly scrutinizing and restraining government and corporate power.
Democracy is much more than attending local public meetings, keeping up with breaking news, or voting. A well-functioning democracy requires freedom from violence, hunger and personal humiliation. Democracy is saying no to the brazen arrogance of callous employers who maltreat workers as mere commodities and deny them the right to form independent unions. Democracy is therefore at odds with unbridled capitalism: since, as Karl Polanyi long ago pointed out, the unrestricted commodification of human beings and their natural environments leads inevitably to “the demolition of society,” both popular self-government and capitalism itself functionally require the protection of social life from the ravages of commodity production, exchange, and consumption.
The protection of society against predatory power also implies the rejection of racism, misogyny, caste and religious bigotry, and all other types of human and non-human indignity. Democracy is tenderness with children, respect for women, and the right to be different. Democracy is humility. It is the willingness to admit that impermanence renders all life vulnerable, that in the end nobody is invincible, and that ordinary lives are never ordinary. Democracy is freedom from fear of police violence, the right not to be killed, or to die from opioid addiction or a broken heart. It’s equal access to decent public transport and medical care and sympathy for those who have fallen behind. Democracy is free access to information and a learned sense of worldly wonder. It’s the everyday ability to handle unexpected situations and make judgments wisely.
To live democratically is to refuse the dogma that things can’t be changed because they’re “naturally” fixed in stone. Democracy transforms experiences of temporality. The present and the future are re-aligned. Horizons of expectations are stretched. There are moments when democracy thus implies the need for insurrection: the refusal to put up with everyday forms of injustice and hypocrisy, idolatry and bullying, snobbery and sycophancy, lies and bullshit, and other forms of social degradation.
From Twitter (X) below two recent posts by Mr. Keane.
John Keane
@jkeaneSDN
language matters: the US commentariat continues (misleadingly) to debate whether Trump is an ‘autocrat’, ‘authoritarian’ or ‘fascist’; absent is the word 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐦 which much more accurately describes the despot’s style and substance via @NYTimes
5:25 PM · Nov 20, 2023·4,143 Views
@jkeaneSDN
absurd, ironic, disgraceful: the world’s ‘largest democracy’ [India] blocks the arrival of my distinguished democracy researcher colleague and friend @NitashaKaul @CSDWestminster
12:20 PM · Feb 27, 2024·534 Views
Studying the loss of democracy seems to always make me very uneasy. I suspect that many might not want to contemplate it. Time isn’t on the side of the American voter in determining Trump’s guilt or innocence. Democracy allows this guy to play games to his heart's desire, and friendly judges are winking and nodding at his exploits. So ends my brief look at time as it might apply to our current American political environment. I hope you enjoyed it.
173rd Posting, February 29, 2024.