DEMOCRACY IN THE AGE OF PLAGUE AND CONSPIRACY
Democracy is fragile, and more important perhaps, democracy
has turned out to be much more fragile in the older anglophone democracies,
especially the UK and the US. This casual statement really needs emphasising,
since it conflicts with long held assumptions it can prove incredibly resistant
to being absorbed. George Orwell set 1984 in a country clearly identified as
England precisely because he sought to shatter the complacency that was conviction
that the UK was somehow inoculated again totalitarianism and totalitarian modes
of government and, more importantly for Orwell, totalitarian modes of thinking.
It is consequently difficult to downplay the significance of the events of the
last half-decade both here and in the United States. From Brexit and the
election of Donald Trump a highly toxic populist wave, hostile to liberal
democracy, swept across Europe but also, for once, across both the channel and
the Atlantic.
Now, of course, both American and British democracy hardly
represent flawless examples of democratic process, equality before the law and
open and transparent governance, a truly inclusive franchise operating in
Britain only since the 1930’s and only since the voting rights act of the mid-sixties
in the US. Whilst anachronisms like the House of Lords, and the royal prerogative
and other arcane processes
diminish the claims of democracy here in the UK. In the US gerrymandering and
voter suppression takes place on a scale and in plain sight that few states
claiming to be democracies would countenance. These scars on American democracy
are exacerbated by the grotesque anomaly of the Electrical college by which you
can win the popular vote but still lose the election.
All of that said we have enjoyed imperfect democracies in
which free speech and broader liberal values are to some extent protected. However,
these protections were weak and were in no state to withstand the populist
winds that emerged from the east, from Putin and his puppets assisted by the
fellow travellers of the British right.
It is difficult to overstate the impact of the collapse of
the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc satellites. That Western states, led by
the US bear serious culpability for the rise of Vladimir Putin has not been
sufficiently recognised. The Yeltsin years, cowboy capitalism and the emergence
of the kleptocrat oligarchy, all encouraged by the western states that looked
on benignly as the Russian people were robbed blind, set the stage for the
strong man Putin.
Putin was and is a man with a chip on his shoulder, he
carried a deep resentment about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the West’s
role in that collapse, famously describing this as ‘the greatest geopolitical
disaster in history.’ Putin wanted revenge.
The cyber warfare unleashed by Putin and its connection to
the election of Donald Trump is a matter of record, however the interference
and the accompanying deluge of disinformation were already interacting with a
fertile field of paranoia and conspiracy theories. President Trump took full
advantage.
As a descriptive term fascism leaves a lot to be
desired. It has been reduced to a term
of abuse, levelled at everything from the papacy to the National Trust and many
points in between. Yet in Donald Trump and the mob he incited to attack the
Capitol we are confronted by a phenomenon that very much looks like the real
thing. If it looks like a duck quacks like a duck... so what do call it?
Perhaps the best way to understand fascism and fascists is
to understand that the phenomenon is never static but is dynamic, it evolves. In
Trump we have an evolved form, contemporary fascism. And like all such
phenomenon it is visceral, it appeals to something deeply rooted in the human psyche.
These are crude, basic impulses, characterised by a hunger for simplicity and
clearly identified problems and solutions. Most importantly a clearly identified
enemy. Brexit and Trumpism met these needs. Then came the plague.
The Covid virus did not fit into the Trump or Brexit
narrative, consequently the immediate response was one of denial. It would all
blow over quickly, life would continue as normal, no worse than the flue. Trump
mocked mask wearers; Johnson made a virtue out of continuing to shake hands.
Unsurprisingly they both caught the virus and unsurprisingly both were not sufficiently
chastened by the experience to radically alter their outlook. It was more of the same especially in the
United States, where a mix of crude misinformation, bluster and denial reigned as
the highest death rate in the advanced industrial world savaged the country. Britain
however vied strongly for this disgusting title.
Populism, with its simple solutions and slogans cannot cope
with a pandemic as countries as disparate as Brazil, the UK and Russia illustrate.
It has only one weapon in its armoury to combat plague, conspiracy theory and the
consequent scapegoating. In the US this again took on much more fascistic and
xenophobic character, in the UK the government blamed the population as a
whole. Lies were piled on lies, truth vanished
in a world of smoke and mirrors.
Copywrite Rolling Stone
THE BIG LIE
Did any of this impact upon the attitude of the electorate? Not
especially, not an electorate fed on the big lie.
The Big lie dominated the 20th Century, ‘the
stab in the back,’ the ‘Trotsky fascist alliance,’ and has now
premiered in the 21st, - ‘the stolen election,’ ‘Britain
held back by the EU,’[1]
i.e., Brexit.
Both Trump and Johnson advanced electorally, albeit Trump
lost, though after breaking records with the scale of his vote. This despite
the fact that in the long run free and fair elections, and a healthy democracy
are incompatible with the big lie.
That Johnson lies continually has now been factored in and
it is difficult to see how this can now be challenged. However, a start might
be made by enforcing the convention that one cannot lie to the House of Commons
with impunity. There is also hope in the fact that, albeit slowly and with some
difficulty Trumpism is now being rolled back across the Atlantic. Johnson no
longer has a mirror image across the pond as democratic norms are restored.
There needs to be a full, open, and extensive investigation
of the Trump years, including, of course, the events of January 6th.
This will be painful, but vital if healthy democracy is to be sustained. An
all-out assault on voter suppression must be followed by new voting rights
legislation. And, unless it turns away from Trump, the Republican party needs
to be crushed electorally.
Here the damage done by Brexit is only just beginning to be
fully felt. There is however one area in which serious damage has already
occurred and that happened in 2016, damage to a fair and ethical electoral
process. Vote Leave harnessed dark money, the sinister illegal information
harvesting outfit Cambridge Analytica, and Russian support in the form of a misinformation
campaign. All of this needs to be investigated and brought out into the open. Without
this happening and being rectified the election process will continue to be
vulnerable to outside interference.
Johnson with Russian 'Friends.'
Anglo American democracy currently faces its greatest threat
since the modern extension of the franchise. The serious question is can it
survive in a form that can still be meaningfully described as democracy?
