Could the next few paragraphs become part of what our children are taught in years to come?
“Democracy was in the end a historical aberration. A group of alleged philosophers and thinkers, and some equally deluded politicians, persuaded the masses of people they could govern themselves. They were aided and abetted by politicians down through the ages. One of them for instance, an American President called Lincoln, talked wistfully about ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’. He said that, of course, while his country was split down the middle by a civil war. And he paid the price of foolishness.
Over the decades other ideologies came and went. All failed. They couldn’t deliver the real freedom the people needed. They couldn’t protect the people from their own weaker instincts. They couldn’t build invincible strength for their countries.
Little by little, the people came to realise that real freedom comes from a strong leader. It took years for the truth to emerge that only a strong man, unhindered by unnecessary checks and balances, could protect the women, could keep the enemy out, could keep our blood pure, and could make us great again.
We are strong now. Our leader knows best what we need and what we deserve. We don’t need to have a discussion every four years about what direction we might go in. Our leader will make that decision, and we trust him. Democracy is dead. Long live a strong leader.”
Dilution of democracy
Is all that a bit fanciful? History after all is written by the winners. And if it is so, how will the history of modern democracy be written in a few years’ time? Could you imagine that few paragraphs at the start of a text book on the school curriculum in future? All over the world?
Because we think of ourselves as living in a democratic world. But we don’t. There are not far short of 200 members of the United Nations. Twenty-four of them (including Ireland) are full democracies, according to the most respected index around (the Economist Democracy Index). That’s it.
Now look what’s happening in the United States, described already in the index as a flawed democracy. So a thing happened there yesterday, and it constitutes one of the greatest ironies of modern political history.
The event that Donald Trump tried to stop four years ago happened yesterday without incident. The democracy he sought to desecrate met to record the fact that he won the election — not that he had lost it. A dignified Kamala Harris presided over a Congressional ceremony that recorded her defeat and her loss of office. State by state the roll call of electors guaranteeing a Trump victory was announced, and by the end of Monday the only things remaining were for Biden and Harris to leave the stage and for Trump to take possession, in a formal ceremony in two week’s time. Nobody who believes in democratic values will try to disrupt that either.
Where’s the irony in all this? It lies in the fact that a Democrat, peaceful and dignified, in a democratic and time-honoured way, handed democratic power to an anti-democrat
But it goes further than that. There is the very real possibility that the democratic ceremonials of the next couple of weeks might never happen again. America may be about to crown a monarch. The peaceful transfer of power that democrats around the world boast about could be a permanent transfer of power.
Because there are two things we know right now (and, of course, they can change). The first is that Trump and his movement have an awful lot of things they want to do before they even contemplate leaving office. The second is that Democrats don’t know how to combat any of that. In the face of looming autocracy, democracy hasn’t a clue.
And that may turn out to be even more true in the world of Elon Musk and his mad control of endless corners of the social media that has become our opium.
Before we talk about Musk for a bit, let’s look at the oldest parliamentary democracy in the world, our next door neighbour.
Child protection
Britain has been consumed by culture wars for a number of years now. So far they haven’t prevailed. But this past weekend they have been ratcheted up.
I forced myself to watch Nigel Farage speaking to his Reform party over the weekend. Among (a lot of) other things, he told them that there have been up to fifty incidences of the rape of children in the UK in recent years. And that was just the start of a weekend where the Tories, Farage, and Musk came together in the most extraordinary pile-on, effectively accusing the still new Labour government of allowing, even enabling, gangs of rapists to attack and abuse Britain’s children.
Except, of course, it wasn’t about that at all. I worked in the area of child protection for many years. I believe there is no greater crime than the abuse of a child. But I find it absolutely sickening that accusations of this kind are flung around for nothing but racist reasons. If you see someone in your community who looks as if they might be from Pakistan, you can be pretty sure they’re involved in gang rape, and Labour is covering up for them. That’s the message.
There is now the beginning of another race war in the UK, and its only purpose is to aggrandise the far right and to undermine democratic process
Farage’s favourite charge is that people of a different skin colour are likely to be evil. His second favourite — and perhaps the more pernicious one, because how do you counter it? — is that the other side is involved in a cover-up.
Right now it’s unclear what role Elon Musk is playing. One minute he’s all over Farage, the next he wants to see the back of him. Even Farage must be beginning to wonder if his erstwhile backer is playing with a full deck of cards.
But despite that … As Trump is about to take power, his primary ally in the States, who paid tens of millions to help get him elected, is also heavily involved in trying to destabilise another democratic government. Musk is immensely powerful, immensely rich, and, it seems, increasingly unstable himself. So maybe, just maybe, someone else with an interest in undermining democracy is pulling his strings.
It all sounds mad, doesn’t it. Like a crazy conspiracy theory being played out in front to us. Maybe someone is making a modern version of The Manchurian Candidate and we are all extras on the movie set. And yet we can see what’s happening, day by day, little by little, in the US and the UK. We haven’t even mentioned France or Germany, Palestine, or Ukraine. Democracy is floundering and wringing its hands in the face of visible and growing threats and challenges.
If there is a conspiracy, we will find out eventually who is really running it. But it may be too late by then. A much more autocratic world may be only years away, and we are all fast asleep.
