For the second time in two years we have seen the supporters of a far-right president violently object to the democratic removal of that president from office.
First it was Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol in Washington DC as the US witnessed its first attempted coup in modern times, just two years ago.
Now supporters of former Brazilian President Bolsonaro have repeated the performance in attacks on central government and parliamentary buildings in Brasilia.
The move is more than a copycat attack, although it would seem to be that. It is part of what I suspect is a trend. The message is clear. It is that the right-wing no longer trust democracy, and will not as a result tolerate it. For them, the philosophy of choice that is at the supposed heart of their thinking is not available to those who might disagree with them. Only their views are acceptable in government, and violence can be tolerated to ensure that is the case.
Good order was, of course, restored in the USA. It looks like this will also happen in Brasilia. But the legacy remains after the incidents are over. The awareness that, for example, the police appeared to let this insurrection happen in Brazil will not be any more easily forgotten than mainstream Republican support for the coup in Washington has been.
And we should anticipate that this is part of a trend, backed by a far-right belief that they have a right to rule, come what may.
There is a message in all this. It is that democracy is hard. It is not the default setting for government: totalitarian rule is that default. Democracy only survives with nourishment, support and the desire to make it responsive to people.
We are by this definition at risk in this country. Our so-called democracy not only embraces feudal institutions, it also quite deliberately fails to reflect the opinion and will of the electorate, for which leading politicians show open contempt. This creates a fertile breeding ground for the right.
When democracy fails people that will always be the case. Our supposed democracy is failing the UK at present. From first-past-the-post, to the monarchy and House of Lords, to the refusal of the democratic rights of the people of Scotland, our supposed democracy is a charade that has the deep-seated ability to alienate hard-wired into it.
We need to be wary in the countries of the United Kingdom. Unless our democracy is revived and re-nourished its failings provide an obvious breeding ground for the far-right. We had the warning with the abuse and exploitation inherent in Brexit. We cannot ignore those warning signs again.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Like you, I’m the UK, but do not believe we are presently ruled under a democracy, and haven’t been for some time. The policies of the major parties are identical. You get neoliberalism whether you want it or not. You are only allowed to exercise a choice once every few years and if you vote for a minority party that voice will not get heard. We have an unelected monarch who can command public funds, and a government that spends money without any checks or balances; corruption has been institutionalized. The public sector has been hollowed out and the main parties both in power and in opposition are trying to crush the voice of the organised working class. This polity, similarly to the USA, is an oligarchy with a few pretend trappings. Seriously, what’s left to “save” in this country?
Arguably the UK has never been a democracy, or at least not for long. Certainly not until full universal suffrage for men and women in 1928, or universal suffrage for men (and partial for women) in 1918. (Ancient Athens was not a democracy in this modern sense of full participation either.)
Before that, the property qualifications for voting made the UK a very partial form of democracy at best – more of an oligopoly, with power balanced between the monarchy and the nobility.
Perhaps the high point was 1950 or 1951, when turnout reached over 80%.
Ancient Athens also practiced slavery, so not overly democratic!
‘democracy is hard. It is not the default setting for government: totalitarian rule is that default.’
I think very few of us have grasped this yet. It is difficult to accept – it means we all have to become ‘activists’ if democracy is to survive. The string of anti-democratic laws in the last couple of years are all designed to preserve the natural party of government in power – limiting the judiciary, the right to protest, investigative journalism, the BBC, the electoral commission, the right to vote etc etc.
None of this has been meaningfully opposed by ‘His Majesty’s Opposition’. They just dont seem to understand the seriousness of what’s at stake.
The World Population Review classifies only around ten countries as full democracies – twenty-odd more ‘flawed democracies’ the rest begin ‘hybrid regimes’ or ‘authoritarian regimes’
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/democracy-countries
Agreed
I think you are absolutley right Richard – though it seems to be a question (in my mind) of not ‘if’ but ‘when’, and then whether it is nuclear conflageration inspired by those running the proxy war from the US, some awful climate consequence (food riot scarcity/heat wave/ drought/floods) or as you righly point out, violence from the right.
I really have no idea what to do about it or where to take my anger and furty at all this Richard – thank the heavens for you and your blog contributors though. As noted before, this is one of the few places of sanity that remains.
Thanks
Bu small comfort
The message to me from this is that democracy is too important to be left to the politicians and our institutions – it needs citizen engagement and intervention too.
I recommend watching the Brazilian documentary ‘The Edge of Democracy’ (2019) about how the leery Bolsonaro actually got into power. It’s quite shocking actually – redolent of Clinton’s impeachment and out own edge of democracy moment which to me was BREXIT and even the successive replacement of Johnson by the Tory party without a GE. And social media played a big part in Brazil and BREXIT.
The thing is democracy works if only people go along with it. For democracy not to work, all they have to do is choose not to go along with it, play by the rules. We’ve seen that in Brazil and BREXIT and the Tory leadership and the U.S.
Yes – democracy is that vulnerable.
The only answer is to end the FPTP systems and enforce multi co-operative working at political level. That might also curb the ability of money-power/capital to over-influence politics. And maybe why PR will be resisted.
Conservatives think that bringing back Johnson as PM is democratic. That’s the group run by Priti Patel and backed by Lord Cruddas, who has donated more than £3.5 million to the party and refuses to donate more unless they do as he tells them.
Conservative Democratic Organisation, they call themselves.
Something tells me they don’t understand the meaning of democracy.
Just voting in elections under FPTP isn’t sufficient to curb the relentless drive towards ever more controlling right wing rule. It would help if more people took the time to read about upcoming legislation and to get some understanding of it’s consequences. In “Democracy for Realists” Achen and Bartels say that the enlightenment view of the informed citizen’s participatory role in democracy is a romantic myth, they don’t see voters as being able to discern the longer term trends and direction of a government in it’s term of office – instead they think people react to recent events and policies that have had a positive or detrimental effect on them. They suggest that politicians shouldn’t be allowed huge budgets in elections as too much money allows dangerous extremists to present their case attractively. I hope that voters are more savvy and more cynical than they give them credit for. Other writers have argued for local committees of people with expertise and relevant knowledge to unravel and explain very complex arguments for and against a policy to interested voters – that might have been useful in the run up to Brexit. The key thing is for more people to be interested enough to find out more and to believe that knowing more and voting on the basis of that knowledge will tip the scale a bit further towards democracy and away from totalitarianism.