Russia, India and Hungary are in alliance in 2022. China hovers nearby them. Using varying degrees of manipulation of the democratic process (total in China, heavily so in Russia, deeply manipulated in Hungary, and corrupted in all four) governments are created that are the antithesis of those that provide the representative accountability that is at the core of actual democracy.
In each case the goal is to use the methodology of fascism to corrupt truth, to sow deliberate division, to manipulate opinion through misinformation, and to in every case support the supposed strong man who holds in their sole hands the destiny of the nation.
Do we call all these states fascist? Does it really matter? Their authoritarian contempt for those not considered aligned with them is all that matters. When Orban can include President Zelensky of Ukraine in his list of enemies on the day when evidence of genocide by Russian forces in Ukraine is revealed you know the type of person we are dealing with.
The threat from this alliance is real. The methods they use are also familiar in the UK. Our current government is but one step at most away from many of them. Trump might have been even closer, and there is no guarantee that he, or a look-alike will not be back in the White House in 2024.
The demise of liberal democracy is on the cards. Most are indifferent to their governments, wishing only to be left in peace today, ignoring the consequence for their tomorrow. Of those who care for politics, those on the right are too often already corrupted and those on the left too in awe of neoliberalism to believe an alternative possibilities.
In 1992 political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history. Liberal democracy had won, he thought. The threat of Marxism was over. But he was wrong. The seeds of the destruction of democracy were sown by Hayek and Friedman. Their thinking, focussed on the success of the few at cost to the many, is destroying liberalism and democracy, and is recreating the tyranny Hayek supposedly feared, but which through his indifference to democracy he was willing to embrace.
Is there a way out of this evil? I don't know. But I am not giving up.
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The situation is truly unnerving. The left are, and have been for some time, a disgrace. It does not appear as though anything can be done to ‘fix’ the difficulties exhibited by the left. As for Fukuyama, when the book came out, I saw another crackpot parading as a serious intellectual. Unfortunately, the book and its thesis have been influential in some circles.
I don’t think it’s fair to blame all the left; many don’t believe neoliberalism is desirable or inevitable. I guess though, in debates left greens must focus on proximal and not just distal matters, coming up with concrete ideas and explaining why they’d make everyone’s life better.
I have come across a number Putin and Xi apologists who believe Biden is waging a new cold war, meaning social liberalism and democracy in their opinion are not desirable and that the enemy of their enemy is their friend. I wonder if they forgot that there was the Sino-Soviet split because of disagreements over how to interpret Marxist-Leninist theories and even within Communist parties, there have been debates and purges
I have noticed that many of those who focus on the shortcomings of the west, which can be quite a list, seem able to excuse or ignore the despots Richard lists. It is as though they cannot accept the virtue and vice can be combined in the same entity. To me that is a definition of maturity.
The problem with the Left is, these days, they’re the Right.
Indeed.
‘On the day the wall came down
They threw the locks onto the ground
And with glasses high
We raised a cry for freedom had arrived’
Few things sum up political discourse better, I suppose, that a post making excellent points outlining the threats to liberal democracy posed by far right fascists and our own fascist adjacent government attracting comments attacking the left. I think there is a large swath of liberals who, feeling utterly powerless over the situation in Ukraine, look around for someone to pick a fight with and it is rather depressing how often they pick the left rather than the people actually in power.
The left have spent the last couple of decades or so warning of the awfulness of Putin, Orban and Modhi (to say nothing of the Saudi monarchy) time after time whilst the centre and the right in the form of Blair, Cameron, May and Johnson have rolled out the red carpet to these fascists, trumpeting trade deals, selling them weapons, inviting them to speak in parliament, accepting money from them and their allies, requesting their help in the ‘war on islamists’, ignoring war crimes, and congratulating them on their corrupt election victories.
So sure, focus on a few powerless folks on the left who are making ill-advised hot takes. Meanwhile the people actually in power are marching us on towards a complete dismantling of democracy.
Hmmm…………………
Then by your definition, maturity works both ways for East and West doesn’t it I.R. Stevenson?
Even now, Russian and Chinese systems will have their good points and bad points too. Maybe Russia’s system has more bad points because unlike China it took Western advice and went for Neo-liberal shock therapy in the late 80’s? We are dealing with the blow back from that right now and we were always going to. The Chinese held back from that. Just.
The only difference I can see between Russia and the West, is that Russia insists on dividing its riches amongst Russian nationals or Russian ally billionaires and not foreigners like the misled idiots in the West who allow foreigners to run their key businesses like energy and weapons armaments for example and leave their democracy weak and compromised in the name of allowing markets to allocate ownership. Ask Germany how they are doing against Russia and its aggression against Ukraine eh, whilst they still pay for Russian oil and gas? They send weapons to Ukraine and maybe prolong the war or make enemies? Like it or not, selling/giving arms means that you have blood on your hands. Ain’t war a bitch? All we had to do was go green and then sanction.
Yes – Putin and Co are crooks. But they are Russian crooks – not American or German crooks or some other flag of convenience such as we get under supposedly morally ‘superior’ Western capitalism.
And as we turn out attention to the Ukraine, what will the Chinese do? Well, they’ll continue to expand for the future – make friends, do deals, cement supply chains in for rare raw materials and perhaps actually enrich more of their people in the process whilst neo-liberalism in the West pauperises ever increasing amounts of its citizens in the name of ‘efficient markets’ and the ‘efficient allocation’ of resources like money to a narrower band of people. But no matter – the West will not seek to understand China and just rope her in with Putin and Co because it will be convenient to do so and it will be a way of trying to stop her getting on with business. You see, far from wanting competition, the West hates it – just like neo-liberals actually do – so China will be made an enemy for that. For daring to want to develop the way the West itself developed once.
The triumphalism of Fukuyama was redolent of the West as a whole who – tumescent with triumph when the Wall came down – decided to forget the old idiom about not throwing stones when one is living in or near glass houses. The West mistook the collapse of Soviet Russia as their success when it was actually an internal Russian failure – a system that would have ground to halt anyway some time or other.
Contemporary Western capitalism kills people – OK? Whether it is by starting wars on faulty grounds and motives like in Iraq, or the way it subtly kills people who need help but whom are deprived of trades unions for health and safety and decent wages or life giving and hope creating social security or health care or PPE to cope with the odd pandemic to not dealing effectively with a hurricane in some southern state of the U.S.
Contemporary Western capitalism is a subtle knife, thrust into the back of humanity.
It celebrates monopoly power under the promise that all of us can end up with such power if only we work hard enough even though its a rigged game already and very few will get that far and many will die in the process thinking that they never made it, measuring themselves against an unobtainable twisted metric.
And that behaviour we have so admonished in Russia and China? Well, sod Russia and China because Boris is borrowing some of their methodologies from history right now to close down democracy here too – to create a thousand year Tory Reich so that he and his rich friends – including a few Russians BTW – can exploit us and our children endlessly. And I mean endlessly.
Some future eh?
BTW, I believe that Fukuyama redeemed himself with a two books on ‘The Origins of Political Order’ which were very well received if I recall.
I am Chinese and I can offer a perspective.
The so-called democracy and freedom simply do not exist in China. Speech is not free, information is not transparent and power is firmly in the hands of those in power. We ordinary Chinese citizens have never had the right to vote in so-called democratic polls; everything is decided internally by them.
We are not allowed to march in the streets and question the government, and if we do, we are arbitrarily convicted and put in jail, even beaten by the police and tortured to force us to confess our guilt (yet we have done nothing wrong at all).
Since that Tiananmen movement in 1989, China’s speech censorship has gotten worse and worse, education is in shambles, teaching to the test and instilling love for political parties from a young age, (foolish education has made at least 80% of the population unable to tell the difference between the party and the state), and it has gotten worse since Xi Jinping came to power, and the Chinese internet is full of stirring up internal conflicts and hatred of the West, led by the US, and Taiwan.
Now China’s response to the epidemic is to close everyone off in their neighborhoods, mandatory not to leave their homes, and to test for nucleic acid once a day until there are no positive tests for fourteen consecutive days, (whereupon very many people are on the verge of bankruptcy, have not left their homes for months, even many neighborhoods have no supplies and are still starving to this day, and some have committed suicide), and if you are diagnosed, law enforcement will come to your home to disinfect it and take your pets to death. (From 2019 to now in Shanghai, the government has not respected human rights in any way)
By now, the vast majority of Chinese people no longer have the courage, or even the thought, to fight the government. (Because China has been so successful in brainwashing and educating its people, this is a real-life version of 1984.) Those who have the independence of mind and the means to do so are choosing to transfer their assets abroad, study abroad and emigrate. And we, the ordinary people, have been living in this hell on earth.
What should we do, please?
You say: “The seeds of the destruction of democracy were sown by Hayek and Friedman. Their thinking, focussed on the success of the few at cost to the many, is destroying liberalism and democracy.” Nowhere is this more true than in the behaviour of Western neo-liberal capitalism in Russia in the 90s: no pity was shown to the lame ducks of the old Soviet economy. Yet the Russians were ready to take their place among Western democracies, they even asked to join NATO. If the West hadn’t been so short-sighted, and slaves to neo-liberalism, the Russian economy and society wouldn’t have collapsed and required a strong man to put it in its feet again.
Remember Pushkin was a great admirer of Shakespeare and Walter Scott, the Russians are not born enemies of the West.
We at https://labouraffairs.com have a lot to say on the subject.
I agree
The actions of the West in Russia at that time was grossly irresponsible and laid the foundations for where we are now