“Twilight of Democracy” by Faith Silk: There is no happy ending for democracy

Just imagine that on New Year’s Eve 1999, a gallant speaker spoiled the audience’s champagne mood. Instead of celebrating the global triumph of liberalism as expected, the future of democracy could have been painted in bleak colours. In the United States, according to their prophecy, a shady real estate agent, and a man with tyrannical intentions, will be elected president in ten or twenty years. The situation is no different in the European Union. Here too, right-wing governments came to power and put an ax to democracy. Italy will soon be ruled by someone post-fascist and place the cultural sector under guardianship; Even in France, the Netherlands and Austria, racist politicians will win a majority. Eventually, Germany would also emulate the authoritarian trend and see how a dangerous Nazi had a good chance of becoming Prime Minister of an eastern federal state.

He will definitely be the speaker.”Madame ApocalypseIt was ridiculed, because cynics were not welcome in the liberal consensus aisle at the time. But today, there is panic everywhere, and the protest against right-wing enemies of democracy and scoundrels is great. Political scientists write with sore fingers and now even the conservative bourgeoisie is building firewalls against the right, at least rhetorically.

There are good reasons to be angry, but “the rhetoric of moral exclusion,” as Darmstadt political scientist Faith Silk has written, is a case of self-deception. What is meant is to blind our eyes to the fact that right-wing extremism only succeeds with voters because the liberal system has not fulfilled its promises. Silk says right-wing extremism is a “corrosive phenomenon” of democracy. It is losing its appeal and influence around the world, and is considered uncontrollable, incomprehensible and unfair. “The form of democracy, in theory and practice, has become grey.” Their transition to a different form of government had begun.

Emiri rule with a media scene

The twilight of democracy That’s the title of this brutal diagnosis of regression that was recently published. Brutal because Silk seems convinced that liberal societies have already lost the game. And all over the world, and not just in Singapore, authoritarian regimes have succeeded in creating the impression that they are able to deal with globalization better than the exhausted and socially divided societies of the West. Their post-liberal model combines social conservatives with neoliberal elements, restricts basic rights, muzzles the courts, and suppresses the opposition’s veto power through censorship and opinion control. In general, these regimes resembled a kind of princely rule with an associated media landscape. What’s striking, Silk says, is the merging of economics and politics. Authoritarian regimes did not believe in the separation of government and business. Instead, it relied on investment management, protection, family networks, and tightly regulated business relationships. Some members of the BRICS countries have played a pioneering role here. They pushed forward a form of government for which a proper name had not yet been found.

Silk offers a whole host of important reasons why Western democracies suffer from right-wing revolutions. First, he lamented the “cognitive asymmetry” within citizens. This inflated term describes the fact that some segments of the population understand a lot about politics, others not so much, others not at all, and others even less. Democratic knowledge is distributed highly unevenly, and persistent educational injustice creates deep divisions. The social democratic hope that the educational ability of citizens would automatically keep pace with the complexities of society was illusory.

This is fatal for negotiated democracy, which depends on participation and maturity. If government actions can only be understood by experts, and if ordinary citizens are no longer able to establish inclusive relationships, mistrust will grow and identity communities with paranoid worldviews will emerge. Silk’s rule of thumb is: the more ambiguous the democratic exercise of power and the “less openly politically accountable,” the more attractive right-wing ideologies become. What makes matters more complicated is the “excessive expansion of the political space.” The inevitable integration of nation-states into the European Union or into global networks creates the impression that the will of voters is being sucked out of national parliaments and disappearing into the black holes of murky negotiations. In short, politics no longer appears to be the planned achievement of democratically determined, public-good-oriented goals, but rather the result of a procedural power game that insiders, elite groups, pressure groups, and other influencers secretly exercise among themselves behind closed doors.