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Another way democracy dies 03 Sep 2024

After the first tenure of Mr. Donald Trump as the President of the United States of America, a cottage industry of democracy pessimism arose. Many political scientists wrote books about the end of democracy. Two most notable of the books of this new genre are ‘How Democracy Ends’ by David Runciman and ‘How Democracies Die: What History Reveal About Our Future’ by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. There was so much glib talk about how democracy ends and the such. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump and we did not see any such frenzy again. It looked like the threat to democracy was no more. Trump was that singular threat that provoked the rise of the literature of the end of democracy. It was all engineered by resentment and hatred for Mr. Trump and what he represents.

The Covid-19 pandemic further etched in black on white canvas the ‘evil’ that Trump posed to democracy. Trump seemed to have doubted the efficacy of modern science. He allegedly assembled and platformed assorted pseudo-scientists and extremists who question venerable personages like Dr. Fauci and the bureaucrats at the World Health Organisation (WHO) to dispute the prescribed modalities and vaccines for the virus. Let us forget for a moment that Dr. Fauci and his venerable colleagues have walked back on tens of what they said were scientifically factual about the virus. Today, the so-called conspiracies from Trump-like scientists have now being accepted by mainstream scientific sources as authentic.

Now that Trump is back to fight for the presidency with a message that challenges the liberal global coalition that calls the shot in international public policy, the noble men and women of Davos, the real undertakers of whatever remains of the ‘Washington Consensus’, are once again chanting ‘Trump is a threat to democracy’. The way the anti-Trump elites paint a scary picture of the end of democracy if Trump gets a second term as US President, you would assume we never had a Trump first term. Trump definitely threatened to end many things important to the global elites , like the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and cozied up to dictators like Putin and Kim Jong of North Korea. But he did not throw political opponents into prison. He did not abolish any of the constitutional rights of the US citizens? He did not use state power to expel elected representatives from Congress. He did not enact decrees in place of laws passed by Congress. He did none of this. Yet Trump represents the most credible threat against democracy.

But Trump is not the President of Brazil where a judge has banned Brazilians from expressing themselves through the X platform. A few weeks ago, the founder of Telegram was arrested in Paris and is undergoing criminal prosecution for what appears to be trumped up charge that belies the truth that government officials are angry at the platform for not censoring what they consider misinformation and disinformation. A few weeks ago, a top official of the EU fired a warning against Elon Musk to stop his proposed interview with President Trump on his X platform to avoid serious consequences. This was a barely concealed attempt to censor a political viewpoint from a man running for the US Presidency. Apart from constituting a veiled election interference, the threat betrays a mindset that is poised against some perspectives considered as ‘dangerous’ to society. What makes these perspectives dangerous in the mind of the ruling elites in the West is that they are frontally opposed to dominant liberal project. Think about the war in Ukraine. It is reasonable to think that the West should support Ukraine to defeat Russia. It is also reasonable to argue against continuing the war against Russia. None of these views constitutes a real threat to democracy.

The global liberal elites have constructed democracy to mean some important agenda that override the basic rights and freedoms that are traditionally associated with the democratic life. Some political theorists are wondering whether democracies needs to accord tolerance to those who oppose the democratic life. This has always been an issue in establishing the coherence of liberal theory. But it is now being implemented as a programmatic shutting down of ideas and viewpoints that contradict the ideas and viewpoints of dominant liberals. Take for example, views about homosexuality or transgender. Some western countries have enacted laws that  criminalise failure to address transgenders by their preferred pronouns. The renowned writer, J.K. Rowling, is threatened with criminal prosecution by Scottish authorities for refusing to accept that transwomen are women. The Vice President of Google startled many when he defended the IT company’s overt manipulation of its algorithm to block certain facts from public search by saying that accuracy is not as important as the project.

There is no doubt that the left in the West have problem with the traditional concept of democracy as freedom of opinion and expression. They have problem with constitutional democracy if it means that the people may elect those who do not accept their comprehensive moral doctrines. This Century’s leading political philosopher, John Rawls, propounded a theory of justice that is based on the liberal faith that civil society can have reasoned coexistence with those who reject the liberal canons. He argued that this is feasible through the overlapping consensus in which liberal and non-liberals can bracket their comprehensive moral doctrines and engage contractarian views on the basis of public reason. In his book, The Law of the Peoples, he showed how to build a just and peaceful social order through such epistemic abstinence.

The new liberal lefts have abandoned this naive faith and are resolved to take out those who oppose the liberal faith. They are willing to abandon democracy to protect the emerging woke and radical agenda. This is like the former communists. Democracy is not as important as the project. Just as the Google exec puts it, ‘The project is more important than accuracy”.

The point is: democracy is dying in the West at the suit of the radical left. But it is not captured in the literature of How Democracy Dies. The literature is about how the extreme right is killing democracy.  

Sam Amadi, PhD, a former Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, is the Director of Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts.