The world’s largest democracy is collapsing before our eyes
The world’s largest democracy is collapsing before our eyes
Narendra Modi’s war on India’s democracy, explained.
Conservatism is a global plague of deception, oppression and death. It always has been.
Who downvoted this? Conservatism has always been an ideology that's opposed to progress, democracy and freedom. It holds back society to preserve tradition and "family values" while promoting xenophobia, bigotry, and unquestioned submission to authority. The most conservative states in the United States are also some of the poorest, with the lowest standards of living, and also the most backwards. It isn't much different in other countries. The Nazis were conservative. Islamic countries with Sharia Law are conservative. And right now, American Conservatives are trying to implement a Christian-flavoured Sharia Law.
When you start talking about "always", you're going to need to apply way more rigor. Conservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in reaction to the emergence of liberalism in the age of European enlightenment. Conservatism champions the idea that order tends towards chaos, that order is required for society to function and that chaos destroys everything, that some individuals are more worthy than others by virtue of their birth and hierarchical position, etc. In the 1700s, Tories we're conservative.
But what we call conservatives in the USA are liberals, and they always have been. Liberal philosophy posits that individual liberty is more important than strict hierarchical order, that society should be organized to limit the power of the state over individual freedoms, etc. Capitalism and market systems are liberal constructions.
Liberalism, however, is still historically situated and emerges during the age of discovery. As such, it is not a moral movement but rather an political one. Specifically, it emerged as the merchant class needed a way to undermine the authority of the nobility. Liberalism birthed all of the bourgeois revolutions across Europe and European holdings. Every tri-color flag came out of this movement. But liberalism couldn't undermine the entirety of merchant dominance, which means it had to be compatible with slavery, misogyny, racism, genocide, and settler colonialism.
This, liberal philosophers struggled with systems of science and systems of morality that allowed for these things to occur. Race science is a liberal cobstruct. Eugenics is a liberal construct. The belief that black people aren't fully human is a liberal construct. The idea that white people must civilize the savages is a liberal construct. The Berlin Conference, the professional police force, the state police force, all liberal constructs.
When Haiti was liberated through the successful slave revolt, it was the French monarchy that determined every single person on Haiti that was a newly freed slaves represented a loss of wealth for French slave holders, and they levied a debt on Haiti to recoup the cost of freedom. The liberal capitalist world acknowledged the debt and required Haiti acknowledge it in order to be recognized. This is a liberal financial construction the remains in the hands of liberal democracies to this day, draining Haiti of it's wealth.
The Nazis, are not Conservatives. They are Liberals. Fascism arises from liberal democracies. It uses specific liberal systems to grow and develop. It is essentially the violence of liberal capitalism turned against liberal capitalists. Prior to the rise of European fascism, the things we attribute to the Nazis are just things that the Europeans had been doing to brown and black people all over the world. There's a reason the Third Reich studied US settler colonialism systems and industrialized them. There's a reason why US capitalists, liberals of the highest order who believed in the individual right to private property and access to free markets, supported the Third Reich.
You can't just go around saying everything bad is conservative and everything good is liberal/progressive. It's a dogmatic approach to political and historical analysis. Nothing could be further from the truth. Liberalism was a progressive step from mysticism. Conservatism was a reaction to liberalism. And most the ills of the modern era are traceable to liberal philosophy, not conservative. In the USA, we redefined conservative to mean liberal and we redefined liberal to mean liberal progressive. Maintenance of market systems is a liberal project. Maintenance of representative democracy is a liberal project. Eugenics was a liberal project and the US engaged in it through the 1970s and we still have after effects of race science in our discourse. All liberal.
Isn't democracy collapsing everywhere? The USA's electoral voting system means democracy doesn't exist. A vote in California is worth 27% of a vote in Wyoming in terms of representation. Add on blatant gerrymandering and you've got a rigged system.
The UK has introduced voter ID laws for a problem that never existed in the past. The UK has also had multiple unelected prime ministers due to the way that the parliamentary system works.
Democracy is on the wane everywhere.
Haven't seen any indication of it being in danger in Switzerland. But we have proportional voting rather than first past the post and referenda are common.
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I would say they're better than a majority of other nations, but not much higher than the mean.
If you compared us to the worst we look great! We're closer to the best than the worst, but we should be competing for being the best and we're not nor does it seem like we will be any time soon.
The UK has also had multiple unelected prime ministers due to the way that the parliamentary system works.
That's... not any indicator democracy is "on the wane". In most Western European countries we don't directly vote for the one man/woman, we vote for MPs because the legislative power is in the hands of the Parliament. As long as the Parliament is made of elected MPs then democracy is working just fine.
Sure on paper but reality is people vote for the leader of the party.
I'm not really familiar with the problem of voter ID laws in the UK. Here (Spain) showing your ID is mandatory to vote, and nobody think that's a problem (but we need ID for basically any paperwork, so it isn't an additional burden). Afaik, the problem in the USA is that it is quite difficult to get an ID card, and intentionally so for certain demographics. Is it the same in the UK?
The US's system is unbalanced and unfair, but it's far from "doesn't exist". And while you have listed a pair of blue/red state pairs, look at the 2nd and next to last state and you see a red/blue state pair. So it's unfair, but it's not uniformly unfair.
Vote weight is fairly common as it provides minority groups a bit more control of their areas. I find that reasonable. There is no such thing as perfect democracy unless you voted on every single issue regardless of importance and that is simply not practical. Sure things could be designed a bit better but the majority of democratic countries have systems that are working quite well. The biggest destabilizes now likely comes more from social media that spreads every dissatisfaction because it sells and makes people think the world is coming to an end. It's not. Or at least not because of failing democracies.
Absolutely a good point. Californians get fucked in senate voting power compared to some dickhead religious voter from a small red state. It's a travesty that California and New York have the same amount of Senate representation as North and South Dakota.
Then you have lifetime judicial appointments. Trumpf was able to get 3 Supreme Court judges in during his 4 years. The impact will last a generation or two at least.
The corruption at the highest levels is open and astounding. PACs can basically buy elections. Insider trading is also normalized in Congress by both sides.
Religious fundamentalists have infiltrated all levels of government and are pushing for a Christian Theocracy. Very similar to what is happening in India. Religion has NO place in politics.
The US is not a good example of a democracy. There are Conservative Republicans (far right), Maga Republicans (Fascist) and Democrats (Center right). Nothing much in between as the system is designed for only 2 parties.
Also, when was the last time a republican won the popular vote? This is proof enough the US is a poor democracy as the will of the people is ignored because of the electoral college.
When I look at Modi I see another Erdogan
My exact thoughts, certainly a similarity between the two
Or Viktor Orbán.
Or Trump Or Bolsonaro
It's been a trend across the world, and I have to think Russia has thrown fuel on the fire with disinformation campaigns in all those cases
can you even call it a democracy anymore?
Of course not. India used to be secular. the far right Hindu extremism is taking over. Also it's so good to be able to post this and not be trolled by pro Modi trolls. The amount of concentration of power due to lack of alternatives is so scary.
PS: I'm an Indian who now lives in Australia.
Just to clarify, the lack of alternatives creates a vaccine creating an almost defacto win for Modi et all. that's the part of democracy collapsing
Yes it is still a democracy, maybe a democrazy. There are no widespread voter suppression, disenfranchisement.
The most recent election has shown that.
There are some pockets of election tampering, violence but nowhere widespread.
MODIcracy
What makes it not a democracy ?
a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation ("direct democracy"), or to choose governing officials to do so ("representative democracy").
Going by wikipedia, India fits in as a representative democracy. None of the elections are contested despite widespread corruptions. Its pretty much assumed all major parties do so and thus in a level field.
Where most have issue is:
Features of democracy often include freedom of assembly, association, property rights, freedom of religion and speech, citizenship, consent of the governed, voting rights, freedom from unwarranted governmental deprivation of the right to life and liberty, and minority rights.
India has some level of trouble with almost all of those. Both in past as well as some ongoing.
A large part of the reason is all available government choices are shitty in some sense or other. Modi is bad but so was their opposition. India didn't start having these issues magically the day modi came to power. In that sense many blaming him ignore how deep rooted these problamatic views are in general soceity (at least in some areas and communities).
My point is that the many issues pointed here stems from a deeper problem and exists despite India being a democracy not because it isn't. Infact if it was nearly as authoritarian as many claim, it would have plunged into greater chaos.
Well it is Bourgeois democracy that's slowly been consumed by corporate power. Globally
Yeah literally, this same thing can be said about every country on earth. The only places where corporations haven't infected the government are ones like Afghanistan that have no strong corporations.
Thought this would be about the US
"Oh no. Thats disgusting. Which one? There are like.. sooo many."
It's foreshadowing
Reminder that Reddit still hosts the largest hatful subreddit that is r/IndiaSpeaks and nothing ever happens to it.
The content in the sub ranges from Islamophobia, death threats, misogyny and homophobia.
I think we also underestimate just the sheer mass that India has. The chances that you talk to an Indian on an English website is pretty high.
हममें से दर्जनों लोग हैं
Honestly those people give a bad rap for other Indians, I have many Indian friends and they are very chill people.
You obviously haven't been to /r/sino then. The most racist place on the internet. Reddit is aware of it and do nothing. I wonder why.
When a party form a government on its own i.e without any coalition partners, they tend to target the opposition with all the arsenal be it CBI , ED and sometimes even the Judiciary. However the elections are fair and impartial for the most part. Just recently, BJP got its ass handed to it in a state election in Karnataka. They may win the federal election again but it is hardly a death of democracy. Their grip on states have been slipping and once it goes out, they will most likely lose the federal government as well. The same happened during Indira Gandhi era. The same is happening now. Democracy survived then and will survive now. I am not saying there is no assault on democratic institutions in India. But they have proved resilient enough to prevent a democratic collapse as portrayed in this article.
And it's already been pointed out that the actions of Trump and Bolsonaro mirror the same undermining strategy but failed. Still, Modi controls nearly all the media now so it's going to be stronger propaganda than Fox News.
Which makes India's case sound more like Hungary or turkey don't you think? More or less complete control of the media while still having "fair" elections.
This is something people often miss when saying that "x is a free democracy, the people chose them!". Fairness and freedom aren't the same thing. For a democracy to truly be free and fair, the media must also be free. However free the election might be, if the ruling party controls the media it's not fair. The opposition does not get represented correctly, and the ruling party is free to say whatever they want. This is why Turkey isn't considered a full democracy and other similar cases. People are easily misled and the fact that a country has elections does not prove that it is truly a democracy.
You want to know what's truly disturbing? The previous Australian Federal government did many of these same things too, or worse.
It seems true democracy has fallen out of favour.
I can’t believe no one noticed Scomo making himself minister of 5 areas
The problem is that we noticed, but nothing really happened. As it always is here in Aus.
Jesus Christ and I didn't notice.
It it all got swept under the rug.
True democracy was never really in favour. It's not like Australia as ever really better than this, and the one time it tried, an unelected representative of a monarch dissolved parliament with support from the CIA
The politicians and corporations think it's too hard to get their agendas implemented with the will of the people in the way.
I don't really feel representative democracy falls into a category of democracy anymore.
In our modern age, it really doesn’t. We have the infrastructure to make direct democracy possible, we just lack the political will to take responsibility for our communities and vote and be informed as much as that would require. As humans, not as a nation in particular.
We have the technology, but not the social skills. Most of America doesn't know their next door neighbors, let alone their community. We have a lot of steps to go before direct democracy is the best solution.
Billionaires can control the media, websites, and most content. They shape democracy in their own image. Seems similar to the time when Kings ruled from huge palaces and had peasants do the dirty work n
an Indian version of fascism.
Lol, what? Isn't fascism the same across the globe?
Not really. Every instance of fascism has been really good at adapting to a local culture and political environment. Just to cite the major ones from 1930s Europe, there are clear differences between nazism (German fascism), Francoism (Spanish fascism) and Italian fascism (the original).
It'd be absurd for fascism in the USA to parade with swastikas, pagan symbols and Hugo Boss uniforms. An American fascism would use stars and stripes, crosses and… red baseball caps, I guess. In the same way, Modi's Indian fascism uses Indian iconography to maintain power.
Fascism also exploits grievances, much like other populist movements. I'm not very familiar with Spanish and Italian fascism, but the Nazis had a whole stack of grievances. Many were complete nonsense, but that never stopped anyone.
Give Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents a look. Wilkerson's got well researched links between India's caste system, U.S. Slavery, and the German Nazis. I was really surprised to learn that the Nazis researched national policies to find out how to best institute 'purity'. They ended up modeling theirs after the United States.
Fascims might not look the same every where, but it shares more than was obvious to me...
Not really, it always adapts to local needs and shares the same oppressive memes, sometimes taking some and leaving some behind.
International commentators can't seem to wrap their minds around the idea that Modi's BJP is having so much success because Indians, on the whole, like them and think they're doing a pretty good job.
Americans in particular tend to think that if you don't have two equally strong parties duking it out over 50/50 nailbiter elections, it's not democracy. But plenty of postwar and postcolonial democracies end up with dominant parties, without falling into dictatorship. In Japan, for example, the LDP has held power for something like 95% of the time since WWII, and it's a pretty healthy democracy.
The LDP has never had opposition leaders arrested. Just because they are popular doesn't mean that they aren't anti-democratic. Democracy requires free elections, which cannot exist if a significant minority is being actively suppressed.
Dictators can also be popular, but that doesn’t make their systems of government democratic. I would suggest you read the article if you haven’t because it discusses both Modi’s popularity and the specific actions he has taken that undermine Indian democracy.
Thank you for sharing this.
Sometimes, democracy is the enemy of freedom. In cases like that, which side do you support?
If democracy is the enemy of freedom, either that means it's not working correctly, or the people have a skewed idea of what freedom is.
Who's freedom? Your freedom? my freedom? Freedom of what? Freedom without boundaries is just Anarchy. but who determines those boundaries - who determines what kinds of freedom constitutes "freedom"
The US definition in its constitution defines The five freedoms it protects: speech, religion, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government.
So to break those down
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You can say what you like about the government, but likewise you can't silence anyone else on their opinion. This means they can state their opinion that you should get fucked when you say an opinion they disagree with - they can't actually make you get fucked though.
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You can practice any recognised religion freely without persecution. (Note: persecution does not stop people from criticising religion, as that would violate the freedom of speech, it stops government persecution from practicing or not practicing religions)
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It allows the press to report freely - the government can't dictate what the press can and cannot say, particularly when it comes to political and governmental matters
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Assembly - the right to gather and peacefully protest. - the moment it becomes even the slightest bit violent is when they're allowed to step in.
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The right for your opinion to be heard in government. You can post your opinions to government officials and have them be heard - likewise, other people can do the same. It doesn't mean the official has to act on it, just that they have to take it into account.
As to whether or not these freedoms are being honoured is up for debate. You'll have to read the lawbooks for the concrete legal definitions and decide for yourself if
- the definition is wrong
- the current situation fits the definition
- how you would redefine it.
As an Aussie I have no say in how your country is run - and my own country has its own issues, but I do impore you to understand the position on the global stage your country has and why it affects us all.
I think the point here is to prevent tyranny of the majority. For example, protecting small religious or ethnic groups from discrimination or persecution from a majority.
Likewise, the ACLU (American, i know) protects free speech even for very anti-patriotic messages, even if those messages are unsavory to the majority.
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Well in any case, you shouldnt support Authoritarians, or those who rule through imposing long term centeralized control. They are the antithesis to freedom. Anyone can easily label themselves as supporting 'freedom'.
The true strength of democratic systems anyways is that it provides a buffer between people and out of control government entities. This government might have your approval but will the same people be leading in 40 years?? 60 years?? Will they have the same values??
They will have the same powers regardless of whether you agree with them or not.
Wait how so?
I remember the day we started bombing Iraq. Their vice-president (actual it was their president, but he was second in command to Saddam as the PM) was a Christian calling on the pope to help stop the war. After the war, things go so bad that we had to intervene a second time to stop the killing of Christians. Freedom of religion definitely took a hit, since the public at large didn't support it. Was it worth it in that particular case to get rid of a dictator? Maybe, maybe not. He most likely would have fallen during the Arab spring - if it still occurred without our Iraq intervention.
My main point is the American public loves 'freedom', but you shouldn't t expect it to follow democracy. Specially when popular leaders get elected claiming everything wrong with "country name" is because of "insert basic human right".
Says "World's largest democracy" but it's not about the PRC? India, unlike China, actually has something resembling pogroms against Muslims.