Is modern democracy fascist?

January 1, 2008

fas·cism [fash-iz-uhm]
–noun
1. A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

(1) “dictator” - The definition of dictator ranges from absolute power to simply authoritarian. All Presidents and Prime Ministers are somewhat authoritarian, they dictate to their subordinates and their cabinet. In fact, it’s very difficult to imagine a functioning leader who isn’t at least partly authoritarian. It’s their responsibility to set policy for the country and it’s not always possible to achieve consensus for every issue. Most leaders will at some point use their powers to implement controversial policies, despite possibly vigorous opposition, and appear to be authoritarian for some people in some instances.

Absolute power is a bit more difficult to judge and must be considered in the context of the laws and procedures specific to each individual country. There are definitely some countries that claim to be democratic and go through all the electoral motions, but nobody really believes the outcomes are spontaneously decided on election night. Stalin famously said that those who vote have no power, those who count the votes have all the power. Since I’m not talking about theoretical democracy from a textbook but real democracy as it is practiced today, I would have to say the mechanisms for individuals or organizations to control the processes by which Presidents and Prime Ministers are held accountable are certainly in place. They may not be held by the leader himself or herself, but in practice what is the difference between voluntary mutually beneficial cooperation with those who control the power and possessing the power yourself?

(2) “forcibly suppressing opposition” - In this case”forcibly suppressing” can be subject to widely different interpretations. It doesn’t need to exclusively apply to physical suppression of individuals, it could apply to suppression of their ideas. It’s not difficult to argue that politicians routinely force their opponents to back down from certain positions using whatever tools they can get away with: secret deals, threats, blackmail, tax audits, etc. It’s not theoretically impossible for people to survive modern democratic politics without engaging in such activities, but in practice for those who rise to top it’s quite common. One may also argue that making deals, voluntary or otherwise, with associates in the media to ignore, misreport or under-report the positions of your rivals can also be considered force.

(3) “regimenting all industry, commerce, etc.” - That’s an easy one. While not inherent to the democratic process in practice these days it’s considered a proper function of government to license and regulate many different industries. I can easily justify the “all” aspect of that definition by including in such regulation the central banks. What more could government do to put into systematic order the entire economic affairs of the nation? Modern industry can not operate without a means to facilitate the exchange of goods, and all dollars begin at a bank and end at a bank. Money is half of every transaction.

(4) “emphasizing an aggressive nationalism” - There is a common belief that democracies don’t go to war with each other, but that could simply mean every democracy has been subverted by the same extra-governmental forces and thus have no interest in destroying themselves. The reality is that throughout human history most democracies have actually had little difficulty finding ways to interfere violently in the affairs of other people, foreign and domestic, using some sort of nationalist justification. Perhaps they tend to attack countries with different governing philosophies, but if the motivation is the same imperialist nonsense cloaked with nationalist reasoning, who cares. Each successive leader will not necessarily use the same tools to emphasize an appeal to the same nationalist sentiment, but when it suits their interests there is nothing inherent to modern democracy that will prevent it.

(5) “often racism” - Racism is not always separate from nationalism. It goes without saying that racism motivates many people to act in many ways that ultimately bring about fascist policies. Modern democracy can only protect minorities if respect for constitutional law and the concept of inalienable rights is respected — that is definitely not the case in many countries that use the “democracy” label.

In the end, every system that centralizes power can be abused by those who hold that power. The best way to prevent fascism is to prevent institutionalized central powers of any kind.

Please watch the following video, “Top Ten Signs Your Country May Be Going Fascist,” it’s less than 2 minutes, informative and very entertaining.