In the UK we like to boast that we are the birthplace of Parliamentary democracy. The values embodied in this democracy are freedom of speech, to assembly, and the rule of law. These values we then export around the world.
However since March 2020 these pillars of liberal democracy have been hugely curtailed.
Do we live in a democracy or a “demockery”?
Canadian protesters 2022 whose freedom to assembly was heavily repressed
I don’t think you’ll find many people in this country who want to live under the “democratic” conditions we find under Russia or China, most people’s conception of democracy seems to run to voting every few years. They vote in Russia and China too!
I would argue that it is hard to say we live in a democracy and the “free world”, when we are constantly surveilled by the Five Eyes surveillance state. The Five Eyes being UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. See this article from The Guardian back in 2013 discussing Edward Snowden’s revelations about this enormous security state surveillance and how they gained a stranglehold on the world’s internet infrastructure.
Who are they spying on and why?
It turns out they are spying on all of us.
Data has been called the new oil. For many people they understood this as companies gathering marketing information to better sell their products. Know thy customer. However, in this post-Covid world many of us have had our eyes opened. The data they gathered on us all has been used to conduct a military grade psychological operation. Also known as a psyop.
Can there be democracy when we live in a world with very little privacy? Where the information gathered on us by Artificial Intelligence has been turned into a weapon to manipulate us. The Germans in the 1930s were brainwashed. The citizens of the 2020s are having their perception of reality managed. Managed by AI none the less. Think of all those bots on the Internet.
All that data they gathered on us all has been utilised by corporations and the government working together to learn how best to control us and "persuade" us into carrying out certain activities. Whether that's stopping smoking, picking up litter or taking a vaccination. You may have no problem with this? But throw in a grounded accusation that the vaccination was not a good thing and the same persuasive technology can be seen as being used to do ill. Technology is not neutral.
Garden Walled
Technical term which describes an environment that controls the users (of the Internet in this case) access.
This restriction of access to information which is supposedly free (and I would argue forms an essential part of democracy) has been hidden from us. They know most people don’t search very far for information. We have become accustomed to having the info at our fingertips. Therefore most people don’t even realise this has happened. After all, if you don’t know something, how can you possibly know it has been concealed from you.
I think this has serious implications for democracy. How can there be debate in a society when information is invisible? When its citizens are only being presented with one side of the story. That’s not information, that’s propaganda. Can a thoroughly propagandised nation also be democratic nation? Well yes if that means a completely uninformed (or worse still a misinformed) public who votes every five years.
I do believe in democracy, I think.
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I'm pretty sure my MP knows who I am because I do write regularly. He is meant to be my representative. Yet, he still has to follow a party line and the country is controlled by a government. This government in turn has to answer to an electorate. Yet, it also answers to big business and especially the City of London.
I fall under the category of the “disenfranchised left”. I have zero representation for my tax pounds. What sort of democracy is it when a left wing leader of the opposition party is elected (Jeremy Corbyn) and then the right wing of that party use dirty tricks to force them out. In this case for spurious claims of anti-Semitism. His main crime was to be supportive of the Palestinians. Just one of the little no nos that mean you will never hold political office. According to Oxford Reference a common graffiti in the 1970s was;
If voting changed anything they’d abolish it.
In a real democracy we would vote for our representatives who would form a government to seek to carry out the will of the people. This doesn’t taken into account the widespread corruption at the very tops of our society. Today we can see clearly how our leaders then go onto cushy industry jobs after finishing their term. We need look no further than Tony Blair who now works for the New World Order pushing digital IDs.
Tony Blair at the World Econimc Forum
However, wherever you are, corruption, bribery, criminality, and blackmail are not far behind. Just take a look at Whitney Webb’s opus One Nation Under Blackmail. This details all the numerous links and tie-ins between organised crime and the national security state. None of this is new.
Censorship
How can we live in a democracy where there is no freedom of speech?
Many people are completely unaware of how much information has been suppressed and censored during this “pandemic”. All in the name of tackling this “unprecedented emergency” anyone who dissented from the line was removed from public discourse. Gone are the days where people would stand on street corners. Today our public debates take place online, on TV, or in the newspapers. We have grown up believing these places imparted unbiased news. However, in March 2020 the government told media companies directly who to ban.
As Elon Musk himself has stated, everything the conspiracy theorists said about Twitter was true. As Matt Taibbi wrote the censorship involved numerous agencies like the FBI, the Pentagon and the CIA. They surveilled dissenting voices and actively worked to shut them down. Shadow banning was introduced whereby it appeared you were posting and friends could see what you had written but nobody beyond that. See this article for more information.
In a democracy how important is truth?
Is truth relative?
If we all have our versions of truth then there can be no single truth. Therefore there can be no single lie. So when our governments tell us things that turn out to be untrue does it matter? Does it matter that the big Pharma execs lied when they told us that the vaccines were safe and effective? That far too many people were afraid for their jobs to speak out?
In a democracy we wouldn’t stifle debate? People wouldn't lose their jobs if they didn't kowtow to the establishment line (lie). Yet, due to the “emergency” nature of the pandemic it became acceptable, no responsible to lie. If the execs had stated that the vaccines killed and would injure thousands then people wouldn't take the vaccines and we’d never have stopped Covid. So to stop Covid we needed to lie to people. That’s the logic? To prevent people questioning the safety and efficacy of the vaccine our democracy had to suppress information about alternative treatments. They had to prevent any debate about the origins of the virus. Indeed any one saying anything different was labelled a “conspiracy theorist nut job” and posed a danger to society and thus had to be silenced.
Indeed those unredacted emails between Fauci and other scientists spell it out in black and white - it was necessary to suppress debate because it "would be bad for science".
Meanwhile, whilst presenting a rather false view of democracy the media continue to hold up Putin as some sort of dangerous dictator. A leader who has at all times been cautious with his dealings with the West. Yet, how democratic was it of the US to stage a coup in Ukraine and replace its “democratically” elected leader. That’s democratic because he was a bad man I suppose? Bad because he wanted to do a deal for energy with the Russians?
Now putting Neo-Nazis into positions of power for the first time in Europe since 1945 can only be a good move for democracy I’m sure. Maybe we should ask Zelensky?.
I’m starting to come round to the view/understanding that the “pandemic” and the Western response to it – censorship, suppression of information, repression of the right to freely assemble, plentiful propaganda, the mass use of behavioural psychology, lockdowns etc were all designed purposively. Our leaders believe in democracy as far as the next plummy government job that can be thrown at them. In actual fact it looks a lot like they are creating the conditions for the totalitarian states they are supposedly opposed to.
Democracy or Demockery? You decide.
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I don't know about the last part about Russia and Ukraine, but I fear the other things you said are a very real threat to the democracy. My experiences in the recent year have me worry that the supposed opposition between democracy and autocracy has become nothing but the facade. The influentials around the world might have formed some kind of order or consent that is meant to have the majority of the people under "control".
I am quite pessimistic about this. It could be to late for us to prevent the coming of a (global) dystopia already.
Thanks for taking the time to add a comment. If you have time have a look at the link to Zelensky's comedy sketch in 2014. He shouldn't have given up the day job!