6 ms·

I used to think I lived in a democracy, but the last couple of years pulled back the curtain revealing the true nature of western democracy

by hathym 1y ago

croes 1y ago
Fun fact, democracy doesn’t mean free society. People can vote for less freedom
- skippyboxedhero 1y ago
  No-one voted for this. The police in the UK are using a combination of existing powers (for example, intimidating people by using their powers to question people), non-statutory instruments that politicians have told them repeatedly to stop using, and laws that are being applied to the online world in an expansive way (the current PM is the former head of government prosecutions so is basically the worst person possible to prevent this, the person who passed one of the most infamous laws, Tony Blair, has said it is problematic). Just generally, this model doesn't apply to the UK. There is an extremely long history of people voting one way and the government doing something else. This is because the country is led by people whose views are shared by no-one, and the tremendous power of the Civil Service (elected officials have limited powers to direct civil servants and cannot remove all but a handful of civil servants...there was an example recently of a senior civil servant giving incorrect information to a minister, the minister was forced to resign, that senior civil servant stayed in for several years, another minister attempted to remove them, the civil servant sued and won a substantial settlement then chose to retire early on a full pension...he was responsible for several massive issues in his department too, Windrush was one, there were many others). A more nefarious factor is that turnout has collapsed because voters, correctly, understand that their vote doesn't actually matter. The government is unable to do things so why bother voting. Turnout is significantly higher in Russia presidential elections. To give you an example, the current level of immigration is supported by ~3% of the population. No-one supports this. The government knows no-one supports this. Immigration has stayed high for multiple years, we have had elections, it doesn't matter. If we elected someone to fix it, they would be unable to fix it. Labour have tried to fix it...they spent years in opposition saying the Tories couldn't fix it with their policies...they get into government, within a year they are now trying the exact same policies...because Parliament has no real control, whether in theory or in reality, to change anything, the government gets in, the civil service present the same choices that won't work...you have to be actually mad to think voting makes a difference. The idea that you can fix things by voting is the reason why things are stagnating.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    I'm not sure it can be attributed to political parties in the UK. By most standards, the British political tradition has remained paternalistic in it's mindset, and a lot of the shifts in civil liberties happened fairly late (1980s-90s) and without the requisite judicial scaffolding being built in place. Furthermore, a lot of the same powers and institutions used for internal security during the Troubles were redeployed during the GWOT and never pushed back against legally speaking. For example, London was the first major city to deploy centralized CCTV surveillance en masse. And this isn't a UK only thing - across Europe, mass surveillance laws and government perogative are much stronger than their equivalents in the US, and given tensions on the eastern border of EU+ due to a belligerent neighbor like Russia and Azerbaijan using grey zone tactics, I think we might see a further regression on this front, because NatSec will always trump liberties. By most standards, we're in an interregnum period similar to the 1930s, the "Dreadnought Wars" (1906-1914), or the 1950s that can spill over.
    - skippyboxedhero 1y ago
      Yes, the Troubles are a huge factor, the security services play a huge and unwelcome part in our political process. I think I mentioned elsewhere, I assume most people are familiar with this but most of the media campaigns that accompany legislation are pushed by the police/security services. Online Safety Act was an example, there was a massive media campaign over multiple years. I believe the case that caused it happened nearly ten years ago now, it went quiet for years and then suddenly sparked back up again, parents put out in front of the media...every time. And it is a legacy of things like the Troubles where you have massive internal political instability and these kind of things become normal. These powers aren't formal though, it is all informal. If we are talking about Europe, you see the same thing in Germany (to an extent, in Germany there is a paranoia about political parties, different but historical context).
      - alephnerd 1y ago
        > Online Safety Act was an example, there was a massive media campaign over multiple years. I believe the case that caused it happened nearly ten years ago now, it went quiet for years and then suddenly sparked back up again, parents put out in front of the media...every time. That's actually a bit of a dumber story than that. Basically, a well connected and knighted documentary maker (Beeban Kidron) made pornography regulation her sole personal mission after she became a mother. The UK being a fairly small political playground and her significant network thanks to Miramax made it easy for her to lobby and get private and public support in the UK and California. Once she was inducted in the House of Lords in 2012, she went gung ho lobbying for it. > informal. If we are talking about Europe, you see the same thing in Germany (to an extent, in Germany there is a paranoia about political parties, different but historical context). Yep. A lot of the Cold War era rules and regulations remain in place
- jibe 1y ago
  When you vote away foundational freedoms, you are no longer a democracy, at least not a liberal democracy.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    Illiberal democracies are also democracies if we treat 1950s era US, Australia, UK, and Canada as democracies. Much of the Western world only saw a shift to Liberal Democracy (as in the enshrinement of civil liberties and limits to majoritarianism) in the 1960s to 1990s. Liberal Democracy can be protected only if it's norms are enshrined in jurisprudence, and a lot of Liberal Democracies like the UK didn't do so.
  - croes 1y ago
    As long as you can vote and the vote is recognized you are a democracy, there is a reason why liberal democracy and democracy aren’t just synonyms. Foundational freedoms sounds like a fixed definition of freedoms but history showed it’s highly subjective and selective by culture and country. Not all cultures value individual freedoms like western culture does, and few cultures grant all their freedoms to people outside their culture or country. Societies always have to balance between what’s good for all, most, some and one.
- idle_zealot 1y ago
  Not really? If freedom is restricted to the point that people can't meaningfully influence their governance then you no longer have a democracy, even of you continue to hold ceremonial or sham elections. A democracy that allows voting to stop being a democracy is fundamentally unstable and will eventually cease being democratic.
- bluecalm 1y ago
  "People" can - sure. What we have instead is a situation where people are not voting on those issues. On many issues there is no choice at all not matter what the majority thinks
chairmansteve 1y ago
Yes, there are definitely problems, but at least you can criticise the speech laws. And fight to change them. In fact if you feel strongly about it you can do something about it. The article mentions the Free Speech Union in the UK. There is also the EFF in the USA. Democracy requires that we fight for it. Otherwise it will disappear. In dicatorships there is no opportunity to speak out.
- option 1y ago
  you can criticize speech laws for now. And tbh, not sure to which extent it is true. There is no switch front democracy to dictatorship, there is a transition.
  - lttlrck 1y ago
    As they said: > Democracy requires that we fight for it. Otherwise it will disappear.
  - arp242 1y ago
    > you can criticize speech laws for now. And tbh, not sure to which extent it is true. You are commenting on an article which critiques these laws. It's not the first either. So what you're saying is demonstrably nonsense.
    - beej71 1y ago
      So how do you think dictatorships come to be?
      - soco 1y ago
        I'm sick of all this doomsaying coming from the bench. If somebody thinks the dictatorship is around the corner, then please get on your ass and do something about it! Organize, vote, find your own way. Because the world has zero uses for more oracles, but a lot of use for _involved_ people.
perching_aix 1y ago
I'm not so sure if putting down a vote for one candidate over many others every few years suffices as democracy though to begin with. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf7ws2DF-zk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf7ws2DF-zk
- tehjoker 1y ago
  When the candidate choices are almost completely plugged in for you, there is no meaningful choice either.
sofixa 1y ago
> but the last couple of years pulled back the curtain revealing the true nature of western democracy There isn't a singular "western" democracy. Different countries have varying levels of (dis)functional democracies and freedoms, and choose different tradeoffs. E.g there are more hate speech restrictions in countries like Germany and France that literally saw what happens when evil is left unchallenged and many innocent paid with their lives; Germany has a federal state against too much power centralisation, France does the opposite due to absurd failures of governance in the past. None of the various failures or wins of democracy in "the West" are inducement of "western democracy".
suraci 1y ago
opinions like this always lead to two types of comments: - the worst democracy is better than the best dictatorship (we are not the worst, others could be worse) - the system is good and perfect, it's just a few bad actors ruining it (we can fix it as long as we fix these certain bad actors)

I used to think I lived in a democracy, but the last couple of years pulled back the curtain revealing the true nature of western democracy

by hathym 1y ago

I used to think I lived in a democracy, but the last couple of years pulled back the curtain revealing the true nature of western democracy

croes 1y ago

Fun fact, democracy doesn’t mean free society. People can vote for less freedom

skippyboxedhero 1y ago
No-one voted for this. The police in the UK are using a combination of existing powers (for example, intimidating people by using their powers to question people), non-statutory instruments that politicians have told them repeatedly to stop using, and laws that are being applied to the online world in an expansive way (the current PM is the former head of government prosecutions so is basically the worst person possible to prevent this, the person who passed one of the most infamous laws, Tony Blair, has said it is problematic). Just generally, this model doesn't apply to the UK. There is an extremely long history of people voting one way and the government doing something else. This is because the country is led by people whose views are shared by no-one, and the tremendous power of the Civil Service (elected officials have limited powers to direct civil servants and cannot remove all but a handful of civil servants...there was an example recently of a senior civil servant giving incorrect information to a minister, the minister was forced to resign, that senior civil servant stayed in for several years, another minister attempted to remove them, the civil servant sued and won a substantial settlement then chose to retire early on a full pension...he was responsible for several massive issues in his department too, Windrush was one, there were many others). A more nefarious factor is that turnout has collapsed because voters, correctly, understand that their vote doesn't actually matter. The government is unable to do things so why bother voting. Turnout is significantly higher in Russia presidential elections. To give you an example, the current level of immigration is supported by ~3% of the population. No-one supports this. The government knows no-one supports this. Immigration has stayed high for multiple years, we have had elections, it doesn't matter. If we elected someone to fix it, they would be unable to fix it. Labour have tried to fix it...they spent years in opposition saying the Tories couldn't fix it with their policies...they get into government, within a year they are now trying the exact same policies...because Parliament has no real control, whether in theory or in reality, to change anything, the government gets in, the civil service present the same choices that won't work...you have to be actually mad to think voting makes a difference. The idea that you can fix things by voting is the reason why things are stagnating.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  I'm not sure it can be attributed to political parties in the UK. By most standards, the British political tradition has remained paternalistic in it's mindset, and a lot of the shifts in civil liberties happened fairly late (1980s-90s) and without the requisite judicial scaffolding being built in place. Furthermore, a lot of the same powers and institutions used for internal security during the Troubles were redeployed during the GWOT and never pushed back against legally speaking. For example, London was the first major city to deploy centralized CCTV surveillance en masse. And this isn't a UK only thing - across Europe, mass surveillance laws and government perogative are much stronger than their equivalents in the US, and given tensions on the eastern border of EU+ due to a belligerent neighbor like Russia and Azerbaijan using grey zone tactics, I think we might see a further regression on this front, because NatSec will always trump liberties. By most standards, we're in an interregnum period similar to the 1930s, the "Dreadnought Wars" (1906-1914), or the 1950s that can spill over.
  - skippyboxedhero 1y ago
    Yes, the Troubles are a huge factor, the security services play a huge and unwelcome part in our political process. I think I mentioned elsewhere, I assume most people are familiar with this but most of the media campaigns that accompany legislation are pushed by the police/security services. Online Safety Act was an example, there was a massive media campaign over multiple years. I believe the case that caused it happened nearly ten years ago now, it went quiet for years and then suddenly sparked back up again, parents put out in front of the media...every time. And it is a legacy of things like the Troubles where you have massive internal political instability and these kind of things become normal. These powers aren't formal though, it is all informal. If we are talking about Europe, you see the same thing in Germany (to an extent, in Germany there is a paranoia about political parties, different but historical context).
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      > Online Safety Act was an example, there was a massive media campaign over multiple years. I believe the case that caused it happened nearly ten years ago now, it went quiet for years and then suddenly sparked back up again, parents put out in front of the media...every time. That's actually a bit of a dumber story than that. Basically, a well connected and knighted documentary maker (Beeban Kidron) made pornography regulation her sole personal mission after she became a mother. The UK being a fairly small political playground and her significant network thanks to Miramax made it easy for her to lobby and get private and public support in the UK and California. Once she was inducted in the House of Lords in 2012, she went gung ho lobbying for it. > informal. If we are talking about Europe, you see the same thing in Germany (to an extent, in Germany there is a paranoia about political parties, different but historical context). Yep. A lot of the Cold War era rules and regulations remain in place
jibe 1y ago
When you vote away foundational freedoms, you are no longer a democracy, at least not a liberal democracy.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- alephnerd 1y ago
  Illiberal democracies are also democracies if we treat 1950s era US, Australia, UK, and Canada as democracies. Much of the Western world only saw a shift to Liberal Democracy (as in the enshrinement of civil liberties and limits to majoritarianism) in the 1960s to 1990s. Liberal Democracy can be protected only if it's norms are enshrined in jurisprudence, and a lot of Liberal Democracies like the UK didn't do so.
- croes 1y ago
  As long as you can vote and the vote is recognized you are a democracy, there is a reason why liberal democracy and democracy aren’t just synonyms. Foundational freedoms sounds like a fixed definition of freedoms but history showed it’s highly subjective and selective by culture and country. Not all cultures value individual freedoms like western culture does, and few cultures grant all their freedoms to people outside their culture or country. Societies always have to balance between what’s good for all, most, some and one.
idle_zealot 1y ago
Not really? If freedom is restricted to the point that people can't meaningfully influence their governance then you no longer have a democracy, even of you continue to hold ceremonial or sham elections. A democracy that allows voting to stop being a democracy is fundamentally unstable and will eventually cease being democratic.
bluecalm 1y ago
"People" can - sure. What we have instead is a situation where people are not voting on those issues. On many issues there is no choice at all not matter what the majority thinks

chairmansteve 1y ago

Yes, there are definitely problems, but at least you can criticise the speech laws. And fight to change them. In fact if you feel strongly about it you can do something about it. The article mentions the Free Speech Union in the UK. There is also the EFF in the USA. Democracy requires that we fight for it. Otherwise it will disappear. In dicatorships there is no opportunity to speak out.

option 1y ago
you can criticize speech laws for now. And tbh, not sure to which extent it is true. There is no switch front democracy to dictatorship, there is a transition.
- lttlrck 1y ago
  As they said: > Democracy requires that we fight for it. Otherwise it will disappear.
- arp242 1y ago
  > you can criticize speech laws for now. And tbh, not sure to which extent it is true. You are commenting on an article which critiques these laws. It's not the first either. So what you're saying is demonstrably nonsense.
  - beej71 1y ago
    So how do you think dictatorships come to be?
    - soco 1y ago
      I'm sick of all this doomsaying coming from the bench. If somebody thinks the dictatorship is around the corner, then please get on your ass and do something about it! Organize, vote, find your own way. Because the world has zero uses for more oracles, but a lot of use for _involved_ people.

perching_aix 1y ago

I'm not so sure if putting down a vote for one candidate over many others every few years suffices as democracy though to begin with. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf7ws2DF-zk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf7ws2DF-zk

tehjoker 1y ago
When the candidate choices are almost completely plugged in for you, there is no meaningful choice either.

sofixa 1y ago

> but the last couple of years pulled back the curtain revealing the true nature of western democracy There isn't a singular "western" democracy. Different countries have varying levels of (dis)functional democracies and freedoms, and choose different tradeoffs. E.g there are more hate speech restrictions in countries like Germany and France that literally saw what happens when evil is left unchallenged and many innocent paid with their lives; Germany has a federal state against too much power centralisation, France does the opposite due to absurd failures of governance in the past. None of the various failures or wins of democracy in "the West" are inducement of "western democracy".

suraci 1y ago

opinions like this always lead to two types of comments: - the worst democracy is better than the best dictatorship (we are not the worst, others could be worse) - the system is good and perfect, it's just a few bad actors ruining it (we can fix it as long as we fix these certain bad actors)