The Threat to Democracy

The American form of gladiatorial combat, at least in myth, is the shoot-out. In the Dodge City that is the politics of the United States of America we have recently witnessed the encounter of Trump and Biden. Their television debate some weeks ago was remarkably sedate, unlike the Sunak-Starmer debate, since, by agreement, the Americans were unable to interrupt each other or squabble as Sunak and Starmer did (with English burnt-out asserting-moral-superiority eyes). Instead, Biden and Trump took turns to speak – or shoot, with the result that the debate was rather more like an English or Russian duel of pistols than an American shoot-out. But then last week someone actually shot at the Mara Lago Kid, who fell, to rise again; and a few days later Old Joe fell off his horse in the Arizona desert, worn down not only by senescence but also by the imprecations of Pelosi, Clooney and others. Then there was a graveyard vigil in which we heard the astonishing litanies by De Niro, Obama and others about how “selfless” Joe was, and what a “patriot”. That was the last week or so. One President was shot at; but the other fell.

Now Calamity Jane (original spelling Kamalaty) is coming in to seek revenge.

Anyhow, one significant part of current Democrat rhetoric is that Trump is a “threat to democracy”. This deserves examination. I think Trump has done well to turn the accusation around, even though this causes consternation amongst the ‘fact-checking’ press. For there is a standard claim perpetuated by corporate academics, corporate journalists and corporate politicians: this is the claim that democracy is threatened, and that the threat comes from populists. As usual, there are several terms here which need to be analysed.

Firstly, ‘democracy’. For some reason, ‘democracy’ is – and has been since the 1840s or so – the word for the European and American political systems. This is partly justified, and partly not. It is partly justified because there have been many attempts to extend our political systems so that the franchise is held by as many people as possible. It is justified because we do live within a system which is not content to let ‘popular sovereignty’ remain a mere theoretical legitimation for the system but must have some actual instantiation of that sovereignty. It is partly unjustified because the way this is done is, strictly speaking, republican and not democratic. The way we have instantiated actually popular elements in our politics is not ‘democratic’ in the historic, or Athenian, sense, whereby demokratia denoted the actual involvement of the citizens in assembly, council, army and jury. It is ‘representative’.

Representation is a trick. It is not well understood, because, like all tricks, it is ambiguous. On the one hand, representation relates us to our rulers. On the other hand, it distances us from them: it gives them licence, either to be independent MPs of great judgement, as Edmund Burke proposed, or to be stamped on the ear and herded by various dubious corporations, political, economic and ethical. In general, as I always try to say, politics is both very simple and very confusing: and always confusing because at every point something can be true and not true at the same time. Heisenberg thought up his uncertainty principle in the twentieth century; but Heraclitus and others glimpsed that the same thing was true of politics in twenty-five centuries earlier.

‘Democracy’ is a prestige term. It casts a glow on the rusty political contraption, it paints some golden lacquer on it, it strews tulips on it. No one should use the word ‘democracy’ carelessly. No one should reify it as if it is a thing. Nay, the word is an aspiration, a simple ideal of ruling ourselves, but it is also a word for a complicated system: and yet the system is not ideal. As I say, this confusion is a trap for the unwary.

Anyone who talks about a “threat to democracy”, or, worse, a “threat to our democracy”, is conflating two different things.

1. A threat to the established system, not ideal.

2. A threat to our ideals.

A threat to the established system, and a threat to the ideals of that system are two different things. The established system includes the entire interlocking order of extraction and justification and imposition. Anyone who, like Biden, says that Trump is a “threat to democracy” is saying two things at once. He is saying: 1) Trump is a threat to the established system (and my established role in that established system), a system which is not ideal, and 2) Trump is a threat to our ideals.

Anyone who has studied ‘critical theory’, knows a bit of basic Marxism or has any knowledge of the workings of the world should be able to decode this. Even if the state is an attempt to generate law, order and harmony, on its good side, it is also, inevitably and necessarily, an attempt to maintain power by a certain set of elites, on its, we could say, bad side: but, if we are calm about it, on its realistic as opposed to idealistic side.

This seems not to be understood by the half-cynical, half-earnest figures operating in the public sphere. Biden accused Trump of being a “threat to democracy” (“he’s willing to sacrifice our democracy”), and so Trump, in reactionary manner, accused Biden of being a “threat to democracy” (“he is a danger to democracy at a level few people have seen”). A BBC newsreader six months ago said nothing about Biden’s comment, thus allowing it to seem true (sin of omission), but, about Trump’s comment, said (sin of commission): “Trump has not provided convincing evidence to support this claim.” The BBC, like the Guardian and many standard American corporate media entities, treat Biden’s claims as no more than the usual rhetoric, and probably true, factual, anyhow acceptable, who cares, let’s move on, while Trump’s claims as fact-checkable hence, stop right there, false.

It seems to me that even if one has no political preferences one should be able to detect in the noises of the BBC, CBS, CNN etc. a salt-sucking defence of the established order. They speak as if the established order is not political, meaning partial, whereas Trump – or Farage – is always political, meaning partial. How about that for an evil political squint.

Now on the second word, ‘populism’. Starmer since coming to power has referred dismissively to the “snake oil of populist charm”. And this reflects a very common use of the term with a negative connotation. ‘Populism’ is a word used to terrify the established elites and their lesser spotted established acolytes in the ranks. I think it should be obvious that, in particular, this phrase is the attempt of Starmer’s advisors to rebrand his lack of charisma as a sign of businesslike propriety and efficiency. Starmer is not charming, ergo he is a business manager; whereas Farage, say, is charming, ergo, he is a carpetbagger. A ‘populist’, indeed, because, er, popular. The word ‘populist’ is meant to invoke the image of a confidence trickster, someone seeking easy answers, someone who sells snake oil. (Ironically, of course, ‘snake oil’ originally referred to bogus medicine, and so anyone involved in the pandemic should not use this term.) Starmer has said somewhere that he wants to find “serious solutions”. The important word there is “serious”. (He has obviously not read the articles in which I point out that politics is not an arena in which “solutions” should be sought: the best one can hope for is “settlements”.) Starmer is serious, a safe pair of hands, a boringly acceptable defender of the established order.

Populism also is an ambiguous word. At one level it refers to a necessary element in any representative democracy or modern republic: the politics of appeal to the people. So every politician is a populist. But at another level populism is the politics of appeal to the people who are being neglected by the other politicians – the others being the ones who are more embedded in the system and so take their duties to the system more seriously than their duties to the people. Populism, therefore, is a natural development, one could even say a part of the rebalancing of the representative system, whereby elites do not become too embedded or entrenched in the system. It should be an uncontroversial term. But it is at this level, however, that the language of ‘populism’ is being used in a highly duplicitous way.

The duplicity is that the systems-politicians defend the entire mediated and modulated system of distancing devices which exist in modern republican systems, and accuse populists of wanting to subvert them. Populists may, or may not, want to subvert ‘democracy’: but they definitely do want to subvert the protocols which prevent the modern state responding to the will of the people. This astonishes the elite or established politicians. But it should not. Populists tend towards a ‘direct’ relation to the people, whereas anti-populists, or constitutionalists, as I like to call them, or standard politicians, tend towards an ‘indirect’ relation to the people. So what we see is that the politicians, like Farage or Trump, who have an effective way of articulating some sort of common sensibility, leavened with their own wit or waywardness, are accused of being a “threat to democracy” because they are simply doing what the situation requires of them, which is reminding other established politicians that they might have forgotten what they should be doing.

The hysteria now exists on both sides. Each side thinks, or says, that the other is a threat to democracy. Constitutionalists hear the charming provocations of Farage or Trump, and hear cacophonous echoes of Boulanger, Bolivar or Savonarola (staff-or-spear-shaking simple-solutioners); while populists listen to CNN or BBC versions of establishment ideology and hear cacophonous echoes of Richelieu, Frederick the Great or the Medicis (cancerous controllers of the system). Both are right, but, alas, and every politician should be forced to admit this, the populists are more honest. They are more honest because it is part of the style of populism that it comes off it a bit, tries to tell the truth, tries to tear the veil, admits or alleges conspiracy. Whereas it is part of the style of the constitutionalists that they earnestly commend their own honesty and believe that they are public servants, while engaging in almost continual concealment.

This is such a shearing asymmetry that it makes all our political discourse very odd and invigorating at the moment. There was hardly such an asymmetry 30 years ago when the media imposed legitimate monopoly on everything. The mediations and modulations held together better back then. And, as everyone says, there was no ‘alternative media’ to expose the tricks of the political trade.

Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.