This is Propaganda
Is it possible to be happy in an autocratic country? If you listen to the stories in the media, the general consensus is no. However, there were happy people in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and there are happy people in China and Cuba today. In our liberal democracies, we only hear of the horror stories because it’s in our interest to defend our culture.
In order to sustain liberal democracy, the public has to have faith in it. It has to believe that liberal democracy is better than other systems. We therefore indoctrinate the public to have this faith. If faith in this idea should falter — as it did in Germany in the 1930s, for example — we would be in a very dangerous situation.
Liberal democracy is constructed around the idea of self-determination — the notion that we make our own choices and manage our own lives — extended to apply to the nation state itself as body of people that votes on its own destiny. In order for this idea to work, the public must be well-informed and capable of critical thinking, yet not so critical as to seriously question the legitimacy of liberal democracy itself.
In a liberal democracy, you have the right to free speech, and you generally can’t be sent to prison for expressing the wrong opinions. What you don’t have, however, is the right to be heard. Publishers and (social) media outlets serve as gatekeepers in this respect, and effectively control what the public hears and sees, giving them massive influence.
With the emergence of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, much of the world’s digital infrastructure and media access fell under the editorial control of a select group of U.S. corporations. We are now in a situation where Silicon Valley top brass can control what news stories are shared among the public, not only in the U.S., but in every other liberal democracy too. The world is placing an enormous degree of trust in these U.S. corporations as well as in the U.S. government.
In autocracies, there are people who are glad to serve the country. Glad to work and fight for a cause greater than themselves. Glad to see critics disciplined. Glad to see law and order restored. Glad to be assured that their great leader will guide them into a bright future. As long as these reasonably satisfied people are in the majority — which they will be if the autocrat is competent — the system will hold up. One might say that autocracy works until, one day, it doesn’t.
Evidence is mounting that liberal democracy is fundamentally unstable too. That a mixed economy doesn’t prevent the concentration of wealth. That a free press will still publish propaganda. That voting doesn’t ensure accountability. Many countries have voluntarily voted autocrats into office out of sheer frustration. They lost faith in liberal democracy and abandoned it.
Liberal democracy is difficult to believe in because it exposes its own flaws constantly. If you live in a liberal democracy, critical and dissatisfied voices are everywhere. The media happily echo these voices and fan the fire because anything that’s outrageous is also good for the bottom line. If you free a country from an autocrat, the first thing the public will learn about their brand new liberal democracy is how broken it is. New liberal democracies are fragile for the same reason that our old liberal democracies are fragile: People lose faith in the system.
As humans, we generally want to be told things we like to hear. We want to be reassured. We want someone else to take responsibility. We want to guided. We want to be rewarded for being good. We want to work together. We want to help others.
The notion of being ruled by a wise and benevolent king carries more appeal than being ruled by dishonest people in tuxedos.
My belief is that a new path must be found. We tried authoritarianism and we tried liberal democracy. Neither make the people happy.
What is next?