The whole reason for writing this book was to shine a light on how we all allow ourselves to be divided to the benefit of the wealthiest in our societies. A key consideration throughout has been the importance of protecting and maintaining our democracies. As long as we have our democratic rights and freedoms, we possess the ability to work together to make our societies fairer.
But is that really true?
Do we really live in democracies?
You may have heard some people refer to liberal and illiberal democracies. I think they’re nonsense terms personally. The idea that democracy can be measured in degrees strikes me as daft as thinking uniqueness can be measured in degrees.
Democracy and uniqueness are absolutes.
Something is either unique or it isn’t.
A society is either a democracy or it isn’t.
The term “illiberal democracy” is generally used to refer to a society where non-democratic practices are hidden behind a facade of democracy. So a country holds regularly scheduled elections, but those elections are not truly free or fair. The actual mechanics of this may vary from case to case.
Commonly the media are controlled to varying degrees so that the “truth” is controlled. Political parties may have restrictions placed on them and candidates for elections may be blocked from standing or even accused of crimes and imprisoned. Judges with hidden loyalties for the leadership are promoted and others removed. Basically, a lot of the techniques from the My Little Autocrat’s Playbook, but with everyone pretending the leader isn’t an autocrat and the people keep freely electing them every election cycle.
In contrast, those who use the term “liberal democracy” apply it to real democracies where the people really are completely free to choose their leaders, with no illiberal practices restricting their choices.
So how do we know if a society really is a democracy?
Both the US and the UK had national elections in 2024. How do we know they were truly free democratic elections?
Because we’re told they were. Even Trump accepted the US elections were free this time, though he seemed prime to claim the opposite in the event he lost.
The elections must have been free because anyone was allowed to stand for election, all the media told us the elections were honest and freely contested and all of the people who were registered were free to cast their vote without intimidation.
But what if you didn’t know those things?
Imagine that you’ve been asleep for 100 years and know nothing of the modern USA. I’ve come across you in an overgrown wood and awoken you with a kiss. Now I show you the web page from…what…no, I’ve no idea why your underwear’s on inside out, it must have been like that when I found you1…anyway, I show you the web page from The Federal Reserve that shows that the poorest 50% of Americans share just 2.5% of the country’s wealth.
Now, if I ask you if you think the USA is a democracy, how would you answer?
Do you think that in a true democracy, half of the people would happily vote for a system in which the other half of their fellow citizens get to own 97.5% of all the wealth? Does that really sound plausible to you?
Just for context, in Russia, a country that could be described as a very illiberal democracy as they hold regular elections, but is clearly an authoritarian and autocratic regime run for the benefit of its leader and his cronies, where Putin’s political opponents literally die early deaths and Russian men of all ages can be forced to go and die in Ukraine for no good reason, the poorest 50% of the people own 3.1% of the country’s wealth.2
The poorest 50% of Russians own 24% more of their society’s wealth than the poorest 50% of Americans. Remember, they’re also better off than the poorest 50% of EU citizens who own 3% of the wealth, though the British look quite flush with the poorest 50% owning 5.92% of the UK’s wealth.
If a referendum was held in any of those countries asking the people if they supported a measure that would guarantee that the poorest 51% of the people always owned at least 20% of their country’s wealth, do you believe there are any circumstances where the poorest 51% wouldn’t vote for it?
No, nor do I, assuming that the facts were presented clearly and honestly to the people. But strangely people in democracies do have a habit of supporting odd things.
We’ve only just considered how a majority of Britons and Americans are opposed to inheritance and estate taxes even though they only affect a small minority of the people. The wealthiest people in fact, who also own the media channels that shape what so many of the people think and believe.
And in Truth, Lies Or Something Inbetween? we saw how despite the fact that only 4% of independent economists believed Brexit would make the British people better off financially and 88% believed it would make them poorer, the British people voted for Brexit. The majority of British people didn’t vote believing Brexit would make them poorer. They voted believing that they would be better off as a result. Because most of the British independent media is biased to the conservative right and they didn’t highlight the dangers predicted by the IPSOS poll of economic experts who overhwelmingly believed they’d be poorer as a result.
See the pattern?
The independent media that is owned by very wealthy people tells their audience that inheritance and estate tax is a dreadful tax and their audience say they want to abolish the tax even though it doesn’t affect them.
The majority of British media that supported Brexit repeated the Brexiteers claims that the British people would be better off out of Europe, largely ignoring the poll where experts said the opposite, and their audience voted to make themselves poorer.
While there’s no clear cut definitiion of illiberal democracies, a common tactic they use is controlling the media so that they control the truth.
I want to float an idea with you, but first we need to talk about fascism and fascists.
Actually, first I want you to define fascism in one sentence. Imagine you’re talking to an idiot…actually you don’t need to imagine, you’re talking to me…so explain to me what fascism means in a single sentence.
Unless you’ve tried this exercise before, right now I bet you have images of Hitler, goose-stepping jack-booted Nazi soldiers and emaciated skeletal human figures staring through wire fences among others. And you may be struggling to form a one-sentence definition of fascism.
I’m making this guess because until a few months ago, even though I’m pushing 60, I couldn’t have done this exercise. I’d heard the word used throughout my life and knew it’s considered negatively by the majority, but I couldn’t have given a definition without turning to the Nazis of Germany.
In fairness, as with “illiberal democracy”, there isn’t a hard and fast definition of fascism and what makes someone a fascist.
Qualities commonly associated with it include it being a far-right ideology that promotes nationalism under a dictatorial leader at the head of an autocratic government that applies strong social control and promotes the good of the nation and/or race over the freedoms of the individual.
If we remove the far-right ideology from that definition, that description very neatly fits China which is governed by the Chinese Communist Party which is clearly from the left of the political spectrum, even with the modernising of the Chinese economy.
And is nationalism really exclusive to fascists? Listen to enough politicians from any country and from any point on the political spectrum and you’ll hear them talk about their nation’s qualities, principles and values as if they’re something unique to them. I’m sure you know the spiel, often about being hard-working, resolute, loyal, fair-minded, strong family values and ready to help those who need it, whle standing up for the weak against the strong.
It’s a small step to leverage nationalism in a more extreme way when most politicians already act as if the people of their country are different and exceptional when compared to people from other “lesser” countries. Politicians are like parents insisting that their little Johnny is awfully advanced for his age because the seven-year-old is no longer breast-feeding.
The reality is that people are people wherever in the world you go and while we may have cultural differences, we generally all value the same things and qualities.
Anyway, the point is that the position on the political spectrum and nationalism aren’t defining features of fascism.
So we can perhaps distil down our definition of fascism as simply the belief that some of the people should have the power to govern all of the people.
As opposed to democracy which states that all of the people have the power to govern all of the people.
Right now we can get back to the idea I mentioned before our detour into fascism.
If you live in the US or the UK or the EU, I don’t believe that you live in a democracy (this applies to all modern democracies, but I’ve been using the wealth distribution figures specifically of these regions). Yes, on paper all of these are open and democratic countries where all of the people are free to vote for their leaders and, despite some claims to the contrary, the elections are free and fair. Well, they’re free and fair at the ballot box, but not before that point.
Governments in “illiberal democracies” use their control of the media to promote a specific truth and reality that presents their party and leader as the best answer to all their country’s problems. Of course, these aren’t democracies, they’re fascist states where some of the people have acquired the power to govern all of the people.
However, a very similar pattern plays out in modern democracies with the media promoting a specific truth and reality that presents a party and leader as the best answer to all their country’s problems.
The difference is that the party and leader they promote can vary from election to election. They don’t care who is in charge for the next four or five years as long as the government continues to support their acquisition of ever greater wealth. Sure, in the short-term they may prefer a right-wing government that will cut taxes for the wealthy, but they’ll also tolerate paying a bit more under left-leaning governments as long as those governments understand that they need to allow the wealthy to continue hoarding and accumulating ever greater wealth.
In the grand scheme of things, left or right governments make little difference to the balance of wealth in our democratic nations. If it did, history wouldn’t show us that at times during the Democratic President Obama’s first term, the wealth owned by the poorest 50% of Americans was just 0.4% of all American wealth. Does that feel like he and his leftist party were a great protector of the poor?
Rather than the system being rigged to protect the interests of a specific party or leader as in true fascist regimes, in our so-called democracies the system is rigged to protect the interests of a specific group within society. The wealthy.
In practice we don’t live in genuine democracies.
We live in liberal fascist regimes.
We have the freedom of voting for our leaders from a genuine choice presented to us, unlike in true fascist regimes where the leader is decided before the vote, but the reality is that we only ever have a choice between leaders who will act in the best interests of a wealthy minority.
And the result for the people is effectively the same as if they lived within a fascist regime.
On paper all of the people govern all of the people.
In reality, because of their wealth and influence, some of the people govern all of the people.
- Imagine the woke outcry if the Brothers Grimm were to release Sleeping Beauty today with that shocking non-consensual kissing scene towards the end ↩︎
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/1364371/distribution-wealth-by-percentile-russia/ ↩︎