Görlach Global: Democracy is in crisis

Whoever thinks that only in the US there are conspiracy theories that endanger the unity of society and democracy as a whole is wrong. Nearly three-quarters of Republican supporters in the United States believe that Joe Boden is not the country’s legitimate president. Of the entire population, 15% believe the claim of the right-wing militant conspiracy group QAnon that the US government, economy and media are “controlled by a group of pedophiles who worship Satan and enslave children around the world.”

In Germany, meanwhile, in a poll recently published by the Allenssbach Institute for Democracy, nearly a third of citizens believe they live in “apparent democracy”, in which citizens have nothing to say. “This attitude is shared by 28% of citizens in the west, and 45% in the east. Since the time of the pandemic it had become clear that in the new federal states far fewer people are connected to the political reality in Germany than anywhere else. Denial of vaccination and refusal to wear the mask led to an increase in deaths in Thuringia, 47%, while in Saxony to 49% in comparison.

Do we live in a seeming democracy?

Even in neighboring countries the situation is not better: In France in January 2022 about 57% of the population believed that democracy does not work properly in the country, in the UK 34% of citizens said that “they have absolutely nothing to say In political matters. These polls can not be generalized, but they show a trend of dissatisfaction with democracy. Whoever extends the horizon beyond the countries mentioned, can see that the same critical points are mentioned: lack of enjoyment of goods in the economy, disrespect for individual rights and anger towards elites, who have lost touch with reality.

Loss of trust in democracy

As early as 2017, the British author David Goodhart in his book “Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics”, drew attention to the fact that traditional, rural and urban districts are in conflict with each other. Indeed, according to American political scientist Francis Fukuyama, there was nothing more significant than the population density in the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump. Where density was less common, they voted more for Brexit and Donald Trump compared to populated areas of cities and regions.

It was Fukuyama who, in his book Identity: How Loss of Dignity Threatens Democracy, showed that losing one’s share of the economy first leads to anger and then to the rejection of the democratic model. According to this interpretation, it is the neoliberal ideology, which many democratic governments have adopted in recent decades, that is responsible for the loss of confidence in democracy.

The reasons are deeper

This interpretation is not wrong, but very abbreviated: Because economic dissatisfaction not only increases the anger towards the democratic system and the willingness to set aside its ideological economic premises, but also the radical rejection of the scientific conclusions of our era, the rational basis of which is the backbone of modern societies. But it does not necessarily mean that we should go from “I do not do well economically” to “my government is a criminal network that enslaves children in the world.”

To overcome the crisis of democracy today, it is no longer enough to eliminate economic inequalities and reorganize economic participation. Beyond this it must be understood why conspiracy theories, tribal, nationalist, religious theories come to the fore instead of secular rational science. From the results of the polls presented here, one can not only conclude that democracy as a form of government and state is being rejected more and more, but with it the whole worldview of the modern age for man, after which there is no turning back. . Denial of democracy as a code for world hatred, this can not continue for long./DW

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