The fatal flaw of Western liberal democracy is that it’s perfectly possible to have a society where only a small percentage of the population is enfranchised or where slavery exists and said society can still be considered “democratic.” In Classical Athens, the gold standard for the Western democratic tradition, only about twenty percent of the population were citizens. The other eighty percent consisted of slaves, various categories of foreigners, and women. We often forget that a huge number of noncitizens had to work anonymously and thanklessly so Socrates could gadfly about the forum. This is why I think terms like authoritarianism have no meaning. In any society, the people who aren’t considered part of “we the people” are going to feel the hand of the state much more strongly than those who are in that group. Freedom often means the ability for real, legal persons (ie the people who actually matter and have rights) to assert their power over legal non-persons. This explains why so many Americans still think that not being able to discriminate constitutes a loss of freedom and why the idea of Arabs being equal to Jews is considered to be an unacceptable notion in Israel.
Well, I must say that I found your comment puzzling, insofar as I was really speaking about the mendacity of the tagline "only democracy in the Middle East." I meant to comment on the lie inherent in the propaganda pushed out by the state of Israel, not commenting on the validity of the construct of democracy itself.
But, even if one were to focus on that, I also find it interesting that you zero in on the model of democracy as put forth by ancient Rome. I'm one of those who believe that constructs can be improved over time, and even one as grand an idea as democracy is one of them. In fact, I would advance that most people would say that the Romans got that aspect of democracy wrong, the idea that slavery could exist in a polity based on equality. Of course, Roman society was not based on equality, so the very idea that it would have recognized the inherent contradiction of a democracy being a slaveholding society is difficult to square. Indeed, I would say that would be an instance of modern people superimposing their (our) morality upon a distant people anachronistically.
I very much contend with your casual assertion that authoritarianism has no meaning. At the very least, I have set out a parameter in this very brief note (I hestitate to call it an essay), where democracy is seen on a spectrum and is diametrically opposed to authoritarianism. So at least in that sense, authoritarianism has meaning.
Beyond that, though, we know from history that authoritarian regimes have come and gone, and some are in existence. The vast view of the 20th century is one where the liberal order (in the modern as well as classical sense of 'liberalism') fought to keep the forces of authoritarianism at bay. Surely you recognize that Nazi Germany was an authoritarian regime (in fact, it was a totalitarian regime, far more extreme than "mere" authoritarianism). To that point, the first sociological study of fascism (whereby the researchers came up with the "F scale") was originally titled "The Fascist Personality" but was restated as "The Authoritarian Personality" instead. There's an inherent relationship between authoritarianism and fascism, and I hope we can agree that fascism is a thing that exists.
The very problem that you locate in democracies is one that I would locate in authoritarian systems, the idea that inequalities can (or should) be structurally built into society. It's the idea of superiority that is the fatal flaw: it makes resistance to the established order inherent in the populations that are repressed and thus instills an intrinsic sense of instability.
I quoted Robert Altemeyer above, and I would recommend seeking out his work if you want a more up-to-date look at authoritarianism from a sociological view (as opposed to 1950, which is when _The Authoritarian Personality_ was published). Altemeyer created the Right Wing Authoritarianism scale, which has been widely recognized as being reliable and sound as a measuring device (thus superseding the F scale). His style of communication is down-to-earth as well, which is a bonus.
As for your last point, I would say the ultimate issue at stake is the fact that Palestinians are stateless people, and thus they have no rights recognized by the state of Israel. Incidentally, the universal human rights as captured in international human rights law, I would wager, Israelis do not feel bound to respect. Therein lies the problem.
Thank you for your reply. When I said that the term authoritarianism has no meaning, what I meant was that the term is almost always applied towards countries that are non-Western or non-white, as if authoritarianism cannot exist in a liberal democratic society. The point I was making about Classical Athens is that it is seen as this great fount of Western notions about freedom and liberty, but the vast majority of the populace were disenfranchised non-persons, and it was their servitude that made “democracy” possibly for the citizen minority. Our founding fathers were all influenced by Athens, its rival city state Sparta (where slaves called helots were killed for sport by the citizen-soldiers), and Ancient Rome when they were setting up our system of governance, so we can’t discount these ancient influences. George Washington may have been seen as a great liberator to the white Patriots, but to his slaves (many of whom ran away with varying degrees of success) he would have been a monstrous authoritarian. Indeed, British critics of the American Revolution pointed out the hypocrisy of the Patriots on the issue on slavery. All of this is to say that the extent to which any government is “authoritarian” depends on your status in society.
For example, many Blacks experience a sort of authoritarian control in their day to day lives that other groups often don’t or at least not to the same extent. One case is racist police practices, which disproportionately affect Black men. I think one reason why it’s next to impossible to make any inroads on this subject is that a lot of Americans of all races (even other Blacks) feel like police brutality keeps them safe, so they don’t care about the consequences. As long as “the right kind” of Americans aren’t personally affected by police brutality and think they benefit from it, it will continue.
You bring up the example of Nazi Germany as authoritarian. One fact that we should grapple with is that many “Aryan” Germans materially benefited from Nazism and didn’t feel particularly oppressed by their government. If they paid their taxes, followed the law, and were considered more or less racially sound, they got a pretty good bargain: subsidized vacations, educational opportunities that had once been closed to the lower classes, jobs, and in some cases, nice homes stolen from their former Jewish residents. If you were Jewish, communist, socialist, a Jehovah’s Witness, or some other despised group, things were bad. But for the average Johann and Johanna, things were looking up, at least until the reality of “total war” slapped them in the face. As long as the authoritarianism was affecting the people they didn’t like, the German public was more than willing to go along with Nazism. Another dirty little secret is that a lot of people in supposedly liberal Western democracies admired Hitler and wanted to emulate what he was doing. If Hitler had stopped with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and “only” limited his genocide to those in the German speaking lands, I think Nazi Germany would have been uncritically accepted as an ally against the Soviet Union.
Similarly, most Israelis are fine with apartheid and genocide against Palestinians because they benefit from it. The anti-Netanyahu protests that started before Oct 7 were about dislike towards possibly authoritarian behavior towards the people who actually matter (ie secular Jewish Israelis). The protesters could have cared less about the Palestinians, since they aren’t supposed to be in Israel in the first place. This instance and others illustrates why I agree with Aime Cesare’s definition of fascism as the methods and logic of colonialism and imperialism boomeranging back to the colonizers. Black, brown, and Asian people are supposed to be exploited and disenfranchised, but not whites, however you choose to define them. This is why Hitler’s crimes shocked the West to its core, but not those of King Leopold II, Winston Churchill, or Andrew Jackson. Unpopular groups of Europeans are still more valuable than the Congolese, Bengalis, or Native Americans.
The fatal flaw of Western liberal democracy is that it’s perfectly possible to have a society where only a small percentage of the population is enfranchised or where slavery exists and said society can still be considered “democratic.” In Classical Athens, the gold standard for the Western democratic tradition, only about twenty percent of the population were citizens. The other eighty percent consisted of slaves, various categories of foreigners, and women. We often forget that a huge number of noncitizens had to work anonymously and thanklessly so Socrates could gadfly about the forum. This is why I think terms like authoritarianism have no meaning. In any society, the people who aren’t considered part of “we the people” are going to feel the hand of the state much more strongly than those who are in that group. Freedom often means the ability for real, legal persons (ie the people who actually matter and have rights) to assert their power over legal non-persons. This explains why so many Americans still think that not being able to discriminate constitutes a loss of freedom and why the idea of Arabs being equal to Jews is considered to be an unacceptable notion in Israel.
Well, I must say that I found your comment puzzling, insofar as I was really speaking about the mendacity of the tagline "only democracy in the Middle East." I meant to comment on the lie inherent in the propaganda pushed out by the state of Israel, not commenting on the validity of the construct of democracy itself.
But, even if one were to focus on that, I also find it interesting that you zero in on the model of democracy as put forth by ancient Rome. I'm one of those who believe that constructs can be improved over time, and even one as grand an idea as democracy is one of them. In fact, I would advance that most people would say that the Romans got that aspect of democracy wrong, the idea that slavery could exist in a polity based on equality. Of course, Roman society was not based on equality, so the very idea that it would have recognized the inherent contradiction of a democracy being a slaveholding society is difficult to square. Indeed, I would say that would be an instance of modern people superimposing their (our) morality upon a distant people anachronistically.
I very much contend with your casual assertion that authoritarianism has no meaning. At the very least, I have set out a parameter in this very brief note (I hestitate to call it an essay), where democracy is seen on a spectrum and is diametrically opposed to authoritarianism. So at least in that sense, authoritarianism has meaning.
Beyond that, though, we know from history that authoritarian regimes have come and gone, and some are in existence. The vast view of the 20th century is one where the liberal order (in the modern as well as classical sense of 'liberalism') fought to keep the forces of authoritarianism at bay. Surely you recognize that Nazi Germany was an authoritarian regime (in fact, it was a totalitarian regime, far more extreme than "mere" authoritarianism). To that point, the first sociological study of fascism (whereby the researchers came up with the "F scale") was originally titled "The Fascist Personality" but was restated as "The Authoritarian Personality" instead. There's an inherent relationship between authoritarianism and fascism, and I hope we can agree that fascism is a thing that exists.
The very problem that you locate in democracies is one that I would locate in authoritarian systems, the idea that inequalities can (or should) be structurally built into society. It's the idea of superiority that is the fatal flaw: it makes resistance to the established order inherent in the populations that are repressed and thus instills an intrinsic sense of instability.
I quoted Robert Altemeyer above, and I would recommend seeking out his work if you want a more up-to-date look at authoritarianism from a sociological view (as opposed to 1950, which is when _The Authoritarian Personality_ was published). Altemeyer created the Right Wing Authoritarianism scale, which has been widely recognized as being reliable and sound as a measuring device (thus superseding the F scale). His style of communication is down-to-earth as well, which is a bonus.
As for your last point, I would say the ultimate issue at stake is the fact that Palestinians are stateless people, and thus they have no rights recognized by the state of Israel. Incidentally, the universal human rights as captured in international human rights law, I would wager, Israelis do not feel bound to respect. Therein lies the problem.
Thanks for the comment!
Thank you for your reply. When I said that the term authoritarianism has no meaning, what I meant was that the term is almost always applied towards countries that are non-Western or non-white, as if authoritarianism cannot exist in a liberal democratic society. The point I was making about Classical Athens is that it is seen as this great fount of Western notions about freedom and liberty, but the vast majority of the populace were disenfranchised non-persons, and it was their servitude that made “democracy” possibly for the citizen minority. Our founding fathers were all influenced by Athens, its rival city state Sparta (where slaves called helots were killed for sport by the citizen-soldiers), and Ancient Rome when they were setting up our system of governance, so we can’t discount these ancient influences. George Washington may have been seen as a great liberator to the white Patriots, but to his slaves (many of whom ran away with varying degrees of success) he would have been a monstrous authoritarian. Indeed, British critics of the American Revolution pointed out the hypocrisy of the Patriots on the issue on slavery. All of this is to say that the extent to which any government is “authoritarian” depends on your status in society.
For example, many Blacks experience a sort of authoritarian control in their day to day lives that other groups often don’t or at least not to the same extent. One case is racist police practices, which disproportionately affect Black men. I think one reason why it’s next to impossible to make any inroads on this subject is that a lot of Americans of all races (even other Blacks) feel like police brutality keeps them safe, so they don’t care about the consequences. As long as “the right kind” of Americans aren’t personally affected by police brutality and think they benefit from it, it will continue.
You bring up the example of Nazi Germany as authoritarian. One fact that we should grapple with is that many “Aryan” Germans materially benefited from Nazism and didn’t feel particularly oppressed by their government. If they paid their taxes, followed the law, and were considered more or less racially sound, they got a pretty good bargain: subsidized vacations, educational opportunities that had once been closed to the lower classes, jobs, and in some cases, nice homes stolen from their former Jewish residents. If you were Jewish, communist, socialist, a Jehovah’s Witness, or some other despised group, things were bad. But for the average Johann and Johanna, things were looking up, at least until the reality of “total war” slapped them in the face. As long as the authoritarianism was affecting the people they didn’t like, the German public was more than willing to go along with Nazism. Another dirty little secret is that a lot of people in supposedly liberal Western democracies admired Hitler and wanted to emulate what he was doing. If Hitler had stopped with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and “only” limited his genocide to those in the German speaking lands, I think Nazi Germany would have been uncritically accepted as an ally against the Soviet Union.
Similarly, most Israelis are fine with apartheid and genocide against Palestinians because they benefit from it. The anti-Netanyahu protests that started before Oct 7 were about dislike towards possibly authoritarian behavior towards the people who actually matter (ie secular Jewish Israelis). The protesters could have cared less about the Palestinians, since they aren’t supposed to be in Israel in the first place. This instance and others illustrates why I agree with Aime Cesare’s definition of fascism as the methods and logic of colonialism and imperialism boomeranging back to the colonizers. Black, brown, and Asian people are supposed to be exploited and disenfranchised, but not whites, however you choose to define them. This is why Hitler’s crimes shocked the West to its core, but not those of King Leopold II, Winston Churchill, or Andrew Jackson. Unpopular groups of Europeans are still more valuable than the Congolese, Bengalis, or Native Americans.