Демократия не должна победить

Democracy Shall Not Win

DEMOCRACY SHALL NOT WIN

“…this is the dead land

this is cactus land

here the stone images

are raised, here they receive

the supplication of a dead man’s hand

under the twinkle of a fading star…

….between the idea and the reality

between the motion and the act

falls the shadow

between the conception and the creation

between the motion and the response

falls the shadow.

Life is very long

between the desire and the spasm

between the potency and the existence

between the essence and the decent

falls the shadow

For thine is the kingdom

For thine is life

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang

but a whimper.”

(reversed excerpt from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” on Guy Fawks, who attempted to blow up the British Parliament)

If it sounds unthinkable in our days for anyone to speak against democracy without being labeled a conservative or a fascist, it is because propaganda resides in the houses and in the minds of [democracy’s own] subjects. Democracy’s totalitarianism has otherwise nothing to envy from previous totalitarian regimes. Nepotism, aristocracy, men of the court, favoured men, businessmen, mediators, contractors and publishers still rule social life, while down “below” remain unjustly treated and at the same time, always willing to be “fooled”.

Society continues to passively tolerate them and wants to take their place at the same time. The ambitions of becoming easily rich, of spectacularly advancing to a higher social class, of having a career, accumulating property, securing material objects and double-locked doors is what democratic prosperity comes to promise. And so, the willful subjects surrender to the totalitarianism of capitalist sovereignty placed against a democratic background. The exploitation of our labour and our lives intensifies, social disparities grow, the world’s police become militarised, spectacle rules – material, and at times intellectual and emotional decadence becomes the choice of the many. Most of this is not new. This has been, more or less, the state of social life under any authority. Yet today, democracy sugars the pill. Democracy is the coup d’etat that doesn’t bring tanks out on the streets but TV cameras and reporter microphones instead. Democracy rules with the power of its propaganda. Labour is protected in the constitution as a supreme right, social disparities are the achievement of the free market and of competition, the police protect and serve the social demand for security, the spectacle protects the freedom of expression and your next-door neighbour might come to a plight, but it’s not you, so why bother…