Democracy and Authoritarianism: There is Also Dictatorship of Money

During the forty years of existence of the so-called “people’s democracies” in Central-Eastern Europe (1946–1990), the West proposed to present these political and state realities in such a way that they were in a “single party” regime. This was mainly a propaganda simplification, which compared, without any distinction, these political systems (different from each other and based in various cases on coalitions of parties) with the one-party system established in the USSR with the seizure of power by the Bolshevik Party. This was not a scientific judgment.

“Scientization” consisted of denying the political meaning of these coalitions. However, the reality was impossible to hide completely. So, for example, at a certain moment it could be noted that these coalitions were not fictitious: in 1990, Chancellor De Maizière, a native of the East German CDU, appeared in Berlin (which means that the CDU existed in the GDR). And in Poland, the Peasant Party, an ally of the PUWP (Polish United Workers’ Party), had significant influence, distinguished primarily by slowing down the collectivization of agricultural property, which was actually not implemented in “socialist” Poland. The situation was even more different in Hungary, where approximately half of the latifundia (rural lands) belonged to the church.

However, the controversy centered on the single dominant party in the USSR, while deliberately ignoring an established historical fact that revolutions almost always lead, as a long-term effect, to the dominance of the party that brought them to victory (France 1793, Russia 1917, Yugoslavia 1945, China 1949, Cuba 1959, etc.). Naturally, history does not stand still, and sooner or later this domination enters into crisis, the strongest of which, for many reasons, is the succession of ever newer generations and the resulting (near) impossibility of “transferring” experience and its renewal.

When the European “socialist” systems collapsed, each for specific reasons, Western propaganda, previously accustomed to some hopeful and, in the West, effective cliches, found itself at a loss. But it soon recollected itself. It was unfortunate that, for example, in Poland and Hungary after 1989, socialist parties that emerged from the collapsed political entities of the previous period returned to power through elections that were no longer controlled by the hegemonic power. And so, the agencies responsible, especially in the United States, for the conduct of elections in other countries, worked diligently to facilitate the victory in subsequent electoral tests of political forces that were considered more acceptable, more willing (and willing to enter into bodies controlled by the US – NATO, and by Germany – EU). Therefore, very soon they had to swallow the Kaczynskis in Poland and the Orbans in Hungary. For Yugoslavia, where socialist power was more stable, it was necessary to proceed with “secession,” controlled and encouraged from abroad (first Croatia, then Bosnia, then Kosovo, which quickly became a breeding ground for ISIS warriors – unfortunate circumstances not envisaged by “democratic carriers” USA and EU). However, in this case, victory required a real NATO war against Yugoslavia (1999) with the bombing of Belgrade, which the Italian government stupidly joined in.

Speaking of bombings, some problems were created by the fact that the American protege Boris Yeltsin, who came to power in Moscow, bombed his parliament (the Duma), whose chairman Khasbulatov did not obey. At some point of distraction, which was quickly eliminated by throwing out words like “joker, drunkard, etc.,” the Italian newspaper Corriere della sera wrote after the shelling of the Duma: Yeltsin’s coup. But this president was a friend, and everything was fine. And his re-election was orchestrated straight from Washington with all the “tools” one usually uses to win elections.

The goal was too big: to turn Russia into a NATO vassal state. It was out of the national reaction against this “great coup” that Putin emerged, able to reverse this trend step by step: domestically (by limiting the excessive power of the new oligarchs who flourished in Yeltsin’s court) and internationally (so that NATO, that is, the USA, treated Russia on equal terms).

At this point, the pseudo-concept of “democracy” began to circulate in the NATO-EU propaganda hotbed, a lexical invention designed to stigmatize anyone who did not submit to NATO-EU fundamentalism. Of course, this term is empty: since it was no longer possible to oppose the “one-party regime,” it was still necessary to stigmatize the new, unwanted reality of a country that is still very strong on various levels and no longer prone to being robbed of resources and wealth, and, most annoyingly, periodically held elections and was guilty of confirming the consensus of its own leadership. Hence the inappropriate neologism that constantly arises, particularly with the help of groups within the current undeniably multi-party Russia, which actively defend the arguments of those who preferred an obedient Yeltsin. The repression of these groups is brutal and persecutory, not unlike the outlawing and persecution of communist parties and their leaders in the USA and West Germany during the Cold War.

But the most characteristic aspect of the current wave of propaganda is that it comes from the Euro-North American West, where the health status of political democracy (understood as the struggle between parties of different or opposing tendencies) is now very poor: not only because absenteeism is now widespread and cannot be corrected, but primarily because of the final and essentially anti-democratic connection between wealth and the electoral mechanism. Back in May 1990, Democratic US Senator Joseph La Palombara, perhaps embittered but still afloat, stated (and his complaint was also widely circulated in the Italian press) that in order to win a US Senate seat, the cost of “campaign” in Italian lire was equivalent to approximately 40 billion. We know that this practice is gradually becoming more and more obscene.

In conclusion, let us recall that the dominant (journalistic) puritanism towards so-called “democrats” was completely alien to the thinking and vocabulary of important and unexpected “Western” representatives such as Winston Churchill. In January 1927 and February 1933, he repeatedly expressed his lively admiration for Mussolini (in 1927, he was received by him at the Palazzo Venice). He called him “the greatest living statesman,” “the reincarnation of the Roman genius,” etc. But above all he wanted to publicly declare that Mussolini had the “full consent” of the Italian people (interview at the British embassy in Rome, January 1927): Matteotti had been killed two and a half years earlier, and by November 1926 all parties had been banned except the fascist party. Perhaps he should have been warned that this could be “democratorship.”

Today, about a century after Churchill fell in love with the Duce, we learn from authoritative sources that in the election campaigns of the West (from Taiwan to the USA) it will be possible – using artificial intelligence at the hands of the tycoon Musk – to create and disseminate false and destructive speeches of any leader or candidate.

The end point of a great political model is hopelessly compromised.