Democracy is dead. Long live democracy!
Trump supporters with painted faces and retired “citizens of the Reich” are allegedly threatening our democracy. The real threat, however, doesn't arise from the people, but rather from the state.
A commentary on “Tucker Carlson's Jan. 6 Video Tapes Release — Four Biggest Revelations” (published in Newsweek on March 7, 2023)
“[The] administration [of the constitution] favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition.”
– Pericles (according to the historian Thucydides)
The Athenian statesman Pericles is known to have been one of the most important supporters of democracy in ancient Greece. Together with the reformer Ephialtes he organized a vote in the popular assembly in 462 BC that deprived the governing Areopagus (the Athenian noble council) of most of its powers and transferred them to the Boule (the Council of 500). The members of this council were chosen by lot on a yearly basis and allowed for basically every male Athenian citizen over 30 (except slaves and foreigners) to become a member – back then, this was a revolutionary idea. Many historians see the downfall of the Areopagus as the birth of Athenian democracy, although one might certainly argue about whether Pericles was truly acting out of pure altruism. He did become the leader of the Democrats after all, once Ephialtes had been assassinated.
Be that as it may, Pericles was certainly right about his definition of democracy: State power must serve everyone, not just the few, and the law may not favor any particular individual interests. Around 2500 years after Pericles, we in the West must acknowledge, however, that this is not the case. Where laws are not made for the benefit of the people anymore, where fundamental rights can easily be restricted, where politicians are shamelessly out for their own benefit, democracy is forced to give way to an oligarchic form of the Areopagus.
In the mainstream media, the narrative of our dying democracy is spun by using recurring names and tropes. Since 2016, the official number one top danger to democracy worldwide is, of course, Donald Trump who has been named “a cancer on American democracy” by political commentator Fareed Zakaria. In Europe, you will continuously hear names like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán or Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as being a threat to democratic values. During the COVID pandemic, anti-vaxxers and critics of COVID measures were commonly branded as anti-democratic. And finally, on January 6, 2021, a historical event took place in the United States that the mainstream media unanimously named an “attack on democracy” when a mob of enraged Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol.
The so-called “Storm on the Capitol” or “January 6 US Capitol Attack” went down in history as one of the darkest hours of modern American democracy and protestors were immediately branded as anti-democratic. The Guardian described the events as “a three-hour story about how American democracy, like a rickety old house, creaked and bent and struggled to hold itself together during a thunderstorm of political violence.” On the first anniversary of the Capitol Attack, US President Joe Biden proclaimed that he would “allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of democracy.” The US media apparatus was reporting in a 24/7 loop about the events for days and weeks. So far, more than 1000 individuals have been arrested in connection with the January 6 events and criminal proceedings are currently under way.
Then, in March 2023 – more than two years after the Storm on the Capitol – Fox News host Tucker Carlson published a news segment featuring new video material from surveillance cameras inside the Capitol, to which public access had been denied so far. But with Republicans gaining a majority in the House of Representatives in the Midterm Elections of 2022, things changed. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave Fox News access to analyze around 40000 hours of video material, which had been kept under tight wraps by the Democrats for over two years. While the new video material may not lead to the complete collapse of the idea that a monumental “attack on democracy” took place that day, the narrative does become a little shaky.
In fact, the new video footage shows quite a different version of the events of January 6, 2021: While the available video material had so far only shown rioting and rampaging Trump supporters, the new footage proves that inside the Capitol things actually progressed far more peacefully than had been assumed. Neither the protestors nor the police resort to violence. Instead, the passiveness displayed by security staff is quite astounding. What’s even more astounding is the fact that the famous “QAnon Shaman” aka Jacob Chansley, who became a worldwide symbol of the insurrection with his bizarre face paint and horned headdress, is being shown around the Capitol by the police. Neither the security guards nor Chansley show violent behavior. The same goes for other protestors that can be seen in the footage who seem less like brutal insurrectionists and more like “tourists”, as Tucker Carlson puts it. Chansley even had time to take some selfies.
Watching this video footage, there is no avoiding the fact that some things just don’t make any sense whatsoever. How is it possible for a group of backwoods protestors to break into the Capitol, presumably one of the most safeguarded places in America? Why does security staff not do anything to hold the protestors at bay? Why on earth are some protestors even being given a tour through the Capitol? The new footage also calls into question important details surrounding the death of officer Brian Sicknick and the role of Ray Epps, an alleged agent provocateur. Of course, one has to keep in mind that the Fox News video cut is a selection of thousands of hours of video material and is therefore subject to selection bias. But that is also the case for the video footage released by CNN, PBS and Co., who had only shown images of a potentially violent mob. In any case, this new video footage must leave every citizen with a shred of critical thinking skills wondering what truly happened on January 6.
On the other side of the pond, in Germany, around two years later, a similarly grotesque “attack on democracy” took place which felt like a pale imitation of the US Capitol Attack. The so-called “Reichsbürger Raids” (Reichsbürger-Razzia) on December 7, 2022, were said to be “the biggest anti-terrorism raid in the Federal Republic”. In a large scale operation special forces raided apartments and arrested members of the so-called Reichsbürger (“citizen of the Reich”) movement who, according to German public service broadcasters, were accused of “forming a terrorist group to eliminate the constitutional order of the Federal Republic of Germany and build a nation state modeled on the German Reich of 1871.” According to Süddeutsche Zeitung, some members of the terrorist network were also part of the QAnon movement and the German Querdenker movement (which became notorious for protesting against COVID safety measures such as lockdown and vaccine mandates). Among other things, the Reichsbürger had allegedly planned an attack on the Reichstag building (the German equivalent of the US Capitol) led by 71-year-old aristocrat Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss. It didn’t take long until the expression “pensioner revolution” (Rentner-Umsturz) circulated on Twitter and revealed the ridiculousness of these presumably highly dangerous enemies to the democratic order.
Nevertheless, German politics and most of the media kept on insisting that the Reichsbürger were “enemies within the cloak of democracy” as Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland stated. Of course, the potential coup d’état was immediately compared to the Storm of the Capitol: “Storming the parliament is not just any criminal offense. It shakes the very foundations of democracy, as the attack on the US Capitol has shown.” The governor of Bavaria, Markus Söder (Christian Social Union), claimed that the Reichsbürger posed a “threat” to democracy whereas public service broadcasters talked about a “putsch against democracy.” And Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (Free Democratic Party) warned not to downplay the dangerousness of the Reichsbürger movement, a claim confirmed by a Welt journalist. Everyone seemed to agree that a group of two dozen pensioners hiding a couple of firearms in the basement were capable of overthrowing parliament.
It became clear very soon that something was off as well with these Reichsbürger Raids. The German magazine Stern for instance had already created the template for its online article on the day before the actual raids took place, and an MP from the German Left Party named Martina Renner later confirmed that the press had been informed about the raids a week before. The government had supplied the press with important information beforehand, including the time and place of the raids. And again, one must ask oneself: Why? Why should the Ministry of Internal Affairs leak details about a potentially dangerous raid to the media beforehand, thereby putting the operation and agents at risk? Why is a group of pensioners dreaming about going back to the days of the German Reich of the 19th century declared a serious threat to democracy and treated by the media as actual terrorists?
Although the Storm of the Capitol was far more impressive and dramatic than the ridiculous Reichsbürger Raids in Germany, both events have some startling parallels, which reveal the current understanding of democracy in the West: In both countries, politicians and the media presume that the threat to democracy is posed by the people. Protestors are declared enemies of democracy and madmen with horned headdresses as well as geriatric pensioners are said to be highly dangerous terrorists who are going to destroy the democratic order. But the truth is: Those who are governing are undermining democratic values, not those who are governed. Take Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for instance, who accused Tucker Carlson of “siding with the enemies of democracy” for releasing the new Capitol video footage. Schumer never actually talks about the content of the footage or the fact that his party had been trying to stop it from being released. His argument relies solely on him saying that January 6 was a horrible event and anyone who questions that, like Carlson, is an enemy of democracy.1 Schumer doesn't even realize the blatant irony of what he is saying: By condemning Carlson for releasing the new video footage to the public, which it has every right to see, Schumer exposes himself as the true enemy of democracy.
Similar to the US where, according to the media, the only threat to democracy is posed by actors from the right-wing political spectrum, Interior Secretary Nancy Faeser (Social Democratic Party) emphasized that “the biggest threat to the democratic order [in Germany] comes from the rightists.” Of course, the terms “conservative” or “right-wing” have been conflated with terms like “radical right-wing”, “right-wing populist” and “right-wing extremist”: Everything to the right of the Left is now right-wing extremist. Nuanced political debate is sorely missed as the danger from left-wing extremism or migrant violence is willfully ignored. Instead, a marginalized group of “citizens of the Reich” led by a retired aristocrat is put in the limelight to remind the population of the constant danger of right-wing extremism. Apparently, they couldn’t find any real neo-nazis anywhere to usher them onto the media stage.
Whether it’s violence caused by right-wing or left-wing extremists, any violence must be condemned and the same goes for storming the parliament or planning a coup. But the media, working hand in hand with politicians, are framing these events in a way that lacks neutrality and balance, and shows that the press is utterly failing in its role as the fourth pillar of democracy. Rallying Trump supporters in the US or a club of German pensioners who want the monarchy back, they are not the true enemies of democracy. Nowadays, democracy is threatened not by the people, but by state power itself. The authoritarian management of the COVID pandemic, the Ukraine War, the global information war, the corruption in all political parties of the political spectrum – all that and more has shown that Western democracy is dying and not because of a QAnon supporter wearing fur, but because of a political elite who doesn’t act in the interest of the people but instead explicitly and openly advocates for limiting democratic rights. This political elite is only interested in maintaining its own power and wealth, constituting the modern oligarchic Areopagus of the 21st century.
By overdramatizing and cleverly framing events like the Storm of the Capitol or the planned Reichsbürger coup as terrible threats to democracy, attention is deflected from the fact that the political elite has “grown tired of democracy’s demand that freedom be granted to its subjects,” as Jacob Siegel put it in his phenomenal piece for TabletMag. “[T]he ruling class ensures that it will always be able to point to a looming threat from extremists—a threat that justifies its own iron grip on power.” But we, the “subjects”, the demos, should always be aware of the fact that we the people have the power, we must have the power in a functioning democracy. People power can only be broken through division, lies and lack of courage. This means we need to strive for the contrary: union, truth and courage. Even Pericles said, in his time: “Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.”
About the author: Born 1987, with roots in Germany and the Philippines, living in Spain. Constantly curious and eager to learn new things. Freedom > safety. Your own opinion > groupthink. Coffee > tea. Podcast recommendation: Joe Rogan Podcast Episode #1940 with Matt Taibbi
A classic ad hominem argument.
> Of course, the terms “conservative” or “right-wing” have been conflated with terms like “radical right-wing”, “right-wing populist” and “right-wing extremist”: Everything to the right of the left is now right-wing extremist.
That's because they've moved so far to the left that those of us who haven't moved look extremely far to the right from their point of view. The best way to verify that is to look at what the Left and the Right used to say not that long ago, compared to what they're saying now. Our positions have remained essentially the same; they've gone beyond what Leftists not that long ago used to universally condemn as "left-wing extremist" territory, and are trying to redefine that point as "the Center."
https://robertfrank.substack.com/p/were-not-the-ones-whove-moved