"As long as there is democracy, there will be demagogy."
 | By John Guida Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
Are we in a crisis of democracy? That's the consensus among many writers and political leaders from the left and right. President Biden recently described a philosophy of "semi-fascism" among MAGA Republicans that "threatens the very foundations of our republic." Just hours before those remarks, Representative Kevin McCarthy said that, under Biden's leadership, the country has witnessed "an assault on the soul of America" and a dismantling of "Americans' democracy before our very eyes." |
But according to Sean Illing and Zac Gershberg, the authors of "The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media and Perilous Persuasion," we are not in the midst of a unique crisis of democracy, or at least not only a crisis of democracy, but just … democracy. |
In a guest essay this week, they argue that democracy is not a particular type of government based on laws and norms, but rather an "open culture of communication that affords people the right to think, speak and act and allows every possible means of persuasion." |
What that means is that a key feature of our democracy — free speech — is also a bug. And that, Illing and Gershberg say, is the paradox of democracy. |
And because of that paradox, "we may not like it, but something like Jan. 6 is always potentially in the offing." |
Their perspective offers a unique, thought-provoking way of processing politics: "We felt something was missing from the democracy-is-dying genre," they told me in an email, "and how we'd become whole again if we just acquired better media and more respect for norms and reason and truth." |
Take the case of Mark Finchem, the Republican nominee for secretary of state in Arizona, who claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. As Illing and Gershberg wrote me, democracy "consists of people using speech acts that try to persuade others" to win power — and that "includes campaigning and petitioning for a redress of grievances, even if they're patently phony." |
They are not dismissive of fact-checking and the eager establishment of truth. What is valuable about their argument is that it highlights the limits of those efforts. |
"What we're pushing back against is a model of democratic politics that assumes outcomes are driven by the facts," they said in the email. The Washington Post identified over 30,000 instances of false or misleading claims by former President Donald Trump during his presidency. But as Illing and Gershberg said: "It didn't matter. In a democracy, it's not about what's true so much as what's persuasive." |
What Our Readers Are Saying |
Democracy is a delicate balancing act in the best of times. It cannot be sustained when its sloppiness and excesses are made worse by technology, paid for propaganda and blatant misinformation, and the unwillingness to regulate these tendencies except when it favors the ruling party. The G.O.P. sees its future in abandoning democracy in favor of holding on to power, no matter what. It gives its constituents what they have been told they want. — Fr., Downingtown, Pa. Anyone who has been victimized by the lies of others knows that propaganda is a vicious and effective weapon. At the extreme, propaganda has been responsible for wars and genocide. Although free speech opens the door to propaganda, so does censored speech. Both are breeding grounds for lies which are the underpinning of propaganda, one of the great plagues that periodically descends upon humanity. — Felix, Connecticut |
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