Let’s start from a Table of Contents
Lancelot: This is going to be a very meticulous job. Even worse than embroidering. We have to kill the dragon in each one of them. Evgeny Schwartz. The Dragon.
There is plenty of material written on how to topple dictatorships, generate revolutions, and so on. However, it is worth to note that post-revolution societies often live in violent and unstable social environment. Sometimes even more violent and unstable compared to the past times of the deposed dictatorship. The outcome of a regime change is often from a dictatorship to anarchy to another dictatorship at best and to a bloody war and genocide at worth (e.g., French revolution, Chinese revolution). Some intermediary steps of some sort of democracy may show up after regime change while the common people on the ground feel that they have less means to feed themselves and they are less secure than they were prior to a revolution.
This book is dedicated to explain on how to transition from a dictatorship to a democracy without having millions killed, enslaved, and tortured. In addition, this book describes the entire spector of democratization of a society and not limiting itself to discuss solely the initial transition from dictatorship to some preliminary democratic state. Meaning, the transition to democracy is viewed as a constant and potentially never ending change of improvements to how society works on many levels. A transition that isn’t viewed as black vs white, but rather as a sequence of changes of all shades of colors.
We try to base this book less on our opinions and more on historical events that shaped successful long term transition to ever improving democratic state. Hence, the book tries to reference relevant statistics, facts, and scientific knowledge. However, this book can’t be viewed as a scientific paper. Lastly, we feel that democracy starts and being maintained by every individual of a society. Consequently, the book explains democratization ideas on a high level and then drills down to suggest strategic actions that are centered on an individual and not a society. Meaning, in this book we concentrate more on the activities that a common person from the street could do to promote the democratization of his/her society.
In this sense we are closer to the following statements:
You must be the change you want to see in the world Mahatma Gandhi
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country John F Kennedy
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free 'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, 'Twill be in the valley of love and delight. Elder Joseph
These days if you ask what democracy is, people would start talking to you about elections, the principle of separation of powers, freedom of speech/religion/assembly/work and so on. However, these topics do not describe the day-to-day life of a person in a democratic society. A person that lives in a democratic society is rarely concerned about these topics, not only because they are given to him, but also because people just don’t think this way in their daily lives.
When we breath we don’t analyze how much oxygen gets into our lungs, we don’t count particles of contamination, and we don’t think about how many liters of blood are being pumped through our hearts. We just breath. Same about democracy. People just live in it. Even though the above-listed democratic principles are important, they can’t be achieved without individuals in society understanding what democracy is and supporting it. Democracy is a true rule of people (comparing to the lies of Communism). If people do not want the society to be democratic, it just won’t be, no matter if the government tries to be democratic (e.g., treatment of African-Americans in the Southern US states during the beginning and mid of 20th century).
Democracy starts from individuals. People in democratic societies feel free, because they are mainly not restricted by their neighbors. Not restricted to do whatever they would like to as long as they don’t bother their neighbors. To create a democratic society one should start from the population itself and its perception of what freedom is. There are plenty of examples when democracy is proclaimed into existence on a country/federal level, but in effect its democratic ideas do not exist and do not work on a local level. That’s because local people may decide to not cherish democracy. For example, it is not rare in democratic countries to see slums controlled by mafia instead of police where people live under tyranny of drug dealers or terror groups. Even large geographic parts of democratic countries are controlled by tyranny. For example, drug lords in Columbia and Naxalite movement in India.
In addition, for democratic law to work, it is important that a society supports it. Politicians, clerks, police, army, courts, and prison officers, are all part of the society; they too have families, kids, love partners, relatives; they too have feelings, ambitions, and so on. If someone hits a woman on a street because of a wrong dress code and the rest of the spectators on the street do not intervene to protect her and do not complain to the police or at least to the press afterward, then it would be hard to maintain women rights of being dressed as they want in such society. No matter how protective the law is, a society and its individuals are responsible to protect it. Police work can not be done if there are no people that are willing to file a complaint against an assault and there are no witnesses to testify that an assault has happened.
Here is a famous saying that may be applied
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, did it fall?
Let’s rephrase it:
If an offense happens and no one to discuss and report it and no one to act on its enforcement, can we have a democracy?
Good example would be a case of the enrollment of James Meredith into the University of Mississippi. Even though by law James had the right to study in this university, he was black and the year was 1961. James received numerous death threats and local levels of government and university management went into long fight to not allow James to study. At the end the Federal government of US had to appoint Federal marshals to protect James’ life while he was studying at the university. Such heroes as James promote democracy and when there are enough people in society that support such heroes, then the society is democratic. If not, the society cannot be democratic no matter what laws are written on paper.
Another good example can be of an Indo-Canadian family based on which a Documentary “labor of love” was released. The movie discusses the long term abuse of three women when they were young by their family relative. Even though they lived in a late twentieth century democratic Canada, where social workers and police could protect them, the girls didn’t complain. They felt they were raised in a culture that promoted women’s subservient role. It took them a couple of decades to eventually file a complaint against the perpetrator. Can a society be fully democratic when some parts of it are abused ? Yes, it can, but there is room for improvement.
But let’s step aside for a minute. What exactly should the so called democracy-heroes defend? What is democracy and how does it work ? For the purpose of understanding the ideas described in this book it would be nice to define what Democracy is and how the authors of this text perceive it.
In this book, we will describe democracy as a state of a society. By society we mean all individuals and by state we mean all parts of their life. It includes all parts of life: politics, economy, science, education, art, medicine, army, busineses, and so on and so on. It includes families and children, women and men, old and young. It is wrong to assume that democracy is only a political state. Society as a whole affects what happens in politics and politics affects what happens to the society. This is true not only in democratic countries, but also in dictatorships.
Freedoms, Rights, Obligations, Duties, Responsibilities
Right to be elected as an official
Obligation to defend the country in times of crisis. In some countries that may include mandatory army service and a military draft in times of war.
Given the above long lists of freedoms, democracy is often confused with absolute freedom to do anything which is anarchy. Democracy and freedom are not synonyms, but there is a correlation between them. One can try to measure freedom. For example, the organization Freedom House created certain criteria to measure freedom in a country. However, it is important to understand that such measurement can’t be considered scientific. Definitions of freedom are subjective and introducing a mathematical index of freedom based on subjective definitions do not make the outcome less subjective. An index of freedom does provide an indication that a country is free only if you agree to the subjective definitions suggested by the Freedom House. Meaning: such definitions may not work for every society that wishes to be democratic, but they may provide good guiding principles for which to strive.
Dictators and party members around them tend to be sociopaths. They drive the country to violence which in terms brings destruction to business and agriculture In a country with no jobs and no food people survive by being more violent: fighting for jobs and food, stealing, looting Good to review examples of what happened in China after the fall of the empire. For example, many peasants joined the ranks of the communistic army of Mao Tse Tung because they needed food and protection from a brutal violence of warlords. (need citations of how the Red Army under Mao increased from several thousands to become huge army). Similar thing happened in Cambodia when peasants joined Khmer Rouge army to Young men tend to join military/police to be in charge of resource distribution In poor countries no money spent on family planning and hence many young kids are born Concentration of many young men with low unemployment leads to violence on the street
Dictatorship relies on people’s will to keep it around. It is not just Dictatorship. Any india that sticks in our mind is an idea that was delivered to us somehow. Dictatorship relies on propaganda to keep people engaged in a toxic set of ideas. Hence, people under dictatorial regime are complacent with the regime, because many of them believe in this regime and the ideas behind the regime. E.g., Communism, Nazism, Roman Empire. That is why free speech and freedom of journalism is important. Dictators manipulate facts so that the population feels the dictatorial regime is right. (e.g., article: “How Modern Dictators Survive: Cooptation, Censorship, Propaganda, and Repression”) How can you resist propaganda? Try to find independent sources of information and help with distribution of truthful information to the public. Distribution of information can be done in many ways: via internet, meetings, underground publications, and so on.
In physics when the air is taken out of a volume a new air will come in from the surrounding. Similar to that there is no vacuum in organized power. There are always people energetic-enough who are organized on street-level, neighborhood level, city-level, province-level and so on. There are always multiple groups of organizations: based on profession, sex, personal interests, politics, sports, religion, and even just pure hate. There are always some kind of organizations that unite people. And the people at the top of these organization are hungry for power. Sometimes because they have antisocial disorder, but sometimes because they feel a need to solve their own problems, in rare cases some of them want to do something good. In cases where central regime fallen, these organizations will start to unite people around them. Eventually several of these organizations will form dominant parties/powers. If these parties are strong enough, they will form a new regime. If one of them particularly strong enough, it will form a dictatorial regime. If non of these parties are strong enough to form a strong federal state control, don’t worry. There are always similar groups from neighboring countries that are willing to invade. And lastly if the invasion isn’t implemented, the parties collide against each other into civil unrest and war.
Example: destabilization of regimes in Iraq and Siriya, and a consequent rise of Islamic State (ISIS). When Sadam’s regime was removed by the invasion of United States and Western Allies and when the allied armies started to exit Iraq, a vacuum of power arose in remote geographical areas in Iraq which allied forces had trouble to control. Conflicts between religious groups resulted in establishment of terror-like organizations that one of them would become ISIS. Further destabilization of power in the neighbouring Siria allowed ISIS to spread into larger territory and hence control larger population, larger area, and larger income to the organization.
Example: China after the removal of the imperial regime in 1911: China was very unstable during the times of the last emperor. Foreign powers took control of large chunks of the Chinese land and even if the rest of the land was not controlled by foreign countries, they still influenced the rest of the country economically and through the sale of drugs and goods. The Chinese army was too weak to protect itself from foreign control. Internally, many people were poor; some wanted to modernize the country. Revolts erupted all over the Chinese empire. In addition, at the beginning of the 20s century China still dealt with widespread opium cultivation and addiction cultivated by UK on China during the 19s century . Large parts of society including educated and reach people consumed the drug; peasants cultivated poppies; merchants used opium as currency; and some local governments used opium for taxation. Large effort by the central government to stop poppy cultivation raised anger among the Chinese public.
What can an individual do to avoid anarchy and consequent violence? Enlist in organizations that influence local politics. Don’t count on someone else to be a politician. Resist violent organizations and promote democratic rule on all levels of government and society.
To understand why a society follows certain political trends, it is important to understand how human population evolved with time. We can’t deny the fact that major wars and conquests affected the structure of our society: some large groups of people were virtually eliminated, whereas other groups became more numerous. Examples would be numerous genocides that even now continue to happen every ten years. Consequently, individuals from societies with certain morals and knowledge became more prevalent. A trait such as violence played a major role. Societies that considered extermination and enslavement as legitimate tools, thrived in conquered land. Societies that could organize in large groups and follow leaders were able to amass large armies, acquire new technologies and take over other societies. It is easy to see then why humans are so violent: there was a selection toward this direction. Societies with individuals that were not violent enough were exterminated by societies with a more violent individuals.
It is also important to note that winning a war does not necessarily lead to a state where the winning society grows in population. Sometimes the enslaved side is deemed important for the economy and its members are allowed to reproduce. The outcome of such a policy is that the winner may end up ruling a large population, but the losing population is able to produce more children and is more numerous than the winner.
Democracy comes in stages. Given the long list of requirements from the declaration of human rights and other requirements related to how the government is formed, it is not surprising that democratization takes years or sometimes decades in working. Moreover, the level of freedom will go up and down while the society tries to establish a set of new norms and laws for these norms. Such up and downs will take years: a more conservative group of people will try to revert the clock of history, while a more liberal group willtry to push for changes. The ideal of democracy and how it is perceived is being changed along with our civilization: e.g., ideas, beliefs, science, technology, standards of living, population numbers, climate, etc. Consequently the “Ideal Democracy” is an evolving concept. If we suppose that democracy is a constantly improving idea, then the democratization is an oscillating function around it. Sometimes a society would go below the ideal to become less free and sometime it will go above to become more free and democratic. One should be careful however from assuming that once a country is democratic for a long period of time, then it can’t be reverted to become a dictatorship. With years a crisis may arise where public discontent and social chaos would lead to a slide to a dictatorship. While people from democratic societies that have democracy for decades may have a hard time believing that democracy can disappear, an authoritarian regime needs to raise just one generation of kids with adjusted school program to ensure that democracy is forgotten. A society doesn’t need to be 100% compliant with certain democratic “checklist” to progress to democracy. Democratization process starts from any new freedom, separation of power, and a better governmental organization. For example, if a communist government allows free business, then it is a step towards democratization (e.g., Perestroika in USSR, capitalistic reforms in China and Vietnam ). If there is more tolerance of a society to a non-average way of life, if people can speak freely, if the prosperity of the society increases, then it is a way to democratization. Here are several points that help to lead to democratization Increased freedom in business activity and trade Increase in education of all forms of sciences, engineering, arts, philosophy, etc. Increase of personal freedoms
For an initial relatively bloodless transition from dictatorship to democracy the following conditions may need to be applied
Broad agreement within different parts of a society that a democratization change is needed. Or at least tiredness from an existing state of affairs Willingness of large portion of the population to support and maintain democracy on a personal level. E.g., respect other people, protect democratization, spend effort and budget on politics, …. Liberally oriented people that are part of the existing governing structure and that are willing to let go some of their power in exchange for a slightly more free society Structure of local governments and some sort of elections on the local level Freedom in business opportunities where new types of leaders can grow and where businesses bring economic stability to the society in terms of employment, goods, services, and income Willingness of the freedom movement to acknowledge that the existing ruling class has rights to exist and potentially be let go of legal liability for their wrongdoings to keep the country united and to avoid bloodshed of struggle for power. Alternatively, the freedom movement can attempt a revolution. Having sufficient institutes that help democracy to grow. E.g., education, businesses, local officials that are elected.
The bloodshed paradox: The initial transition from tyranny to a democracy may require violence to suppress supporters of the dictatorship. However, direct civil war requires organization of the rebelling society around rebel army leaders. These leaders may become candidates for a next generation of tyranny. Case study: putsches and revolutions in Africa
The dictatorship is losing power, because of economical or social strain: e.g., after a large war, economic collapse, environmental crisis (e.g., drought). As a consequence, large parts of society become more discontent. Discontented society is usually not a problem for the dictatorial regime, if there are sufficient people that can suppress the rest with enough violence. However, with enough strain the percentage of population that can suppress the rest is losing power and can’t suppress all the revolt efforts or potentially doesn’t want to, because such suppression will result in bloodshed that involve family ties.
Then the governing regime loses power due to either revolution or just because nobody wants to continue enforcing its rule. At this stage chaos usually brakes loose. Dictatorship maintain order on the streets. Without it, criminals are free to take over to loot and establish their own, usually neighborhood based strongholds. At that time no proper policing is done, because the police are not being paid and also because the police are unsure what sides to take in this conflict.
The country can break at this stage to separate entities where landlords/parties control some parts of the land.
At a certain point in time people organize into new parties that take control over the land. Once control is established, economic growth comes from either money landing from other nations, sales of assets, or slow establishment of new businesses.
Power that was once centralized is now distributed. If the new parties in power are willing to share it, then democratic institutions can grow.
Dictatorship -> crisis - >instability/chaos-> shift in power to temporary government -> sharing power? elections? -> newly elected government -> power stability -> constitution -> establishment of democratic principles -> political stability -> economic growth -> will of people to support democracy -> more freedoms are introduced over time -> more power sharing with the population -> more economic opportunities -> stable and evolving democracy
Destabilization of political power and economic stability -> people become discontent -> radical political power suggests to fix the situation: by taking possessions from certain groups of people in the society: let’s robe the rich, let’s kill minorities. (e.g., Fascists in Italy and then Germany) By promoting ideals that resonate with the public: communism, fascism, life under certain religious set of beliefs. Empty promises of populism
A foreign power takes control over the country as it becomes weak.
Large wave of immigration changes the democratic perceptions where a country can become less free. Usually happens on a local level in a part of the country where the concentration of immigrants that don’t agree with the democratic rule is influential enough to destabilize the democratic rule of that particular geographical region.
Science is a search for truth to explain how our world works: creation of theories based on real-world experiments and application of these theories on real-world problems. Further on this topic is expanded by a philosopher Karl Popper Scientific research cannot be properly done if people aren’t allowed to spread information freely and if scientists are lying. For example in USSR during 1920-1964 Lysenko suppressed scientists that didn’t agree with his falsified biological theories. Thousands of academics were silenced, sent to concentration camps, and were executed. As a consequence genetics studies in USSR were stagnated with false ideas for decades and didn’t progress till political persecution of geneticists stopped. Presently the scientific process in democratic countries is free. However, the access to scientific articles to the general public requires payment even though most of the scientific research is funded by the public via taxation.
Capitalism does not have to be associated with Democracy. Infact there are good examples of dictatorial countries where capitalism prospers, such as China and Singapore. However, Capitalism does prosper in democratic countries due to freedom. When one spends time learning how technical startups become prosperous companies, one clear pattern is seen, innovation is related to freedom of economic activity. If a young company cannot iterate on business ideas and test them in practise, then such company can’t grow.
Worth to mention the state of post USSR life described by Soljenitsin in his book “”
It is funny to see that Marx himself explained why communism can’t work. In his “Manifesto of the Communist Party” he writes the following:
It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease and universal laziness will overtake us. According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital
It is important to notice that when Marx wrote his books, there were no communistic societies. Large amount of educated people believed in his dream, because it seemed logical enough. Yet, in science theories must be supported by real life experiments. At our age we have vast historical knowledge and experience of entire countries becoming communistic. So called “social experiments” provided statistics on the outcomes of a communistic regime. In communistic countries production and innovation has decreased significantly comparing to capitalistic countries with democratic regime.
Such downgrade happened for the following reasons: To transform a society to a communistic regime one should employ dictatorship. From that point, sociopaths climb the ladder of power and the most violent of them stay at the top. Hence, a communistic society becomes yet again another dictatorship. Under the disguise of equality communists create a ruling class of communistic party leaders that can rape and enslave while the rest of the population lives under a set of rules to make them equal. In fact, communistic society is still full of classes: the regular people that are enslaved by the dictatorship, party members that cooperate with the party and that are paying additional taxes to the party to enjoy slightly better life under the sun, party leaders that are untouchable and can be as violent as they please, and finally the psychopathic leader that is a god-like creature. Inability to own a business kills any ability to innovate. No technological startup can be initiated. Most modern inventions were promoted by capitalism: the process to take an idea, assemble a capital from others, create a product, and sell it to the masses so that with time such product becomes cheap and widely available; such process is not available in communistic societies. Equality in the society provides no incentive to more talented people among us to act. Yes, they can become a scientist or engineer, but they can’t progress on their dreams due to governmental bureaucracy that owns everything and because they can’t amass some capital to start their own business and prove that their ideas are worth something.
In fact, the proponents of Karl Marx could argue endlessly with the proponents of Adam Smith if we couldn’t measure the state of societies in a real world. After decades of communistic rule where communistic countries struggled to provide basic necessities to their subjects, after these countries were transformed to capitalism, modern goods and services became quickly available and population became wealthy. Post-USSR countries, China, and the rest of communistic countries in Asia are good examples. We even have historic examples of societies that were split in half where a population with same cultural, ethnic, and initial economic state was split in half: one part of the country became communistic and the other continued to be capitalistic (not even democratic right away). West and East Germany, North and South Korea, Mainland China vs Taiwan. The economy of the capitalistic “tween country” prevailed in the long run, while the economy of the communistic “tween country” collapsed.
But what is the core reason communism didn’t work? The same way why a capitalism that ruled over people within dictatorial countries didn’t work well. When freedoms are taken away from people, they can’t work well and they can’t innovate. There is however a balance: where freedoms can be given up to a certain point and by doing so add productivity to the society. E.g, China, Vietnam. However, the reader didn’t stay to hear a lecture about GDP growth. People choose democracy to be able to live without fear and be free to do whatever they want with their life.
Many times regime changes start from large cities, particularly from political capitals and business capitals. Examples of changes that started from large cities: Egyptian revolution during the Arab spring; Russian Bolshevik revolution of 1917 started at the Russian capital, Saint Petersburg; the Chinese demonstrations of the Tiananmen square; the American revolution started from Boston; French revolution started from Paris; Why is that happening ? People that want a political change are rare. In a large city they have easier way to find each other and organize. In addition, it is easier to exchange information in a large city and to create social network and socialize.
To understand why large societies tend to be dictatorships in nature and why it is so hard to transition to democracy, it is important to consider the human psychology. Let’s start from reviewing human behavior on individual level and then understand how it affects society on a large scale.
Antisocial personality disorder is a condition of a brain when a person can’t feel empathy and love towards other living creatures (including humans). Empathy and love are complex feelings. For example, to feel empathy, there is a need to process much information to understand what the other person feels, whether he is distressed, to project such feeling on yourself and figure out if that is indeed painful. Such complex analysis is apparently not available to all the population. Between 1-4% of humans are incapable to feel empathy. This is a pretty small percentage, but the people that don’t feel empathy are capable to affect the rest of the society on a large scale. In a non-scientific day-to-day life such people are called sociopaths and psychopaths. For simplicity we can say that some sociopaths don’t feel empathy due to some social condition in their life that affected their brain development or suppressed it, whereas other sociopaths have their brain physically damaged in some way (e.g., accident, drugs, birth defect, a brain-affecting decease).
Humans with antisocial personality disorder tend to violate the law. They may lie, behave violently or impulsively. They just don’t feel a need to care about other people. As they become smarter and learn about the outcomes of their lifestyle, they may become law abiding to avoid being punished and to find loving mates. However, deep inside they are the same.
As they don’t feel such emotions, they tend to disregard the feelings of others. Such person doesn’t feel remorse when stealing or cheating, because the only thing such a person cares about is himself.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-psychopath-inside/201111/the-mind-dictator
Suppose tyrants are mainly sociopaths, but the rest of the population, more than 95%, is not sociopathic. So why does the rest of the population follows the lead of tyranny ?
There are a few aspects to discuss here:
The answer to this question depends on the technology used and some psychological factor. For example, during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, entire city populations were forcefully driven out to rural areas. The army that enforced the movement compromised under 10% of the population. In addition, people were lied into believing that they are being moved for a short period of time to reorganize the city. Un-armed population was forced to evacuate, because it didn’t have means to resist. People that refused were executed on spot which in term created further psychological factor for everyone that saw an execution.
Another example: during its maximum expansion ISIS had 50,000-100,000 soldiers, while it controlled a territory where 8-12 million people lived. A ratio of 1:120.
People in a society can loose empathy to others. Such fenomenon is called empathy fatigue. It happens when life become hard: bad economic times, starvation, plague, war. To feel empathy people need to spend their own energy to associate themselves with the suffering individuals. To care about others means to act and help. However, during stressful times, people just can’t afford to loose energy and hence care less about others. Dictators especially love to keep society under stress so that they can execute their own violent policies against any oposition. When a society under stress, people don’t have time to think about a jailed opposition figure or opression of minorities.
Kids grown up in bad conditions tend to have high percentage of sociopathic … Link: https://www.livescience.com/21778-early-neglect-alters-kids-brains.htmlStages of Democratization (Evolution of Democracy)
How orphans are susceptible to become sociopathic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3720131/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/early-maternal-and-paternal-bonding-childhood-physical-abuse-and-adult-psychopathic-personality/29DD19050E6BFE6A5021985A2F992F38
Dictatorship regimes tend to spend much effort to brainwash the younger generation. What’s better than young hearts that believe in your false ideology without asking questions and executing your most dirty orders without a second thought ? It may sound strange, but democratic actions (and science) start from when children pause to disprove their teachers; when children start to understand that morality does not necessarily follow country’s code of law and that some laws even in democratic country can be unethical. The more the young generation pause to think about the society in which they live, the more democratic the country may become. When these children grow up, they may join the army or the police. In these roles young adults should be able to choose to refuse unethical commands. Blind followers can build only yet another dictatorship.
How quickly can education help a society switch from worshiping a dictator to worshiping freedom? There are clear examples in history when such processes happened. Both Nazi Germany and militaristic Japan switched to be pacifistic countries following education reforms. The same way a dictatorship can educate submission in a society within one generation, the same way a democratic government can educate for freedom and equality within one generation.
It is no secret that many books and movies for children contain magical stories about kings and queens. In these stories monarchy families are glorified. It is indeed a dream for many girls to become a princess. It is a dream for many boys to be a mighty knight. Of course, such a narrative is just a fruit of writer’s imagination and it is sometimes wonderful to dream about magical worlds where a royal family fights dragons. However, the amount of such stories and the dreams they instill inside children is worrisome. Why does the amount of fantasy worlds where the population lives under republic or democracy seems to be lower than under a monarchy regime ? Why do so many storytellers try to bring our children to worlds where monarchs are glorified ? Are these just stories or do we in fact teach our kids from a young age to live in societies with political oppression? In some ways, narrative about good kings, helps children to establish the connection that there is a need for a strong leader. Such leader may have disposable servants that help him/her during a quest to glory. Don’t be surprised then that children reading such books may elect certain leaders when they are adult.
Statistic of incarceration in US shows one clear trend about women vs men: there are ten times more men in jail than women. Men are more prone to violence and biologically are built with larger muscle tissue than women. Historically it is males that fight wars, engage in masacares, torture, systematic rape, and fighting as child soldiers. What does it mean to democracy ? To create a tolerant and peaceful society, one should appease the male part of the population. To fight a large war, there is a need for a large population of young men. To enforce a dictatorship, there is a need for a large amount of young and strong men. And to topple a dictatorship the same young men should be supporting a democratic society, visiting demonstrations and potentially participating in a revolution. However, once a stable start to a democratic rule is achieved, to sustain a democracy one should convert the energy of young men to efforts such as business, employment, family planning, pleasure.
Women maintain an important role in democratization of every society. Traditionally it is women who are responsible for the upbringing and education of children in a family. It is true that in modern society men started to be more involved, but women still play a core role in the education of their children. Given the above, women have an important role to educate their children for tolerance, peace, involvement in society and caring about neighbors, freedom and struggle for freedom.
Women traditionally have also an important role in educational institutions: day cares and schools. In fact dictatorial regimes use teacher as a weapon to brainwash children at school and teach them on how to be a compliant slave of the dictatorial system. If you are a person inside such educational system, try to introduce free thinking among your pupils. Maybe under the disguise of teaching science or teaching arts: provide a way for kids to think beyond boundaries of existing cruel reality. Make children dream about alternative reality. Then in the future they will be ready to build a reality of their dreams.
A good example where women were able to achieve a transition of a war-embattled society to a more peaceful one is the example of a modern Liberia. Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace was a movement lead by women to push on peace talk negotiation between fighting parties. (provide more info about this story)
An excess in young adult male population predictably leads to social unrest, crime, war and terrorism. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28469/1/WP72.2.pdf
Based on the above, a large population of young males often leads to violence. Not only because men are more violent than women, but because these men compete for the same jobs, economic opportunities, and wifes. Without an ability to simply satisfy their sexual needs, start a family , get a decent income, live in a separate space and so on, men turn to violence in order to change the “rules of the game”. They sometimes don’t have a choice. For example, young men may be drafted to compulsory army service under dictatorship regimes that like to promote conflicts with neighbouring countries. Alternatively, young men will be used to subdue opposition as part of a militia or other military/police body.
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/79t737gt#page-1
How can an individual make a change ? It is important to invest in the education of the youth. So that the youth understands the political situation of the country and understands potential solutions. Try to start from your own family. Do you have your own children or maybe you have young relatives ? Try to talk them out of unnecessary violence. The violence can be from the young relative helping the dictatorial regime or instead helping violent fractions in the revolutionary movement.
Every sperm is sacred Every sperm is great If a sperm is wasted God gets quite irate Monty Python
The rights of people are dependent on abundance of living spaces, resources, and economic opportunities among the population. An increase in population density automatically impacts these abundances.
Asimov was once asked:
“What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?
His answer was:
It's going to destroy it all. I use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have what I call freedom of the bathroom, go to the bathroom any time you want, and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And this to my way is ideal. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up, you have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, aren't you through yet, and so on. And in the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.”
How does overpopulation impact democracy?
Overpopulation isn’t just the fact that certain amount of people suppose a million is suddenly multiplied by ten and becomes ten million. Overpopulation is a long process. It is mainly driven by large families with many kids. Although sometimes it can happen due to large immigration from abroad or local overpopulation when people migrate from one location of the country to the other in search for work or better lifestyle. For example, farmers migrate to large cities.
Overpopulation is a gradual process, because large families do not right away transform the society to a resource strained society. It takes time for kids to grow. However, with time the following trends emerge: Overcrowded schools that lead to lower quality of education Overuse of infrastructure that in term impacts economy Large aggregation of poor people in slums. Even in democratic countries the slums are not fully controlled by the local authorities and slums tend to be controlled by local crime organizations. Concentrated young population that doesn’t have many jobs In a large city it is easier for criminals to find mutual interests the same way as it is easier for scientists or artists to aggregate into a larger organization in a large city. Hence, larger cities tend to have better organized and more sophisticated crime organizations. It is also easier for extremists to create large organizations and parties that overtake mainstream parties. To create a party one needs to find the initial seed of like minded people. In a large enough city it is easier to find people of all views of life and hence easier to find extremists that can join your cause.
How can an individual change the overpopulation trend of his/her country? One of them is by his own example: family planning and raising no more than one or two children. In addition, an individual can advocate for family planning in his community; help to educate adolescents about contraceptives and safe sex education; help to improve human rights for women so that they can make their own decisions about age of marriage, age of motherhood, and the amount of children they want to raise.
(need to describe how education of women affects the family size )
There is a correlation between the level of education of a woman and the size of a family. An educated woman won’t be abused to raise a large family just because her husband or the society around her want it.
There is a high correlation between the freedom of a person’s body and his/her ability to feel free in general. When people activities related to their bodies are being suppressed by a society, then it also affects their mental capacity to feel free and affects their emotions, thoughts, and defines how they will live their life. It is not a coincidence that oppressive regimes restrain the type of clothes people should wear. In addition, it is typical for oppressive regimes to dictate the way women and men can interact with each other: for the purpose of marriage, sexual relationship, friendship, etc. Such oppression affects well being of the society. For example, women have difficulty to experience happiness if their marriage is arranged and when women are seen as a pure baby-making womb. Physiologically, there is a high probability for women to have health issues related to child carriage and child birth. Be it the physical state of the woman or the state of the newborn child. Inability to control her own body and destiny becomes a mental and physical trap for a woman. It is typical for an oppressive regime to sensor information related to sexuality, and the rest of woman vs man relationship. Such censorship affects sex-education, family planning, and hapiness of the populaiton. Dictatorial regimes tend to oppress sexual minorities: LGBTs. Such oppression leads these people to live in constant fear and hiding.
How can an individual make a change? First of all, by loving his/her own body, regardless of what the society tells you about it. Secondly, by trying to be free as much as possible from oppressive clothing and judgment about bodies of other people
Another important difference between democracies and dictatorships is: what types of people are jailed and prosecuted. In dictatorships people with antisocial personality disorders are allowed to participate in damaging activities with little consequences to them, if they play by the bureaucracy rules of the dictatorship. Meaning: dictatorship may punish a crime like beating people for fun to maintain order on the streets, but allow the same people to beat and torture political dissidents in jails. In Democracy there is an inversion: there is a set of bureaucratic rules to protect individuals. Whoever steps over them may be prosecuted and jailed. As a consequence people with antisocial personality disorders are more careful to not intimidate the law in democratic regime. They try to abuse people behind the scenes using methods that are hard to prosecute e.g., in corporate settings. Free press gives people the opportunity to speak up against influential people that have antisocial personality disorders and provides an opportunity to bring them to trial. Recent successful movement in that direction is the MeToo movement. It is hard for a peaceful society to exist when violent people are allowed to behave as they like. Often such people crave for power and create systems, such as working conditions, that are intolerable. In democracy such people can be punished. In dictatorship, there are no mechanisms for such punishment.
There are many examples in history when societies went into a state of total anarchy. When there is no rule of a police on the street and when whoever is strong physically and is organized wins over the weak. We can start from an example on a small scale when during a 2017 police strike in Brazil in state of Espírito Santo, crime rates spiked. With no police in the area criminals had a card blanch to steal and murder on unprecedented levels. As a result the state government had to ask the army to step in until the dispute with the police payroll could be negotiated. On a larger scale, Somalia was torn apart by a fifteen-years-long civil war. Consequently, Somalia became a so called “Failed State” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state
Police force should receive adequate salary to be able to enforce the law. Police officers put their lives in danger on a daily basis. Low salary leads to police corruption and inability to fight gangsters. With inadequate salary one can expect that the police first would curb to organized crime, can be infiltrated by crime organization, and can also become the prime crime organization by itself. With low salary police officers can start collecting protection money to increase their budget or start running their own underground businesses. A good example would be: corruption of local police in Mexico in 2010s and in Russia during the 1990s.
Given the above discussion about police, it is important to discuss the BLM movement in US. One of the goals of the BLM movement is to protect afro-american minorities from racial-profiling and violence of the police force. However, BLM officially states that the only solution to this problem is to disband the police altogether. By disbanding the police, the society will be open to anarchy that will slowly be filled with violent groups that can’t be stopped. The interim solution suggested by BLM requires to defund the police. Such approach could work if the funding provided based on intended work capacity to keep the society safe and not based on arbitrary funding cuts to appease demonstrators. One important highlight related to the BLM movement is that if the police is mustrasted by a population of a certain neighborhood, then residents will not report crime to the police and hence democracy can not fully work in such neighborhood; criminal law won’t be enforced. There need to be a balance between the power of the police to enforce the law and its accountability against the citizens of the community so that police doesn’t become corrupt and violent against the people that they were sworn to protect.
In a way the generation raised under dictatorship would never be free. Somewhere deep inside this generation is enslaved and traumatized by the regime and societal rules in it. To establish a proper democratic society it is important to educate for Democracy in school and actually as early as in day care. Ideas of respecting the other and understanding the different are cornerstones of democracy. You would be surprised how many societies are not teaching these principles in daycares. For older ages, describing the participation in democratic processes is important. If a person is not participating in elections, demonstrations, public hearings, writing letters to politicians, supporting news organizations, joining parties, then do not expect democracy to last much further in time.
Democracy is based on the idea that every citizen is expected to participate in the elections and that every voice is equal. As an outcome, it is important to educate the public about politics and other topics related to the state of a country. Uneducated public will vote for populists that in term may become dictators.
Teachers have a central role in supporting dictatorship and in promoting democracy. This is true for all levels of education: starting from child care, schools, and universities. If you are a teacher, try to stand you ground to promote free thinking. Free thinking and critical thinking are important to judge the regime. Children that are used to confront elders about their knowledge will be less susceptible to brain-washing. If you have children, but live under dictatorship, try to find schools oriented on science. Scientific research and methods are oriented on the search for truth.
Art has a crucial role in teaching and propaganda. Dictatorial states use art to promote their own ideas.
In ancient times, art and architecture were frequently utilized as a means of promoting dictatorial ideologies and displaying the power of those in charge. For example, great monuments in Rome were promoting the greatness of the dictatorial regime of Roman emperors. In Egypt, the grand scale and impressive design of pyramids could be seen as a way of promoting the wealth and power of the ruling classes, as the construction of such elaborate structures would have required significant resources. In Spain, the Inquisition often used art as a means of propaganda to support its goals and ideals. This might include depictions of saints and other religious figures, as well as images that sought to glorify the Inquisition and its activities. In some cases, art was also used as a means of warning or intimidation, with images of torture and punishment being used to deter people from engaging in non-conforming behaviors. The use of art as propaganda during the Spanish Inquisition was meant to both promote the values of the organization and to exert control over the beliefs and actions of the population..
It is no surprise then that all dictatorial regimes of the twenties century used art as propaganda: in Nazi Reich, in the Fascist countries, in Communist countries and during the Showa dictatorial period in Japan. Dictatorial states control art to ensure it doesn’t promote ideas against the state. In addition, artistic work is diverted forcefully to ensure that many artists promote the ideas of a particular dictatorship. Movies, animation, paintings, books, poems are created to glorify the regime and grow hatred against so called “enemies of state”.
Exposure to propaganda can have a number of negative effects on both children and adults. It can distort their understanding of the world and create false or biased views about people, events, or issues. It can also undermine their critical thinking skills and ability to evaluate information objectively.
It is important for parents and caregivers to be aware of the potential impact of propaganda on children and to help children develop the skills and knowledge they need to critically evaluate information and make informed decisions. This can include teaching children about media literacy and helping them to understand how propaganda can be used to manipulate and deceive. Propaganda can be hidden under pretense of an interesting movie plot. For example, racism can be promoted where positive movie characters are always actors of one race and negative characters are always another race.
In Democracy artists have freedom of expression, but this freedom can be abused to promote hate speech and hidden messages. Children are particularly susceptible to propaganda because they may not have the critical thinking skills or life experience to fully evaluate the information they are being presented with. As a result, they may be more likely to accept propaganda as fact and to be influenced by it.
Dictatorial states can use media produced in a democratic state do support their own ideas. For example Communist China promotes Western animation movies where a powerful king is shown to dominate a country and movies where a centralized regime is presented in a good light. Such movies enhance the picture that Communist leaders want to project that dictatorial regime is always right and cares for the people. In fact, parents should pay attention to the ideas that are being promoted in animation movies for children. An innocent idea of a powerful good-willing king in a children’s movie may be imprinted in child’s mind till adulthood when the person will start to vote for power-seeking and power-abusing individuals. Animated movies and movies have a definitive propaganda influence on children and adults alike. This fact was well understood right at the beginning of the 20th century when cinema and animated movies were invented. Both capitalist societies of the West and Communist and Fascist societies in Europe created lots of propaganda movies to support their own political causes.
How can a person and his family avoid state propaganda in a dictatorial regime ?
Limit consumption of state-controlled media: Dictatorial regimes often control the majority of the news and media outlets, so it is important to limit exposure to these sources of information. Instead, try to access alternative sources of news and information from outside the country.
Be critical of the information received: When consuming information, it’s important to be critical and question the accuracy and credibility of the source.
Use censorship circumvention tools: Dictatorial regimes often censor the internet and restrict access to certain websites. Using tools such as virtual private networks (VPNs) and Tor can help to bypass censorship and access alternative sources of information.
Create a network of trusted individuals: In dictatorial regimes, it’s important to have a network of trusted individuals with whom you can discuss sensitive or controversial topics in a safe and secure environment.
Educate yourself and your family about the regime: Understanding the history, politics and ideologies of the regime will help you to understand the propaganda and make more informed decisions.
In a democratic regime, state propaganda is not as pervasive as it is in a dictatorial regime, but it can still be present in various forms. Here are some ways for a person to prevent being influenced by state propaganda in a democratic regime:
Seek out multiple sources of information: In a democratic society, there are often multiple sources of news and information available. It is important to seek out a variety of sources in order to get a well-rounded and accurate understanding of an issue.
Learn to critically evaluate the information: It’s important to evaluate the credibility and reliability of the sources and the information provided.
Be aware of hidden biases: Many news sources, including those that are considered reputable, may have hidden biases. It’s important to be aware of these biases and take them into account when evaluating the information. Please note that some art and news agencies are sponsored by the government and be aware that such sponsorship leads to specific presentation of information by these agencies.
Fact-check information: With the ease of access to information, it’s important to fact-check information and to be skeptical of anything that seems too good to be true.
Be aware of “fake news”: In the age of internet, it’s easy to spread false information and propaganda. Be aware of “fake news” and fact-check any news that seems suspicious.
Educate yourself about the political system: Understanding the political system and the role of government can help you to understand the propaganda and make more informed decisions. In democracy propaganda can be also lead by corporations that benefit from government decisions. For example, the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, army contractors.
It’s important to remember that in a democratic regime, the freedom of speech and expression are protected, so it’s not always easy to distinguish between propaganda and legitimate information. However, by being critical and informed, a person can reduce the risk of being swayed by propaganda.
Many promote to lead a fight against dictatorships using non-violent activities. Such activities may work against tyranny regimes which are somewhat moderate or against an occupation by a democratic country (e.g., during occupation of India by UK). However, it is hard to imagine how non-violence can work under extremely violent regimes such as were Stalinist USSR or the Nazi Third Reich or Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge movement in Cambodia. Even in regimes that are perceived as not too violent, peaceful resistance may not work. Good example would be the persecution of Falun Gong in China. Even though the Falun Gong movement is entirely peaceful, millions of its members are being violently persecuted in China. That includes torture and organ harvesting from live Falun Gong practitioners. Another good example for failed non-violence attempts under aggressive regime is the movement of San Suu Kyi in Myanmar/Burma.
Case study: failed democratization in China via failed non violence approach. Peaceful demonstration on Tiananmen square. The student movement in China had mass protests and demonstrations during years 1986 and 1989. These protests were mainly peaceful. At the height of the protests in 1989 Tiananmen Square in Beijing had one million people participation. In addition, other cities were participating in the protests with not only students, but other members of the Chinese society joining the protests. Eventually, the Chinese communist party saw such massive protests as a threat to its existence and forcefully ended it with a massacre in the square and follow up arrests of involved people. Furthermore, Chinese government continues to suppress mentions of the events of the massacre up to a point where Chinese public inside China doesn’t have access to any mention of the events. In such circumstances one should take into account that fight for democracy never happens in isolation. Chinese communistic party saw what happened to the comunistic regime in USSR and other socialistic countries in Eastern Europe. the killings of Falun Gong, etc.
Case studies: there are good examples where non-violence worked; for example, the National congress in India and Ghandi’s South Africa fight against the apartheid. Also, South African fight against apartheid led by Nelson Mandela
Case studies: example for non-violence where not enough time has passed to know if it is effective or not. E.g., the political life of Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma/Mayanmar.
Every regime is being run using budgets and money. Even the most corrupted regime has to pay salaries and provide other benefits to its supporters. To change, build, and create money is needed. To restrict a democracy, a “law” enforcement system is needed: police, army, secret agencies, jail authorities. The employes of these organizations aren’t working for free. They all benefit from the regime. This is true for both democratic and dictatorial states.
In addition, every government relies on the collection of taxes. Corrupted governments also rely on robbing corporate entities and on collecting money via non-profits, for example, churches.
Based on the above description, an economic boycott against government agencies and government sources of funding can be effective to stall governmental actions. Economic boycotts can be used for both affecting decision-making in democratic governments and decision-making in dictatorial states.
When a state is corrupted, it is not easy to know its funding sources. Compared to democracy, dictatorial states do not disclose their sources of revenue.
An effective example of an economic boycott can be seen in the Indian self-sufficiency Swadeshi movement against the British Raj (years 1918-1945). The movement, led by multiple leaders including Mahatma Gandhi, identified sources of revenue that could be affected by boycotts. At that time, United Kingdom benefited in India from liquor stores revenue, sales of British goods inside India, export of raw materials from India for clothing and then manufacturing actual clothes in Britain, export of raw materials from India, and taxes on basic goods such as on salt. The boycott had a significant impact on the economy of British Raj. In addition, it unified the Indian population against the opresive regime.
An economic boycott doesn’t have to be against a country-level government. Boycotts are effective against local governments and may be easier to organize as they involve less people. For example, Montgomery Bus Boycott. This bus boycott started as protest against segregated seating of African Americans inside buses in the city of Montgomery, Alabama, US. This boycott lasted slightly more than a year. In addition to the boycot, legal actions were taken against the City of Mongomery and the Alabama state to end the segregation on the buses. The boycot, the legal actions and the demostrations related to these activities led to a sustained pressure on the American society to change the local laws.
A more recent example of an economic boycott (year 2021 and on) is a boycott of the military hunta of Myanmar. Residence of Myanmar that are supporters of the democratic regime avoid buying goods and services from the military-owned businesses and organizations.
However, economic boycotts against governments can be complicated. Modern governments own a large variety of corporations. Often, the ownership is diguised under figurehead
Some regimes become increasingly oppressive. It can happen internally or with a help of another country. For example, the peaceful civil disobidience movement in Belarus was dispersed by Lukashenko’s security forces with a help of the Russian FSB. Leaders of the opposition were tortured and killed. Many demostratores were jailed and beatten. After a few months the massive demonstrations were surpressed and oppoosition leaders had to flee the country. What to do in such situation for the people that want to continue the struggle? Clearly in this situation non-vilence fails. Now, some may argue that non-violent actions should continue as underground operations of information distribution and financial support. However, these activities will not be able to facilitate a shift in power. They will just help to inform people on the real situation in the country. In such situation the next step is an active disobidience and violence against governmental security forces, police, army, and national guard. Such clash may work or not. It may lead to significant bloodshed. It may lead to an external invation by a violent neighboring country. For example in Ukraine the initially peaceful Maidan demonstrations didn’t lead to their original goal of getting rid of the pro-Putin president Yanukovych. Yanukovych refused to continue the process of integrating Ukraine into European Union. Instead he was a corrupted official supported by Putin’s Russian regime to stay a Russian ally. Some other goals of the demonstrators included new parliament elections. When the peaceful protests failed to achieve these goals, a section of the Ukrainian opposition resorted to more aggressive measures, attacking police and occupying government buildings across the country. These escalated tactics successfully convinced other politicians that they had the backing of the masses, leading them to denounce Yanukovich and proceed with new elections.
How often putsches happen after a regime change? In a very high frequency. In Spain in 1936 and in 1978, in Russia in 1917, Germany Kapp Putsch of 1920 and Beer Hall Putsch 1923 , 1948 in Venezuela, 1991 in USSR/Russia against Gorbachev’s reforms. It is worth to note that putsches happen not only against a democratic rule, but can happen against any government when this government is weak. To keep the democracy intact it is important to protect democratic bodies against assassination and violence. Body guarding the democratically-elected politicians is important. So is important the ability to work remotely and distribute the power among officials. So that if some officials are getting hit, there is a smooth power transition to yet another democratic representative to be able to resist putsch attempt.
Even though the power of the dictatorship governmental bodies should be dismantled, it is important to keep balance in their dismantling. Democracy is based on balance of power. Making too many people that have powerful positions angry will lead to an attempt to remove the democratic governance. The first years of Democracy are unstable due to economic instability and violence inside the population. It is hence advisable to avoid destabilizing the country even further by destroying too many governmental bodies at once. Such a move probably won’t accelerate democracy but instead will result in full blown civil war. Coups can also be initiated by foreign countries trying to block democratization. Such countries will invest money or even deploy their own soldiers to try to overthrow the new democratic government. Not surprisingly such foreign countries can be democratic themselves. Politicians may prefer to deal with a stable dictator than with unstable democracy (a need to add examples of how US toppled democraticly elected govenrments in order to keep dictatorial governments))
There are peaceful ways to block coups: the general population can resist by not providing services to the newly emerged government (see discussion in the book “From dictatorship to democracy”, chapter “Blocking coups”). However, a small portion of the population with weapons can control vast amount of civilians. Hence, if the coup leaders are violent enough, a peaceful resistance is not feasible. For example, in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge movement forcibly evacuated an entire city of Phnom Penh that had several millions of civilians after taking it over from the Cambodian government. Civilians were forced to a death march where a large percentage of them perished and whoever survived was forced to live in forceful labour camps for years.
Based on the above example, when the coup is done by a violent group, the civilians don’t have a choice for peaceful resistance by disobeying the new government and by boycotting its activities. Sometimes there is a need to be organized into active military units that can resist the government. E.g., What Spanish people did during the Spanish civil war.
Many times democratic governance can’t be held without resort to violence. Cases can be:
A regime that is killing and jailing coalition members and doesn’t allow opposition is dictatorial and violent. It is not always possible to resist such a regime using only non-violent methods. Many individuals can become trapped by activities of a violent regime in situations of life and death. For example, a violent regime may withold food from large amount of population (example: Golodomor in Ukraine). A violent regime may prevent members of opposition from working and hence prevent their ability to sustain their families (Refunisks in USSR). Dictatorial regime may exterminate peaceful oposition It is enough to look into the history of China in years of 1920-1960 to realize that a non-violent resistence was not an option. Various groups be it Chinese Communits, Chinese Nationalists, Chinese warlords, or Japanese soldiers abused the common Chinese population. Many peaceful Chinese citizens were forecefully constripted to war, or were forcefully starved to death, many were raped, tortured, exterminated, brought to slavery, brought to concentration camps, and so on. In total, Chinese internal conflicts, Japanese war, and subsequent Communist regime killed more than 50 million people.
Provide example from changes in Portugal for the Carnation revolution of 70s. document the details….
Many times a dictatorship relies on a very succeesful individual that holds the rains. Such person is a dictator. He or she is the only unifying person that glues all the other influential parties and people under one touch point that holds the power. Such single point hence has a very fragile breaking point: a dictator can be killed. When a dictator is killed, then there is no delicate glue that is able to hold all the influential parties under one umbrella. Such a dictatorship will fall apart and transform either into a more broad dictatorial rule under multiple people or will switch to become democratic. The outcome above is that for a single-dictator regimes, it is worth to kill the dictator so that a regie can collapse.
It was for the sake of this day that he had first decided to run for the Presidency, a decision which had sent waves of astonishment throughout the Imperial Galaxy --- Zaphod Beeblebrox? President? Not the Zaphod Beeblebrox? Not the President? Many had seen it as a clinching proof that the whole of known creation had finally gone bananas. …….. Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippy, good timer, (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch. President? No one had gone bananas, not in that way at least. Only six people in the entire Galaxy understood the principle on which the Galaxy was governed, and they knew that once Zaphod Beeblebrox had announced his intention to run as President it was more or less a fait accompli: he was the ideal Presidency fodder. The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.
After putsches the next danger to democracy is to elect a future dictator in a democratic election. Slowly the elected official gains power, promotes regulation to remove authority of other politicians and eventually starts to control the entire country …. Present Democracies are based on the idea of equal voting rights. Meaning that each individual will get the same voting strength, no matter how smart or dumb the individual is. Future dictators use this weakness of democracy by promising impossible-to-provide benefits to the not so smart population (populism). In turn, such population turns out to be the core electorate that provides support to the future dictator. Don’t be naive to think that population with higher educational standards is resistant to dumb political decisions. Having a university degree does not indicate that a person understands in psychology, economics, and history. Consequently, it is theoretically possible that a majority of educated population may vote for a leader with antisocial personality disorder.
Case study: turkey. Election of Arduan and his continuous drive to undermine Turkish democracy Case study: Russia: election of Putin and his effort to switch Russia to a dictatorship state
It is worth to note that many regimes fall when insiders that gained much influence decide to reform the regime. For example both Gobachev and Yeltsin were insiders to the Communist party. Hence, their knowledge of the party, its political processes and people helped them to reform USSR and subsequently Russia. Please note that as individuals regime supporters are not always united, they may decide to follow reformists if they feel the old regime approach is dead. Another example would be to examine how Nikita Khrushchev reformed USSR after Stalin’s death. After Stalin’s death Khrushchev and his close circle of allied politicians quickly jailed or killed politicians that were closely allied to Stalin and his way of government. Only because Khrushchev knew how the political regime worked he was able to reform it (albeit not to a democracy, but to a way less violent regime)
Scholar perspective about regime change is usually viewing historical events of revolutions, coupes, or non-violent movements and demonstrations. Where does the regular person, which is you, fit into these movements or processes ?
When times are harsh, people first and foremost try to survive. People that become activists in a dictatorial regime, are people that are either have nothing to lose or that are ideological.
Here we will talk about multiple situations in life.
People that live in a shaky democratic country tend to elect strong politicians that can stabilize the country, protect it from internal violence and that can promise economic prosperity. However, societies in such countries are easy going astray after strong individuals that concentrate the power around them. Initially, such political candidate acts to improve the condition of the society. People are ecstatic and allows the politician to concentrate power. By keeping electing such individual for many multiple terms the society creates a corrupt system of government that is dependent on such individuals and political/business connections around them. The leader at the top collects more and more power. Eventually, becoming a dictator or at least a very corrupt leader.
It is interesting that people in such societies tend to beleave that they can live happily while being out of the politics and if they just mind their own business then they won’t be affected by the government. Such state of living can indeed be sustained for a few years till repressions start, economy slides down and economic freedoms and jobs are affected. One can’t stay away from politics, because corruption affects his/her wallet and well being. Why do societies propel such corrupt politicians ? Part of the answer lies in the fact that news channels and in modern times social networks fall under the controls of such politicians. Underground government organizations create “troll fabrics” to influence public opinion, corrupts news channel to hire government-friendly journalists and editors that promote the greatness of the leader and his/her party. Such promotions brainwash a large percentage of the society to beleave that their all-great leader is indeed propelling their country in the best available direction of prosperity and greatness.
Case study: internal troll fabric in Russia, taking over of independent news channel by the Russian government.
For democracy to survive it is important to keep economic prosperity among the population. In fact, that’s a key factor for the survival of any regime. During transition times from dictatorship to democracy the population needs to adjust to new rules that potentially can quickly change. Instability is not healthy for business. In addition, many times dictatorships collapse after acquiring much debt and this debt is falling on the shoulders of a new democratic country. During dictatorship many working places and resources may be owned by the government and will go through a privatization process leading to job losses and instability. Investing in environment where entrepreneurship can thrive and where it is protected will help establishing the democratic rule. Otherwise, discontent people will try to bring back the old times where they at least could have a bread on their table.
Often the participation of citizens in democratic elections is limited to elections themselves: reading about candidates and then voting for the appropriate ones during the election date. However, an important part of democratic stability is to vote in primaries and influence inside your favorite party. So that a party that you support isn’t being taken over by radicals or hostile institutes. Without a wide participation in primaries a party is exposed to people for which a selection of a candidate is very important. Suppose a small amount of population participate in primaries. What kind of people will participate? The people for which some political issues are more important than their spare time. When an economy is stable, there is a tendency for most people to skip voting in primaries. Such situation leaves politicians with no choice, but to attend to the wishes of a more dedicated electorate of the party, which is often more radical. For example groups that vote based on a direction of a religious leader will be more willing to spend time on primaries. An outcome of unballanced primaries will be radical political leaders from both left and right parties. By the time an election date comes, the voters that skip primaries are limited in their ability to influence the democratic process.
The danger of the useful idiots grow as more people stay poor and uneducated about democracy. While violence and chaos may be on the rise, while employment and economy stay low, many people don’t have much choice but to potentially help and support anti-democratic organizations that supply them protection and food. Consequently, stability of police, rule of law, food availability, and employment are important cornerstones of democratic rule. Case study: the growth of the participants in red army in China after the famous Long march
It is important to note that oppressed people will lie to stay alive. Consequently, in oppressive regimes individuals rarely speak the truth about what they support and what they object. Natan Sharansky in his book “The case for democracy” gives a nice overview of such behaviour. Given this logic, it is counter-productive to assume that large percentage of country population supports an oppressive regime, even if individuals do openly say so and even if they participate in activities to support such regimes. The true set of mind of individuals can only be known when they are free to say what they like without being oppressed. During a transition to democracy more people may decide to support such transition. However! It is also important to note that many individuals do support an oppressive regime even if they are given freedom, because such people benefit from the oppression. Such individuals will continue to support the old regime and fight the democracy. In addition, the new so-called democratic government may not be that democratic or may be repressive against certain people. Such activity of the government may in turn bring more support to the old regime.
If we go through the history of the old democracies, they didn’t start right away from equal rights to all. Meaning equal rights to all men, women, ethnic minority groups, religious minority groups, sexual minority groups, rights for children, etc. Democracy is an evolving state of ideas that the society agrees to cherish. With time minorities (e.g., slaves in US) gain their rights. When a new democracy is established in a society that is not ready to give full rights to all its members it is still a pretty good advance. Establishment of democratic institutions and legacy will result in future rights of society members that are not yet liberated.
Many times the initial democratic movement has to cooperate with the previous regime. Even if some high rank officials in the dictatorship regime were removed, there are hundreds of thousands of mid-level management positions occupied by supporters of the previous regime. Starting from the army, to police, to other governmental organizations. It is hard to dismantle these supporters of the previous regime from their power. Do it too quickly and the economy or security of the country will collapse. Do it too slow and the supporters will organize a coup to restore them to power. Let these supporters linger in the background and they will form a party, get democratically elected and then take the ownership of the country again while potentially transitioning back to dictatorship. There are no easy answers on how to deal with such supporters. Civil wars against them generally proved too bloody and destabilizing for a young country. In countries where democrats were able to negotiate deals with old regime supporters democracy could prevail.
Case studies: Chile and Pinochete’s rule (and his supporters) The peace pact between newly established US and the monarchy ruling regime in UK How Khruschev got rid of Stalin’s supporters What US did in Iraq with the Sadam’s army members.
Liberals and Democrats can have many political views that not necessarily agree with each other. This indeed how democracy works: people have opinions, they debate and vote on them. However, it is important to show a united front against dictatorship supporters. Dictatorship supporters will create their own parties or infiltrate democratic onse. It is important then to make sure that intense political disagreements between Democrats won’t split the already shaken support of the public. Otherwise, election of suppressive party or leader is inevitable. While Democrats splitting themselves into smaller parties that have a slightly different view, the supporters of authoritarian regime get united under large parties that win the majority in the parliament and hence get an option to promote laws that limit democratic freedom. Alternatively, supporters of authoritarian regime can get much influence in the government, lock out access of democrats from broadcasting platforms, restrict control of jobs and funds by the government and so on.
Even though most of the democratic countries have constitution that does not mean that the constitution has to be written right away. In young democracy people may not be sure what they want as they never lived under a democratic regime. In addition, a young democracy can split into several countries (e.g., post-soviet split of USSR). As a consequence, it may be better to draft a set of laws that will evolve with time. After several years when the country is economically and socially stabilized it is possible to decide to move on to a constitution or continue governing without it as being done in UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Israel (all these countries have a common historical connection to the UK governing law). Remark: the idea of constitution was invented when life and technology didn’t change as rapidly as today. In present days the social processes change pretty quickly and hence the idea of a static set of laws that is too hard to change may not be wise anymore.
To protect the democracy it is wise to spend some time thinking about the opposite side of the “fence”. The people that enjoyed the benefits of authoritarian regime, had high income while confiscating resources of the suppressed population, used to high style of life while others are in dirt, and some potentially enjoyed making others suffer. These people didn’t disappear after the fall of the dictatorship. Many of them remain in power. For example, it is not easy to put different governmental employees in charge of a jail. So same people that potentially tortured political dissidents now take care of criminals and arrested supporters of the previous regime. What a convenient mix for networking. Jokes aside, these people are concerned about the following main issues: Avoidance of persecution. Keeping the status, money, etc People with anti-social personality use the chaos to enjoy acts of violence
Join some democratic party. Not necessarily on a federal level. Participate in parties on a city level as well. Participate in demonstrations and other social activities that are linked to democracy Educate yourself and others about democracy: what it means and how to sustain it When you see injustice, act. Submit info to the press, distribute on social networks, complain to authorities, demonstrate. Join country’s democratic bodies: e.g., army, police, government, parliament, work for government, work for non-profits that participate in activities, join parties, work in municipalities, volunteer Personal security and security of your family and friends is important to protect. In chaotic times of change the police may not get sufficient resources to suppress criminal activity. Being part of voluntary body that keeps peace on the streets may help Be part of the Free press. Write articles and create videos about important issues in your region. You don’t have to be part of an official news paper staff. Running a blog or a group via social network also helps. Check out how Bassem Yusuf started.
# Examples of individuals that contributed to democratization of a society
Don’t be misguided that individual activists that fight for human rights come out of the blue. Usually, action taken by one individual leads to another. Political activity that can change a situation of a country usually comes from activities of many different people and works best as a movement. Actions come from education about the situation and about what can be done. All political movements star from educational material: be it discussions, meetings, articles, books, websites.
Case study: Bus boycott by black people in US. Multiple african-americas in US in various years and states tried to fight the segregation of black people in buses. For example, Bayard Rustin in 1942, Irene Morgan in 1946, Lillie Mae Bradford in 1951, Sarah Louise Keys in 1952 , Claudette Colvin in 1955, Rosa Parks in 1955 and so on. In many of these cases there were other african-american people on a bus that complied with the police. These other people also had a choice to act, but only certain black people followed the choice through and refused to be segregated. All of them were arrested, some of them were beaten, some went to a trial, some were jailed. However, each act to fight for human rights served as an example that something could be done. Many of the afro-americans that protested against segregation were educated about what could be done and how people could live differently. When activists got arrested, they had the support of their black community to escalate such arrests in press, to get good defence lawyer, to pay a bail, and to get emotional support by visitors.
Case study: Indian National Congress This political party and movement allowed to establish democratic institutions needed for the future governing of India, the largest democracy on earth. This organization was instrumental to alow the first Indian government to establish proper control over India when the British ruling (Raj) was removed. This avoiding entering the anarchy and chaos that happened in China when Chinese emperor was removed from power.
Many people that live in democratic countries seem to forget that their country was also once under a dictatorial control, that people in their country betrayed each other, sent people to concentration camps, tortured, killed, received bribes, and so on. As a consequence many presume that only the Western countries or the societies based on European culture can reach democracy. However, this is utterly not true. It is worth to remember that just couple of centuries ago European countries were ruled entirely by kings, queens, and other forms of dictators. It is fair to argue that non-European countries that reached democracy were influenced by European ideas. That is indeed true, because the ideas and methods of reaching democracy were developed first by Europeans. In the broad world-wide view there are plenty of non-European countries that reached democratic statehood. Let us take India as an example. Even though the British Empire had a large influence on India, the society and the way of life in India when it became independent from the United Kingdom at 1948 were very different from the society and way of life in UK. In addition, UK did everything it could to suppress democratic movements in India during its occupation. For example, the participants of the Indian National Congress were jailed and threatened. Another example is Turkey.