I borrow the title of Yascha Mounk’s interesting book to reflect on a topic of the greatest importance in today’s democracy. I am referring to its internal enemies, a real danger that threatens its future in all latitudes, since even the democracies that we consider more stable suffer its attacks and the threat of its shipwreck appears. The last wave of strong agony of democracy was the so-called interwar period (1918-1933), thanks to its crushing by totalitarian ideologies, fascism and communism, with a notable difference from the current situation: liberal democracy still It was in a stage of construction, in addition to being present in very few countries, a select club that expanded considerably in the postwar period. In this way, representative liberal democracy triumphed, which, thanks to the welfare state and the progress of capitalist development, reduced class conflict to its minimum expression and achieved a political consensus where moderation and good sense prevailed in the majority of its citizens.
That consensus of elites, also a consensus of majorities, led by a fundamentally enlightened political class, united by the values and institutions contained in their renewed constitutions, is the one that is currently in crisis, lost its way and without knowing where we go. It is true that the people is a variable category in its interpretations. For our purposes, in that long period that runs from 1945 to the present, it has lost a sense of integration, divided into strong “cleavages” that have distorted the concept of citizenship, and turned the political arena into a merciless struggle where ethics has been abandoned in a pure struggle for power.
Nothing helps to strengthen the sense of nation and less to link it with the sense of State that contributes to coexistence and a minimum social harmony. The political center, that is, the axis that harmonizes differences and allows governability, is now beaten in such a way that it has lost its operability. The extremes have grown, mainly in Western nations, the proud models of representative liberal democracy, whether to the left, and particularly in the democracies of the northern hemisphere to the right, an intolerant, racist and fundamentalist neo-fascism, which laboriously threatens coexistence achieved. In short, the extremes, the extreme right and the extreme left, so harmful and pernicious in our latitudes, unite once again to try to destroy the democratic order, and its consequence in dictatorships, which for lack of a better name, we can call as postmodern dictatorships.
Intolerance is the queen of the present time, and new communication technologies, especially social networks, do not contribute anything, quite the contrary, they stimulate it and generally reject the fruitful dialogue that should guide a healthy democratic life. The Enlightenment, how much we would like it not to be like that!, with its lucidity guided by the idea of reason and reasonableness, is losing the battle against extremes and what one author calls “structural stupidity” has risen up. irrational and violent, that using the simile of a soccer game, separates the fans of one side or the other into trenches, encouraged to shout nonsense in a runaway competition to show which one is more intimidating in its imposition on the adversary.
Democracy is in danger, apart from the fact that we Venezuelans miserably lost it due to serious errors that we have not been able to correct in order to relaunch it. At least we have the bitter awareness of what it means to have lost it, in the face of the suffering caused by the cruel dictatorship that governs us, and then to be able to acquire the knowledge to reconquer it, rethink citizenship and, in its fair sense, know how to preserve it.
