Prospects for a post-democratic world | United States and Canada

The whole world may not have noticed, but as I write this article, in fact, since Donald Trump’s fiasco in the 2020 presidential election, the Republican Party has been actively working to destroy the foundations of democracy in the United States through Including-systematically restrict people’s voting rights.

The more Americans vote, the more reactionary white Republicans feel that the prospect of full democracy is threatened, and the more active they become in their efforts to suppress the will of the people.

Just two weeks ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell coordinated with his Republican colleagues to block the establishment of a bipartisan committee to investigate the opposition of a group of Trump supporters determined to overturn the results of the presidential election to the US Congress on January 6. The attack on the building.

If this attempted coup took place in any other country, we would quickly classify it as its actual situation-a violent attack on the democratic will of the people by an iron-pan dictator. However, in the United States, the vast institutions of the Republican Party are working at the state and federal levels to hide this atrocities and maintain democratic delusions.

The violent end of Trump’s presidency is the last sign. If anyone needs more signs, American democracy is dedicated to white people who believe in white supremacy. If these heavily armed and violent whites cannot do whatever they want, then they will burn the foundations of this country’s demand for democracy.

Mass suppression of voters

Similarly, Republicans are now actively participating in the formulation of voter suppression laws to prevent the majority of the population from having a say in their future. This is nothing more than a duplication of the Jim Crow law enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to prevent African Americans from exercising their hard-won voting rights.

As shown in recent legislative cases in Texas, Republicans are also trying to make it easier for judges to overturn the results of the election-this is Trump and his corrupt lawyer led by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani The gang tried but failed after Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.

In short, Republicans are making sure that only white Americans, or more accurately, white supremacist Republicans can vote. Moreover, if anyone else manages to pass and vote in large numbers, they hope to cancel the result.

This is the status quo of the so-called “world’s oldest democracy”.

The Republican Party’s racist attack on American democratic norms is not limited to voting rights—it also extends to immigration laws. Republicans across the country are working overtime, making it particularly difficult for Hispanic immigrants to become American citizens because they tend to vote for Democrats with an overwhelming majority.

Of course, it is not only Republicans who are responsible for the regrettable status quo of American democracy. Countless influential politicians, blacks and whites, Republicans and Democrats, have long been buried in the pockets of predatory billionaires and partners. Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, is one of them. These billionaires and multi-billion dollar companies seem to respect the democratic will of Americans as long as the candidates they choose are loyal to their power.

Democratic leaders, such as Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, position themselves as champions of democracy, and they are seeking to expand and protect the voting rights of all Americans. But their protest is meaningless. The corruption of the Democratic Party is part of the problem here. Yes, they protested the looting of the Capitol by white supremacist mobs on January 6, but they remained silent about the fact that long before and long after that decisive day, the U.S. Capitol has been and will continue to be attacked by shaves and Lobbyists and promoters in suits. No one saw it, no one reported it, and no one opposed the regular attacks on Capitol Hill. This is an indispensable part of the daily and daily life of American politics.

Therefore, the systemic collapse of American democracy began long before the white supremacist Republicans began their latest and perhaps the most insidious attacks on American voting rights.

However, the current state of affairs in the United States is very worrying-not only for Americans, but also for people around the world.

The illusion of democracy

People should neither exaggerate nor underestimate the disastrous consequences of developments in the United States on the entire world.

For a long time, many people around the world have regarded the United States as the leading model of democratic governance, and they can seek guidance and aspirations. Therefore, the systemic collapse of American democracy has laid the foundation for the prospect of a post-democratic world—a country without a well-functioning democratic model for reference. When “the oldest democracy in the world” falls, where will the struggle for democratic rule on a global scale go?

Of course, the United States has never been a truly ideal democratic model. A country built on the genocide of indigenous peoples, maintained in the cruel process of slavery in Africa, and endured by the mainstream ideology of white supremacy before and after the civil war and civil rights movement is almost impossible to become democratic governance for anyone mode.

But despite this, at the core of this republic, the fragile democratic aspirations have been fighting for survival. African-Americans who were previously enslaved desperately fought for the right to vote-paying great sacrifices and carrying out a merciless attack on their humanity. After decades of indomitable struggle, black Americans passed the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870 and won the right to vote.

Yes, the 15th Amendment did theoretically give African Americans the right to vote, but soon the Jim Crow Act ensured that these rights were still fictitious and not effectively implemented. Voter intimidation, murder, and chaos systematically prevented blacks from going anywhere near the polling station. Today, the descendants of those very racist Southerners are doing their best to prevent African Americans and other communities that have been deprived of their rights from expressing opinions about their future.

The world is at a loss

The situation in the United States is not optimistic. More destructive than the Republican Party’s restrictions on voting rights or whitewashing of the January 6 coup attempt are conspiracy theories, which continue to insist that the last presidential election was manipulated and that Trump is still the real president and that the current government is illegal. The people who preach these conspiracy theories are not fools. They know what they are doing. They have always questioned the legacy and effectiveness of the country’s democratic system, so their alternative facts have become as legitimate as the democratic will of people who think differently from them.

It is no accident that Michael Flynn, a former military officer who now serves Donald Trump’s fascist aspirations, is now publicly proposing a Myanmar-like coup in the United States. You can no longer be blunt about where this country is now.

American democracy is collapsing. But are there other examples that people around the world can learn from in their efforts to achieve democratic governance? Should they turn to hypocritical European democracies, which always seem to be on the verge of transforming into a fascist dictatorship? Should they turn to Russia ruled by Putin’s mafia? Should they yearn for China’s mechanized totalitarianism, Brazil’s systemic brutality, India’s Hindu supremacy horror, Syria, Iran, or Turkey’s false democratic pantomime? Should they look to authoritarian regimes in much of the Islamic world or Israeli settler colonialism based on the broken backs of Palestinians?

Where is the future model of world democratic rule?

Today, no partly functioning democracy can provide a model or blueprint for the world. The foundation of liberal democracy in the modernity of the European Enlightenment has been replaced by predatory capitalism, which blindly plunders the world while preaching “freedom, equality, and fraternity” to the same world.

Today, the only model model of democratic aspirations in the world is large-scale social uprisings, such as the fate of blacks, and national liberation movements like those in occupied Palestine.

But none of these movements can achieve their goals alone-they need each other. The recent symbiotic relationship that emerged between Black Lives Matter in the United States and the liberation struggle in Palestine allowed the two movements to correct each other’s lines and grow together.

Without active support for the issue of black lives, the Palestine National Liberation Movement can easily integrate into the sad clichés of Arab politics. Without active solidarity with the Palestinians, “the life of blacks” can easily degenerate into a more narrow identity politics, vulnerable to the professional opportunism of people like Barack and Michelle Obama.

For all the impoverished, tyrannical, looted, and slandered people around the world, the only prospect of achieving complete democracy is cross-border solidarity across the clichés of specific ethnic cultures and into the transnational public sphere, in which every country All are saved because of each other’s experience. Barack Obama and Donald Trump are two sides of the same coin, because Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu are part of the same circle of despair and deception.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.