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https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-john-keane-on-demagogues-despots-and-the-rise-of-phantom-democracies-280137>
"Let’s begin with a troubling truth: in many countries, hundreds of millions of
people nowadays feel that when it comes to the biggest decisions affecting
their lives, despite all the talk of “democracy” and “the people”, they have no
control over those who decide things in their name. Their shared experience of
organised powerlessness is amplified by fears that our small blue planet is
spinning out of control.
People are not just annoyed and angry. They’ve grown convinced that elected
governments have become so blind and corrupt that they no longer notice or even
care that we earthlings are hurtling towards a future bruised and battered by
more than a few perilous forces. Naked big power rivalries. Nasty genocidal
wars. Hatred of immigrants. Border closures. Trade and tariff disputes. Extreme
weather events. Pandemics. Corporate greed.
Polls show that millions of people are equally bothered by another unpromising
political trend: the mounting anxiety that demagogues, despots and a strange
new kind of Russian-style despotism with thoroughly 21st-century
characteristics are gaining traction and everywhere getting the upper hand.
To speak of despotism is immediately to invite frowns and risk heated
arguments. It’s an old word with a complicated and chequered history. Long out
of fashion these days – “autocracy”, “fascism” and “authoritarianism” are the
fashionable political buzzwords – despotism has often been dismissed as an
emotionally charged and fuzzy term laden with Orientalist prejudices against
non-Europeans.
But when suitably revised and carefully deployed, despotism is an indispensable
keyword for making sense of the new global threats to democracy in polities as
different as Russia, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Vietnam, but also by
the parallel and overlapping attacks on power-sharing democracy led by
demagogues and their admirers in countries such as Türkiye, Israel and Donald
Trump’s America.
This worldwide growth of a strange alliance between demagogues and despots is
no coincidence. It ought to puzzle and worry every thinking person, and it
needs to be understood."
"John Keane will be appearing at the launch of
Reclaiming Democracy Together,
Melbourne Town Hall, May 9, 2026."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
