Democracy

Democracy
Type	political
Interest of	• Academics For Peace • Alliance for Securing Democracy • Carole Cadwalladr • Center for the Study of Democracy • Richard Löwenthal • Ivo Mosley • Johanna Möhring • Onora O'Neill • Poynter Institute • Giovanni Sartori

Official Narratives

The etymologically accurate official narrative is that these regimes represent a form of rule by the people. Historically, "democracy" used to be a term of abuse, with connotations comparable to those associated with the term "mob rule", while nowadays it is seen as a highly positive term.

Problems

The often unspoken assumption behind the modern use of the term by commercially-controlled media is that the party politics framework provides an effective reflection of (most) people's will. In the case of the USA, this is directly contradicted by the only academic study to tackle the topic, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens a paper from the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics which begins by asking "Who governs? Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of U.S. citizens sovereign, semi-sovereign, or largely powerless?" and concludes that "Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts."

Choosing the least worst?

The 2016 US election provoked strong reactions and the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was widely seen as not representative of the aspirations of the US people. People worldwide appear to be waking up to the fact that whoever wins, the people themselves do not win, that in the world of the late George Carlin "the game is rigged".

Deep state control

Full article: Deep state

Many democracies are demonstrably controlled by deep state groups, who install puppet leaders to do their bidding. Mark Gorton notes that the cabal appears to control over the US presidency, while the Bilderberg group has included at least 5 UK Prime Ministers to be, before they even lead a political party.

Voting fraud

Full article: Voting fraud

There is considerable evidence of vote theft by software in US elections, including peer reviewed academic papers and sworn testimony of people who coded the vote systems. However, the commercially-controlled media continues to treat the subject as a third rail topic.

Lobbying

Full article: Lobbying

Bribery has always been a form of control over the nominally independent political apparatus. In the modern era, what is euphemistically known as "lobbying" is an increasingly transparent version of the same thing. Put simply, lobbying is to bribery as tax avoidance is to tax evasion. Most politicians belong to the monied classes, and many are multi-millionaires, allowing them scope for "lobbying".

Exclusion

Some countries prevent certain classes of people from voting, notably criminals. As of 1999, the US denied the vote to a larger proportion of its population than any other nation state.

Terror management theory

Full article: Terror management theory

Terror management theory is a branch of psychology about how fear of death can overcome reasoned judgements, and do so subliminally, without subject population even being aware of the fact. This theory has not been lost on the architects of the "war on terror" Sheldon Solomon explains that "Five weeks before the 2004 presidential election, Americans reminded of their mortality or the events of September 11, 2001, reported that they intended to vote for President George W. Bush by an almost 3:1 margin. Americans in a control condition reported that they intended to vote for Senator John Kerry by a 4:1 margin – suggesting that subtle alterations in psychological conditions can have profound effects on political preferences that could skew the outcome of close elections."

Cultural references

The Prisoner is centred on a village in which people are held prisoner with numbers instead of names. They hold elections of "number 2", who is the public face of authority, and is depicted in a technologically equipped command center which surveils the village. The unsuccessful efforts of the protagonist to discover the identity of "number 1" are a recurrent theme throughout the series.

 

An example

Page name	Description
Election	The event in where people choose between multiple options in a contest, usually politics.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
1970s	“[M]uch of the destabilization of British democracy in the 1970s can only be fully understood by analysing the international support given to groups like the Anglo-American “deniable propaganda” outlet, the Institute for the Study of Conflict.”	David Teacher
Ziad Abdelnour	“Iran's going to be finished and every single Arab regime that's like this will be finished. Because there is no room for us capitalists and multinationalists in the world to operate with regimes like this. Its all about money. And power. And wealth... and democracy has to be spread around the world. Those who want to espouse globalization are going to make a lot of money, be happy, their families will be happy. And those who aren't going to play this game are going to be crushed, whether they like it or not! This is how we rule. And this is how it's going to be as long as you have people who think like me.”	Ziad Abdelnour	18 November 2005
Philip Agee	“[CIA] operations help sustain favorable operating conditions for U.S.-based multi-national corporations. These conditions, together with political hegemony, were our real goals. So-called liberal democracy and pluralism were only means to those ends. "Free elections" really meant freedom for our candidates. "Free trade unions" meant freedom for us to establish our unions. "Freedom of the press" mean freedom for us to pay journalists to publish our material as if it were the journalists' own. When an elected government threatened U.S. economic and political interests, it had to go. Social and economic justice were fine concepts for public relations, but only for that.”	Philip Agee	1987
Ernesto Araújo	“I’m not a great fan of the concept of the great reset. We don’t have anything against what’s in it […] but what’s not there — the concept of freedom and democracy”	Ernesto Araújo	March 2021
Annalena Baerbock	“As European democracies and part of a transatlantic democratic alliance, we are also in systemic competition with an authoritarian regime like China”	Annalena Baerbock	5 December 2021
Barack Obama/Presidency	“In spite of the promise of “Change you can believe in,” it looks like things are basically UNchanged”	Bob Franken
Blockchain/Consensus	“Similar to PoS, this trend of the largest being best-placed to receive the most rewards means that the network will trend towards an oligarchy inclined to collude, rather than compete. The largest actors will become richer and strengthen their position as delegates over time. As they earn more rewards, they will hold more tokens. As they hold more tokens, they will have a proportionally higher share of the vote. This means they will then be more likely to be elected, and the cycle repeats, consolidating supply in hands of a narrower and narrower minority.”
George Carlin	“On Election Day, I stay home. Two reasons: first of all, voting is meaningless; this country was bought and paid for a long time ago. That empty shit they shuffle around and repackage every four years doesn't mean a thing. Second, I don't vote, because I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. I know some people like to twist that around and say, "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain." But where's the logic in that? Think it through: If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and you screw things up, then you're responsible for what they've done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote—who, in fact, did not even leave the house on Election Day—am in no way responsible for what these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created. Which I had nothing to do with. Why can't people see that?”	George Carlin
George Carlin	“You might have noticed that I never complain about politicians. I leave that to others. And there's no shortage of volunteers; everyone complains about politicians. Everyone says they suck. But where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky; they don't pass through a membrane from a separate reality. They come from American homes, American families, American schools, American churches, and American businesses. And they're elected by American voters. This is what our system produces, folks. This is the best we can do. Let's face it, we have very little to work with. Garbage in, garbage out. So maybe it's not the politicians who suck; maybe it's something else. Like the public. That would be a nice realistic campaign slogan for somebody: "The public sucks. Fuck hope." Put the blame where it belongs: on the people. Because if everything is really the fault of politicians, where are all the bright, honest, intelligent Americans who are ready to step in and replace them? Where are these people hiding? The truth is, we don't have people like that. Everyone's at the mall, scratching his balls and buying sneakers with lights in them. And complaining about the politicians.”	George Carlin
Corporate media/Censorship	“would through a lurid light of distrust and disbelief onto our entire electoral system, political system and basically our democracy”	Jonathan Simon	24 November 2016
Friedrich Engels	“the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy [...] until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap.”	Friedrich Engels
Financial system	“The key master lie is this one:- that the politically-imposed (not economically-) the politically-imposed global corporate system calling itself the "global free market", that that politically-imposed global corporate system equals the "free market" equals democracy equals a solution to poverty.”	John McMurtry	2001
Bill Gates	“The closer you get to [government] and see how the sausage is made, the more you go, oh my God! These guys don’t even actually know the budget. . . . The idea that all these people are going to vote and have an opinion about subjects that are increasingly complex — where what seems, you might think . . . the easy answer [is] not the real answer. It’s a very interesting problem. Do democracies faced with these current problems do these things well?”	Bill Gates	2013
John Taylor Gatto	“As a vampire fears garlic, the marketplace fears wisdom. Well schooled populations are usually trained to pay lip service to democracy. At the same time, they are being conditioned to avoid the attitudes and behaviors democracy requires. It's a dilemma without an easy answer, because though our national consciousness honors the idea of a democratic society, our national economy and our government would wither and die under anything less than a command-and-control reality. Would you teach critical judgment and moral behavior to everybody? Tell me something, if you would. How could an economy like ours, grounded in the global sale of war machinery, industrially produced meat, fruit and vegetables which has a nutritional value about half of what farm products did in 1940, that relies on financial trickery and the mass sale of magical programs of schooling (not all of them inside school). How could an economy like this endure in a climate of critical intelligence?”	John Taylor Gatto	2008
Katharine Graham	“We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I think democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.”	Katharine Graham	1988
Craig Murray	“It is to me quite incredible that the UK is still at the mercy of the whims and foibles of degenerates from not only the same class, but from within the same tiny social institutions which still confer a hereditary ability to govern a state of 60 million people now, in 2020. It makes a mockery of the UK’s claim to be a functional social polity and it makes a mockery of the very notion that “democracy” has any real existence in British society.”	Craig Murray	14 February 2020
Nice truck event	“Democracy must not be weak, nor simply commemorate. Democracy must say "We will win the war."”	Nicolas Sarkozy	July 2016
Mabel van Oranje	“Most mainstream media are being driven by print runs and ratings and not by unprejudiced critical analysis, truth-finding or simply delivering quality. Image is superseding content. Mass-media in the open society play an essential role for our orientation on the world and are of substantial importance for our view on the truth. (...) What is democracy if the vox populi will not listen to the truth but only wants to listen to sensationalism?”	Mabel van Oranje
Plastic word	“In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, ‘The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality’, while another writes, ‘The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness’, the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.”	George Orwell	1946
Plutocracy	“The United States is not a democracy, it is a plutocracy. The people don’t rule in the United States. Wealth rules, the corporations rule. They rule the Congress, they elect the president, they run the Pentagon. They own the media, which are the voices of the plutocracy.”	Ramsey Clark
Political party	“It doesn't make the slightest difference whether Republicans have control of congress or democrats. They're the same people. Look at their campaign contributions.”	John Taylor Gatto
Michael Ruppert	“It’s organized crime. All you do is you call the Republicans the Genoveses and you call the Democrats the Gambinos. The people at the top, they treat it like a crap game. It’s their crap game, like they’re making lots of money. Occasionally, somebody at the table shoots each other, but the moment anything threatens their crap game, they all unite to protect it. ... They’re both controlled by the same financial, economic and corporate interests.”	Michael Ruppert
Russia	“Higher stakes meant aggressive mobilisation of media for an information war became a feature of 1990s electoral politics at regional level, following the pattern of the 1996 presidential election. By then, the corruption associated with privatisation had made Yeltsin and the reformers unpopular – and many feared the communists would return to power. The democrats had to resort to desperate measures. Every possible resource was mobilised to ensure that Yeltsin was re-elected – including deals with powerful oligarchs with large media empires. The communists were defeated but the price was endemic cynicism about the democratic process. The Yeltsin presidency remained beholden to Russia’s regional governors and the oligarchs. It fell to Putin to curtail the powers of these groups, campaigning in 2000 under the slogan of “the dictatorship of law”. That such a slogan could have popular support shows the degree to which the public had become disillusioned in the late 1990s. However, the direction towards concentration of power had been set almost a decade before Putin was elected president. Russia’s reformers of the 90s largely achieved the irreversible economic change they wanted. They were less successful in creating a positive narrative for the new Russia. Reform had seemed to be based on the idea that Russia needed to learn as much as possible from the west. Over time, disillusion with this idealised view of the west grew and public opinion became more nationalistic.”	Adrian Campbell
Mark Rutte	“I'm totally, totally, totally against referendums on multilateral agreements.”	Mark Rutte
Social change	“Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.”	William Lyon Mackenzie King	1935
UK/Deep state	“Even though we live in what's called a democracy, a few people will always run things in this country anyway.”		August 2018
US/Foreign policy	“Anybody who believes that a country's internal democracy is the determining factor in whether the West decides to move for violent regime change in that country, is a complete idiot. Any journalist or politician who makes that claim is more likely to be a complete charlatan than a complete idiot. In recent years, possession of hydrocarbon reserves is very obviously a major factor in western regime change actions.”	Craig Murray	January 2019
Matthijs Veenendaal	“Trust is a key foundation of a well-functioning society. Without reliable communication, organizations cannot operate effciently, be they corporations or government institutions. Malicious actors are aiming to exploit vulnerabilities in communication flows. With the advent of new technology, it is possible for adversaries to impersonate leaders and create false impressions among population. The Tallinn based NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence will organize a session focusing on questions including: What is at stake? What can nations do to enhance and protect trust in democratic institutions? Or is it already too late?”	Matthijs Veenendaal
Joris Voorhoeve	“Take into account that 2/3ds of UN member states are no democracy, also take into count that quite a number of states are run by criminal organisations. Colonialism did not end, it took a different form.”	University of Leiden Joris Voorhoeve	12 April 2016
Woodrow Wilson	“Nothing like official sanction was given to the idea that the United States is first and foremost a democracy until Woodrow Wilson, in making the war against the Central Powers a war for democracy, gave the stamp of wide popularity to the idea that the United States is, first and foremost, a democracy.”	Woodrow Wilson Charles Beard	1943
Howard Zinn	“Voting is fairly easy and convenient but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.”	Howard Zinn	April 2008

 

Party Members

Politician	Born	Died	Description
David Aaron	21 August 1938		Deep state connected diplomat. Attended Bilderberg 1977 as Deputy National Security Advisor.
Huma Abedin	28 July 1976		Hillary Clinton's "right-hand woman", 7th floor group, kept Hillary posted about Laura Silsby. Exposed after her emails were recovered by the FBI during a probe about her husband's sexting minors.
Ralph Abernathy	11 March 1926	17 April 1990
James Abourezk	24 February 1931	24 February 2023	US politician who opposed illegal activities by the CIA
Robert Abrams	4 July 1938		New York State Attorney General 1979-1993
Bella Abzug	24 July 1920	31 March 1998	US Congresswoman who campaigned to expose the US deep state
Dean Acheson	11 April 1893	12 October 1971	US deep state operative who was the 51st Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright	15 May 1937	23 March 2022	Ruthless politician, acquired and beloved by everyone named Clinton in the 1990s. Hero of Kosovo. Most powerful woman of all time according to ISGP's superclass index. When asked about half a million dead Iraqi children because of the sanctions she enforced, she replied "We think the price is worth it."
Roger Altman	2 April 1946		US Banker, Bilderberg Steering Committee
Jake Arvey	3 November 1895	25 August 1977	Notorious political fixer for the Democrats in Chicago and key figure in the Supermob
Les Aspin	21 July 1938	21 May 1995	Chairperson of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, CFR, Book and Snake
Elizabeth Frawley Bagley	13 July 1952		American diplomat who has been closely associated with the Clintons since Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. Big donor to the Clinton Foundation. Member of the Board of Directors of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children.
Zoë Baird	20 June 1952		Spookily connected US lawyer
George Ball	21 December 1909	26 May 1994	US deep politician who attended all 40 Bilderberg meetings up to his death, he helped make key decisions about post-WW2 Europe.
Alben Barkley	24 November 1877	30 April 1956
Robert Bauer	22 February 1952		White House Counsel under President Barack Obama. Also played a role in the Joe Biden administration.
Evan Bayh	26 December 1955		US lawyer, lobbyist, and politician
Abraham Beame	20 March 1906	10 February 2001
Nick Begich	6 April 1932	16 October 1972	A US congressman whose small plane disappeared without trace in Alaska, together with Hale Boggs and two other men.
Anthony Beilenson	26 October 1932	5 March 2017	Spooky US lawyer
Colleen Bell	30 January 1967
Griffin Bell	31 October 1918	5 January 2009
William Bennett	31 July 1943		US official
Lloyd Bentsen	11 February 1921	23 May 2006	5 time Bilderberger US Treasury Secretary
Preet Bharara	1968		US lawyer
Ashley Biden	8 June 1981		Daughter of Joe Biden
Hunter Biden	4 February 1970		Second son of the deep state actor, Joe Biden.
Joe Biden	20 November 1942		US deep state actor accused of sexual assault in 1993. As US Senator aggressively pushed for the patriot act, mass surveillance and death penalty for anyone who was not CIA. As VP famous for sniffing and grabbing children on camera. Became US President in a quite weakened mental state.
Hugo Black	27 February 1886	25 September 1971
Lloyd Blankfein	20 September 1954		Attended the 2007 Bilderberg as Goldman Sachs/Chairman
Bill de Blasio	8 May 1961
W. Michael Blumenthal	3 January 1926		US/Secretary of the Treasury in the 1970s, Bilderberg, Le Cercle, CFR
Hale Boggs	15 February 1914	16 October 1972	A US House Majority Leader who strongly dissented from the official narrative of the JFK Assassination. His small plane disappeared without trace in Alaska, together with Nick Begich and two other men.
Edward Boland	1 October 1911	4 November 2001
Richard Bolling	17 May 1916	21 April 1991	US congressman
Cory Booker	27 April 1969		US politician
David Boren	21 April 1941		Jobs including Chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board
Chester Bowles	5 April 1901	25 May 1986
John Brademas	2 March 1927	11 July 2016	US politician
Bill Bradley	28 July 1943		US Senator from New Jersey
Bill Bratton	6 October 1947
Donna Brazile	15 December 1959
Anita Decker Breckenridge	19 July 1978		White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations for president Barack Obama, then also for his post-presidency office, where her portfolio includes the Obama Foundation.
Andrew Brimmer	13 September 1926	7 October 2012	African-American economist who attended the 1972 Bilderberg as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
Eli Broad	6 June 1933	30 April 2021
Fred Brown	12 April 1879	3 February 1955	US politician
Harold Brown	19 September 1927	4 January 2019	United States Secretary of Defense.
Jerry Brown	7 April 1938		US politician
Ron Brown	1 August 1941	3 April 1996	Ron Brown was the United States Secretary of Commerce, serving during the first term of President Bill Clinton. He died in a plane crash along with 34 others. 3 months later, Mohammed Ferrat, a business partner, reportedly died aboard TWA 800.
Willie Brown	20 March 1934		California State Assembly Speaker, later became mayor of San Francisco. Never proven allegations of corruption.
... further results

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Abolish Terrorist Agencies	essay	29 July 2019	David Swanson	Swanson characterises Annie Jacobsen's Surprise Kill Vanish as an apology for intelligence agencies. He deconstructs their the official narratives of defending "democracy", claiming that they have "decades of engaging in and provoking terrorism". Citing blowback from their operations as major factors in the growth of the MICC and its climate paranoia and permanent war, he calls for an end to the intelligence agencies.
Document:Democratic State v Deep State	essay	1 January 2008	Ola Tunander	An excellent introduction to deep politics. By clarifying the real role of the Secret Intelligence Services and the policy agenda they under firm control in most Western 'Democracies' (especially the UKUSA nations), it demonstrates the irrelevance of the party-political masquerade.
Document:Invasions of the Mind Snatchers	article	19 February 2014	Nebojsa Malic	A good introduction to the current template and modus-operandi of US/NATO-sponsored "Regime-change" operations which began with the destruction of Yugoslavia and have been repeated in at least a dozen countries in so-called "colour revolutions" and the "Arab Spring" in the decade or so since
Document:Silicon Valley’s Trump supporters are dicing with the death of democracy	Article	4 August 2024	John Naughton	Speaking to a Christian convention in Florida the other day, Donald Trump said: “Get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it any more. Four more years, you know what: it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians.”
Document:The 20-year war on Afghanistan was a mistake	Speech	18 August 2021	Zarah Sultana	Speaking outside Parliament on 18 August 2021, prior to the Afghanistan emergency debate, Zarah Sultana joined colleagues including Jeremy Corbyn to say: "The war on Afghanistan shows – once and for all – that the West cannot deliver liberal democracy at the barrel of a gun. This war – the first 'War on Terror' – must be Britain's last war of aggression."
Document:The Harrogate Agenda	manifesto	10 September 2013	Peter North	The basic rationale and six demands of 'The Harrogate Agenda'
Document:We the People…	appeal	27 January 2014	David Malone	It is time for the dusty antique concept of 'WE THE PEOPLE' to be revived and given determined mass support

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