Fact, one half, that's 50% of American voters say that democracy is not working for them. It does not enhance or improve their prospects. It does not vouchsafetheir prosperity. It does not underlie or guarantee their well-being.
Democracy is widely perceived to have been usurped and hijacked by an intellectual elite that is aloof and detached in numerous ivory towers. Intellectual elite that, exactly like me, holds the masses in profound contempt.
And now is the payback time, the backlash, or shall I say the whiplash.
My name is Sam Vaknin and I'm a columnist in Brussels morning.
And today we're going to discuss opting out from democracy into authoritarian narcissism.
Exactly like in the 1930s, in a scene reminiscent of the 1930s, all over the world, from Japan to the United States, from Australia to Hungary, both the ultra-rich and the masses have been opting out of democracy in droves.
Rent-seeking billionaires have transformed themselves into Russian-style oligarchs, embedded in insidious patronage networks around authoritarian figures such as Putin or Orban or of course Donald Trump.
These oligarchs provide the dictatorship with much needed funds. These funds are used to further the agenda of the tyranny, the newly emergent tyranny.
These oligarchs provide the dictatorship not only with money but also with legitimacy and clout as it concentrates economic resources in the hands of the few and dismantles institutions such as free press, the judiciary and the rule of law.
The Great Unwashed have very little in common with these tycoons.
Indeed, the interests of these two groups are diametrically opposed, but both constituencies have one thing in common.
A burning hatred of the educated, the establishment and of democracy, erudition and science. These are all perceived as elitist and contemptuous of the common folks, of their concerns, of their values.
The revolt of the masses described almost a hundred years ago by Jose Ortega y Gasset is a periodic cyclical event. The hoi-polloi rise, pillage, and then subside, recede into the background as a silent minority, or shall I say, majority. And they allow the more skilled and trained to rebuild what they have destroyed.
But this time is different. This time the dumb masses are empowered by both democracy turned oclocracy. Democracy turned mob rule.
And they are empowered by technologies, technologies that amplify, magnify and disseminate and distribute the grievances of the masses, their delusions, their inanities, their conspiracy theories, and their aggression.
And the voices of the masses can no longer be silenced. Even the aforementioned oligarchs and tyrants are typically illvoracious and omniscient and paranoid and rapacious as the mob that spawned them.
This time there is no reversing the tide. There is no confronting the self-destructive trends. There is no rebuttaling of the menacing genies.
This time the game for humanity is truly over.
So how can you tell if your country has transitioned from democracy to authoritarian narcissism, to oligarchy, to plutocracy and to other forms of authoritarian, autocratic, self-centered networking.
Well, I've constructed a scale which I hope might be of help.
Test yourself and your country against these parameters.
Like cancer, autocratic authoritarianism is a spectrum, with clear and often ineluctable progression of egregiousness from one stage to the next. Like cancer, let us start with stage one.
In stage one, institutions are compromised. They are subject to political interference and pressures, but they are largely still functional. Freedom of speech, freedom of the media. These are intact, but self-censorship abounds induced by amorphous, fuzzy fear and gaslighting.
Politics is dominated by one party with a nepotistic, cronyist network of patronage and loyalist sycophantic clientele. Active opposition parties compete in semi-fair elections. Personal freedoms are still unhindered. The private sector seeks rent, seeks to suck the blood life of the public sector. It is subject to tacit and subtle extortion by well-connected political hacks and parties.
The rule of law is opportunistically subverted by the ruling elites and structures, but otherwise it is still extant and prevalent.
Corruption is limited to the upper echelons of the state and ruling parties. People are still held accountable regardless of their position.
But then there is a seamless, albeit sometimes glacial transition to stage two, and it is ineluctible.
The moment the body politic has been infected and corrupted and contaminated, these stages are inexorable.
Stage two, institutions are compromised.
They are subject to political interference and pressures, micromanaged and scripted, but still functional, where no political or commercial interests are threatened.
The freedom of speech and freedom of media suffers. There is direct coercive political intervention in editorial policy and hiring and firing decisions. Rampant self-censorship. Commercial co-opting of media owners and properties via governmental and state advertising budgets.
Billionaires and tycoons affiliated with the authoritarian figure, with a new strong man, begin to purchase media properties and compromise their integrity.
Politics is dominated by one party with a nepotistic, cronies network of patronage and loyalist psychophantic clientele. Opposition parties face obstacles to proper functioning, limited access to the media, and compete in semi-fair elections.
Personal freedoms are still unhindered except when political interests are at stake. Reprisals against disloyal, treasonous behavior include detention and even accidents.
The private sector is rent-seeking, subject to open extortion, sometimes via state institutions and the courts, by well-connected political parties and hacks.
The rule of law is constantly subverted and circumvented by the ruling elites and structures, but appearances to the contrary are scrupulously maintained.
This is beginning to be pseudo-democracy.
Corruption engulfs all organs of the state and all members of the ruling parties.
Here comes stage three.
In stage three, institutions are dysfunctional and paralyzed, subject to pervasive political interference and pressures, micromanaged and scripted, even when no political or commercial interests are threatened.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the media is subjected to direct coercive political intervention in editorial policy and in hiring and firing decisions.
Rampant self-censorship and sometimes overt censorship, commercial co-opting of media owners and properties via governmental and state advertising budgets, or by billionaires and tycoons and rich people associated with the governing elite.
Media are supervised by polytrux, whose role is to ensure adherence to the party line.
Politics becomes dominated by one party with a nepotistic, cronyist network of patronage and loyalist psychophantic clientele.
Opposition parties are actively obstructed. They have no access to the media, and they compete in mock elections or boycott the elections altogether.
What about personal freedoms at this stage?
The conduct and opinions of individuals are extensively and massively surveyed, monitored, and logged using the latest technologies.
Reprisals against disloyal treasonous behavior include detention, workplace sanctions, and even accidents or natural death in detention camps.
The private sector is again rent-seeking and subject to take over via state institutions in the courts by well-connected political hacks and cronies, the oligarchs.
The rule of law is completely subverted and circumvented by the ruling elites and structures, both substantively and procedurally.
Corruption becomes a way of life for everyone.
Appearances are still maintained, but only tenuously so.
And finally, stage four, exactly like in cancer. Terminal.
Stage four, institutions are often replaced by impromptu or ad hoc parallel institutions under the control of the ruling class.
The empty shells of previous institutions are dysfunctional and paralyzed, subject to pervasive political interference and pressures, micromanaged and scripted, even where not political or commercial interests are threatened.
The parallel state takes over.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the media are gone. Directcoercivepolitical intervention in editorial policy and hiring and firing decision becomes common and daily. Rampant self-censorship and express, overt, legalized censorship, commercial co-opting of media owners and properties via governmental and state advertising budgets and affiliated oligarchs.
The media are now supervised by Polytrux, whose role is to ensure adherence to the party line.
Many media are shuttered, and access to alternative media, venues and distribution channels is restricted or abolished completely.
Politics is dominated by one party with a nepotistic, cronies network of patronage and loyalist, sycophantic, clientele and affiliated people. Puppet, pseudo-opposition parties are allowed to operate and compete in mock elections.
Personal freedoms are gone. The conduct and opinions of individuals are extensively and massively surveilled and monitored and logged using the latest technologies.
Reprisals against disloyal, treasonous behavior include workplace sanctions, criminal prosecutions, detention, and even accidents and assassinations.
The private sector remains, and now overwhelmingly, rent-seeking, subject to take over via state institutions and the courts by the ruling parties, the state or well-connected individuals, political hacks, cronies, tycoons, etc., the oligarchs.
The rule of law is nowhere to be found it's completely subverted and circumvented by the ruling elites and structures both substantively and procedurally. Corruption becomes a way of life for everyone. Legislation is erratic, ad hoc, retroactive and biased in favor of the ruling elites.
At this point, there is a narcissistic society in the sense that everything is centered around a narcissist in charge.
This narcissist in charge is charismatic and projects the strong men, the strong leader image.
He suspends other people's decision-making powers.
He assumes sole responsibility for choices and decisions on behalf of the entire population. He subverts and destroys any ability to voice criticism or alternative views. He becomes the reification of the nation, its embodiment, ahistorical and historical, at the same time, surrounded by yes-sayers and by yes-men and tycoons and oligarchs who benefit from the authoritarian regime, real feedback is lacking, and the entire structure becomes more and more delusional, fantastic and counterfactual.
Ultimately it all comes crashing down and tumbling in a massive destruction at point, the old elites reassert themselves and start and embark on the tedious Sisyphian work of rebuilding everything that the narcissist has destroyed.
Autocracy is nothing new, but it has a post-modern version replete with the following characteristics.
Number one, the trappings of a democracy.
There are elections, institutional checks and balances, multi-party systems, media, which are essentially subservient and dominated by the regime.
All these are the embellishments of democracy empty and hollowed out. This is the first characteristic.
Number two, an affiliation with a global network of other authoritarian, totalitarian, tyrannical and dictatorial regimes.
And this network, this affiliation, this club of autocracies cross-promote the members' agendas and interests.
Everyone is helping everyone in a variety of settings, military, political, geopolitical, internal and external.
Number three, a vehement and hateful rejection of the values of liberal democracy and what is called the left, especially pluralism, sexual gender and social freedoms, free speech, and the peaceful transition of power.
My name is Sam Vaknin and I'm a columnist in Brussels morning and the topic of today's video is autocracy, its social and psychological roots and its current incarnation.
The historical fact is that American coercive meddling has given rise, created and restored autocracy as an alternative political and geopolitical organizing principle coupled with a value system.
Suffice to mention countries like South Vietnam, which has been taken over by the Communist North, Russia, after Yeltsin and today under Putin, and Afghanistan, now again in the hands of the Taliban.
In all three places, America's footprint, heavy-handed, has led to the emergence of an autocracy as a response and a defense.
Seemingly, incapable of learning from its mistakes, the United States is currently repeating the same self-defeating pattern in Israel, Venezuela, and a host of other polities.
Now, autocrats, the people at the head of the autocracy, the dictators, the tyrants, they perceive democracy and Western decadence as symptoms of an incurable and inexorable, a fiefness, a weakness, a vulnerability, even a disease.
With narcissism on the rise, such vulnerabilities are widely derided and decried in populist movements.
What's the solution? Strong men. Strong men are touted as the panacea to all the ills of the failed progressive project.
Autocracy is highly performative. It's a performance art, and it fits well with Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle. It leverages the emergence of social media, conspiracyism and conspiracy theories, and fake news.
And so, autocracy is a contemporary phenomenon.
I'm reminded of this quote.
Even though autocracy is, as I said, a contemporary phenomenon, it had its roots long ago.
De Custine, writing about Russia in the mid-19th century, had this to say, I came here to see a country, but what I find is a theater.
In appearances, everything happens as it does everywhere else. There is no difference, except in the very foundations of things.
The spectacular aspect of autocracy, the performative dimension of a tyrannical regime, these are age old.
The new variants, the postmodern renditions and disguises of autocracy are contemporary.
Six decades ago, the Polish-American Jewish author Jerzy Kosinski wrote, or maybe compiled, the book, Being There. The book describes the election to the presidency of the United States of a simpleton, a simple-minded gardener whose vapid and trite pronouncements are taken to be sagacious and penetrating insights into human affairs.
The being there syndrome is now manifest throughout the world, from Russia, we have the likes of Putin, to the United States, Obama, Trump.
Given a high enough level of frustration triggered by recurrent, endemic and systemic failures in all spheres of policy and life, even the most resilient democracy develops a predilection to strong men.
Leaders whose charismatic self-confidence, sangfroid, and apparent omniscience, all but guarantee, so to speak, a change of course, and any change of course would be for the better, so to speak, a change of course. And any change of course would be for the better, because things can get worse.
These leaders are usually people with a thin resume in politics, having accomplished little prior to their ascendance. They appear to have erupted on the scene from nowhere.
These people are received as providential messiahs precisely because they are not encumbered with a discernible past.
And thus, they are ostensibly unburdened by prior affiliations and commitments to the establishment, the swamp, their only duty is to a nebulous and shape-shifting horizon.
These leaders are ahistorical, have no history, and they're above history. They are, in many ways, history reified, at least in their own eyes.
Indeed, it is precisely this apparent lack of biography that qualifies these leaders to represent and bring about a fantastic and grandiose future.
They act as a blank screen upon which the multitudes project their own traits, wishes, personal biographies, needs, fantasies, dreams and yearnings.
The more these leaders deviate from their internal promises and initial pledges, the more they fail, the more dear they are to the hearts of their constituents.
Why?
Because psychopathologies resonate.
When you break your promises, when you fail, it means that you are normal, average, common.
The constituents of these leaders keep saying the leader is like me. This new chosen guide and guru is struggling, coping, trying and failing and like me, he has his shortcomings and vices.
And this affinity is endearing and captivating. It helps to form a shared psychosis, a folie à plusieurs, between ruler and people, and it fosters the emergence of autocracy.
The propensity to elevate narcissistic or even psychopathic personalities to power is most pronounced in countries that lack a democratic tradition, countries like China or Russia or Hungary, or the nations that inhabit the territories that once belong to Byzantium or the Ottoman Empire, for example, cultures and civilizations, which frown upon individualism and have a collectivist tradition, prefer to install strong collective leaderships rather than strong men and definitely over any variant of democracy. Yet all these polities maintain a theater and appearance of democracy. The theater of democratically reached consensus. Putin has a name for it, sovereign democracy. Such charades are devoid of essence and proper function. They are replete with personality cuts, concurrent with the adoration of a party or some governing elite in power and the network of benevolent and venal patronage guarantees long-term allegiance and loyalty in most developing countries and nations in transition, democracy is an empty word. Granted, the hallmarks of democracy are there. All these countries have candidate lists, parties, election propaganda, a plurality of media and voting and so on so forth. But the quiddity is absent. The essence of democracy is missing. It is decontextualized. The democratic principles and institutions are being consistently hollowed out and rendered mock by election fraud, exclusionary policies, cronyism, nepotism, corruption, intimidation, and collusion with interests, both commercial and political, inside and outside the country. The new so-called democracies are thinly disguised, thinly veiled and criminalized plutocracies. Plutocracies. Recall, for example, the Russian oligarchs. These are authoritarian regimes. Have a look at the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus. These are puppeteered hierarchies. Look at Iran, Bosnia, Iraq. These are all, they all claim to be democracies, even North Korea. The new democracies suffer from many of the same ills that afflict their veteran role models. All democracies, all democracies display dysfunctionalities in pathogenic and pathological processes. For example, murky campaign finance, venal revolving doors between state administration and private enterprise, endemic corruption, nepotism and cronyism, self-censoring media, socially, economically and politically excluded minorities, and so on and so forth. These are as common in the United States as they are for example in China. The Malays threatens the foundations of even the likes of the United States and France.
Something is innately and inherently wrong in the very concept of democracy. Possibly it's an ideal that defies human nature itself.
Many nations have chosen prosperity over democracy. Yes, the denizens of these realms cannot speak their mind. They cannot protest, they cannot criticize, they cannot even joke, lest they be arrested or worse. But in exchange for giving up these trivial freedoms, they have food on the table. They are fully employed. They receive ample health care, retirement benefits and proper education. They save and spend to their hearts content. In return for all these Confucian worldly and intangible goods, popularity of the leadership, which yields political stability, prosperity, security, prestige abroad, authority at home, a renewed sense of direction, nationalism, collective, community, etc., etc. These are all intangible goods, but very important, this sense of stability and safety and certainty. So in return for all these Confucian goods, the citizens of these countries forego the right to be able to criticize the regime or to change it once every four years. And many in these countries insist that they have struck a good bargain, not a Faustian one. The only threat to most autocracies is the intergenerational transmission of power in an environment increasingly more suffused with pathological narcissism and psychopathy.
By definition, leaders are authority figures. And as authority figures, as such, they stand in for one's parental figures, especially the father in patriarchal and traditionalist societies. Old school psychoanalysts would tell you that such a substitution is bound to provoke one's latent Oedipus complex and the proclivity for patricide, whether actual in the form of assassination or symbolic in the form of dissent and disdainful criticism. Young, emerging leaders more often than not, treat their predecessors this way as hated father or parent figures. This is especially true when the new or young leader's childhood has been marked by the traumas wrought on by an absent or an abusive father, as is much more common nowadays than ever.
And this pernicious undercurrent often mixes unsettlingly with virulent envy, the outcome of deep-seated feelings of inferiority and insecurity.
The less self-regulated the new or young leader's sense of self-worth, the more he or she resorts to narcissistic defenses, and the more he or she compulsively seeks narcissistic supply, attention, adulation.
And all this is in order to buttress their precariously balanced personalities.
Narcissism is frequently tinged with sadism and passive aggressive behaviors, taunting the older or previous leader, publicly humiliating him or her, thus showing him or her who is boss.
The more successful the new or young leader is, or subjugating his or her predecessors, the more it supports their belief in their own omnipotence, omniscience and cosmic messianic sense of mission.
Every manner of psychological defense mechanism is provoked in the young leader.
Denial of the inappropriateness, impudence and immorality of his actions.
The evaluation of the old leadership, thus justifying their mistreatment.
Displacement, scapegoating the previous leaders for one's own predicament and failures.
Fantasy evading reality by constructing elaborate, grandiose narratives and profanulations. Idealization of the nation, for instance, or of one's own coterie or followers or political party.
Omnipotence, projection attributing to the former leaders one's own faults, frailties and shortcomings and mistakes.
Projective identification, provoking the older leaders into action that is unseemly or against their best interests.
Rationalization and intellectualization of one's misconduct and misdeeds as a young leader.
Splitting, casting the older, erstwhile leaders as evil, corrupt and incompetent, while attributing to oneself all the positive traits and so on and so forth.
It's a psychodrama.
The intergenerational transition or transmission of power in autocracies is a psychodrama.
The end result of such a clash is often a civil war, or at the very least decimating civil unrest.
This is the end point of most autocracies too.
There is a transfer of power from one autocracy to the next or from autocracy to democracy.
Intergenerational transmission, the emergence of the young as challengers, as usurpers, as disruptors, this is critical.
Democracy does not stand a chance unless young people are there to impose it on the outgoing autocrat and his milieu.
And yet, the youth of today are opting out of the political and social game in the public square.
They are not participating in the life of any collective.
The smallest, a family, a couple. They're solipsistic and atomized.
They're not even rebels because rebellion is a form of participation.
The young today merely seek to sabotage the established order via avoidance, virtue signaling and self-aggrandizing morality plays with obstructive withdrawal and passive aggressive resistance.
The young today constitute a new phenomenon, the avoidant revolutionary.
In their ostentatious absence spells the perpetuation and ascendance of autocracy over democracy.