Democracy?

Communism and anarchism are branded idealistic because human nature is egoistic and eager of power, but reading a definition of democracy I can’t but mock its… innocence? What is democracy if not another illusion? I’ll tell you what it is: a fraud. Democracy, as defined conventionally, does not exist in the Western world.

US-model democracy –for, after all, the US is the democracy of democracies isn’t it?– is a system that promises freedom and doesn’t deliver it. The blanket that hides a rancid imperialism with the typical crusade-like religious overtones and fanaticism implied. Fanaticism to combat fanaticism: 9-11 is responded with the massacre of 3,000 civilians in an innocent country, Afghanistan. It is remarkable that direct imposition from the mother of democracies is a necessary condition for the good working of the system. The results can be appreciated in Iraq, and they are self-explanatory. On the other hand, Hamas’ absolute majority in Palestine does not evidence the will of the people, but the result of terrorist pressure… Obviously, before spreading democracy and freedom throughout the world, the US should worry about making their own “democracy” worthy of that name.

Because power abuses are not the mere slips of a few “bad” men; they illustrate the corruption, degeneration and failure of, not just American, but Western democracy (for Europe readily consents and even cooperates). The point is not to blame Americans for this or that (although the promotion of ignorance is influential), but to bring the system down. We cannot allow its universalisation as the definitive form of government, predicted by the propagandists of democracy. It is known that all empires fall. And the empire of democracy is digging its own grave in the Middle East. But let us not remain passive and indifferent while this empire falls and another one takes its place. Let us accelerate its collapse and be able to remember it as the last one.

One of the first steps to let the hypocritical politicians, the populist mass media and the hidden industries and companies that move them in the background know that we are sick of their “democracy” is to refuse to vote. To vote is not only to recognise yesterday’s accepted evil as today’s good, it’s also cooperating with the evil. What does it matter who we vote anyways? Does it change anything? All democratic parties, if only for the fact that they support this false democracy, essentially defend the same injustices.

The solution must not be found within the democratic system. However, the way I see it, straight social revolution cannot succeed in the present because the worker of today, despite the fact that his situation has changed little, is unconscious, kept in a state of hibernation. A social revolution risks the fate of previous ones: to be poisoned by capitalism and become all it seeks to destroy. A fundamental preliminary step is to reject the system within ourselves, with all the consequences. We must liberate our minds, for democratic imperialism, not content with the physical subjugation of other people, also attempts to control its own subjects’ minds. This action alone, the first stone of the building, signifies quite a challenge for a young person of shallow and selfish ambitions, imbued in capitalist culture, like you and I are meant to be. But it can be done. We shall not stand up for a specific party to move conformist masses towards a lie. What we defend above all is individual and global freedom, which essentially go together. Currently an illusion, yes, and quite an exemplary one too, worthy of our attention and efforts. But one that must become reality and that will never be a fraud.

- a Zappatista