Risk and Extortion LXVI: The End of Democracy

Democracy manages the masses, while oligarchy manages outcomes.

This is blasphemy. How dare someone speak like this? Democracy is a sacred good; wrenched from the aristocrats by “the people”, either through force, through bribery, or through persuasion. It is the foundation of European enlightenment and civilization, forged by human nature in the freedom of individual conviction.  Free to pursue happiness according to his own will, democracy as become the core of the genus of modern European man, to be exported across the rest of the world by means of seduction, persuasion or force.

The idea that one can bomb nations into accepting “Democracy” was at the heart of many wars: the Vietnam War, the Second Gulf War, Lybia, Syria and more recently Gaza and Iran. It is certainly the most expensive option compared to persuasion and seduction. Persuasion can be done through extortion or through bribery. The former is cheaper but with a higher risk. Seduction is the strategy of weaklings and cowards, such as the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte alongside leaders of European states, prostrating themselves before Trump, who himself is a coward and a weakling, prostrating himself before the likes of Netanyahu, Putin and Kim Jong Un.

I am ashamed to be a European and having to watch how our elected leaders behave like sycophants around a stupid, sick and disgusting old man such as Donald Trump. I am equally ashamed whenever a European leader tries to justify that genocide is a price worth paying for “Israel’s right to exist”. By trying to criminalize peaceful protests against genocide, by declaring pro-Palestinian activism as terrorism, they also reveal what they are afraid of: their own people. They are afraid of democracy and just like Trump, Putin and Netanyahu, they rather destroy democracy than face the consequences of their own actions.

In Israel, Netanyahu is in trouble because of fraud (not because of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide). In order to avoid prison, he has tried to destroy the judicial independence, which lead to mass protests. Allowing the attack by Hamas to take place (Mossad had been given exact intelligence on this by their loyal friends in Egypt), Netanyahu then had a free licence to use genocide as a means to postpone the investigations that might lead to his incarceration. But this proved to be not enough. Israeli “democracy” cannot sustain engaging in genocide without the help of its western allies. They need to continuously justify, legitimate and consent to it.  This not only brings those states in direct conflict with international law (as genocide is still a violation of international law), but also with democracy itself. This is because normal people do not want to be made co-responsible for genocide. In school, we learned that it is bad to kill other people because of their race, ethnicity or religion. Through culture industries, we learned to sympathize with the underdogs and to interpret the abuse of power as weakness and cowardice. Suddenly, everything has been turned upside down because Israel has a right to defend itself at all costs, just as Netanyahu has the right to try to stay out of prison at all costs.

The dismantling of democracy in the USA is a similar story. In order to stay out of prison, Trump supported by the Republican Party, had to ensure that the Supreme Court had a vast majority of right-wing extremists who are easily corrupted and bribed-. This was the final icing on the cake as the entire political system in the USA had already been corrupted by voter suppression and gerrymandering and above all by bribery and extortion. Netanyahu and Trump are bound by fate and AIPAC lent a helping hand. By electing Trump, AIPAC could then also ensure that Netanyahu remained in power in Israel, which in turn safeguarded the financial interests of billionaires (many funnelling their political influence via AIPAC) for whom genocide, militarism, securitization and fear are extremely profitable businesses.

Let me be clear: AIPAC is not a Jewish lobby. It is a Zionist lobby. Zionism is not a Jewish ideology, it is a European one. Those who funnel their money through AIPAC are the same as those who funnel their money through the federalist society. They do not care about race, ethnicity or religion. They care about accumulating wealth through capital and the (forced) labour of others. It is completely irrelevant if Zionists are Jewish, Christian, Atheist or – as is the case with Egypt – Muslim. Capital does not care about this. Ethnicity is merely a lubricant to extract loyalty from the lower ranks. It is cheaper than bribing them and easier than extorting them.

While we are waving our flags and proudly wearing the colours of our nations, singing the hymns and chanting “death to our enemies”, the billionaires are using their wealth to ensure we keep looking the other way. Ultimately, they want to pay us less by forcing us to work harder. Ultimately, they want us to sacrifice our lives for their interests. They beat the drums of fear to extract more from us to prop up defence spending, knowing full well that an arms race is indefinite. The language of risk is the means of extortion.

By threatening us that we may lose our jobs, our scholarships, our freedom of movement or even our lives, unless we give up our freedoms to think, to express ourselves and to listen to logic and reason, they are exposing the emptiness of democracy; that is what feeds their neurosis. They know that democracy is a lie and by desperately trying to prevent that we will find out, they are actually accelerating the demolition of the veneer of democracy, exposing its vacuity.

Oligarchy not Democracy determines the outcomes. That is why electoral promises are never kept. And when they are being executed, it is always at a price that had not been mentioned before. For example Trump promised to remigrate “illegal immigrants”, it was operationalized with massively extending the resources and impunity of ICE, which operates in exactly the same way as the Gestapo and the Stasi. The price however is not only freedom, but also the absence of sufficient low-waged labour power. Thus, prisons have to be filled with slave labour, which can only be secured by excessive force, turning prisons into concentration camps.

The Gaza strip has often been described as one open concentration camp. That is no longer accurate. It must now be compared to an extermination camp. In the Third Reich, the first concentration camp (Dachau) was opened in 1933, the first extermination camp (Chelmno in Poland) was opened in 1941. The transformation has historical precedents. They are never outside of the logic of capital however. Big firms such as IG Farben, BMW, Siemens, andKrupp all benefited from the forced labour organized through concentration camps. In the USA, currently over 800,000 inmates are deployed in forced labour, against very low wages or nothing at all. In the USA constitution, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime, creating a legal loophole for forced labor.

We cannot understand why western elites are so desperate to defend the indefensible without looking at the relationship between risk and extortion. Security is big business and it enables the persistence of forced labour and slavery not only globally which includes their own back yards. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are merely forms of securitization on steroids. In order to succeed, people have to be seduced, bribed or forced to comply.

Seduction: It is easy to seduce nationalists and fascists, as they actually desire the kind of barbarism that genocide and ethnic cleansing require without causing sleepness nights and feelings of guilt. Nationalism is an ideology that makes people do the stupidest of things against their own interests. Those who have really swallowed the red pill of nationalism whole – not those who are prepared to die for their country but those who expect others to die for their country – believe that they are heroes without sacrificing anything. They are the sycophants and admirers of kakistocrats.

Bribery: It is well documented that being a successful politician also leads to an increase in personal wealth. This is less related to the salary, but more related to the social capital of being an elected member of parliament and – even more so – holding a public office within a government. If one sings from the correct hymn sheet, one will not only increase one’s celebrity status but also become a reliable and trusted member of executive boards, lobby forms, consultancy firms, quangos and other para-governmental enterprises. This is not even referred to as bribery, because it is deemed completely legal. Paying judges to rule in your favour is of course illegal, but as we have seen in with the United States Supreme Court, judges are easily bought legally, through personal gifts and other perks. News media are also easily bought. Not only do owners and boards of directors have the ability to intervene directly and indirectly in how news stories are being framed, they can also enforce compliance through promotions, demotions, hiring and firing. The example of the BBC is living proof that even public broadcasters that do not rely on advertising income are easily corrupted and persuaded to abandon journalistic integrity.

Extortion and forced compliance: The use of threats is the last resort, because it carries the highest risk. However, there is ample evidence to suggest that this means of “persuasion” is becoming more prevalent. The Epstein-files is one major example of this. The prohibition of its release by the Trump regime strongly suggests that there are interests at play that go well beyond the question of whether Donald Trump has had sexualized encounters with underage girls.  Evidence of this already existed outside of the Epstein-connection as Trump himself had already publicly boasted about going backstage on teenage pageants to “inspect” the girls, before running for president. Honey traps are a great way to comply dirty old men to play along. Other forms of extortion, such as public threats made against members of the ICC or Francesca Albanese by the Trump Regime, are more economic in nature. The remarkable proscription of Palestine Action as a Terrorist Organization by the UK government is a form of legal extortion to stop direct action to prevent genocide. The harsh police tactics and barely legal persecutions of pro-Palestine activists in Germany are an example of the deployment of state-violence as a form of extortion. All these examples show that those who still believe that democracy exists have lulled themselves into a false sense of security. Sooner rather than later, however, they too will wake up in a dictatorship.