Democrazy

There’s a clip of an interview with the late, great Fela Kuti, in which he breaks down the word “democracy” into demo, and crazy. Demonstration of craze. It’s a short clip, and a wonderful insight into the mind of one of the greatest musicians Africa has ever gifted the world (alongside Baaba Maal, Toumani Diabaté, and Ali Farka Touré among many others). It is also, on further reflection, an interesting insight into the way the concept of democracy is viewed by a man who was a political activist, human rights campaigner, and was more than once the victim of state brutality and suppression. Kuti railed against the corruption of the Nigerian government, started his own political party, was arrested over 200 times as he called for African unity, and criticised the language used by Western countries such as the USA to describe Africa. From this point of view, it’s clear to see why Fela would see democracy as madness, leading poor men to “cry” as the rich men “mess.”

I wanted to start this post with this insight from a personal icon of mine as it reflects a lot of thoughts I’ve been having recently, in light of the news that I’m sure all of you have no doubt heard by now. BoJo of Etonion V has made the decision to prorogue Parliament, essentially denying MPs the chance to debate or vote on a potential exit agreement for five weeks, before offering a brief window prior to the October 31st deadline. What this means in practical terms is that firstly, this Brexit nightmare is set to roll on even longer, secondly that a General Election is likely this year although it’s still uncertain when, and thirdly that the EU has pretty much run out of patience with the UK. But I’m not here to lay out what any article on the BBC could tell you, because that’s not what’s been bothering me the past few days. Recently I’ve been feeling a worrying sense of apathy at the whole affair, despite being a British citizen residing in Europe who will be personally affected by anything that happens, I find it harder and harder each day to wake up and catch up with all the latest developments and deadlines and defections etc. In short, I just want the whole bloody thing to be over.

(Since I wrote this the UK Supreme Court has ruled the BoJo’s prorogation was in fact unlawful, and MPs have since returned to the House of Commons to continue shouting at each other. However I wrote too much to go and change the rest of this blog, but needless to say the effects of this on the three branches of government as well as the UK constitution are of enormous importance. This may well be the UKSC’s version of Marbury v Madison, and define what exactly the bounds of Parliamentary Sovereignty and the limits of Government power are for generations to come). 

As I learned during A Level Politics classes, apathy is a leading cause of low electoral turnout. Only people who really care will go out and vote, and if a lot of people find themselves reacting to the state of the country with a quiet “meh,” then they’ll busy themselves on Election day watching telly and demolishing a pack of Digestives. Apathy, it was told to us, is a democracy killer. As has been noted on this blog before and in a great many other places before that, democracy is only truly effective with an informed and an engaged electorate. In my Brexit post written just days after the results of the referendum, I tried to state that no matter the outcome it was incumbent on us as people to set aside our differences and work together to achieve the best result given the situation at hand. Looking back it strikes me as a particularly naive sentiment, especially as rhetoric has descended over the past few years into “Remoaners” and pictures of Corbyn with his head photoshopped onto a chicken. I hoped that the results of the referendum would galvanise a new generation of politically engaged and active voters, who shed the apathy of the Brown/Cameron years and took a real interest in the future of their country. But now one question sticks with me more than any other – why bother?

Britain has a long and storied history of democracy, but it’s a story that has been misunderstood by many as an example to the world when it should perhaps serve as more of a cautionary tale. British democracy, as Sir Edward Coke popularised in the Elizabethan era, began with the Magna Carta, a great charter intended to rebalance the scales of power from the Crown to the people. Only it wasn’t the people, it was rich Barons and other landowners, and even then the Crown still retained a vast amount of control. Fast forward four hundred years and the Habeas Corpus Act and Bill of Rights emerged, guaranteeing the right to a fair trial (of sorts), the powers of Parliament, and free elections (not for women of course). The Bill of Rights may seem like an ancient document now, but bear in mind this statute was cited by the Supreme Court as recently as 2016 in the Miller case, when they ruled that the UK could only exit the European Union after Parliament passed a law approving it. Fast forward some more and after the various Parliament acts and some little document called the European Communities Act, we wound up with something that resembled a Frankenstein’s monster of a Constitution – functionally containing all the required elements, but cobbled together and patched up as it grunts and shambles its way through the years.

Now I don’t want to bore you with a breakdown of Constitutional law (for more on that please request a copy of my Bachelor’s Dissertation which I will happily email to you), but instead want to move on to the main crux of this post – as given away by the title. The point I’m trying to make with all this; whether it’s the messy UK, the liberté, égalité, fraternité of France, or the “We the People” of America, is that democracy is not nor has it ever been an exact science. It’s a process of trial and error, stretching back from the Ancient Greeks all the way to the modern day, when panicked voices fear the death of democracy at the hands of BoJo, Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping and many more. As much as I agree with these voices, and join in the worry, I often wonder what exactly it is that they’re hoping for as a change. Are they harking back to some idyllic time in history when democracy was more functional? Or are they arguing for a new system that offers better representation of the people and more accountability for those we elect?

Recently I was visited by one of my oldest friends, who after three years finally made the short hop across the North Sea to visit me in the Netherlands. Me and this friend (it’s Joe) sit on opposite sides of the Brexit vote – I voted remain, he voted leave. Honestly it made no difference to our friendship or our shared love of 70s music and obscure Simpsons references, but that’s besides the point. As we sat sipping an aperitif one evening the conversation turned to this idea of democracy, whether the systems we have are functioning as they should be, and more pressingly what changes would have to happen to ensure that they were. During this conversation I suggested that with the increased power and reach of technology, perhaps one day we would have a system of truly direct democracy where anyone could vote on a bill in a secure manner at the tap of a button on their phone. This suggestion was met with laughter, incredulity, and a stern word from Bianca who reminded me to think of all the old people and those who don’t have access to technology. It was a fair point, and I sheepishly sipped my G&T in acceptance.

But it got me thinking – okay, so we can’t all start using biometric verified systems of voting to replace our current governments, and frankly given what’s happened to date with Trump and Modi et al it may seem a bit strange to suggest handing more power to the people when they seem to constantly forget the words of Uncle Ben and wield it irresponsibly. On the other hand, it’s hard for anyone to say that the way things are is the best they can be, and we should all be content with the gerrymandering, partisan bickering, elitism, and the bending of constitutional rules. So we find ourselves in a bit of a bind – how do we enact change if we don’t know what to change things to? This leads me to a few possibilities, which I’ll try and summarise as briefly as I can. Okay you know I can’t do that, prepare for some waffling.

1. Democracy as a system is fundamentally unworkable

This one might be unpopular, but let me explain lest anyone think I’m advocating for Kim Jong Un to plod over from North Korea and liberate us all from our freedom. Democracy operates on assumptions, as does any system, and the fact is that maybe it’s time we reconsider some of those assumptions in light of the radical changes our world has seen. We are more connected than ever, we can travel easier than ever, we have greater access to information than ever, and the societies we live in now are no longer reflective of documents drafted in 1215, 1789, or 1945. The assumptions made by the drafters of those noble charters are not always tenable in today’s world – just look at America’s battle with its 2nd amendment for a tragic and horrifying reminder of the power of archaic writings.
“But Srikar,” I hear you say, “things are always changing, so when does it stop?” Aha, I say, it doesn’t. We can’t have a fixed conception of what true democracy is as the demos themselves are constantly in flux. We humans are fickle, our tastes and ideals and values are in endless states of change, be it societal views towards race, gender, poverty, or the climate. On top of that lets address the elephant in the room that is technology, and its now widely publicised influence on the 2016 US Election and the Brexit vote. A political strategist twenty years ago may have been able to read economic trends or carry out ethnographic studies to build a model of 2019, but would they have been able to predict Facebook? Youtube? Would they have been able to factor in algorithmic processing that targeted specific individuals with the right messaging to sway their views without the need of archaic methods like leaflets and men on soapboxes?
Likewise those of us around today will be hard pressed to peer twenty years into the future and try and make any accurate predictions for the state of the world. How much will the influence of technology in our daily lives grow as we move further into IoT, AI, smart cities and autonomous vehicles? Where do we draw the line, if ever, in the march towards an automated world? And in this world of surveillance capitalism, where the data you produce is becoming increasingly more valuable than you as a physical human being, what weight will we as humans hold in the democracies of the future? Or more pressingly – will there be space for democracy at all?

2. Democracy will be forced to change

This kind of leads off what came before, but I want to consider a different approach. What if it’s not technology and Teslas and Skynet that leads to a radical shift, what if democracy looks to its roots and the change in fact comes from the people. We’re witnessing a live and very real demonstration of this possibility in Hong Kong, where for three months now millions of citizens have been taking a stand to protect their rights in the face of staunch opposition from the mighty CPC. Protestors in Hong Kong are fighting, literally, for their rights of free assembly, open elections, and freedom of expression.
The protestors in Hong Kong are a very modern demonstration of a tradition that stretches back centuries – the fight for a voice, and the right to be heard. Whether it was Russia in 1917 (although that’s perhaps not the best example), or France and the USA in the 1700s, the people came out in force to resist and ultimately overthrow those they saw as their tyrannical oppressors. The French one got a bit guillotine-y, but let’s not dwell on that. Ultimately change did not just happen incrementally as it did in the UK in these countries, change was forced to happen by people sick of being mistreated and ignored. Some have argued that the Brexit vote was a smaller echo of the same sentiment – a cry of rebellion from those who felt the weight of the EU was suffocating their freedoms, and whether you agree with this notion or not it’s a feeling that any of us would find difficult to resist. So that’s option two, forceful change, whether by violent means or maybe something more diplomatic, but ultimately driven by the very people the system has failed

3. Democracy will never change

To tie this all back to where we started, let’s consider the option that frightens me the most. This is the option where none of the events of the past few years matter, where the protests in Hong Kong are forgotten as soon as they are over and Trump wins the Presidency again. This is apathy – this is when the cumulative effect of all the turmoil across the globe leads to nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders and a “see what’s on the other channels.” In this world we continue to increase our reliance on and our servitude to technology, and in pursuit of short term economic gain, comfort, and fear of failure, we don’t even try to change anything. This is when those who have the system work for them continue to impress their power, and those who are crushed by the system accept their positions out of resignation and exhaustion. Just look at the sheer amount of frustration in Greta Thunberg’s voice as she delivered her speech to the United Nations, the voice of someone who is beyond exasperated at the sheer ineptitude of those in power and their unwillingness to make even the slightest concession to common sense.
It’s not hard to imagine this scenario; with our increasingly short news cycles, quick fix social media dopamine rushes, and daily economic hardships meaning worrying more about how to pay your bills than pondering society’s ills (accidental rhyme). What 25 year old is going to become the next Robespierre when he’s too busy worrying about how he lands a job that’s actually paid, or can scrape together enough money to afford rent in London or Amsterdam? Apathy in today’s world is less of a gradual transition and more of a choice, driven by attrition. We are bombarded with information, expected to know everything happening everywhere as soon as it happens lest we commit a social faux pas and betray our lack of “woke”-ness. It’s hard not to become so utterly infuriated with the whole cycle that the only option is to simply remove yourself from the equation saying “what I don’t know can’t hurt me.” Or, in other words, ignorance is bliss.

I think I’ve prattled on for long enough at this point, but I really felt like I had to get this off my chest. I set out to try and come to some sense of understanding about where all of this is going, and how we as a generation will either submit, change, or passively accept the systems we live in – but as dictated by entropy the longer we exist in this isolated system the more chaotic things become. From Fela Kuti to Boris Johnson, democracy has been a transient idea and not a fixed state of being. It’s an ideal for some and a headache for others, a noble institution or a corrupt quagmire. As time passes the words of Fela Kuti sound less like a random interview with a musician and more like a Nostradamus-like prediction of the world we see today – democracy has indeed become craziness, a crazy demo, a demonstration of craze.

Now here’s some glorious music as a palate cleanser for it all.