The paradox of democracy. Too much democracy enslaves us?

by Davide Gionco
02.05.2022

l Popper's paradox of tolerance
The philosopher Karl Popper (1902-1994) proposed the paradox of tolerance to the attention of his readers in 1945 (book " The open society and its enemies "). According to Popper, a tolerant society, which accepts diversity and freedom of opinion, cannot be overly tolerant of opinions which propose not to accept freedom of opinion.
He cites the case of Hitler, who would not have come to power, silencing all opposition, had he been prevented from publicly expressing his undemocratic and totalitarian political doctrine to the Germans, in the name of the democratic right of freedom of opinion.

We all know the famous statement attributed to Voltaire “ I disagree with what you say, but I would give my life so that you can say it ”, a phrase that was actually written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall , to illustrate Voltaire's thinking.
The paradox posed by Popper actually stands as the only admitted exception to the fundamental principle of freedom of speech, as any "wrong" opinion can always be correct when the facts prove it, since there is the freedom to express critical opinions to realize it and to express alternative views to change decisions. If, on the other hand, the opinion that foresees intolerance towards dissenting opinions is implemented, the possibility of listening to critical judgments and alternative opinions will be lost, as the holders of the only authorized point of view will feel the right and duty to silence any opinion that criticizes and changes prospects.

This is what Karl Popper argued wittily, but in my opinion today we find ourselves faced with another paradox, according to which an excess of democracy in many cases leads us to other forms of conditioning of public opinion, which limit critical thinking and the expression of alternative views.

Western democracies and "statistical censorship"
When strong powers intend to impose their point of view in countries where a democracy is formally in force, they do not need to exercise a strict censorship as is the case in countries where dictatorship is in force. In democratic countries, this is achieved by implementing a disguised form of censorship, which we could define as "statistical censorship".
The method consists in conditioning the media, providing an altered narrative of the reality of the facts, so that the majority of citizens do not have the sufficient tools to express a critical and factual judgment on the decisions of political power.
At the same time, critical views are made difficult to access or presented as not very credible.
This method also naturally provides for a parallel action of conditioning political power, made with the "traditional" methods of corruption or infiltration of institutions with men or women loyal to strong power.

If absolute censorship were to take place, as occurs in normal dictatorships, it would be clear to everyone that one is in a dictatorship. If, on the other hand, the right to speak is formally granted to those who have different opinions, the image of an apparent democracy is presented, so that the alarm bell of the arrival of the dictatorship does not sound in the citizens.
The mechanism of "statistical censorship" is based on the fact that, in order to guarantee control of political power, it is sufficient that there is not a majority of citizens able to vote for an effective change of political power, which should normally happen. if the citizens were properly informed about the decisions taken in the interests of the strong powers and to the detriment of the people.

So for them it is not a problem if 10%, 20% or even 30% of citizens realize that those who govern are making profoundly wrong choices. The important thing is that the absolute majority of citizens who go to vote are not aware of this.
The pulse of the situation is continuously monitored through surveys on the trend of public opinion, so that whoever decides what type of information must be given adjusts the shot, if necessary by suggesting to the political power not to exaggerate with the choices that are unpopular , if the media narrative has not been able to make them sufficiently acceptable.
In this sense we can speak of "statistical censorship", defining it as a set of conditioning actions by the media aimed at ensuring the maintenance of a majority consensus around the political decisions imposed by the strong powers.

The fake political opposition
The first action to take is the creation and maintenance of a fake political opposition.
One must give the impression of the existence of a political alternative, as formally befits any democracy. This is why many information spaces are created in which there are political figures who play the role of the majority and the opposition, speaking of all colors, showing that they have an apparently opposite political vision.
But this only happens on marginal issues.
For example, endless debates are launched on civil rights issues, while on important economic issues, such as those relating to the fight against poverty or the failures of our small and medium-sized enterprises, there are no substantial differences. On these arguments the opposing sides are usually united, depending on the case, by the resigned acceptance of inevitable consequences or by silence on the question, because they have nothing to say.

Any truly alternative political forces, which contested the existing political power, hardly find space in the mainstream media. Or, if they find it, they are relegated to “second-rate” spaces, so that the majority of the population is not informed of their opinions.

Once the figure of the fake opposition has been created, all that remains is to influence the narrative of reading political facts to prevent the majority of the population from contesting the credibility of the main political forces present in the mass media.
The issues must be presented as not dependent on political power or as unavoidable. As Margareth Thatcher said “ There is no alternative “.
For example: poverty increases, but it depends on globalization, we can't do anything about it.
Alternatively, it is said that the solution will be found by voting on the fake opposition. For example: to lower taxes, we vote right. Or: to protect the rights of employees, we vote on the left. When this happens, of course, nothing changes.
The narrative of statistical censorship does not allow us to get out of these simplified schematisms which, in reality, only serve to mask the absence of a real democracy.

Financing of information
To condition the narrative of the media, there are mainly 3 mechanisms used by the strong powers, certainly also national ones, but today above all operating at an international level.

1) If political power has already been acquired, this power can establish the provision of funding to the media, even very large ones, in exchange for their alignment with the required political line. If you give a certain type of information you are funded, if you do not you are left without funding.
At that point, first of all to ensure the profitability of the company and for its managers, publishers, whether public or private, will find a way to motivate journalists to comply with what is required.

The large availability of funding will allow these media to have, for a fee, the presence of famous people (actors, footballers, artists, etc.) and to have the skills of the best professionals to create content that attracts the general public. to which the narrative decided by the political power will then be trimmed.

Therefore, the media remain without funding which, despite carrying out a public service, do not want to align themselves with "governmental" thinking. Few funding means informing few people, which means avoiding the majority of the population from risk of changing their opinion.

2) After all, a way very similar to the previous one is the financing of the media through advertising sales. Most of the advertisers of the main mass media are all either large national companies or multinationals, whose executives are the expression of or are in close relations with the strong powers who have an interest in manipulating the media to pursue their own economic interests.
Anyone who wants to provide information at a certain level will need the funding of advertisers and will therefore have to adapt to the information line requested by them. Penalty the cutting of advertisements and the bankruptcy of the publisher.
Those who do not adapt lose large loans and can at best be satisfied with the small advertising of local businesses. Again, little funding means reaching a small audience and being irrelevant to statistical censorship .

3) Finally, there is a third way through which the strong powers manage to manipulate the media, even in cases where public funding is distributed correctly and where it is not necessary to finance information with advertisements.
This way, of course, can also coexist with the two described above.
This is the targeted corruption of journalists and " opinion makers ", who are paid to support the narrative desired by those in power.
Who are the " opinion makers "? They are those who, on television, on radio, in newspapers and on the internet, present themselves with sufficient authority to be believed for what they say, influencing the opinion of citizens.
They can be journalists, technicians (economists, doctors, etc.), sports or show business personalities. The important thing is that they know how to present themselves in a credible way in the eyes of the majority of citizens, to condition them.

Without wanting to specifically accuse any of the opinion makers currently operating in Italy, we can mention the famous German case of Udo Ulfkotte , a very famous journalist who made opinions on the main televisions in Germany, author of highly successful books.

Shortly before his death in 2017, for reasons that were never cleared up, Udo Ulfkotte revealed: "I have been a journalist for 25 years and I was educated to lie, to betray and not to reveal the truth to the public …"
"With the aim of" leading to a war against Russia, to manipulate public opinion and that is what my colleagues have done and still do, not only in Germany, but practically throughout Europe ".

In the famous " Democratic rebirth plan " of the P2 Masonic Lodge, found in the suitcase of Licio Gelli's daughter, it provided in point 1b):
« With regard to the press (or, better still, journalists), the use of financial instruments cannot, at this stage, be foreseen nominatim. It will be necessary to draw up a list of at least 2 or 3 elements, for each newspaper or periodical so that no one knows about the other. The action must be carried out like wildfire, or, better, in a chain, by no more than 3 or 4 elements who know the environment .. "

Going back a little further, it is only worth remembering how such a young journalist called Benito Mussolini, who in 1914 was director of the Avanti! (socialist newspaper, a party that was against Italy's entry into the Great War), received substantial funding from the French and English secret services to support Italy's entry into the war. Enough money to found the new newspaper Popolo d'Italia from scratch, through which the objective required by the strong powers of the case was pursued, that of dragging Italy into war, with a certain popular and parliamentary consensus.
It is only necessary to remember that this interference cost our country the price of 1'240'000 deaths-

The preponderance method
In the cases mentioned above, the total censorship typical of dictatorship has never occurred, but the method of preponderance has been adopted, which has allowed a certain type of narrative, that confirms the wishes of the strong powers, to prevail over alternative visions and even on the objective narrative of the facts, in order to condition the opinion of the statistical majority of the population.

The preponderance makes it possible to make one narrative prevail over the others not by virtue of its validity, but as a function of other artificial criteria.
The first mechanism is that of " quantity " or " frequency ". If a certain narrative of facts is presented 90% of the time, attributing to alternative views only 10% of the time, the result will be the adhesion of at least 60-70% of the population to the first version, despite the greater credibility of the alternative opinion.
A variant of this criterion is to dedicate information spaces with a large audience (for example in prime time) to the narration that must prevail, relegating alternative narratives to hours with little public. Same time made available (the democratic appearance is saved), but very different number of recipients.

The second mechanism is to present the different narratives together in a comparison, for example in talk shows, but creating situations in which the narration of the strong powers has the support of 4-5 people presented as authoritative, against only one who thinks differently. The basic message that will pass is that the opinion of only the people is a minority, so the majority of citizens will have to consider it reasonable to side with the majority of the opinion leaders represented on that talk show.

The third mechanism is to present opinion-makers in favor of the narrative to be imposed as hyper-qualified, while presenting objectively unskilled and non-credible people in support of the alternative vision.

Democracy or dictatorship?
In all these cases we cannot technically speak of censorship, as in the days of fascism, so no one will be able to criticize those publishers and journalists for operating outside democracy.
If we want, from the formal point of view there is no violation of art. 21 of the Constitution, which mentions “ Everyone has the right to freely express their thoughts by word, writing and any other means of dissemination. The press cannot be subject to authorization or censorship … "

At the same time we cannot say that we are in an accomplished democracy, because beyond the apparent absence of censorship, the information system is clearly artificially controlled not to inform the people ( demos ), so that they can know the reality and make adequate decisions. of self-government ( democracy ), but to hide reality from the people, so that they cannot take the necessary self-government decisions with good reason. These decisions, of course, are instead taken by those who have invested in the control actions of the media, to certainly make a greater profit. At the expense of the unwitting people, of course.

The paradoxical situation is that democracies seem to be defenseless against these mechanisms of conditioning public opinion.
Conversely, in systems with authoritarian government, the existence of political control over the media generally succeeds in preventing other strong powers from exercising their influence in the media.
Readers will think: what have we gained? In one case, information is conditioned by external strong powers, while in the other by dictatorial power. Having to choose, we want democracy with limited information, which at least prevents us from suffering the abuses and violence typical of a dictatorship.

Obviously it would be the right choice, if we were faced with a fierce dictatorship that economically impoverishes the country. Think, for example, of the classic African dictatorships, in which the dictator enriches himself and his family, letting the external strong powers take over the wealth of the country.
But if the choice were between a democratic-authoritarian regime, but not excessively violent and which protects the economic interests of the country (as could be that of Gaddafi in Libya) and a weak democracy (for example many states of Central America), in to which political decisions and the media are subservient to the interests of external strong powers?
In this case what would be the best choice?
The real question to ask is: how can we defend the media of the democracies from the conditioning of the strong powers?

The key issue: the excessive liberalization of capital
At the base of the conditioning mechanisms, whether they are aimed at conditioning decision-makers (politicians), or aimed at implementing the methods of statistical censorship to influence public opinion, there is always the availability of large capital, which the strong powers can invest. to then make a greater profit.
If economic investments influence political decisions of national interest and if they alter the narrative of the media, to prevent the people from exercising their democratic right of judgment of the rulers, democracies are emptied of their foundation.

For this reason it would be very appropriate to avoid excessive concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few, not because social equality must necessarily be pursued out of hatred against the rich, but because certain types of corruption "on a national scale" are only possible who has large capital to invest in this regard.

So the best way to prevent the media narrative from being subordinated to economic interests is first of all to avoid that there is a concentration of economic wealth that is capable of heavily affecting the budgets of most media or media. to be able to bribe dozens and dozens of journalists or the rulers and officials of a country.
To avoid these risks, at a national level it may be sufficient to fiscally counteract the excessive accumulation of wealth by individuals or companies. Nothing to do with the classic "patrimonial" that affects the first and second homes. The problem is not whether a person earns 200 thousand euros a year or has 2 or 3 villas by the sea or if an entrepreneur owns industrial plants for 10 million euros to be able to produce. The problem is that we must avoid having subjects, as for example the P2 Masonic lodge intended to do, capable of influencing the media thanks to the huge availability of capital.

As regards the risk, perhaps even more serious, of influences coming from strong powers operating at an international level, the only way to limit them is to put strict controls on the flows of capital from abroad.
According to the current treaties of the European Union and of accession to the WTO (the organization of world free trade), the free movement of capital is one of the fundamental requirements that are required of a democratic state. If a state does not liberalize the movement of capital, it is not considered democratic by the international community of democratic states.

In reality it is precisely this “excess of democracy” in the financial field that renders democracies defenseless in the face of the influence of the strong powers on the media. If we really want to have an effective democracy, in which the people are correctly informed to judge the decisions that are taken by the political power, we must have the courage to escape the constraints of international treaties that prevent us from controlling and limiting the flows of capital from the abroad.
After that we must have the courage to introduce a strong taxation that prevents excessive accumulations of wealth in Italy, to avoid that they represent a risk for our democracy.

To further defend freedom of information, it is also necessary not to consider companies operating in the information sector as normal companies. It is essential to ensure, with specific anti-trust laws, that ownership concentrations are carried out in the sector, both in the publishing field and in the field of advertising sales.
Once this is done, we will also be able to study organizations guaranteeing information pluralism, which will only be able to function if the economic pressures on the media cease.

In reality, it is not too much democracy that hurts freedom of information, but the implementation of a wrong model of democracy, which places economic interests (the circulation of capital) before safeguarding democracy itself.

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The article The paradox of democracy. Too much democracy enslaves us? comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/161739-2/ on Mon, 02 May 2022 20:45:43 +0000.