The most obvious threat comes from within democracy, from among the supporters of democracy, namely the existence of a degenerative form of democracy that is promoted by those who give voice to democracy.
By
YUDI LATIF
·5 minutes read
Kompas/Wisnu Widiantoro
Six suspects from the Muslim Cyber Army (MCA) are shown to journalists during a press conference on the propagator of online hoaxes and hate speech at the National Police Criminal Investigation Department’s (Bareskrim) cybercrime unit in Jakarta on Wednesday (28/2). The police are investigating the network and calling on other perpetrators to surrender.
The arrests of those who spread hoaxes containing hate speech and politically provocative issues reveal the hidden dangers in a democracy. The threats to democracy do not merely come from established political ideologies such as communism or khilafahisme that systematically reject democratic ideals. The most obvious threat comes from within democracy, from among the supporters of democracy, namely the existence of a degenerative (decadent) form of democracy that is promoted by those who give voice to democracy in ways that contradict democratic principles.
The most prominent phenomenon of decadent democracy that plagues the world today is "populism". As Jan-Werner Mueller (2017) describes, populism is a political concept that provokes popular support with anti-elite rhetoric through the exclusive and discriminatory manipulation of identity politics.
In its tendency towards exclusivism, populist actors claim themselves to be the true (genuine) representatives of the people. As this “authentic representation”, they define themselves as moral guardians while pointing a finger at their political opponents as immoral. By positioning the people as a source of purity and moral virtue, political opponents who have been accused of being immoral are deemed not of the people – foreign parties that must be removed.
Because democracy requires a plurality of citizenship, and freedom and equality amid differences, the tendency of populism to focus on singularity, homogenization and authenticity poses a serious threat to the survival of democracy. By stressing singularity, populists not only encourage polarization and hostility based on differences in identity, but also label their political opponents as "enemies of the people".
Populist actors not only divide the people with provocative issues and hate speeches during their campaigns, but can also perpetuate conflict and divisiveness after gaining power. A populist government tends to perpetuate identity politics to conceal the weakness of its performance, develop policies that are different from the previous regime, and employ "mass clientelism" – using the bureaucracy and budget to prioritize the interests of their client-supporters.
The awakening of populism does not emerge from a vacuum. Exclusive identity politics becomes widespread as a backlash against the defects of globalization and liberal democracy. Globalization and the piggybacking free market penetration divides the world into "winners" and "losers", both internationally and intranationally. Starting from the centers of international capitalism, the currents of globalization can change course and become reverse globalization. With the liberalization of global trade and investment, markets grow so freely and thereby undermine the ability of a nation-state and its welfare systems to protect their way of life (Hobsbawm, 2007: 4). This is the condition that raises social inequality in different parts of the world.
Political costs
As globalization brings about social inequality, it incurs political costs in a liberal democracy, which conducts fair and free elections based on majority rule. Due to the high political costs, the leadership selection process places more emphasis on financial capital rather than social and moral capital. The dependence of democracy on such “investors” increasingly widens the social gap.
Moreover, when financial capital carries more weight than social-moral capital, politics as manipulation become sophisticated, but politics as ethics declines. In a healthy public life, there are many things that money cannot buy. However, in a capital-intensive democracy with a decline in ethical rationale, almost everything becomes value for money.
When money becomes the master while its distribution remains uneven, groups that feel economically and socially marginalized tend to develop a defense mechanism by consolidating the tribal forces of fundamentalism, ethnocentrism and thuggery. This widespread tribal sentiment is exploited by the opportunistic political elite to expand it as inflammatory populism.
The lure of populist campaigns is easier spread in a society with a fragile ethical foundation. In a weak ethical democracy, the laws swim in the sea of pirates; so the surplus of the laws does not prevent citizens from developing manipulative actions, spreading lies and hatred.
Populism along with the accompanying hoax industry is also growing rapidly in the context of a society with shallow logic and scientific reasoning. A democratic culture assumes the existence of empathy and debate; namely the ability to understand and put oneself in others’s situations, and the ability to express one’s mind precisely, rationally and measurably. The skills of empathy and debate can be generated by strong literacy (Lerner, 1958).
Kompas/Wawan H Prabowo
Yudi Latif
Without adequate scientific reasoning, the content of hoaxes are consumed and disseminated without either the process or capacity for verification. By further increasing formal prerequisites rather than deepening the skills of scientific reasoning, a number of lecturers and teachers have become a miserable part of the hoax supply chain. Many people in the garb of pandita (priests) "sell" sacred verses at low prices, glorify God\'s name with disinformation and verbal abuse, and deceive the public with engineered images and data.
Populism in no way present solutions to the problems it criticizes, but is simply a reactive-manipulative response to problems that creates more problems. Our democratic crisis can only be overcome by restoring fair, ethical and rational politics in this nation and state that is founded on the principles of Pancasila.
YUDI LATIF, Chairman, Presidential Working Unit on the Implementation of Pancasila (UKP-PIP)
