• sandman@lemmy.ca
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    7 months ago

    Ask the people of El Salvador, and they’ll say having a dictator is better because democracy has demonstrably failed them.

    El Salvador under a dictator actually has less gang violence than Mexico under a democracy.

    Westerners will blind themselves to this reality, though. They always do.

    • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      When dictatorships go badly, they go extremely badly. Far more badly than even a broken representative democracy. The odd of having a sold string of reasonably good dictators are vanishingly small. A good dictator is the best form of government. Good luck maintaining that though.

      • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        When a bourgeois democratic state goes badly, it tears off its liberal mask and reveals the fascism beneath. The capitalist class dispenses with democratic theater and rules by naked dictatorship. Western liberals shouldn’t wonder why fascism is on the rise in the West: it’s because Western monopoly capitalism is increasingly going mask-off. Monthly Review, 2014: The Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism

          • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            Of course we’re told that: it’s a given that the US will call a country it wants to browbeat or regime change “authoritarian,” and corporate media will repeat it.

            The Western concept of “totalitarianism” was constructed by Hannah Arendt, who came from a wealthy family and so unsurprisingly was anticommunist. Her work was financially supported and promoted by the CIA. It’s a bourgeois liberal, intentionally anticommunist construct that lumps fascism and communism in the same bucket.

            Monthly Review, The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited

            U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested in and promoted the “Democratic Left” and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell.