2 - Political Theory: Deliberative, Agonistic and Dialogic Democracy

Summary

To recap the look of the political landscape that fake news, the new conspiracism and post-truth attitudes have helped create since 2016: The flight from liberal democracy spread out from the unexpected results of the 2016 American presidential elections that brought in a reactionary fake populism. The right politicizes basic science on sanitary measures for the pandemic and officially denies climate change. Culture wars on race, immigration, women’s reproductive rights, universal health care and globalism centered the 2016 and 2020 campaigns by promising to improve the lives of those who have been forgotten and looked down upon. Once in power, the first achievement was not to revive the coal industry as promised but to lower taxes for the most well-off. The regime quickly showed itself to be open to white supremacy on numerous occasions and eventually signaled the approval of militias with paramilitary training to position the insurrection. Following the 2021 change in government, the strategy follows the accusation that the election was fraudulent and organizes voter suppression and purge of non-believers from electoral districts at the state levels. While more than a hundred election deniers won lower level positions in 2022, only a handful of the most belligerent politicians from the hard right won reelection to the house. It is widely assumed by democrats this could be a way to manipulate the electoral college should the right lose the next presidential election. Accelerating the culture wars into polemics against cancel culture and wokism, the overall attitude is carried forward and made even more anti-illegal alien, anti-refugee, anti #metoo, DACA, LGBTI, Black Lives Matter and against many other vulnerable groups. The fake populist push against the fragility of democracy is built from a steady stretching out of liberal democratic principles (separation of powers, rule of law, fair elections, a free press) that resembles the new despotism without the military support but also with a freezing out of democratically preferred legitimation operations through deliberation.

Lying about voter fraud since the 2020 election, ensuing state voter suppression laws, an armed insurgence and the obstructionist strategies that gridlock the US Congress press the democratic regime to its limits.