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India's Battle to Control the Democracy Narrative

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Re: India's Battle to Control the Democracy Narrative

#91

Post by tim333 »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #10
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't help that the nature of "democracy" is itself endlessly contested. E.g. both supporters and critics of the way Romanian courts have treated Georgescu seem to claim they are "defending democracy". There are important advantages to a social contract which is simple and unambiguous.

I am pretty shocked at that Romanian court ruling though. It seems like the entire questioning of the election outcomes was motivated by EU leadership not liking the result of democracy. The decision to not stop at redoing the election but to then ban the candidate seems motivated by the fact that opinion polls show him to still be winning even today despite the alleged “election interference”, months after he won th…

I'm not shocked although it's messy. From the technical point of view elections have rules and if candidates break the rules it seems ok to block them.

At another level, Russia is kind of waging war on Europe to try to engineer a fascist takeover. Some of us don't like that - remember Hitler was democratically elected and Putin is merrily killing thousands of innocents in his imperial quest.

There is other iffy stuff:

> ... evidence about a plot organised by former presidential candidate Călin Georgescu and a group of former French Foreign Legion fighters ... were planning to "infiltrate peaceful protests and trigger chaos through violent actions"

>Police found large amounts of lethal weapons, ammunition, and cash https://www.romania-insider.com/romania-prosecutors-georgesc...

>Russian Military Intelligence Behind Attempted Coup in Romania: The Shadowy Network Supporting Pro-Russian Candidate Călin Georgescu https://lansinginstitute.org/2025/03/10/russian-military-int...

etc. 6 charged with treason. I'm not sure how proven it is but Russian military coups are bad and all that.

Re: India's Battle to Control the Democracy Narrative

#92

Post by orwin »

rayiner wrote: post #77
mmooss wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the old argument of dicators, going back to the Cold War and before. Like much propaganda, it tries to turn around the enemy's own arguments to disrupt and disconcert - the enemy cares about cultures and freedom, so brutal dictators should be 'free' to do what their 'culture' demands - I don't think their victims see it that way. Democracy, with rights, has prospered and been embraced across cultures and arou…

I have no idea what “dictators” you’re talking about. Both my argument and Hamid’s comes from the experiences with fledgling democracies in the Muslim world, where the model of liberal democracy has been tried and failed repeatedly. What does “democracy, with rights” even mean? Who decides what the “rights” are? In Asia, “democracy, with rights” exists primarily in Japan and South Korea, where it was imposed by the U…

It means than everyone is equal in front of the law. If one can be prosecuted for doing X, then everyone should.

If a majority vote to exclude a minority from owning businesses (then property, then anything), it isn't a liberal democracy.

Re: India's Battle to Control the Democracy Narrative

#93

Post by tines »

profsummergig wrote: post #22

I once took a deep dive into the methodology of one of the custodians of "democracy rankings". It is one of the 2 most popular custodians. Their methodology for each country was different. For India their methodology was to survey 36 important people in the country. They did not disclose who these people were. The survey asked them to share whether democracy was "backsliding" or whether it was becoming stronger, than…

> I once took a deep dive into the methodology of one of the custodians of "democracy rankings". It is one of the 2 most popular custodians.

Why not just say which it is? Are you trying to give your post a veneer of unbiased-ness while retaining plausible deniability?

Re: India's Battle to Control the Democracy Narrative

#94

Post by boruto »

mmooss wrote: post #28
rayiner wrote: post #7

Modi has the highest approval rating, according to western pollsters, of any leader in the world. India’s elections are free and fair. That’s all democracy requires. Democracy doesn’t mean western democracy or liberal democracy. Shadi Hamid has done excellent work on this issue: https://www.brookings.edu/books/the-problem-of-democracy-ame... ; see also https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/18/the-problem-of...

> India’s elections are free and fair. Are they, when people opposing one candidate are jailed? > That’s all democracy requires. That is certainly false. Democracy isn't mob rule, or as the saying go, it's not two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. Democracy is about self-determination for each person; if people in minority don't have self-determination, it's not democracy at all.

> Are they, when people opposing one candidate are jailed?

Actually a great filter to know who knows what they are talking about.

Re: India's Battle to Control the Democracy Narrative

#95

Post by consteval »

tim333 wrote: post #89
mrkstu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the police visiting grannies based on their Facebook posts, I’d say the UK should be right there next to the US.

I not sure allowing / banning hate speech is that central to democracy. The ones who get jailed are like "inciting racial hatred with Facebook posts in which he advocated an attack on a hotel in Leeds as part of the violent public disorder..." If it was the police having a go for criticizing the government I'd say it was undemocratic, but for inciting violence it seems ok. If I go on social media where you are trying…

I concur. The US has taken an “anything goes” approach to speech and clearly it hasn’t helped us. In fact, it’s only allowed disinformation to spread.

I mean, Jan 6th is directly the result of an “all speech is equal” approach. Intuitively we know this isn’t how speech works - the town dumbass is probably spewing BS, and the pharmacist might have a point. But when we distill it down to all the same thing and then throw in the immediate and vast nature of the internet, things get hairy.

It’s tough because, of course, nobody wants to let someone else decide who is right and who is wrong. But someone is actually right, and letting everyone decide for themselves isn’t currently working.

Re: India's Battle to Control the Democracy Narrative

#96

Post by profsummergig »

tines wrote: post #93
profsummergig wrote: post #22

I once took a deep dive into the methodology of one of the custodians of "democracy rankings". It is one of the 2 most popular custodians. Their methodology for each country was different. For India their methodology was to survey 36 important people in the country. They did not disclose who these people were. The survey asked them to share whether democracy was "backsliding" or whether it was becoming stronger, than…

> I once took a deep dive into the methodology of one of the custodians of "democracy rankings". It is one of the 2 most popular custodians. Why not just say which it is? Are you trying to give your post a veneer of unbiased-ness while retaining plausible deniability?

It was one of the two: VDem, or Freedom House.

I don't remember with 100% surety which one it was. I think it was VDem.

The reason I called it a "deep dive" is because it took a huge amount of digging in their publications to find the specifics of the methodology.

Re: India's Battle to Control the Democracy Narrative

#97

Post by mrguyorama »

mmooss wrote: post #25
8note wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wouldnt describe it as rapid, but there certainly are examples of covil rights declines, mostly via court decisions. eg. overturning roe v wade, and allowing gerrymandering based on race the most recent wpuld be executive orders stripping visas and greencards based on protected speech

Civil rights are declining for immigrants, the press, speech - just because a law hasn't been passed doesn't mean rights haven't changed. The idea that it all depends on law is naive or disingenuous.

The entire premise of the Trump admin is that the President has enough control and power to significantly alter the functioning of the US government with no new laws being passed

Re: India's Battle to Control the Democracy Narrative

#98

Post by ouilala »

rayiner wrote: post #88
rectang wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the obvious answer is that rights, along with legislative procedures, etc, get codified in a constitution which takes a supermajority to amend. In a perfect world that constitution is approved at a constitutional convention by a supermajority of the citizenry acting through their representatives; in practice it arrives via various historical means, including outside imposition. Despite the "irreconcilable boots…

Who decides what those “rights” are? You need a source for those rules that is respected by the governed as legitimately superseding the popular will. Constitutional democracy exists in America, for example, because Americans had shared english political norms stretching back to the Magna Carta. They could invoke the “god-given rights of Englishmen” and that’s would have purchase among the electorate. What equivalent…

[flagged]

Re: India's Battle to Control the Democracy Narrative

#99

Post by ouilala »

rayiner wrote: post #88
rectang wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the obvious answer is that rights, along with legislative procedures, etc, get codified in a constitution which takes a supermajority to amend. In a perfect world that constitution is approved at a constitutional convention by a supermajority of the citizenry acting through their representatives; in practice it arrives via various historical means, including outside imposition. Despite the "irreconcilable boots…

Who decides what those “rights” are? You need a source for those rules that is respected by the governed as legitimately superseding the popular will. Constitutional democracy exists in America, for example, because Americans had shared english political norms stretching back to the Magna Carta. They could invoke the “god-given rights of Englishmen” and that’s would have purchase among the electorate. What equivalent…

[flagged]

Re: India's Battle to Control the Democracy Narrative

#100

Post by mmooss »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #82
mmooss wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one seems to know, exactly. The problem is that we've made this intellectual laziness acceptable. Nobody knows exactly? We have pretty good ideas; we know the difference between legitimate media and propaganda; we just need to encode that in English in specific rules. And before that, we need to get the people who benefit from propaganda, and therefore defend it, out of power. Look at the widespread, and effecti…

>we just need to encode that in English in specific rules. Well, I encourage you to lead the way, fight this intellectual laziness, and propose specific rules. I suspect that you will find the task more difficult than you thought. Whatever rules you propose will be adversarially interpreted by your political opponents, and by actual propagandists. Ideally, the rules should also be simple enough for any voter to under…

So you're going to do nothing and mock everyone else - unfortunately, that's become the norm, and that was my point.
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