"Unpacking the Essential Elements of a Democratic Society: A Celebration of Democracy"

In today’s turbulent world, fear is omnipresent and is particularly prevalent in the modern political discourse.

I am amazed at the number of people convinced that a major conflict, the proverbial Third World War, is just around the corner. The politics of fear is at the core of populism not only in Eastern Germany with the rise of the far right or in other European countries, be it most recently in the Netherlands but across the globe, in South America where the song “Don’t cry for me Argentina” takes on a more ominous meaning and last but not least in the land of the free, home of the brave, the United States of America. 

As Al Gore once said in his book “The Assault on Reason” and more specifically in the aptly named first chapter

“The Politics of Fear”, “under the right circumstances, fear can trigger the temptation to surrender freedom to a demagogue promising strength and security in return ». Interestingly enough, he also mentions a few lines later that the Founders rejected the idea of direct democracy precisely “because of concerns that fear might overwhelm reflective thought”, a point of view that I submit is not absolute as illustrated by the Swiss political system.

 It is not by accident that I mention Al Gore here. I remember vividly the 2000 US election that Al Gore conceded following the decision of the Supreme Court on December 12th 2000, whereby George W. Bush was declared the winner of Florida by an infinitesimal margin of 537 votes, guaranteeing him a victory in the electoral college of 271 to 266. 537 votes represented a margin of 0.009% of the 5.9 million votes cast in Florida. There is no better example to illustrate the importance of voting and the impact every vote can have. Secondly, I also believe that this is the most vivid example of the butterfly effect, where notably bad ballot design (unbelievably named the butterfly ballots) that confused voters in Palm Beach County spoiled 30’000 ballots and consequently led to the victory of George W. Bush. Imagine what would have happened if the Supreme Court had decided in favour of Al Gore (by allowing further recounts). How would Al Gore have handled 9/11 and the aftermath thereof? Would the War on Terror have been initiated, and what about the Iraq War? 537 measly votes had a major impact on world affairs. 

The reaction of the US to 9/11 is today used as a counter-example for the Israeli reaction and war on Hamas following the heinous terrorist attacks on October 7th. Cool heads must prevail, and hasty emotional decisions are to be avoided. Unfortunately, based on the number of civilian deaths in Gaza over the past seven weeks, despite a short-lived cease-fire, it seems that the more extreme views of the Israeli government are not listening to more moderate calls from President Biden. The recent events in the Middle East have rightly focused the attention of the world on what is a tragic conflict where fear, hatred, tribalism and the worst impulses of human nature have been on display going back over a century to the First World War and the British Protectorate of Palestine. The passions unleashed today have reached new levels – provoking both islamophobia and antisemitism. Voicing an opinion as balanced and as nuanced as it may be is a perilous endeavour and there is little if no space left for moderation in this debate. 

I hoped that the Covid pandemic would allow for a more consensus-based form of politics as I naively presumed that the once-in-a-lifetime advent of such a dangerous virus would bring people together from all political views and opinions. I couldn’t have been more wrong as very quickly, the crisis itself and the way to fight the virus became politicised.  Even today, the consequences of this radicalisation of what should have been a uniform and concerted response to a major healthcare crisis continue to have a far-reaching impact where the level of trust in government and vaccines, in particular, has plummeted.

“To be or not to be” became “to wear a mask or not to wear a mask” and somewhat unbelievably, reason lost out once again to fear and to passion and more nefarious underlying motivations.