"The West and democracies must look at the U.S. primaries as the beginning of an extraordinary and spectacular showdown between populism and democracy that concerns each of us." (M. Molinari, La Repubblica) (M. Molinari, La Repubblica)
In the run-up to the 2024 U.S. elections, there are increasing alarms from left-wing politicians and pundits about the risks to democracy should Trump succeed. What these influential thinkers fear is that the American people, as they did in 2016, may elect a president whom they consider not merely an adversary but a sworn enemy, as the bearer of populist and nationalist thought and an avowed opponent of globalist and wokeist.ideology.
Leaving aside the question of the controversial figure of the Republican businessman and billionaire, and his often questionable and sometimes difficult to defend initiatives, the interesting aspect of these controversies lies in the absolute dissonance between what is being denounced and the reality of the facts. In the four years of Trump's presidency, no authoritarian or otherwise constitutionally contrary reforms have been proposed, nor have the procedural and institutional rules that preside over U.S. democracy ever been challenged. In other words, no 'attack' on democracy has been launched.
What is emphatically presented by progressives as a danger to democracy should actually be understood as the risk that an opponent of theirs may prevail, as is physiological in a system governed by free elections. On closer inspection, an aberrant assumption, which nevertheless we have been seeing revived for years whenever foreign figures hostile to those globalist powers of which the left is the avowed guarantor appear in some electoral round. It happened for Le Pen in France, for Orban in Hungary, and of course for Giorgia Meloni in our country, and the script is always the same: if they win, it means that the people have voted badly, that they are neither mature nor culturally prepared to exercise their right to vote properly.
To this increasingly pronounced and now ubiquitous orientation throughout the Italian and international mainstream press, American philosopher Jason Brennan provided a theoretical basis and cultural dignity in his 2016 book "Against Democracy." The Italian version of the book was published in 2018, thus in the midst of the traumatic period that had followed the annus horribilis of the globalist elites (success of the Brexitreferendum and election of Trump), characterized by angry and classist reactions against the people "who do not know how to vote" and the sovereignist leaders "who endanger democracy."
Left-wing intellectuals were busy at that stage scoffing at the ignorance of British farmers or the primordial illiteracy of the rednecks of deepest America, to which they contrasted the wisdom and ability of the affluent and metropolitan classes to choose the most enlightened candidates dedicated to the common good, i.e., the progressive ones. redneck dell’America più profonda, cui contrapponevano la saggezza e la capacità dei ceti abbienti e metropolitani di scegliere i candidati più illuminati e dediti al bene comune, cioè quelli progressisti.
Hence the emergence of proposals that are only apparently provocative, such as that of the "license to vote," which arose from the profound and long-suffering thinking of authentic gurus of the Italian left (including Michele Serra and Corrado Augias), who identified it as a necessary tool for limiting the electorate to the competent and knowledgeable, thereby zeroing in on the risks of sovereignist governments or in any case those hostile to supranational powers, the European Union in primis. in primis.
On the other hand, if there is a constant in the thinking in the Italian progressive world of the last 30 years, it is the very low trust in the electorate and in Italian citizens in general, which not by chance has led it several times to propose and support technical governments, that is, formed by people outside politics and therefore removed from democratic judgment and control. From Amato to Ciampi, from Monti to Draghi of 2021, the left has always looked with extreme favor on this type of executive, precisely because of their distance from the needs and expectations of the citizens, and their commitment to the implementation of programs mostly dictated or even prepared in Brussels, and generally conflicting with national interests.
The basic idea of the progressive media-political class is that the major strategic choices, starting with economic-social-environmental ones, but secondarily also those pertaining to so-called civil rights, should be the exclusive prerogative of an elite of technocrats, capable of transcending the immediate interests of the people in order to project themselves on long-term objectives, aimed at the welfare of the entire planet. And in this sense, the institutional architecture of the European Union largely meets this need, with a Parliament that has very little power of initiative and is basically destined to ratify the decisions of the Commission, a decision-making body made up of politicians and bureaucrats appointed by governments and in no way accountable to the people.
But, of course, while even the Brussels model satisfies the elitist aspirations of the progressive world, the same cannot be said of national systems of government, still tied to the anachronistic ritual of the popular vote. And so the proposals of scholars like Brennan come in very handy, especially where they anchor themselves in seemingly common-sense considerations: "If we refuse to tolerate a medical practice or a plumber's job lacking knowledge and expertise, we should treat voting unknowingly by the same standard." (The implication, of course, is that only left-wing voters vote consciously.)Se ci rifiutiamo di tollerare una pratica medica o il lavoro dell’idraulico privi di conoscenza e competenza, dovremmo trattare con lo stesso metro il votare inconsapevolmente”. (Il sottinteso, ovviamente, è che a votare consapevolmente siano solo gli elettori di sinistra).
The real risks to democracy, in fact, arise precisely when intellectuals, real or alleged, advance ideas such as making the right to vote conditional on examinations to ascertain cultural preparedness, at least to the extent that these suggestions are able to spread the deleterious idea that a country's political choices are matters too serious to be entrusted to citizens.
Ultimately, as he identifies the voting public as the worst danger to democracy, the entire recent ideological drift of the Wokeist brand, not coincidentally born in the United States and then overflowing into Europe, emerges forcefully in progressive discourse. Intolerance for the theses of opponents, the Manichean belief that they are engaged in a mortal struggle against the evil of nationalisms and populisms, the moral delegitimization of anyone who questions the new dogmas (from the subtraction of sovereignty from individual countries to anthropogenic climate change, from health totalitarianism to gender education in schools), constitute as many theoretical pillars of the left, which is increasingly in tune with the declared goals of the financial elites that concentrate the levers of real power in their hands. And since these goals do not seem very promising or desirable to the vast majority of Western citizens, they inevitably end up pouring their electoral support to those political forces that present themselves as alternatives to the system. èlite finanziarie che concentrano nelle proprie mani le leve del potere reale. E giacché questi obiettivi non sembrano molto promettenti né auspicabili per la stragrande maggioranza dei cittadini occidentali, questi finiscono inevitabilmente per riversare i propri consensi elettorali a quelle forze politiche che si presentano come alternative al sistema.
Hence results like that of 2016, when, despite meticulous media demonization and the open hostility of the media and political establishment, Trump beat the heavily favored Hillary Clinton, or even 2020, when he narrowly lost to Biden, garnering more than 74 million votes, the highest number of endorsements ever achieved by a non-winning candidate.
The gap between the model of society pursued by this powerful caste of the enlightened, or self-proclaimed, and the interests of 98 percent of citizens is becoming increasingly unbridgeable, and political debate is inevitably affected by this circumstance. The alarms sounded almost daily by columnists as we approach important elections where the vituperative populists can realistically aspire to success thus have very little to do with risks of authoritarian or anti-democratic torsions, but reveal, quite simply, their concern about the possible hindrances or delays that might ensue to the realization of that - for them - idyllic world in which people "will own nothing and be happy."
A graduate in Law (University of Rome "La Sapienza"), after a brief experience as a civil servant in the Ministry of Labour, he was a parliamentary adviser in the Chamber of Deputies for more than 30 years.
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