Mediocracy and the pandemic of authoritarianism
These days, tiny Switzerland offers "fish bowl" experience for the observation of the passage of power from classical political authority to the media, the emergence of a "mediocracy".
On a popular Late Night show on State TV called ARENA, the discussion about Justice minister Christoph Blocher's critical remarks on Swiss federal antiracism legislation during a visit to Turkey (see "Kemal Atatürk and Switzerland") had taken place without the participation of representatives of the "Grand Old Party" of Switzerland, the Free Democratic Party,FDP. The president of FDP, Fulvio Pelli, later fustigated the media for echoing premeditated provocations by the far right Justice minister. The consequence of his remarks has now become a full scale fox hunt for his head and for the party itself. It appears that even in a traditionally stable political system like Switzerland, political parties no longer are free to follow a coherent strategical line without risking to be undone by the media, and that political raiders like Christoph Blocher can blow up subjects of minor importance on the scale of political and economic priorities at will, with full support of the media.
In ancient Greece, this degenerated form of direct democracy was called "ostrakismòs" (ostracism) and it lead a) to mediocrity and b) to tyranny.
It might be interesting for the reader who is not fully familiar with present time Swiss politics that Christoph Blocher in 1981 (then a member of the Federal House of Representatives - Nationalrat) declared that the military dictatorship in Turkey was the only possible solution in the fight against terrorism...
These remarks are fully compatible with Blocher's later political record, and they strongly support Osservatore Profano's impression that we live in an emerging pandemia of highly infective authoritarianism, the origins of which can be found in Beijing, with a route of spread to Russia and some Republics of the former Soviet Empire. More recently smaller pockets of infection have been identified in various parts of Europe, e.g. Poland. Contrary to the emerging pandemia of Avian Flu where there is a strategic plan developped and imolemented by the World Health Organization and it's national partner organizations, no internationally acknowledged center of competence is at hand for controlling the pandemia of authoritarianism.
What will be the role of the blogosphere in this context?
Will it contribute to the trend to mediocrity and ostracism in a mediocratic system?
2 comments:
In Turkey we are confronted with the phenomenon that the military is guarantor of the secularized state. The history of the past forty or something years shows that Turkey without the army would have drifted ether to communism ore towards Islamic fundamentalism. Of course I am well aware of the occupation of Cyprus. But without the generals, Mr. Erdogans cabinet would shift Turkey towards Islamic Sharja.
Besides that, Mr. Blocher as a former colonel of the Swiss Army knows very well the influence of an officer corps in a society even in a democratic society. Up to the late eighties there was no decision making in Switzerland whether in politics nor in business without officers, just because almost all the leading man served in the army as militia officers. I once called this unique political system “colonels democracy”. You served as a captain, haven’t you?
M.M.'s comment is correct. From my personal perspective of a former officer (lieutenant colonel to be correct) of the Swiss Army, the main problem has been the slowly progressive professionalization of the original militia army over the past few decades and the loss of motivation for young people to engage in a military carreer. Countries where the Armed Forces have never been based on a militia system and conscription, but on volunteering, such as the United Kingdom, have had fewer problems with changes in cultural and political paradigms.
In the U.K., a recruiting ad of the Army during the sixties ran the following lines: "Are you prepared to defend your neighbour even if he is a communist?..."
That's certainly one way of managing professional armies, but maybe a constitutional monarchy is needed as a point of reference in order to guarantee the loyalty of the armed forces. The Swiss concept of State, developped on the basis of a pact of mutual support and self-defense, lacks this point of reference. Therefore it is endangered once the armed forces become a narrow circle of insiders linked to raiders of the type of our Justice minister...
Post a Comment