Demagoguery, Democracy and Dictatorship

A ruler who reaches power by way of a democratic election, if he does not practice democratic norms there, should not be considered as following the characteristics that democracy informs. That origin is the starting point, but in the discharge of the presidency of the republic he must prove loyalty to the democratic vote that took him to that high post. If he deviates from this ideological line, he has no right to consider himself a democrat nor that anybody considers him as such.

There are many examples of this in the political history of the world in the Twentieth Century and in the 21st. Adolph Hitler was elected by an overwhelming majority of Germans, although his characteristics were well known. Right away he began a dictatorial government, an opprobrious tyranny, while enjoying considerable popular support. The same thing happened in Italy with Benito Mussolini. The examples are numerous. Although Fidel Castro was not the product of a popular election, the truth is that, between deceit and fear, he had an immense majority of the people backing him while he spoke about executions from the podium. Right now, Hugo Chávez won the presidency of Venezuela in democratic elections, and in this high office he has left the lines of that system and he is ruling Venezuela in a way totally incompatible with democratic norms, not to mention the characteristics of his obnoxious vocabulary.

Those who are truly concerned about the life of democracy must think about these harsh realities to avoid that the system be blamed for the faults of those who have betrayed the ideals that they said they had. Many, actually, have not betrayed anything. What has happened is that they were dictators disguised as democrats, using a demagogic vocabulary that, in many cases, the people, out of ignorance, applaud frantically.

Demagoguery is a serious sickness of democracy. Unfortunately, it is becoming a science, to the extreme that those who practice it are masters of deceit. It should be remembered, for example, that John Edgard Hoover described the communists as “ masters of deceit”. Specializing in deceit, playing with the emotions of the people, abusing a systematic verbosity, they fool the people and receive applause and support that they do not deserve. Those who applaud frantically have no idea of what is coming. Often, when the storm finally hits, they attribute it to anything else, not admitting that there are professional demagogues from whom people should learn how to defend themselves.