One aspect of the current political dispensation - at least with respect to the further right, is the manner in which those like Trump and Bolsonaro lose. As of Tuesday morning the latter had not spoken publicly or conceded. This is not a trivial matter either. It speaks of the disdain with which these politicians treat democratic processes. Their victories they trumpet loudly and utilise to legitimise their actions - often well beyond that which is actually implicit to that which is allowed by the democratic processes. Their defeats they ignore or deny or obfuscate. This is a fundamentally toxic approach to democratic political life. It functionally delegitimises democratic approaches, by tilting the scales towards victories that are used as potential license for any and all actions while regarding defeat in essentially existential terms. There can be no defeat, therefore an actual defeat is a threat that must be countered in whatever ways are possible in order to stymie the process of a transition, to retain power or, and this is crucial, to bolster the chances for a future victory that would reverse it.
There are other aspects of this worth noting. That for these supposed political titans their actual political and personal skin is remarkably thin and their behaviours petulant and worse. But that doesn't seem to particularly concern their voters - perhaps because defeat can be painted as betrayal or conspiracy and because their own political orientation is one grounded in complaint. This pernicious dynamic locks those who are supporters into ever more baroque efforts to deny reality, in a sense making them very literally complicit with the broader narratives of denial. Of course most will know, at least on some level, that there is no conspiracy, that an opposition victory was won genuinely, but that's not really the point. By stage-managing matters so that they purport to believe otherwise this further attaches them emotionally to the Bolsonaro's of this world. And in that way - the fact that the response onwards is emotional rather than political, that makes understanding the behaviour of supporters that bit more understandable. This is psychological - a sort of theatre - albeit one with very real consequences.
One needs have no illusions about the nature of bourgeois democracy to recognise that given the actual alternatives it remains the least worst option. That's not a small thing. But how to combat those who would diminish it yet further?
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