When does democracy cease to be democracy?

There was a record low participation by French voters in the parliamentary elections on Sunday (just 47.51% voted). This decrease in voter participation has been going on for decades throughout neoliberal democracies. In the 2019 EU parliamentary elections not even a third of voters in six EU nations bothered going to the polls: Portugal, Czechia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Croatia.Add to this another eight EU members who did not reach the 50 percent hurdle: Ireland, Netherlands, Finland, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia,Hungary Poland. In other words, in fourteen of the 27 EU members, not even half the eligible population bothered voting. Altogether only 50.65 of all EU voters cast a ballot, which was by far the highest participation in these elections in a quarter of a century!



At what point does an election result no longer represent a nation’s citizens? We know in many referenda in EU member states there is a minimum voter participation necessary to make the vote valid. I know of no nation in the EU where such a minimum is set for elections for political office. Yes, in France it appears in the first round of the parliamentary elections that although a candidate may win over 50 percent of the vote, if at least half the citizens did not cast a ballot, the triumphant candidate must nonetheless proceed to the second round of voting,where there is no minimum voter participation.



In the past decades this decrease in voter participation has been condoned by the political class, as many working people no longer feel represented –which they aren’t – by their neo-liberal governments and see no alternatives in the European political parties. As I often mention with regard to Germany, there is one neo-liberal political party with seven factions: Just look at the current German government should you have any doubts! And after Brexit it is the same old political and economic regimen with the same old political class. The same is true of most other EU nations, although we witnessed a brief exception in the UK with Corbyn and now in France with Mélenchon. What remains in the way of voters tend to be those conservative over sixties. This explains to some degree why often before general elections pensions are increased. If you look at recent election results the under thirties vote diametrically to the geriatric majority. Does the European political class care? No. All that counts is the result and it keeps coming up "More Neoliberal Democracy".



So liberal democracy is looking less and less like a democracy, when ever fewer voters fill out their ballots, which does not appear to worry the politicalclass in the least. It should worry us though. Our democracy has defacto been reduced to voting every few years and when this is not even supported by a majority of citizens, what is left of our minimalistic democracy?

Social Media, You, and Us

I have to confess that I used to be somewhat sceptical as I read about websites being sabotaged by twitter and facebook. When you have a loss of readers, one always tries to blame it on an exogenous element.



Recently we noticed that things were not right though and began to have a look. Like others, we had the feeling that our tweets were simply not reaching many people anymore, so we had a look at our twitter “Analytics”and made an amazing discovery. One of the metrics offered is “Tweet Impressions”, which is the number of times our tweets appear on someone’s timeline. Nothing more, nothing less. It does not mean it was read, liked, or retweeted. It simply appeared on someone's timeline informing them that we had posted an article. We scrolled back in time to see what has been occurring.



The furthest back we could go is December 2020. In that month we had 1,75 million impressions. In other words 1,75 million times our tweets were on someone's twitter timeline. In the course of 2021 the numbers dropped to between one and 1,5 million.Suddenly in August 2021 we were at between half a million and 750,000. Then in February of this year we have been below half a million per month. Due to the fact that we still post the same number of tweets daily and have ever more followers  – we are at 6,000 in the meantime – these numbers should be increasing, not radically decreasing. What is probably saving us from oblivion is that we add your handles to most of our tweets, which not only ensures that these tweets are received, but many of you retweet them,increasing our number of impressions. But this is a lot of extra work. Since December 2020 we are reaching 75% fewer of you today than a year and a half ago via twitter.



Although we do not have a similar benchmark for facebook, we have another number that assists us. When we post a new notice of the latest article on our website on facebook, we could see on our reader analytics system that we immediately had 12 readers for the article – no fewer no less.This dropped to six half a year ago. It has recently dropped to three. As always, no more no less. Again, that can only mean that our access is actively being blocked at a certain point. We are now encountering days where we have zero readers when we do a new posting.



The same phenomena are being reported by other progressive websites.



Those who know us also know that we are the last to spread paranoid conspiracy theories. Our work is based on facts. And the facts are telling a clear and Intimidating story.



But the news is not all bad. Despite the policies of twitter and facebook we registered an absolute record of readers in February, March, and April. This of course had to do with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for which we had exceptional coverage. What probably enabled this robust surge of readers was that so many of you were sharing our articles with one another (probably on other social media as well).So once again, we – everyone of us - have the power to increase the flow of non-corporate-media-information despite social media, but it is an uphill battle.

The most read articles in the past month



Branko Milanović – What if Putin’s true goals are different?

Rupert Read – The failed ideology of Davos

Michael Hudson: Inflation – A Junk Economics Perspective

The many in one: A book review by Branko Milanović of Amartya Sen’s “Home in the world: A memoir”

Craig Murray – Nato Expansion and Turkey

Michael Hudson – Accidental Crisis?



Richard D. Wolff – There Are Better Ways for Societies to Address Inflation Than by Hiking Interest Rates



Michael Hudson – Is US/NATO (with WEF help) pushing for a Global South famine?

Editor's Choice for the Past Week

Ben Wray was in Berlin for the Gig Economy Project and produced a series of outstanding articles about the struggle of gig economy workers to establish workers' councils, better working condtions, and higher wages: Work and resistance in Germany’s platform economy: Interview with Oğuz Alyanak, Inside Berlin’s food delivery workers movement, Gorillas in Berlin: Chronic problems and mounting divisions



In Socialism Ain’t What It Used to Be: Ezra Klein Interview with Bhaskar SunkaraDean Baker looks at the decline of what were once progressive political parties, such as the Democrats in the US, but also the Social Democrats in various European nations.

Michael Hudson sees a more extensive strategy by the US in its reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Is US/NATO (with WEF help) pushing for a Global South famine 

The Russian invasion was never solely about a criminal action by the
Russian government. It has always been part of a broader political
context explains Craig Murray in his piece Biden Works to Prolong Ukraine War  

Servaas Storm goes through the causes of the current inflation crisis in Inflation in a Time of Corona and War

According to Michael Roberts things are going from bad to worse for the world economy: The scissors of slump

In Now we’ll see if it’s still the Europe of the TroikaCarlo Clericetti asks if the EU has taken a virtuous turn with regard to the finances of EU member states, especially Italy.

Talks in our series "Economics beyond the Swabian hausfrau"

The talks will resume in autumn 2022 

As always, our work is funded solely by you, so please do consider donating.

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