The Fascist Use of Democracy: From Pericles to Biden

In this week’s episode of the Great Game, V and I break down the absurd moral failure that is Biden’s upcoming World Democracy Summit by leaping back over 2300 years into the past and evaluating the rotten origins of the cult of democracy as it arose under the corrupt leadership of Pericles of Athens. By examining the causes of Athenian decay with the democratic murder of Socrates in 399 BC, and the warnings Plato embedded in his Republic to future leaders regarding how to break free of the vicious cycle of tyranny and mob rule (tyranny of a different form), we are able to better understand what the founding fathers intended when they established a republic for the first time on earth.

When Benjamin Franklin was asked in the closing days of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, what sort of nation had been established, his response was “a republic… if you can keep it.” This statement clearly echoes a profound understanding that the republic he led in establishing is not a democracy, nor is it a monarchy, nor tyranny, nor oligarchy… but rather a society ruled by representatives of the people. This society only works if a cultural standard is maintained which itself involves the constant recreation of an informed and morally developing culture with EACH GENERATION where each citizen learns to use their minds and strive to become true philosophers. This conception of philosopher means learning to see with the mind’s eye rather than being enslaved to the effects of our five senses while taking responsibility for our nation’s wellbeing as a whole. Anything less would involve a society of subjects whose responsibilities are limited to their micro worlds of immediate self-interest while all higher affairs of the state are reserved only for the hereditary elite and their managers.

As we will come to see throughout this episode of the Great Game, Biden’s Democracy Summit which excludes nearly half the nations on the globe is really nothing more than a global feudal tyranny masquerading behind a self-congratulatory democratic veneer. But it is empty and devoid of all actual substance, while the true representatives of the better traditions of humanity are found on the other side of the new iron curtain and labelled “evil authoritarian regimes” by the modern day Pericles’ roaming about the Rules Based International Order.

Supplementary reading: Klaus’ Great Narrative: Locking The Plebs Into Plato’s Cave in the 21st Century

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas (click on the links to buy the books). In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation .