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Topic Summary

Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: March 20, 2024, 09:09:45 pm »

Still supporting democracy, leftists?

https://news.sky.com/story/phoning-it-in-some-signs-leo-varadkar-planned-to-step-down-after-black-eye-for-government-13098555

Quote
Mr Varadkar was handed a humiliating defeat in twin referendums earlier this month, when the Irish people voted against redefining marriage and removing "sexist" language from the constitution.

His government's proposals weren't just rejected, they were trounced. The latter referendum received a massive 74% No vote, the highest in Irish history.
Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: March 07, 2024, 06:17:16 pm »

https://twitter.com/ChadGilmartinCA/status/1765202198944711050 (video at link)

Quote
MSDNC panel mocks the fact immigration is a top issue for  voters across the country

But will the panellists ever reach the conclusion that those voters whom they are mocking should never have been allowed to vote?

Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: January 20, 2024, 04:33:18 pm »

10 in 10 leftists should be opposed to solving rightist rise with democracy:

https://rmx.news/france/7-in-10-french-citizens-opposed-to-solving-demographic-decline-with-immigration/

Quote
At a time when France is experiencing a spectacular demographic decline, an overwhelming majority of French citizens are not in favor of using immigration as a lever to boost the birth rate, recent polling showed.

According to a CSA survey conducted for CNews, Europe 1, and Le Journal du Dimanche, 69 percent of respondents rejected using replacement through immigration as a means of injecting fresh blood into the French economy.

Upon further analysis, women (71 percent) were slightly more opposed to mass immigration than men (67 percent), and while every age group rejected the idea, elderly respondents were more firmly opposed.

A total of 56 percent of 18-24-year-olds were against using immigration to counter the declining birth rate, while 74 percent of those aged 35-49 and 70 percent of over-65s were opposed to it.

In a socio-economic breakdown, 65 percent of the most highly educated respondents were opposed, compared to 76 percent of those less qualified academically.

Supporters of Jordan Bardella’s National Rally were the most opposed at 94 percent, closely followed by voters of Éric Zemmour’s conservative Reconquest party at 92 percent.

For the Republicans, this opposition is slightly less pronounced but remains in the majority at 84 percent. On the Renaissance side, 62 percent of those polled were also against.

Conversely, on the left of the political spectrum, supporters of all parties are in favor of the proposal. Supporters of La France Insoumise (56 percent), the Greens (58 percent), and the Socialist Party (60 percent) are in favor of using immigration as a solution to the country’s demographic decline.
Posted by: antihellenistic
« on: December 27, 2023, 11:20:19 pm »

Democracy is Rightism

Quote
My coworkers assumed that anything associated with capitalism must be “conservative” because capitalists were against the working class. This archaic analysis totally misrepresents the current situation. An application of an outmoded Marxist model of class conflict, it tells us absolutely nothing about what is going on in this age. Today the working class here and in Western Europe is usually allied to the cultural right, while our financiers and CEOs are mostly where Rod Dreher locates them, on the cultural left. There is no way we can make sense of political and cultural polarities unless we assume an inversion of the Marxist economic paradigm.

Another point I would make about “woke capitalism,” as someone who has just finished a book on antifascism, is that the fascist enemy for the cultural left never goes away. According to New York Times film critic Manohla Dargas, commenting on the movie Dunkirk, “the fight against fascism continues.” And such Yale professors as Tim Snyder and Jason Stanley have raked in fortunes publishing book length comparisons of Hitler’s Germany and Donald Trump’s America.

The good people, who impose PC guidelines on their puzzled, powerless workers and the media who never end their tear against “the authoritarian Right,” are still fighting Hitler. {snip}

{snip} Strange as it may sound, some of these actors may believe in what they are doing. Given their education and socialization, it is entirely possible that what these woke capitalists are imposing on their workers reflects an internalized belief system. Even elites may embrace lunatic ideas out of both personal conviction and a sense of advancing the Good.

Source :

Posted on August 22, 2020 Please, the Capitalist Class Is Anything but Conservative  Paul Gottfried, The American Conservative, August 20, 2020

https://www.amren.com/news/2020/08/please-the-capitalist-class-is-anything-but-conservative/
Posted by: rp
« on: December 27, 2023, 06:10:45 pm »

https://twitter.com/dharma__vijay/status/1739882190086058431?t=zPG0yXsZxUTlSKe4bBvJTQ&s=19
Quote
No. All our lack of civic sense boils down to democracy and diversity. Civic sense needs some amount of enforcement in diverse countries. In India can't enforce because the misbehaving chap would be from a community which is a vote bank. So no action will be taken.
https://twitter.com/GabbbarSingh/status/1739874687952544235?t=Y3Jj-MRfkqQKoUiSseNipg&s=19
Quote
Can India ever reach this level of Civic sense? Ever?

Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: December 14, 2023, 06:03:55 pm »

Democracy working properly a month ago:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/western-democracy/msg16458/?topicseen#msg16458

Quote
Nearly seven out of ten French people believe that the state should adopt a stricter policy regarding the reception of migrants

Democracy working even more properly now:

https://rmx.news/migration/80-of-french-support-ban-on-more-immigration-two-thirds-back-referendum/

Quote
According to the survey conducted by the CSA Institute for CNEWS published on Tuesday, 80 percent of people in France want a ban on immigration, compared with just 19 percent in favor of further new arrivals.

Opposition to more mass immigration is the majority view among all age groups. The most welcoming demographic is younger people; however, 68 percent remain against more immigration compared to 31 percent in favor.
...
While opposition to mass immigration is almost unanimous among right-leaning voters — 100 percent of Éric Zemmour’s Reconquête and 98 percent of National Rally voters are against it — an increasing number of left-wing sympathizers are also questioning the number of new arrivals into France.

A total of 56 percent of left-wing voters oppose more immigration, with the only slim majorities in favor found among supporters of the Radical Party of the Left (55 percent), LFI (55 percent), and the Greens (52 percent)

This is why the real danger is democracy working properly, and not democracy not working properly.
Posted by: 90sRetroFan
« on: December 12, 2023, 11:06:01 pm »

"Democracy cannot work properly on people with low intelligence"

But what does "work properly" actually mean? When the majority votes to prohibit immigration (e.g. Denmark), that is democracy working properly (as Aristotle intended). So do we want a democracy that works properly or a democracy that doesn't work properly? I want the latter.

You yourself posted:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/issues/demographic-blueshift/msg21417/#msg21417

Quote

Which one shows democracy working properly? Which one shows democracy not working properly? Which one do we want?

"Hitler's governmental system were proper for multi-ethnic and "low-intelligence" society. And if sun environment "lowering intelligence" and "decrease democracy", then Hitler were man of the sun, not man of the cold-climate"

No, you have it backwards. Germany started off as an Ice People country, therefore a democratic Germany would work properly and hence become more and more rightist, which is what we don't want. This is why we consider it a good thing for Hitler to rule Germany autocratically, since this is the best way to make it more leftist which is what we want. It is Ice People countries (where democracy would work properly) which most need autocracy (with a leftist dictator), not Sun People countries (in which democracy would not work properly anyway).

On the other hand, when no suitable individual like Hitler is available, the next best way to make Ice People countries more leftist is to get democracy to stop working properly by importing new voters from Sun People habitats to outnumber the Ice People voters.
Posted by: antihellenistic
« on: December 12, 2023, 10:25:46 pm »

Democracy cannot work on multi-ethnic and "low intelligence" society

For example :

Uganda

Quote
Uganda provides an example of a restricted democracy in an ethnically very heterogeneous country. The largest tribal group, the Baganda, does not comprise more than 17 percent of the population. Because of the fierce tribal competition, it was not possible to stabilize democratic institutions and a party system adapted to tribal divisions during the first decades of independence. Finally, Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement routed other military forces in 1986 and restored peace based on the hegemony of his military and political movement (cf. Kokole and Mazrui 1988). In 1996, Museveni legalized his power position through a competitive presidential election, and in the 2001 presidential election Uganda crossed the threshold of democracy. Political parties were still banned, but presidential elections were competitive. This kind of restricted democracy might be better adapted to some African countries than a full democracy allowing party competition along ethnic lines. However, Uganda’s system may be less stable than Botswana’s dominant party system for the reason that Uganda’s system is crucially- based on Museveni’s personality. By a referendum in 2005, the establishment of political parties became legal, and a multiparty system emerged in Uganda (see Banks et al. 2007, pp. 1272-1276).

Senegal

Quote
Senegal provides an example of a successful path to democratization through a dominant party system. The Socialist Party established by Leopold Senghor ruled without opposition until the 1978 elections when some opposition parties were allowed to take part in elections (cf. Coulon 1988). Since the 1993 election, Senegal was only slightly below the participation threshold of democracy, and finally in the 2000 presidential election the opposition’s candidate won the presidency. The fact that the largest tribe (Wolof) comprises nearly half of the population supported the survival of the dominant party system, but ultimately it was not enough to stabilize it. Ghana and Nigeria are examples of countries in which it has been very difficult to adapt political institutions and party systems to the requirements of the ethnic heterogeneity of their populations (cf. Chazan 1988; Diamond 1988).

From the perspective of democracy, a parliamentary system of government and a multiparty system adapted to the ethnic divisions of the population might be best suited to the plural societies of sub-Saharan Africa, but in practice these institutions may not function as expected. The experience shows that African ethnic parties have quite often been unable to agree on the democratic sharing of power and on the basic rules of the game in democratic politics. Disagreements have led to violent clashes and breakdowns of democratic institutions. It is worthwhile to experiment with fully democratic political institutions, but if they repeatedly fail in practice, it might be useful to consider how to establish a less democratic but more functional political system. Perhaps it would be possible to establish a political system that combines dominance by one group and some kind of representation of various tribal and regional interest groups. From the perspective of such a compromise, a strong presidency based on the support of the dominant ethnic or regional group, on the support of a dominant party, or on the support of the military might be a more practicable governmental system than a fully parliamentary system presupposing cooperation between ethnically based parties. Political rights and civil liberties would be more restricted in such dominance systems than in full democracies, but they might be able to guarantee civil peace and legal order.

Source :

The Limits of Democratization: Climate, Intelligence, and Resource Distribution by Tatu Vanhanen page 264, 265, 266



Therefore Hitler's governmental system were proper for multi-ethnic and "low-intelligence" society. And if sun environment "lowering intelligence" and "decrease democracy", then Hitler were man of the sun, not man of the cold-climate
Posted by: antihellenistic
« on: December 12, 2023, 10:18:07 pm »

Democracy cannot work properly on people with low intelligence and low ability to sustain their economy

Quote
Prof. Vanhanen proposes that high IQ per se is necessary for democracy because “people in countries with low national IQs are not as able to organize themselves, to take part in national politics, and to defend their rights against those in power as people in countries with higher national IQs” (p.270). The peoples of low-IQ countries may want democracy, but they cannot establish and maintain it.

...

Prof. Vanhanen concludes otherwise: A high average, rather than a tight distribution of IQs is what creates the middle class. More intelligent people are better able to defend and further their interests and to acquire education, which prevents the concentration of power resources. This distribution of political power supports the emergence of market economies, which help distribute power resources more widely. Standard deviation in IQ is probably similar for most countries, but those with high averages are more equal and more democratic.

Source :

Who is Capable of Democracy? Posted on August 22, 2020

https://www.amren.com/news/2020/08/who-is-capable-of-democracy/


Continuing

Quote
According to my theoretical argumentation, this relationship is causal. Important power resources tend to become more widely distributed in countries for which national IQ is high than in countries for which national IQ is low. Intelligence is a factor which increases the ability of people to invent new things and technologies, to produce more effectively, to work in different trades, and to establish organizations to further their various interests.

...

Nearly all components of the IPR (Index of Power Resources) are more strongly correlated with national IQ than with MT (Mean Temperature). The highest correlation is between national IQ and tertiary and the weakest correlation between national IQ and FF, National IQ explains 59 percent of the variation in tertiary, but only 8 percent of the variation in FF. IR is much more strongly correlated with national IQ (0.818) than ER (0.562).

...

The IPR (Index of Power Resources) is assumed to be a crucial intervening variable in the hypothesized relationship between mean temperature and ID. Therefore it is important to explore to what extent the variation in the IPR is due to the variation in national IQ and mean temperature. The results of correlation analysis support the assumption that a substantial part of the variation in resource distribution (IPR) can be traced via differences in the average mental abilities of populations (national IQ) to differences in climatic conditions (MT). Because the IPR explains nearly 70 percent of the variation in the degree of democratization (ID) in this group of 172 countries, the results support the argument that a significant part of the variation in ID can be traced to differences in mean temperature via intervening variables.

...

The results of this multiple regression analysis indicate that national IQ does not explain anything of the variation in ID-2006 that is independent from the impact of the IPR. The coefficient of national IQ is not statistically significant. The impact of national IQ (Intelligence Quotient) on ID-2006 (Democracy Index) seems to be completely mediated by IPR. The multiple correlation 0.815 is practically the same as the simple correlation between IPR and ID-2006 (0.813). Although the correlation between national IQ and ID-2006 is 0.575, the impact of national IQ on ID is insignificantly independent from the IPR functions as an intervening mechanism in the hypothesized causal connection between national IQ and ID. MT and national IQ do not increase the explained part of variation in ID-2006 independently from the IPR, but are both needed to explain variation in the IPR? The multiple regression analysis in which MT and national IQ are used as independent variables and the IPR as the dependent variable answers this question (Table 3.8).

...

The definition of the four variables intended to measure annual mean temperature, differences in the average intelligence of nations, the
distribution of intellectual and economic power resources, and the level Variables 41 of democratization makes it possible to transform the original hypotheses formulated in Chapter 1 into testable research hypotheses.

1. The higher the annual mean temperature (MT), the more the
values of national IQ, IPR, and the index of democratization
(ID) tend to decrease.

2. The higher the national IQ, the more the degree of resource
distribution (the IPR and the mean) and the level of democratization
(ID) tend to rise.

3. The higher the degree of resource distribution (IPR), the more
the level of democratization (ID) tends to rise.


...

The average level and quality of democracy rose systematically with the level of national IQ in all cases, and thus the results support the basic argument on the constraining power of national IQ. The quality of democracy tends to rise with the level of national IQ no matter which indicator is used to measure the quality of democracy. However, it was also noted that many countries deviate significantly from the average pattern at all levels of national IQ.

Finally, in Chapters 9-17, descriptive country reviews were used to Ilustrate the variation in the level and quality of democracy between the seven national IQ categories. The nature of each country’s political system was described briefly from the perspective of democratic governance. Country reviews show great differences in the level and quality of democracy between the countries of the two lowest and two highest national IQ categories. Political systems tend to be less democratic and more violent and corrupted at low levels of national IQ than at high levels. Similar systematic differences emerge in political rights and liberties, the rule of law, and the security of people between the low and high levels of national IQ, but country reviews also show that many countries deviate more or less from these average patterns. This implies that there is room for human choices and that the quality of democratic governance is not strictly tied to the average intelligence of the population.

...

Political systems adapt to environmental constraints in the continual process of natural selection in politics, and this process of adaptation produces different institutional arrangements and behavior patterns. People in countries with low national IQs are not as able to organize themselves, to take part in national politics, and to defend their interests and rights against those in power as people in countries with higher national IQs. This difference is reflected in the quality of democracy.

Source :

The Limits of Democratization: Climate, Intelligence, and Resource Distribution by Tatu Vanhanen page 45, 47, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 260, 270
Posted by: antihellenistic
« on: November 29, 2023, 09:19:42 pm »

Discriminative and Eurocentrist attitude in China came from the Democratic Chinese

Quote
The Goddess of Democracy, along with the destruction of the Berlin Wall, became one of the most prominent symbols of the global movement for liberal democracy and freedom in the late twentieth century. Like the Statue of Liberty itself, the Goddess also had an important racial dimension. The whiteness of the statue—not just the white color of the papier-mâché but more significantly the prominent European features of its face—contrasted sharply with the typical Communist statuary in  China, including in Tiananmen Square itself. More generally, the pro-democracy movement in China began with a wave of racist attacks against African students. Prejudice against Africans was nothing new in China, where many saw African students as unduly privileged (a criticism made much less often of other foreign students). In December 1988, a series of attacks and demonstrations against Africans broke out in several cities, most notably in Nanjing but also Hangzhou, Wuhan, and Beijing.110 Resentment over African men dating Chinese women often provoked clashes, but many Chinese students also attacked the regime for importing and protecting the Africans. As Barry Sautman has noted, “Student ‘democrats’ did attach slogans about human rights and freedom to anti-Black exhortations and  thus used the events to advance their own agenda by claiming that the  regime failed to protect the rights of Chinese against the alleged depredations of Africans.”111 In China, as in other parts of the world, desire for freedom and racial prejudice were strange but close bedfellows. The Goddess of Democracy symbolized not just liberty but white freedom as well.

Source :

White Freedom The Racial History of an Idea Tyler Edward Stovall 2021 Princeton University Press page 109
Posted by: antihellenistic
« on: November 29, 2023, 04:47:53 pm »

Imperial Japanese's Worldview during World War II

Quote
Fighting both fascism and Western racism during World War II was also a key issue for the colonial subjects of European empires. This was especially true of those in Asia, confronted by the threat (or reality) of Japanese invasion and occupation. More than in the case of the Allied struggles against Nazi Germany and Vichy in North Africa, Imperial Japan’s approach to the war made this a very complex question. On the one hand, Japan’s war effort, especially against China, was motivated by its own racial prejudices. Japanese troops frequently looked down on the Chinese as dogs, and such attitudes helped facilitate widespread massacres against the civilian population.188 On the other hand, the Japanese portrayed the war in the Pacific as a pan-Asian campaign against Western imperialism and their conquest of colonies like the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines as wars of liberation. Japan certainly had its own colonies, notably Korea and Taiwan, but it nonetheless saw itself as a force for Asian racial deliverance and freedom. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 Japan had supported a resolution for racial equality that was defeated by the Western powers, and many Japanese saw the Pacific war as merely a new phase in this struggle for racial equality.

Source :

White Freedom The Racial History of an Idea Tyler Edward Stovall 2021 Princeton University Press page 257, 258
Posted by: democracy
« on: November 28, 2023, 10:19:23 pm »

The events in Europe shows that in times of crisis under the rule of democracy, the far right is more easily able to assert itself.
Posted by: antihellenistic
« on: November 28, 2023, 01:20:58 am »

Western Liberalism enhancing Colonialism

Quote
By the end of the nineteenth century, a large portion of the globe was  controlled by European nations committed to some form of liberal democracy at home. Their colonial possessions did not have legislatures  or other democratic political structures for the most part, and few of  their people had the right to vote or any ability to choose their rulers.  In contrast, in the metropoles that controlled these colonies the principle of popular sovereignty was gradually becoming the norm, as was the  idea that all adult men should have the right to vote. Moreover, nations  like France and Britain that had made the most progress in developing  liberal democracy at home had also created the largest overseas empires.  The fact that metropole and empire were usually legally distinct served  to mask the fact that they nonetheless constituted whole political units  internally segregated by race. Within them, liberal democracy was  largely for whites, while nonwhites were subject to authoritarian imperial rule.

...


In both the British and French empires, somewhat like in the United  States, voting practices varied widely according to local traditions and  legal customs. Often, however, whites could vote and “natives” could  not, or if the latter could in some cases vote, their votes would not translate into any meaningful political power or self-rule. Electoral rights varied widely across the British Empire, but in most of its colonies the 156 Chapter 4 local privileges around racial distinctions meant that inhabitants could not vote, and frequently within the colonies the British designed electoral privileges around racial distinctions.76 Many colonies, like Britain  itself, based suffrage rights upon property, and that fact alone usually prevented most of the indigenous, non-white population from voting.  In India, for example, only a tiny percentage of adult males could vote  until after World War I.77 In Jamaica, while Black and colored men could vote in the nineteenth century, property qualifications—especially for  those who wanted to run for office—were high enough to keep a white oligarchy firmly in the saddle. As historian Thomas Holt has commented, “If, all things being equal, Black men should rule the island,  then all things could not be equal.”78

The racialized character of British imperial electoral democracy was most evident in the white settler colonies. Democracy was often much more advanced there than in the mother country; for example, New Zealand was one of the first modern nations to give women the vote. This liberality usually did not extend to indigenous or nonwhite populations. In Canada before 1867, British male subjects could vote, but not Catholics, Jews, or indigenous peoples. In both Australia and New  Zealand, formal as well as informal restrictions kept most members of the indigenous populations away from the polls. Interestingly, South Africa represented one of the few cases where colonial Africans could vote in large numbers, a major factor in prompting white South Africans  to seek independence. To an important extent, Britain’s white colonies gave their white subjects all the rights of freeborn Englishmen, and in a  colonial situation this traditional sense of rights increasingly translated into the right to vote.79

Although the French Empire was in general more centralized than that of the British, it also practiced various approaches to native enfranchisement. When the French abolished slavery in their Caribbean and Indian Ocean colonies in 1848, they made the former slaves citizens of  France and gave the men of the “old colonies” the right to vote on an equal footing with French men in the metropole. That at least was the theory; the reality on the ground in Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion,  and French Guiana was very different. The old colonies remained colonies, even though their inhabitants were citizens, a fact that circumscribed their political autonomy vis-à-vis France. Moreover, the white planters and former slaveholders continued to dominate the local economies, essentially based in the production of sugar. French ex-slaves could in fact vote, but their ability to do so did little to improve their conditions in the years after the abolition of slavery.80

Most of the inhabitants of the rest of the French Empire were subjects and therefore had no right to vote. It was possible for natives to become citizens by attaining the status of évolués, “evolved individuals,”  by giving proof of assimilation into French culture and law.81 Since this meant not only obtaining French education in colonies with few schools but also renouncing other legal traditions, notably Islamic, it was a path open to and taken by only a few individuals.82 In colonial Algeria, for example, the number of “evolved ones” amounted to only a few thousand out of several million people.83 This practice not only benefited  few people but also reinforced the idea that freedom was a European  idea reserved for white Europeans.84

Source :

White Freedom The Racial History of an Idea Tyler Edward Stovall 2021 Princeton University Press page 170, 171, 172
Posted by: GermanicDemocracy?
« on: November 21, 2023, 02:58:36 pm »

Quote
Does western democracy mostly derive from Germanic people instead of the Greeks?

I was reading about Charlemagne‘s forced conversion of Saxons and supposedly one of the reason the Saxons (mostly the lower classes) resisted conversion so strongly is because they didn’t want their political and democratic rights stripped from them.

Obviously one of the most democratic countries in Europe has been England who derive from the Saxons. I’m just wondering if Athenian democracy is overstated in comparison to the Germanic influence on western democracy.

[Response:]

--
While it is true, that tribal societies usually have a more democratic structure than 18th century absolutist monarchies or modern dictatorships, I wouldn't go so far as to claim that this Germanic tribal society has had much influence on modern democracy. The no-source-text clearly gives us certain keywords that make it clear that this is not a democratic society described here: Nobleman. Castes. Leaders.
The Noblemen were basically early Monarchs. It isn't described how the assembly was put together, but I think it's fair to assume that it wasn't be a general election that would hold up to modern democratic standards. Germanic tribes had pre-Monarchy-structures and over time, Germanic states became Monarchies in the early Middle Ages.

The conflict between Charlemagne and the Saxons was complex (Saxon Wars - Wikipedia), but it wouldn't be correct to put that down to democratic structures. While the Saxons and Charlemagne are both considered "Germanic", one shouldn't underestimate the regional "proto-patriotism" of Germanic tribes. Charlemagne was basically a foreign invader who wanted to conquer Saxonian lands, establish himself as ruler and change Saxonian culture and religion. Those are enough reasons for any culture of any kind to defend itself fiercely without even discussing how much democracy one might have under foreign rule established by war...
--

A lot of western democracy is derived from the Germanic legal tradition. The thing to look at is how the Middle Ages dealt with parsing the competing legal traditions of Roman Law, Canonic Law, and Germanic tribal law – there's a reason Medievalists dubbed the 13th c. "The Century of the Lawyer".
--

I think there are really two different strands of ideas which modern Western political systems have been influenced by, to varying degrees depending on country and circumstances.

1) The Enlightenment, through the French (and to a lesser degree in Europe post 1945, American revolutions)

2) Feudalism, in the broadest possible sense.

To the degree that a state’s politics is the product of ”1)”, the Greeks and Romans may be more influential than the Germanic peoples - although filtered through the really very Christian and very nerdy Enlightenment.

To the degree that a state’s political institutions is not of Enlightenment origin, it is basically all Germanic. Every modrn country in Europe that has some tradition of political representation which goes back longer than the French revolution, be it Sweden, The UK, Switzerland or w/e is of Germanic origin.

All Feudal institutions are (or were?), more or less, Germanic in the broad sense, in the way that the basic power structure of nobles who are freed from taxation and are a military class is more Germanic than Greco-Roman. The entire tri-partite division of medieval society probably is more similar to how pre-Christian Germanic societies were organized than the late Roman state (but this is not the same as saying it is 100% a direct product, of course there was cross-pollination etc).

In the most direct sense, the nobility in most of Europe West of Poland, even in places like Italy and Spain, is disproportionately of Germanic descent, if you look at the genaeology. Since for a lot of the middle ages the nobility were in many ways synonymous with the most free part of the population, and as everybody knows the nobility had a conception of themselves which was quite familial, separate from the commoners…well… the argument is self-explanatory…

Historically it is not entirely as clear cut: I think I mentioned the Italian citystates. Well, we also have things like Novgorod, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Gallo-Roman nobility in Provence before the crusades there (ai’ve heard, I am no expert)…

So there have certainly been other kinds of political freedom, with a flavour from other European ethno-cultural groups, but the Germanic strand seems to be the only ones who have survived to the present day in some form in some places as a real separate influence from the Enlightenment.

Whether this is the product of chance or greater resilience is an open question: I think both, but that is just my gut. Germanic Europe was just not so civilized, and property -holding was comparatively egalitarian with down south, for a very long time. It makes sense that people who marinate in this cultural substrate for centuries (or millennia?) develop a more egalitarian attitude toward politics than peoples with a more mixed experience, including living under the bureaucratic and incredibly hierarchical collossus which was the late Roman Empire.
--
https://historum.com/t/does-western-democracy-mostly-derive-from-germanic-people-instead-of-the-greeks.190206/

Noteworthy in regards to the above questions and responses, and timely considering western civilization and current geopolitics?:

Quote
...
There is one important difference between the past Reich and the present Reich’s policies. The old Empire granted freedom to its people and showed strength to the outside world, while the new Republic displays weakness in foreign affairs and suppresses its citizens at home. In both cases, we can see cause and effect. The powerful national state does not need excessive domestic laws since its citizens love it and are attached to it. The state that is a slave to international interests must resort to compulsory force in order to make its subjects perform the services it demands. Therefore, it is one of the greatest crimes of the
new Republic to dare and speak of “free citizens”. This could only be said in the old Germany. The present Republic is a slave-colony for the benefit of foreign countries. It has no citizens, but, at best, subjects. For that very reason it does not have a national flag, but only a trademark introduced and guarded by official decrees and regulations.
This symbol is the Gessler’s hat of German democracy and it will always remain alien to the heart of our people. (Gessler’s hat is a reference to the story of William Tell. Gessler was the local ruler who put his hat on a pole and demanded the citizens bow to it when they passed. William Tell did not bow and was arrested. It is also a play on the name because Gessler is the name of Otto Gessler, the Minister of the Reichswehr.) This new Republic has thrown the symbols of the past into the gutter, without any respect for tradition and greatness, but the day will come when the new Republic is astonished to find that its subjects were only play-acting and honored its own symbols superficially for they meant nothing to the people. The Republic has made itself nothing more than an intermission; it will be a short, unimportant part in German history.

In order to save itself, this new Republic must constantly restrict more and more the sovereign rights of the individual states, not only for financial reasons, but also to maintain control. Since it drains the last drop of our citizens’ blood through its tactics of financial extortion, it must also take away every last one of their rights unless it is prepared to watch as someday general discontent turns into open revolution. — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pg. 387. Ford translation....
Posted by: antihellenistic
« on: November 21, 2023, 07:41:24 am »

Democracy cannot work properly on people with low intelligence and low ability to sustain their economy

Quote
Prof. Vanhanen proposes that high IQ per se is necessary for democracy because “people in countries with low national IQs are not as able to organize themselves, to take part in national politics, and to defend their rights against those in power as people in countries with higher national IQs” (p.270). The peoples of low-IQ countries may want democracy, but they cannot establish and maintain it.

...

Prof. Vanhanen concludes otherwise: A high average, rather than a tight distribution of IQs is what creates the middle class. More intelligent people are better able to defend and further their interests and to acquire education, which prevents the concentration of power resources. This distribution of political power supports the emergence of market economies, which help distribute power resources more widely. Standard deviation in IQ is probably similar for most countries, but those with high averages are more equal and more democratic.

Source :

Who is Capable of Democracy? Posted on August 22, 2020

https://www.amren.com/news/2020/08/who-is-capable-of-democracy/