AHC: Make democracy viewed like communism IOTL

What's the most plausible timeline in which democracy is seen in the 21st-century West as a form of dangerous extremism, much like communism is IOTL?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Let's see...
The USA goes straight into a period of revolutionary bloodletting instead of avoiding one, and France does the same. That might be a good start, especially if both stumble along with periods of demarchy and demagoguery much like what blasted Athenian democracy.
 
What's the most plausible timeline in which democracy is seen in the 21st-century West as a form of dangerous extremism, much like communism is IOTL?

It might require, to be frank, a democracy that's rather different from what we know and understand. And you'd need one hell of a POD, or set of them, at that. So, possibly no U.S.A. or French Revolution to begin with.
 
Perhaps not quite close enough, but how about a surviving Cromwellian British Republic? By no means was it really democratic, but if it became the poster boy for republicanism then it could provide an interesting effect in making enlightened absolutism the "go to" for revolutionaries and reformers.
 
I will be easier to make universal suffrage as populism: only could vote those who finished basic education, have a job, have an estate or any combination of these requirements.
 
What's the most plausible timeline in which democracy is seen in the 21st-century West as a form of dangerous extremism, much like communism is IOTL?

That's the view of the vast majority of scholars dealing with the subject from about two millennia, roughly from Aristotle to Rousseau, let's say. Just make it stick. ;)
 
What's the most plausible timeline in which democracy is seen in the 21st-century West as a form of dangerous extremism, much like communism is IOTL?

In a sense it was viewed like that in the early 19thC, the extremely bloody history of revolutionary France being the example everybody pointed to. Also, the 1848 revolutions, while liberal, inadvertently unleashed waves of nationalism and proto-socialism which would have definitely scared many in the middle/upper classes. Had the latter been more bloody (for example, either by descending into chaos or fuelling revanchist wars), I think democracy's reputation as a very dangerous and fickle beast (which it has had, to some degree, since the days of Athens) would be reinforced.
 
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Yuelang

Banned
make USA as dysfunctional as possible starting from 1776, and so does Republican France

there we go, anyone who suggest democracy and republicanism will just get pointed toward those two by their enlightened monarch
 

GdwnsnHo

Banned
The other option is to have Communism function whilst Democracy swings back and forth between brutal authoritarian King-For-Life brutality, or complete and utter chaos as policies swing back and forth.

Make it dysfunctional, and make Communism work. Simples
 

Sideways

Donor
The problem is, communists countries have elections, and can consider themselves democratic and genuine democracies can elect communists. Democracy and communism are very different kinds of things. Democracy is a thing ideologies aim at, Communism is an ideology.

It would be far easier to discredit western liberal capitalist democracy. You just need a Soviet-wank.
 

It's

Banned
It might require, to be frank, a democracy that's rather different from what we know and understand. And you'd need one hell of a POD, or set of them, at that. So, possibly no U.S.A. or French Revolution to begin with.

Don't confuse populism with democracy!
 
The other option is to have Communism function whilst Democracy swings back and forth between brutal authoritarian King-For-Life brutality, or complete and utter chaos as policies swing back and forth.

Make it dysfunctional, and make Communism work. Simples

Given its OTL track record, I suspect that "making Communism work" will be anything but simple.

I will be easier to make universal suffrage as populism: only could vote those who finished basic education, have a job, have an estate or any combination of these requirements.

Yeah, I was thinking something along those lines too. Alternatively, maybe something like the Roman system, where everybody has a vote, but it's weighted in favour of the richer citizens?
 
Perhaps not quite close enough, but how about a surviving Cromwellian British Republic? By no means was it really democratic, but if it became the poster boy for republicanism then it could provide an interesting effect in making enlightened absolutism the "go to" for revolutionaries and reformers.

But if it survives, that would give democracy staying power, something it didn't have until much later IOTL. Part of what drove people in both Britain (post-Cromwell) and France (post-Revolution) into supporting restored monarchy was the sense of stability it seemed to offer in contrast to republics. Having Cromwell's state last for good would seem to bolster the case for democracy if anything.
 
But if it survives, that would give democracy staying power, something it didn't have until much later IOTL. Part of what drove people in both Britain (post-Cromwell) and France (post-Revolution) into supporting restored monarchy was the sense of stability it seemed to offer in contrast to republics. Having Cromwell's state last for good would seem to bolster the case for democracy if anything.

I don't think that's neccesarily the case... I mean Tsarist Russia survived for an exceedingly long time and was powerful enough to be considered Britiains greatest worry for a time... Yet it never effectivly bolstered the case for Monarchical Autocracy.

Even if that were the case, how about a temporarily surviving Cromwellian republic which after more and more madness collapses so utterly that even England becomes divided in civil war?
 
Or . . . something better where democracy is considered a clumsy system where people vote or don't vote based on all kinds of superficial reasons.

I'm thinking about John Rawls and his 'justice as fairness'(?), but good luck implementing that in any kind of functioning system.

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The way I distill Rawls down is, What kind of system would you want to be reincarnated into? In a very risk-adverse way. Focusing on the persons in the least advantageous positions and how well off they are.

But it's also the case that average welfare matters, future prospects, how to make decisions as a group where people on the losing side believe they've received a fair hearing, and a lot of other factors on the table. Hard to reconcile all this to put it mildly.
 
What about a pod where France and Italy elect communists after WW2? I'm not entirely sure how likely that is, but in my undergrad course on the first half of the cold war the professor said that Stalin was pretty sure they would. Maybe Churchill convinces FDR that what would become D-day is fundamentally impossible, as Churchill wholeheartedly believed. The us military focuses on africa, but the Soviets liberate more of Europe directly, and Germany would end up like poland, where Stalin promised democracy to the other allied leaders and then shifted the deck in his favor. As well, with soviet liberation, communism might be more appealing (or possibly less, but for the sake of the direction) communism is dominant in europe, the us and Britain could end up being seen as warmongering capitalist mob-rule states, while the Soviets institutionalize the fact that the head honcho wasn't the elected but the person most "powerful" or respected, shifting their communism into meritocracy in which those who have proven themselves defend the workers. This wouldnt be much of a function change as much an ideology change, where democratic systems such as the Soviets are still in place, and frequently elections are how the most respected/powerful are chosen, but is more a sort of democratic dictatorship where the term democracy itself is shunned as meaning populist rather than meritocracy agreed upon by the people. Its really just a shift in propaganda, but try telling that to them in this scenario!

Tldr: Communism becomes "democracy rules the people, in soviet Russia the people rule democracy!"
 
Actually, what I could see is democracy still viewed as it was in 1975, according to Daniel Patrick Moynihan at the time: "Liberal democracy on the American model increasingly tends to the condition of monarchy in the 19th century; a holdover form of government, one which persists in isolated or particular places here and there, and may even serve well enough for special circumstance, but which has simply no relevance to the future. It is where the world was, not where it is going. Increasingly democracy is seen as an arrangement peculiar to a handful of North Atlantic countries.” https://books.google.com/books?id=JF3tkUYGbk8C&pg=PA4

That I think *is* pretty much how communism is viewed now: apart from North Korea, the few remaining Communist states are not seen as "evil" so much as "anachronistic" like Cuba , or as "not really communist" because they have partly market-oriented economies (China). And when people in the contemporary democracies are asked to name political movements that are "dangerous extremists" they are more likely to name far-right or Islamist ones, not Communist parties, which are seen not as dangerous but as holdovers from the past.
 
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