On Angrezon ke zamane ke jailers

Whether yoursquore part of team sport or in a family of four Or if yoursquore a kid going through school that places premium on discipline Later an adult employed with a firm that dictates your day and its decisions Is there any aspect of what constitutes most of your life that you can call a lsquodemocracyrsquoBy which I mean your voice is equal to everyone elsersquos at every point No So why then do we expect democracy in publiccivic life or state as it were Because unlike the fascist father tyrannical teacher or bozo for a boss we actually elect a political leaderThere appears to be no way better to decide who is the first one among equals termed citizens The leader in turn has to keep up the pretence of democracy mdash for how did he get there in the first place Sure once he gets to power there is the inevitable controlling impulse to go after those who oppose Because he canThis is how dictatorships have been imposed in modern times mdash the same moments from 20th Century that people dig for clicheacutes like Nazism populism etc to inaccurately describe the presentThe cover of Temelkurans book How To Lose A Country The 7 steps from Democracy to Dictatorship PicAmazonBut what if people actually want dictatorships imposed on themselves And wittingly or unwittingly but actively work towards it Going from blind or opportunistic participation temporary denial to submissive acceptance in real time of shrinking history Even supposed intellectuals initially cheering on this disruption assuming it will create space for something new since the exclusive corrupt statusquo could do with a mighty fixThe delightful Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran lists precisely this journey in her evocative book How to Lose a Country The 7 steps from Democracy to Dictatorship Itrsquos both her story and her countryrsquos 2002 onwards with solid parallels to make it seem like the worldrsquos as we know it Although surely all countries cultures and histories arenrsquot alike Humans by and large are What are these seven steps you askStep One Create a movement Which represents whom The ldquoreal peoplerdquo leaving others flummoxed enough to believe if they are indeed out of touch with reality Out of vacuum so much of it also on the Internet emerges a cause How do you achieve that Through ldquomanufactured victimhoodrdquoIn Turkey it was religious people oppressed and humiliated by a secular elite Other countries can have their own blockbuster stories with resonating conflicts ldquoThe content doesnrsquot matter because in later stages it changes constantly replaced in relation to emerging needs and aims of the movement once the identification of the masses and the movement with the leader is complete The only North Star in an everchanging political environment is the unquestioned leaderrdquoHow do you get there Step Two Disrupt rationale terrorise language And Step Three Remove the shame immorality is lsquohotrsquo in the posttruth world This is where you aggressively play into fantasies and imagined anxieties through what Donald Trump once described as ldquotruthful hyperbole mdash an innocent form of exaggeration an effective form of communicationrdquoOnce thatrsquos sorted and permeated lsquoargumentum ad hominemrsquo can take over mdash basically attacking the character of the adversary rather than the substance of the argument The role of the troll is anyway to terrorise the communication space No holds barredThe upholders of objective truth on the other hand namely the media both social and mainstream can hold victim or weak to the same level of interrogation as the powerful or the perpetrator who talk in realpolitik reducing the outoftouch lsquonaiumlversquo to irrelevance tending towards obsolescenceGreat then Step Four Dismantle judicial and political mechanisms Wait does that not work against the very people clamouring for its decline Not if a leaderrsquos brute supportersrsquo powers are deemed to be greater than the establishmentrsquos and indeed the old state and its fogey institutionsrsquo Selfpreservation is supremeTemelkuran writes of Turkey for almost two decades ldquoThere is no election but not a day passes when we are not subjected to propaganda as if therersquos one in a few days For when democracy shrinks to being no more than a voting process then the destiny of a country becomes inseparable from its single rulerrsquos political existencerdquoInevitably then since you can only be for or against a leaderrsquos supporters whether or not any of this affects your normal life mdash which is just to be and live as you wish to mdash itrsquos time to get to the real task Step Five Design your own citizen Okay you know who you are Of course there is free speech and expression The price you pay for it is yours aloneStep Six Let them laugh at the horror The response of Joe public thatrsquos still not reeling inside the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories is that of a joke mdash directed at what the worldpeople are dishing out at them Soon it becomes a joke on themselves mdash yeh kahaan aa gaye hum typeBecause there is Step Seven Build your country ldquoEveryone else is welcome to leaverdquo What happens thereafter Do we just go quiet Live in our sombre pessimism Since therersquos nothing left to save Turkish Temelkuran currently in exile in Croatia doesnrsquot sayMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper