(c) Copyright 1999: Graham L. Strachan
After the Australian High Court declared Britain to be a foreign power, Pauline Hanson was quoted in the Australian as saying, “If [Britain is] a foreign power, then why the hell are we going to a referendum in November this year to see whether we are a republic or not?” That’s a good question. I’m prepared to go a step further and make a prediction: that even if there is a ‘No’ vote in the November referendum, the Howard government will ignore the result and declare a republic anyway. Furthermore, it is my opinion that that was always going to be the case.
It has been obvious for some time, though trusting Australians were reluctant to accept it, that THE Australian government is no longer AN Australian government. It no longer represents the interests of the Australian people as citizens of an independent sovereign nation. It conforms to the requirements of the international bankers acting through the IMF in economics, and of the international community acting through the United Nations bureaucracies in regard to social policy. Increasingly it ignores or rides roughshod over the real wishes of the Australian people in its haste to globalise their country, to hand over the ownership and control of it to ‘institutions of global governance’.
So for all the posturing about Australia ‘coming of age’ and ‘cutting loose from Britain’, this former nation is about to become, at the hands of its ‘own’ government, an ‘interdependent member state’ of the new global order. And for all the questions about Heather Hill’s citizenship and her qualification to take her place in the Senate, there is now a mountain of evidence to sustain an argument that the Howard government itself represents a foreign power located in Wall Street and Manhattan, that there has been a quiet coup in the halls of Canberra with the concurrence of an extremely lame, or equally treacherous, ‘Opposition’.
This federal government is sneaking or steamrolling a whole range of measures through the parliament (and some not through the parliament) without proper public exposure or debate, and to which the majority of electors are clearly opposed, despite spurious claims of ‘mandates’: the GST, the sale of Telstra and other public assets, the soon to be revived MAI, the signing of the Fifth Protocol to the GATS, the censorship of the Internet, the new ASIO Act, the Republic and proposed changes to the Constitution, the manipulation of the political process to exclude One Nation, and the list goes on and on. All of these measures serve to further the globalisation programme, and it is all being done in a big hurry, as though the government has a deadline to meet.
Government members approached by concerned voters are responding to legitimate questions about policy with what seem to be standard answers read from a FAQ sheet circulated to all politicians. Some of the answers are outright lies, such as “the Debit Tax has been comprehensively looked at and it doesn’t work”, “Australia has to rely on foreign investment because Australians are not good savers,” and “the Prime Minister wants to sell all of Telstra to raise the level of share ownership in Australia.” There seems to be a growing attitude in government that the electorate is variously ignorant, easily deceived, a nuisance, or a body of potential troublemakers trying to interfere in the affairs government. There is a growing attitude in government of “tell ‘em anything, but get ‘em globalised”.
It might be thought that the ‘vast majority’ of Australians have so successfully been dumbed down by the media that they are beyond caring, that there is no longer any such thing as ‘the interests of the Australian people’. But there is a section of the people, perhaps 2-3 million and rapidly growing, who do care, and do have an interest in the future of their country. Those people, who are entitled not only to expect their duly elected government to represent their interests, but also to be truthful about what it is doing, are becoming increasingly alarmed at what is unfolding in Canberra. In particular they are becoming aware that what this government says, and what it does, are increasingly at odds. They are starting to suspect not only that this government is not to be trusted, but that it represents a very real threat to their country, their national sovereignty, and their basic freedoms.
More and more people are asking, “How can ‘honest’ John Howard still talk as though Australia is a ‘democracy’ when the government blatantly ignores or rides roughshod over the wishes of the people?” The answer is to be found in yet another false theory, this time political. It’s a theory which enables politicians to talk ‘democracy’ but to act totalitarian, and it is called the Theory of Democratic Elitism.
The term ‘Democratic Elitism’ sounds like a contradiction, and that’s exactly what it is. Under classical democracy the ruling elite are supposed to carry out the wishes of the electorate, while under rule by elite, the elite decide what to do and force the masses to do it. How could such opposites be reconciled? Well it’s amazing what can be done with some creative social ‘science’ theorising and generous grants from the Rockefeller Foundation. The result is this false theory, this ideology, which enables governments to globalise their countries without the approval of the voters, or even without their knowledge, and still be able to claim they have a ‘democracy’.
The ideology of Democratic Elitism starts from an assumption: that since political power must ultimately be exercised by the few, rule by elites must be some sort of iron-clad law of nature. Democracy in the sense of ‘government of the people by the people for the people’ might have been a laudable enough idea in its day, so the story goes, but it can’t work in practice. Rule by elites is unavoidable, so why fight it? Why not make it respectable, even desirable? And that’s exactly what was done. During the post-World War II period, while the masses were hard at work generating the wealth to fund them, political elites in the social science faculties of American universities came up with this ideology which reconciled dictatorship by an elite with the alleged requirements of democracy [see Peter Bachrach, ‘The Theory of Democratic Elitism’ (1967)].
The usual excuses were trotted out to justify abandoning classical democracy: modern technological society, complex problems, the organisational needs of science and industry, need for experts with specialised knowledge and skills, the average person is an idiot, all the beliefs of the past are ‘outmoded’. “Decisions and policies were matters for expert determination rather than parliamentary divisions or electoral counts.” Only rule by an elite, could “cope with the shapeless mass created by urbanisation and industrialism.” Classical democracy, with its emphasis upon equality, popular participation, and the responsibility of the governors to the governed, was not only anachronistic but also dangerous.
Why dangerous? Because it threatened something the theorists posited as THE most important feature of any political system: ‘STABILITY’. What the people really needed most from their political system was not representation, not transparency, but ‘stability’, and since permanent elite rule gave the system ‘stability’, it was the political ‘good’. The masses and classical democracy, on the other hand, posed a threat to ‘stability’, and so were inherently ‘bad’. The people had to be protected from themselves. ‘Stability’ needed to be preserved at all costs, even if it meant lying to the people, manipulating the electoral process, and crushing dissent.
The problem then was how to make that look ‘democratic’, and the answer lay in the illusion of choice. Since democracy implied choice, something had to be found to create the impression the people were choosing something. The answer lay in alleged ‘competition between elites’ for power and for votes. The masses could still have their elections, but they would choose between ‘competing elites’. That way it could be claimed that they still had ‘democracy’, even though they had no real say as to policy or anything meaningful. ‘Competition between elites’, it was claimed, would also prevent any one elite gaining and retaining a monopoly on power, providing the necessary checks and balances required by democracy. Sound good? And if that wasn’t enough, the masses were welcome to aspire to positions in the ruling elites (make a play for a slice of the action, so to speak) so they were not really excluded. And there it was: a masterpiece of theoretical reasoning, democratic elitism, democratic dictatorship, the irreconcilable reconciled. The masses could now be told, “You’ve got democracy, so shut up!”
Well lets take an inventory of the more important claims of Democratic Elitism, and see how they have fared here in Australia.
(1) Competition between elites would prevent a monopoly on power.
The elites do not compete. In the same way multinational oligopolists in the economic marketplace form a club to share the market, the elites form a club to share the power. When ‘stability’ is the primary goal of the political system, collusion between major political parties to prevent change (it’s called ‘elite consensus’, or ‘bipartisanship’) is inevitable. The media even try to flog it to the public as a sign of ‘political maturity’. Elite consensus, uniting to share power to the exclusion of newcomers like One Nation, displaces the competition between elites which was supposedly going to satisfy the requirement of democracy. The result is tweedle-dum, tweedle-dee politics with two parties, one set of policies, each taking it in turns to rule, and doing ‘whatever it takes’ to monopolise the power.
(2) The elites cannot render their power hereditary, because new social groups can gain access to the elite positions.
In practice, if ‘new social groups’ from the mass challenge the elites’ grasp on power, all sorts of skullduggery is brought into play. The elites collude in the swapping of electoral preferences to exclude the newcomers, electoral boundaries are redrawn, electoral Acts are changed to make voting other than for the major parties informal, High Court challenges are brought to prevent the voters’ choice taking her place in the Senate. And the halls of Canberra echo with the gleeful laughter of the elitists as they see the system working as it should, reaffirming their own monopoly on power.
Furthermore, the social scientists overlooked another crucial factor: media control by the elitists, and journalists prepared to jettison all journalistic ethics to smear and discredit the newcomers. The ‘informed’ consent of the governed, so crucial to democracy, has disappeared forever, murdered by the elitist-controlled media.
(3) The elites would have to draw support from shifting coalitions, so no single form of power could become dominant.
In practice the ‘shifting coalitions’ (ethnics, indigines, feminists, homosexuals, greens) don’t shift. They too form a club to which the elites pander to retain power. While the various minority groups may not always agree on everything, when it comes to vicariously controlling the political power they are as solid as a rock. When it comes to excluding newcomers who might wish to share that power they are equally united, inventing ‘racism’, finding boogiemen like the Ku Klux Klan under beds, and lying through their teeth to poison public support for the would-be intruders. One single form of power does become dominant: the coalition of minority factions....the same coalition, of the same factions.
(4) The elites dominating various areas of society (business, education, and the arts) will be prevented, by competition for power, from forming a common alliance.
In fact they become as thick as thieves. From their mutually congratually Honours List, their ‘Australian of the Year’, to their jobs for the boys and girls, the same old faces on boards and panels and committees of inquiry, to their Grammies and Mo and Art awards, to their lucrative ‘consultancy’ jobs for ex-PMs and the judiciary in private industry, the elites close ranks to form a nice little club which shares the power and the perques.
What about the claim that anybody is free to gain access to the elites, so they are not really excluded from the ‘democratic’ process? The qualification for entry into the coalition of elites is a willingness to become indistinguishable from the elitists: to bow to political correctness, to conform, to embrace all the elitist values and policies, regurgitate all the phony theories, and talk the pre-requisite elite-speak. When ‘stability’, ongoing rule by the same elites pandering to the same coalition of interests, is the main requirement from the political system, different ideas are heresies. The result is, and increasingly will be, political, social and cultural stagnation.
So in practice ‘democratic elitism’ led to plenty of elitism, and no democracy, which was precisely what it was intended to do. The requirement of ‘stability’ was nothing more than an excuse for a defacto one party state. The coalition of elites, like a compacted wad of faeces stuck in a constipated bowel, now not only manipulates the political process to serve its own ends, but controls the social agenda, the media and the law. The elitists see themselves as the social class chosen by ‘history’ to lead the world to the globalist utopia. In the interests of ‘stability’ the masses must be disarmed, subdued, mentally reconstructed, and if they step out of line, bombed into submission. The worst fears of the classical democrats concerning rule by elite are being confirmed. And it’s happening right here in good ol’ Oz.
Globalisation Discussion Forum