RULING THE VOID: A BOOK REVIEW

Ruling the Void
By Peter Mair
Verso, 160 Pages
Available for purchase from Amazon here

Reviewed by William Solniger

Written by the Irish political scientist Peter Mair, who died before the book was finished, Ruling The Void is a penetrating account of the steady decline of democracy in Europe. In my view, the book is far better for having been left incomplete: it stands far stronger as a negative assessment of the times than it would had the author racked his Leftist politics for some illusory and half-hearted set of “solutions” to the structural problems he describes. The book seems to have attracted far less attention than it deserves, except from certain Eurosceptics who have focused myopically on its criticisms of the European Union, ignoring the wider significance of the “hollowing of democracy” which is the book’s main theme.

Ruling the Void opens with the most damning indicator of decline: the falling level of participation in national elections. Against those political scientists who are tempted to deny the evidence of this phenomenon, Mair establishes his position beyond doubt by a thorough review of the facts: electoral turnout has certainly been falling across Europe in the last decades, not in the sense that turnout is progressively lower for every election, but in the more general sense that troughs in participation occur more and more frequently.

DEMOCRACY OF THE ACT

Local democracy in a post-democratic age.

by Colin Liddell

The peoples of Europe have been involved in a massive shell and pea game. I’m not quite sure when exactly the switch was made, but it was definitely made sometime, because when the shells stopped moving and we took our pick, there was no pea to be seen. The democracy we thought we were getting had dematerialized into rules, regulations, dictates from Brussels, "human rights" legislation, mind-control from the media, and supranational bodies telling us what to do all the time about everything!

“Where is our democracy?” we feebly ask, confused that, having jumped through the hoops and done the little dance with the ballot papers and boxes, we are still not getting it. Instead we get what they decide to give us. We get what we don’t want – exactly what we don't want. Then, when we complain, we are shown our signatures on the order form. "Yup, that's us," we meekly concur, scratching our heads. "I guess we did vote for that after all, but...but..." No buts. Welcome to post-democracy.

THE BROKEN WHIP OF OUR MASTERS

by Colin Liddell 

The recent European elections are not the way that civilizations are saved, and the promising results for a number of slightly more realistic parties may in fact be outliers before the anti-democratic system reasserts itself using its usual tricks. We have been here before. When the BNP threatened the political consensus in the UK a few years ago, there was a sudden clanking of gears and whirring of wheels as the Great Machine went into action to eradicate the threat, which was done by a variety of techniques:

• Racial swamping of the areas involved
• Intense canvassing and the establishment of a detailed voter database to allow tailored approaches to individual voters
• Comforting (and patronizing) noises about the need to understand "the concerns of ordinary voters"
• Cloaked threats about the consequences of voting BNP both at the community level and the individual level
• The promotion of "suitable" alternatives, which is essentially how UKIP got its big start
• Cultural immersion in anti-racism

The result of this is that while the fake nationalists of UKIP have done rather well this time, the UK actually lost the two real nationalist MEPs – Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons – that it had elected last time.

ELECTILE DYSFUNCTION

by Colin Liddell

In recent days Alternative Right has been working hard to highlight the deficiencies of our modern democracy.

Siryako Akda's ARE MASS MOVEMENTS OBSOLETE? contends that politics is going the way of warfare – i.e. something fought by special ops or guerrilla forces rather than the mass armies of the past. Mike Newland's MANCUR OLSON AND THE DECLINE OF NATIONS makes similar points, referring in particular to the way that strongly motivated minorities skew the system in their favour while the majority allows itself to be sidelined. William Solniger's IS ETHNIC REPLACEMENT 'UNDEMOCRATIC'? identifies the way that our nebulous egalitarianism works to disempower the majority – effectively rendering it silent – and thus allows its domination by these potent minorities

MANCUR OLSON AND THE DECLINE OF NATIONS

The last days of Rome.

by Mike Newland

Why do great and powerful nations which appear unbeatable decline and fall? One might immediately conclude that they are simply overcome by the growth of inevitably superior forces despite all the advantages in resources which being powerful has brought them.

The best known example is Rome which enjoyed extraordinary abilities in organisation and in the technology it could apply by the standards of the day yet still collapsed.

Mancur Olson (1932-1998) was an American economist who addressed this question from the point of view of how things work in societies as a result of the formation of groups pursuing particular interests. How do incentives to combine together in self-interest affect what happens? See his book "The Rise and Decline of Nations."

The virtue of democratic government at first sight is that any group which feels itself disadvantaged can form a coalition and lobby to improve its position. That is certainly the version of democracy purveyed by politicians on the stump. It’s in principle correct if you ignore the obstacles placed in the path by a system protecting its power interests against interlopers.

But there is a paradox here, Olson argues. It is logical to think that if enough people are discontented and agree on a common interest that they will act in concert and influence how things work. In reality they often do not.

POST-DEMOCRACY AND THE BROKEN SOCIAL CONTRACT

by Colin Liddell

Back in 2011 it was revealed that ALL sexual assaults involving rape in Oslo in the previous five years were committed by "males of non-Western background." The figures released by the police showed that in the five years between 2005 and 2010, there were 86 rapes, in which 83 of the perpetrators were described as having a "non-Western" appearance. The remaining three cases involved unknown attackers, but, given the identity of the other 83 attackers, it would be reasonable to assume that they, too, were non-Whites.

The women attacked were, of course, overwhelmingly Norwegian.