Imposing candidates, controlling public opinion and widespread repression of dissidents have been essential elements of the celebration of democracy in the United States.
All major Western media outlets, controlled by Washington’s disinformation and propaganda apparatus, are providing extensive news coverage (or rather, “journalistic”) of the presidential elections in the United States.
The country is portrayed as a bastion of democracy and free choice for citizens. However, this paradise is being threatened by one of the candidates, who is said to be an aberration and an anomaly of the American system.
Therefore, the two assassination attempts against this candidate are justified by the tense climate and the polarization encouraged by him. At the same time, he – Donald Trump – has used these events as a propaganda weapon against his rivals, presenting himself as the victim of a regime controlled by the Democratic Party that has destroyed the American dream.
Both sides have used all the latest tools to gain the slightest advantage over their opponents. The most widely used is the spread of fake news. But Kamala Harris and the Democrats have been shielded from most of the accusations by the press that is linked to them.
In fact, Trump, despite being an absolute demagogue, is right when he says that the U.S. is living under a kind of dictatorial regime. However, this is not exactly due to the Democrats and it is not something new. The U.S. has always been a dictatorship, at least since it became a capitalist power.
On only two occasions has the bipartisan clique failed to secure a double in the final result of the presidential elections. And that was a long time ago. A very long time ago indeed: in 1860 and in 1912. As presented in another article, at least half of Americans would like to have a minimally competitive third party, because the others are merely a facade to cover up the clearly undemocratic two-party system.
The system basically works like this: the big bankers and industrialists meet to decide who should represent their interests in the Oval Office of the White House. Since the interests are not exactly the same – some want more money for their businesses than for others – and since it is necessary to pretend to a population of over 300 million people that these citizens also have some rights, two candidates are chosen to compete.
In recent years, Donald Trump – one of these big businessmen – has managed to garner support from a sector of the bourgeoisie to be one of these two candidates. Since he says some nonsense that many people like to hear (and that makes sense to many people who are broke in every sense), this bothers the most powerful businessmen.
The capitalist elite in the United States prefers Harris to Trump. The apparatus that controls American politics and the state is basically made up of the finance, arms industry and cutting-edge technology sectors. A look at the financing of both campaigns shows that the balance still weighs in favor of the Democratic candidate.
The money invested, both officially and behind the scenes, is what decides who will be elected. Voters just go with the flow. The monopoly of the major media outlets only reports on the Democratic and Republican candidates – how will voters know about the other candidates to vote for them? Social networks control the discussions and the content to be seen – Google is the largest financier of Harris’s campaign; Apple, Oracle, Amazon and Facebook also invest heavily in the Democrat, while Microsoft also deposits money in Trump.
There is no room for anything different.
The only space would be the streets. But there the dictatorship is even more brutal. Thousands of activists have been arrested in recent months for holding political protests. The main area of political activity of the United States, as a true global empire, is international politics. And much of the discussions between the two candidates have been about this. On the streets, people are also trying to join the discussions – since channels, pages and profiles of both individuals and organizations and even media outlets have been excluded from social media. But students from dozens of universities are being attacked and detained by the police for opposing the genocide that U.S. weapons and money are facilitating in Gaza. This repression on the streets – carried out during the Democrats’ term – is applauded by Trump and the Republicans. But Trump should be careful, because the two assassination attempts he suffered were carried out by people who do not like the candidate’s allegedly pacifist words regarding the war in Ukraine. In fact, those who do not support the U.S. and NATO war in Ukraine against Russia have been the preferred target of censorship in these elections. Several prominent political officials and commentators have been coerced by the police and the FBI because of their political positions, such as Scott Ritter, Dan Kovalik and Dimitri K. Simes. Or the Jewish historian Ilan Pappé, who was questioned upon arriving in the United States because of his critical opinion on Israel.
In these elections, imposing candidates, controlling public opinion and widespread repression of dissidents have been essential elements of the celebration of democracy in the United States.
This is the country that wants to teach the rest of the world a lesson in democracy.
Eduardo Vasco is a Brazilian journalist specializing in international politics.