Well, that's all well and good in an idealistic liberalist abstract, but in reality it often leads to (and Romania's own history did lead to) mass suffering, extermination of minorities, and getting invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union after their fascist leader Codreanu allied with Hitler. So, it's best nipped in the bud, no matter what the majority believe.

Șoșoacă, in fact, is under investigating for commemorating Codreanu in public.

[–] FreudianCafe@lemmy.ml 0 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

So you are against democracy. Who gets to decide the leaders then? You?

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 0 points 6 hours ago

So you are against democracy.

No. I am against the simplistic idealistic approach of just unconditionally allowing the most popular candidates to rule, especially given the surrounding circumstances like mass media propaganda turning this nice idea into a pay-to-win scheme, and the broken implementations in most countries (FPTP, systematic voter disenfranchisement, etc.). Just look at how that turns out in the USA, repeatedly. There are many other ways democracy can be structured. Most 'democractic countries' have extremely broken federal electoral systems which fail to represent the voting people, despite it seeming democratic on the surface with elections.

Who gets to decide the leaders now? If you live in a modernized country and a federal candidate does not have the support of the rich owning class, they won't have much chance at competing with airtime on television and news, support of paid 'influencers' and other celebrities, commercial advertising spots, social media astroturfing campaigns and all the other ways to make a candidate seem important enough to have a chance of winning. The bottom line is, realistically speaking, the only viable candidates at leading on a federal level are those promoted by the ultra-rich, every other candidate and party is fringe. I assert that you effectively having to choose between candidates pre-selected by the owning class is not a valid democracy. Even if you have the right and the freedom to do due diligence and vote for a minor party which is closer to your views, that freedom is ultimately useless in a popularity contest influenced by mass media. That minor party, in real life, never had a fair chance of winning, no matter how popular their policies are.

[–] Bloomcole@lemmy.ml -1 points 22 hours ago

They fully deserved to be invaded by the Soviets.
They had a fascist regime indeed. Don't go crying about the consequences of their own actions.
And you only believe in democracy when it turns out how you want?
Looks like fake democracy to me if they let them participate and then ban them AFTER they win.
It's exactly what the US did when they held 'democratic elections' in Afghanistan.
The Taliban won despite all their meddling after which they annuled it and had to do it over again without them.

What will happen in other countries, let's say if the horrible AfD win in Germany, are they going to ban them then?
Either you ban them before or honor the results.
But that would break the illusion of having a real democracy.
It's clear only centrist results in the narrow overton window are tolerated.
And you think it was better for Georgia when they basically got a French president puppet or that corrupt one who had to flee to fascist ukraine where he had to flee again for doing the same?
They literally started a war with Russia.
And somehow the west doesn't mind extreme right when they are against Russia.
They fully suported them in ukraine, turned out great for them didn't it?