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President Donald J. Trump enters the Oval Office on March 5, 2017 in Washington, DC.Erik S. Lesser-Pool/Getty Images

President Donald Trump and his advisors are all about the American people. But their continual invocation of these people reveals how the language of democracyparticularly when accompanied by colorful pictures of cheering crowdscan become a powerful tool in the consolidation of profoundly undemocratic political processes and ideas.

When, for instance, Trump calls the press the enemy of the people, he is possibly not even aware of the history behind the phrase as a rallying cry for the Soviet Unions Stalin-era witch hunts for hidden traitors. Such attacks are not intended only for journalists critical of him, but broadly apply to the entire edifice of public servantscareer diplomats, policy experts, analysts, and pressthat the White House portrays as a drag on U.S. democracy. This appears to be one small piece of a larger administration effort to develop a division in the U.S. public imagination, with the public servant class on one hand, and Trumpthe chosen emissary of Americas no-longer-silent majorityon the other.

Since the election of Jimmy Carter, almost every president, Democrat and Republican alike, has come to power by positioning himself as an outsider, assailing politics as usual and threatening to shake up the Washington establishment. But Trump chief strategist Stephen Bannons promises to launch a deconstruction of the U.S. administrative state go beyond such standard critiques of the status quo. Instead, the Bannon camp is suggesting that a host of agencies and organizations long considered central to good governance are full of inefficient and unreliable schemers, catering to their own interests rather than to the peoples real needs.

Trump presents himself as the oppositean instrument of direct democracy with an unfiltered connection to the ordinary American and a determination to defy all cowardly intermediaries who might wish to hamstring the bold words and actions that he claims reflect the peoples will. ( You think it, I say it , was a standard campaign phrase.) In truth, Trump favors stadium rallies over face-to-face meetings with small groups of constituents. During the New Hampshire primaries, he marveled at how slow the process of actual connection could be. People would go and have dinner with the voters like, five people, a family and theyd sit there and have dinner for two and a half hours If I did that people would lose respect for me. Instead, he prolifically tweets to his over 26 million followers, manufacturing a sense of uncensored immediacy.

We should care about this rhetorical strategy because Trump advisors are starting to redefine the very meaning of democracy, in much the same way they have already succeeded in transforming the meaning of fake news. The figure of the president, keeping his promises to the American people, is being upheld as fundamentally rival to a system of checks and balances designed to contain the executive branch and another system of expertise intended to advise it.

In continually allying himself with the people in opposition to institutional power, Trump is doing several things. First, he is undermining the role of deep knowledge in government decision-making and removing opportunities for experts to air their views, particularly when those views might diverge from a predetermined political line. Scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Health and Human Services, and other government-funded agencies have been forbidden to publish or speak publicly about their work without White House approval. The State Department, which employs nearly 70,000 people worldwide, is facing a 37% budget cut , and the administration has given short shrift to much of the analysis the department puts out. Meanwhile, Trump is the first president since World War II to eschew a daily security briefing. The reports, he has stated publicly, are repetitive, and since he is a smart person, he doesnt have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years .

At the same time, the president is encouraging the splintering of authority in the civic sphere, among those voices outside government that cannot be so easily controlled. He is doing so by proclaiming a large segment of the mainstream media to be not simply biased but deliberately fake and aimed at discrediting the true American polity. Those journalists, Trump warned a crowd in Melbourne, Fla., have an agenda, and their agenda is not your agenda.

But Trump and his advisors are also praising the increasing fragmentation of Americas information landscape as yet another laudable manifestation of direct democracy. Applauding the fact that people get their news now from literally hundreds and thousands of sites, the president of the American Conservative Union termed this historical moment a time of great democratization in journalism.

Encouraging the proliferation of a multiplicity of media voices may not seem like an authoritarian strategy. It certainly diverges sharply from the media policy of a more textbook type of top-down regime like Russias. There, the three major television channels are unified around positive coverage of President Vladimir Putin, and a background apparatus of censorship is in place to portray him not only as a man of the people, but also as an uncontested leader above the fray and backed by a hegemonic state apparatus.

Trumps people, in contrast, encourage chatterthe emergence of a relativized world where every opinion can be of equal value. As described in a recent Foreign Affairs article, How America Lost Faith in Expertise, the current social climate is one where any guy on the street is entitled to know as much about any issue as, say, a Nobel Prize winner. These days, author Tom Nichols writes, members of the public search for expert errors and revel in finding themnot to improve understanding but rather to give themselves license to disregard all expert advice they dont like .

In such a corrupted environment, where even the most straightforward of facts can find a challenger, Trump can shine as the loudest, brashest voice of self-proclaimed authority. Its not about truth, as much as power. As he himself puts it: The era of empty talk is over, its over. Now is the time for action.

Cynthia Hooper is an associate professor of history and director of Russian and Eastern European studies at the College of the Holy Cross .

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Donald Trump's Definition of Democracy Is Dangerous - Fortune

PARISJean dOrmesson was born in Paris in 1925. A writer and philosopher, he received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor in 2014. I spoke to him recently in Paris about the upcoming elections in France and the rise of populism globally.

Do you see a real possibility that Marine Le Pen and the National Front can win the French elections?

The National Front is clearly making steady progress. I remember when the party of the extreme right in France at the time of [Jean-Louis] Tixier-Vignancour reached a maximum of 2 percent of the vote. Later Jean-Marie Le Pens party gained a maximum of 3 to 4 percent of the vote. But now there is a populist wave all across the world I am thinking for example of Brexit, of Trump, of the Dutch elections and today Le Pen is at 26-27 percent.

For several months Le Pen has been the only candidate to be certain of going into the second round; the others, I am not sure. As I said before Le Pen will have approximately 25-30 percent of the votes but I do not think that she can be elected. She will face the Socialist Party led by [Benot] Hamon and the extreme left led by [Jean-Luc] Mlenchon. If they were united they would represent 25 percent, more or less the same percentage as Le Pen.

Anyway, I think that in the end Le Pen will be defeated. In my opinion, [Francois] Fillon if he is still in the race despite the scandal that has engulfed him or Macron will win the elections in the end. I do believe that Le Pen will be elected in the elections of 2022, but even now all possibilities are open. If, unfortunately, there should be a horrible attack two days before the elections, it would be a catastrophe, and in that case Le Pen could win.

Lukas Schulze via Getty Images

Are the French anxious and worried?

France has changed. For many years it was a country organized into two parties: the conservatives and the socialists, the right and the left. Macron has said correctly that bipartisanship is finished and it has been replaced by quadri-partisanship: Le Pen at the extreme right and the extreme left of Mlenchon, and then the traditional left and the traditional right. But it is not only politics that have changed but also the French people, who were once happy and carefree. As Cocteau rightly said they have become like Italians in a bad mood. The democratic system has been threatened and people are tending towards extremes. The victory of the National Front would be an economic catastrophe the return to the Franc, the closing of borders in short a great chaos.

Brexit and the election of Trump seemed to be unforeseeable events. They are, however, things that have happened.

You cannot absolutely trust the polls today, and also for many years people did not dare to admit that they voted for the National Front. Today, this trend has changed, and people are less afraid to say that they vote for the National Front. This could increase the partys vote to 30 percent.

What kind of a country is France today?

Its a country in bad shape. The five years of the Hollande presidency have been disastrous. He has not kept his promises and he was not able to reduce unemployment and increase the standard of living. Today France may seem to be turning the page, but the danger of terrorism and the problem of migrants is strong. Security is one of the main priorities, and with Le Pen there will be no more migrants because the borders will be closed. A large number of Christians vote for the National Front and I do not understand how they can support a political party that wants to close doors. I have to say that Hollande was better on the topic of security than he was on the economic front.

Do you worry about the world of culture, how are things for French culture?

The French language is doing very badly; it is hard to fight against English. It is also true that books and newspapers are in difficulty. Some publishers are doing well, but there is a negative trend and bookstore sales have been reduced by between 5 to 15 percent. Current events have certainly invigorated peoples desire to read newspapers, and for the moment the freedom of the press is total in France.

And if the National Front wins?

It will not only be a disaster for the poor and for the rich, but it will also affect culture, and the freedom of the press will be threatened.

Do intellectuals still have a voice in France today?

I am not an intellectual, I consider myself a humble writer. The left wing intellectuals went further right than myself. All of France is moving to the right. The Communist Party and the Socialists no longer seem to exist in France. However, writers still have a privileged situation. A writer in France still has a voice in society, although the myth of the great writer, such as Victor Hugo or Franois Mauriac or Andr Gide, no longer exists. The people have violently rejected the political class, all politicians are unpopular and the press is not seen in a very good light. Writers do still enjoy a certain respect.

You are a French academician. What is the role of the Academy of France today?

It does not have very much to do with literature, it is more like a meeting place for interesting people. Neither [Jean-Paul] Sartre nor [Andr] Malraux nor [Albert] Camus were French academicians, but the Academy of France definitely has an undeniable prestige, especially abroad, because it represents a certain French esprit. The French esprit prevailing at the time of Voltaire and Descartes.

One thing remains at the Academy that has otherwise disappeared in France I am talking about conversation. Formerly there were literary salons, but they disappeared. In the last 60-70 years, they were replaced by literary cafes, but now even those have disappeared and conversation has gone with them.

Does France still have a leading cultural role in Europe today?

France follows the destiny of Europe. For centuries the dominance of Europe was total, but I would like to say that culture goes hand in hand with a flourishing economy and military power. Both Louis XIV and Napoleon understood this very well. Tomorrow, the most important philosophers will be Indian, Chinese and Brazilian. The advance of populism is due to the weakness of Europe.

What about the United States?

Who would ever have expected four months ago an America with [Donald] Trump as president? And that is the opposite of what the world thinks about America. In both America and Europe today, there is great hostility toward the system. The real victim of all this is democracy.

What kind of a world do we live in nowadays?

It is a difficult period. The world has always changed, but today it is changing with a faster pace. I am not among those who say that it was better before. In spite of the great success of science it is unequivocally important to save a clear concept of humankind, and to reconcile the triumph of science with humanism.

Do you think that there will be new wars?

There should be no more wars, because we have created Europe, but if populism triumphs, things will change. We absolutely must safeguard the idea of Europe. Europe has succeeded in two things: the single currency and the absence of war. Wars will certainly continue in Africa, in Asia, but we must ensure absolute vigilance against populism. Young people have a tendency to be extremist, but we must prevent them from voting for the National Front.

In conclusion, what is your opinion about your country?

It is definitely somewhat anxious and unhappy. The French language, as I said at the beginning, is becoming less important, and France is not the first country in a Europe that is no longer the center of the world. It is wrong, though, to be talking about decline all the time. What I believe is that Africa will have an increasingly important role. The future is Africa.

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The Victim Of Populism Is Democracy - Huffington Post

Is there any party less aptly named than the Liberal Democrats? A truly liberal party would embrace the chance to shape Britains future as a self-governing nation outside the EU, free to trade with the world. And a democratic one would respect what the people voted for in one of the biggest exercises of democracy in modern times. Instead, the Lib Dems want to stop Brexit.

With only nine MPs, the Lib Dems can do little harm in the House of Commons, but there are over 100 of them in the House of Lords, many rashly given peerages by David Cameron to placate his Coalition allies. Those peers are seeking to force the Government to hold a second referendum on the final Brexit deal; they say they will vote against the Bill that will authorise Theresa May to trigger Article 50 unless their scheme for another public vote is written into law.

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The Liberal Democrats should learn to respect democracy, even if they don't like the Brexit result - Telegraph.co.uk

Pax Ahimsa Gethen / Wikimedia CommonsA recent Pew Research report looked into what characteristics Americans feel are essential for a strong democracy to flourish. The survey asked 1,503 American adults how important things such as fair and open national elections are in preserving democracy.

Of those surveyed, 89 percent believed that open and fair national elections were essential for a strong democracy, while 83 percent saw having a system of checks and balances as critical. Seventy-nine percent thought that people having the right to nonviolently protest was important, and 74 percent favored protecting the rights of people who hold unpopular views. Only 64 percent thought that news organizations being free to criticize political leaders was essential.

Breaking the data down along party lines shows little difference between Republicans and Democratsexcept on a two key points.

Sixty-eight percent of Republicans viewed nonviolent protests as important, compared to 88 percent of Democrats.

Republicans' lower propensity to see this right as essential is reflected in a recent push to crack down on the practice. GOP lawmakers in at least 18 states have introduced some form of anti-protesting legislation, according to The Washington Post.

Inspired by the North Dakota pipeline protests, state Rep. Keith Kempenich introduced a bill that would make motorists not liable for unintentionally hitting protesters who are blocking a roadway. A bill sponsored by Iowa state Sen. Jake Chapman would make intentionally blocking traffic on a highway a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Missouri Rep. Don Phillips introduced legislation to penalize anyone wearing a mask or disguise during an unlawful protest.

Civil liberties groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have called the anti-protesting legislation unconstitutional and an "unlawful infringements on our right to speak." As the ACLU notes, some of the bills have stalled (including the one in North Dakota) or been dropped altogether (including ones in Michigan and Virginia).

A 20-percentage-point difference is nothing to sneeze at, but it pales in comparison to the current partisan divide over the importance of the right of the press to criticize political officials. While 76 percent of Democrats believed a free press was essential, only 49 percent of Republicans felt the same way.

Trust in the media has been declining, as noted by Gallup, so it's no wonder both Democrats and Republicans feel journalists' role in preserving democracy is less vital than the role of things like checks and balances. But you still have to wonder at the extent to which President Trump's ongoing feud with the media and the anti-Trump protests of recent months seem to be shaping the views of GOP supporters. It's also hard not to think the results might be flipped if Democrats were still in power.

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How Important Are Nonviolent Protests and Media Criticism in Preserving Democracy? Depends Which Party You ... - Reason (blog)

Either we own political technologies, or they will own us. Illustration by Ellie Foreman-Peck Illustration: Ellie Foreman Peck

Has a digital coup begun? Is big data being used, in the US and the UK, to create personalised political advertising, to bypass our rational minds and alter the way we vote? The short answer is probably not. Ornotyet.

A series of terrifying articles suggests that a company called Cambridge Analytica helped to swing both the US election and the EU referendum by mining data from Facebook and using it to predict peoples personalities, then tailoring advertising to their psychological profiles. These reports, originating with the Swiss publication Das Magazin (published in translation by Vice), were clearly written in good faith, but apparently with insufficient diligence. They relied heavily on claims made by Cambridge Analytica that now appear to have been exaggerated. I found the story convincing, until I read the deconstructions by Martin Robbins on Little Atoms, Kendall Taggart on Buzzfeed and Leonid Bershidsky on Bloomberg.

None of this is to suggest we should not be vigilant. The Cambridge Analytica story gives us a glimpse of a possible dystopian future, especially in the US, where data protection is weak. Online information already lends itself to manipulation and political abuse, and the age of big data has scarcely begun. In combination with advances in cognitive linguistics and neuroscience, this data could become a powerful tool for changing the electoral decisions we make.

Our capacity to resist manipulation is limited. Even the crudest forms of subliminal advertising swerve past our capacity for reason and make critical thinking impossible. The simplest language shifts can trip us up. For example, when Americans were asked whether the federal government was spending too little on assistance to the poor, 65% agreed. When they were asked whether it was spending too little on welfare, 25% agreed. What hope do we have of resisting carefully targeted digital messaging that uses trigger words to influence our judgment? Those who are charged with protecting the integrity of elections should be urgently developing a new generation of safeguards.

Already big money exercises illegitimate power over political systems, making a mockery of democracy: the battering ram of campaign finance, which gives billionaires and corporations a huge political advantage over ordinary citizens; the dark money network (a web of lobby groups, funded by billionaires, that disguise themselves as thinktanks); astroturf campaigning (employing people to masquerade as grassroots movements); and botswarming (creating fake online accounts to give the impression that large numbers of people support a political position). All these are current threats to political freedom. Election authorities such as the Electoral Commission in the UK have signally failed to control these abuses, or even, in most cases, to acknowledge them.

China shows how much worse this could become. There, according to a recent article in Scientific American, deep-learning algorithms enable the state to develop its citizen score. This uses peoples online activities to determine how loyal and compliant they are, and whether they should qualify for jobs, loans or entitlement to travel to other countries. Combine this level of monitoring with nudging technologies tools designed subtly to change peoples opinions and responses and you develop a system that tends towards complete control.

Already big money exercises illegitimate power over political systems, making a mockery of democracy

Thats the bad news. But digital technologies could also be a powerful force for positive change. Political systems, particularly in the Anglophone nations, have scarcely changed since the fastest means of delivering information was the horse. They remain remote, centralised and paternalist. The great potential for participation and deeper democratic engagement is almost untapped. Because the rest of us have not been invited to occupy them, it is easy for billionaires to seize and enclose the political cyber-commons.

A recent report by the innovation foundation Nesta argues that there are no quick or cheap digital fixes. But, when they receive sufficient support from governments or political parties, new technologies can improve the quality of democratic decisions. They can use the wisdom of crowds to make politics more transparent, to propose ideas that dont occur to professional politicians, and to spot flaws and loopholes in government bills.

Among the best uses of online technologies it documents are the LabHacker and eDemocracia programmes in Brazil, which allow people to make proposals to their representatives and work with them to improve bills and policies; Parlement et Citoyens in France, which plays a similar role; vTaiwan, which crowdsources new parliamentary bills; the Better Reykjavk programme, which allows people to suggest and rank ideas for improving the city, and has now been used by more than half the population; and the Pirate party, also in Iceland, whose policies are chosen by its members, in both digital and offline forums. In all these cases, digital technologies are used to improve representative democracy rather than to replace it.

Participation tends to be deep but narrow. Tech-savvy young men are often over-represented, while most of those who are alienated by offline politics remain, so far, alienated by online politics. But these results could be greatly improved, especially by using blockchain technology (a method of recording data), text-mining with the help of natural language processing (that enables very large numbers of comments and ideas to be synthesised and analysed), and other innovations that could make electronic democracy more meaningful, more feasible and more secure.

Of course, there are hazards here. No political system, offline or online, is immune to hacking; all systems require safeguards that evolve to protect them from being captured by money and undemocratic power. The regulation of politics lags decades behind the tricks, scams and new technologies deployed by people seeking illegitimate power. This is part of the reason for the mass disillusionment with politics: the belief that outcomes are rigged, and the emergence of a virulent anti-politics that finds expression in extremism anddemagoguery.

Either we own political technologies, or they will own us. The great potential of big data, big analysis and online forums will be used by us or against us. We must move fast to beat thebillionaires.

Twitter: @GeorgeMonbiot. A fully linked version of this column will be published at monbiot.com

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Big data's power is terrifying. That could be good news for democracy - The Guardian