US-UK “democracy index” 2021: The hegemon clings

mw. The British magazine “The Economist” has been compiling an annual “Democracy Index” of states around the globe since 2006, the latest one is from 2021 and was published at the beginning of February 2022.¹ The blueprint for the index is provided by the US think-tank Freedom House funded by George Soros, among others. But today, more and more states are no longer accepting the order to reassess their values, their culture and their governmental system, but are turning their attention to a community of states on equal terms.

Calling a spade a spade:
“The Economist” and “Freedom House”

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Democracy Index divides states into four types of regime: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes − based on extensive “scientific” indicators, of course!² Freedom House, the other actor, states its goals clearly: “We act as a catalyst for freedom through a combination of analysis, advocacy, and action.”³ (emphasis mw.) In plain language: Freedom House and its clique organise the colour revolutions and regime changes − so-called “promotion of democratic change”.
    It is rather presumptuous that the elites in Washington and London, of all places, who cover the world with their bloody wars, give all other states “democracy” labels if they show good behaviour towards the only world power, or “autocracy” labels if they do not.
    In fact, Freedom House has only one goal: to “Promoting US Leadership”. To this end, the think tank recommends that the government in Washington “to cultivate alliances with free nations and lend support to democracy advocates in authoritarian or transitional settings”. We know what they mean by this from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and currently from Ukraine, where NATO is fighting for the “freedom of the West” − down to the last Ukrainian.

It doesn’t get more absurd than this

The ranking reflects the stated geopolitical goals of the US-UK elites. Some particularly illuminating “assessments” shall be singled out here.

• A “new low for global democracy” would be the pandemic-related restrictions that “damaged democratic freedoms”.⁴ Not a word about the far more serious de facto abolition of freedom of expression and media freedom in the “free West”!
• The US narrowly made it to the bottom 35 of the “full democracies” in 2021, “Despite riots in the Capitol and attempts by the departing president Donald Trump to overturn the election results”. In the 2016 Democracy Index, the Economist, a few days after Trump’s inauguration, had “for the first time downgraded the US from a ‘full democracy’ to a ‘flawed democracy’”.⁵ Now these practices actually have something to do with democracy, or rather with its undermining. For in the USA, the ruling elite is in the habit of dictating who should become president. This failed in 2016: The US citizens elected the “wrong guy”. In 2020, the Federal Security Agency (FBI) therefore controlled the election propaganda via Twitter, as its new owner Elon Musk recently revealed (according to the Swiss radio news of 19 December 2022, Musk added that if he was found dead soon, it would not have been a suicide). So much about the US as a model democracy.
• From China will come “the biggest challenge to the Western model of democracy6 (“The Economist”): Isn’t it embarrassing that China is prospering economically in such a way and at the same time successfully fighting poverty at home and in many countries around the world that are exploited and neglected by the West? And this country, of all countries, does not let Washington and London dictate how it should run its state.
• The final rank for Afghanistan, maltreated and robbed by the hegemon for decades “because of the return of the Taliban” (or rather to whitewash its own ignominious defeat?) − is more than cynical!
• Switzerland, with its globally unique direct democracy, does not make it to the top of the US-UK rankings – that’s logical. The Western superpowers (including the EU) have long been concerned about the piece of sovereignty that we have been able to preserve. In Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World 2022” country report, Switzerland only gets 96 out of 100 points, because Swiss citizenship is a prerequisite for the right to vote and to stand for election, according to the will of the electorate at the federal level and in most cantons, because the federal popular initiative “Against the Construction of Minarets” was accepted at the ballot box. Plus, the Swiss wanted to control immigration from the EU themselves with the mass immigration initiative (which, as is well known, was not implemented by parliament in violation of the constitution).⁶ The alleged “lack” of freedom and democracy is therefore attributable to the strong Swiss popular rights, of all things. It doesn’t get more absurd than that.•

¹“A new low for global democracy. More pandemic restrictions damaged democratic freedoms in 2021”. In: The Economist of 9 February 2022
²https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2021 
³https://freedomhouse.org/issues 
⁴«A new low for global democracy. More pandemic restrictions damaged democratic freedoms in 2021». In: The Economist of 9 February 2022
⁵Hunter, John Stanley. “USA zur ‹fehlerhaften Demokratie› herabgestuft”. (US downgraded to flawed democracy) In: Handelszeitung of 30 January 2017
⁶https://freedomhouse.org/country/switzerland/ freedom-world/2022