Is confidence in “democracy” declining throughout the Western world? If it is, what does that mean for the future?
Open Society Foundations (OSF), the leftist political donor network of billionaire George Soros, published a survey indicating that a significant portion of young people are doubtful of democracy’s virtues, and even see authoritarianism as more favorable.
“Our findings are both sobering and alarming,” said Mark Malloch Brown, OSF’s president, per The Guardian. “People around the world still want to believe in democracy, but generation by generation that faith is fading as doubts grow about its ability to deliver concrete changes to their lives.”
The survey took responses from over 36,000 people in 30 countries. According to the results, 86 percent would prefer to live in a democratic state, and 20 percent believe authoritarian regimes are better at delivering “what citizens want.”
When broken down by age group, however, the numbers tell a very different — and surprising — story.
For respondents ages 18 to 35, only 57 percent viewed democracy as preferable to other forms of government (whereas 71 percent of those over 56 see democracy favorably). A whopping 42 percent of young people said they support the idea of military rules, versus just 20 percent of older respondents who felt the same.
In other words, nearly half of the survey’s young respondents are doubtful of democracy and open to authoritarian military rule. Specifically, the language of the survey referred to “a strong leader who does away with assemblies and elections.”
Another notable finding was that a majority of respondents — 58 percent — expressed fears that there will be political violence within the next year.
The OSF survey also gauged respondents’ policy priorities. As The Guardian reports:
The climate crisis was viewed as the most significant challenge facing the world by 32% of people in India and Italy, followed by Germany (28%), Egypt (27%), Mexico (27%), France (25%), and Bangladesh (25%).
At a national level, however, corruption was the chief worry, with an average of 23% saying it is the top issue facing their country – ranging from 6% in Germany and 7% in France and the UK to 45% in Ghana, 44% in Nigeria and 37% in Colombia.
Of issues most directly affecting people personally, poverty and inequality ranked highest – including in Senegal, the smallest economy surveyed, and the US, the largest – with an average score of about 21%.
Migration, while highly visible as a key political campaigning issue in many countries, was of low concern. Just 7% of respondents said migration was their biggest concern, at [the] global and national level, and 66% wanted to see more safe and legal routes for migrants.
Another significant statistic was the finding that almost twice as many of those who responded believed China would have a positive impact (45 percent) versus a negative impact (25 percent).
The OSF survey arguably raises more questions than it answers.
Naturally, with the Soros family’s political objectives being common knowledge, any statistics produced by OSF are likely to have an agenda, and their legitimacy is questionable.
The matter is further muddled by the fact that OSF, like so many individuals and entities on the Left, gets its terminology wrong. They speak of “democracy” broadly as the antithesis to authoritarianism. But they never speak of republicanism, even though the government of the United States and similar systems throughout the world are republics, not democracies.
However, per the survey’s usage of terms such as “democracy” and “authoritarianism,” it would appear that respondents who reject democracy similarly reject republicanism. While reliability of OSF’s numbers is questionable, there is certainly an observable, growing frustration with representative government and a simultaneous renewed interest in authoritarianism — a phenomenon The New American has covered previously.
The issues OSF identified as being top priority among respondents is clearly self-serving. Soros and Open Society have long advocated for overreaching green policies, so is it any surprise that OSF’s survey claims climate issues are the most important for the people of the world?
Likewise, Open Society and Soros encourage mass migration and open borders. How convenient, then, that, according to OSF’s survey, the migration issue is at the bottom of the priority list — with the few respondents who do care about it saying they want an easier path to legal status for the migrants.
Nevertheless, there’s some truth to the claim that on both the Right and the Left, many people — particularly young people — feel a sense of exasperation with gridlock and indecisiveness in the halls of Congress or other lawmaking bodies. The media’s constantly hyping the urgency of various issues and the apparent inefficacy of elected bodies combine into a perfect breeding ground for the kind of dissatisfaction that fuels support for authoritarianism.
The survey is good news for Soros and OSF, given that their true aim has always been to enact globalist authoritarianism. As for those who still favor “democracy,” the Left can win them over to authoritarianism slyly through their strategy of slandering conservatives as authoritarians in order to justify politically persecuting them.
