1 June 2021 — The New Dark Age

Eric Zuesse

[Of course, this ‘poll’ depends on what definition of ‘democracy’ the polled accept. And then there’s the technics of conducting the poll, the questions asked and who was polled, so all in all, I’d suggest that the results tell us more about the institution doing the polling, NATO, than the polled, and anyway, why is NATO conducting this poll in the first place and then NOT revealing the findings to the publics at large? WB] 

A NATO front organization recently released their polling report “Democracy Perception Index 2021”, and its poll-findings in the 53 surveyed countries contradict more than confirm what NATO’s own propaganda routinely asserts; so, though these findings are major news, they are suppressed, instead of publicized, by NATO, and are practically a secret NATO poll. These rankings are published here for the very first time; they weren’t published, at all, in the NATO-affiliated report, but I calculated them from the data, which were published (and even those data were suppressed by the polls’ sponsors).

This is a follow-up to the report that I did on last year’s polling report.

Here are the ranks of the 53 polled countries, as indicated in “Democracy Perception Index 2021” — based on a thousand respondents in each nation — regarding the question:

Q3 Think about your country today. How democratic do you think it is? Slider: 0 – not at all democratic; 10 – very democratic (rankings here are based on the scores as shown on page 9 of the report)

1. Switzerland

2. Norway

3. Denmark

4. China

5. Taiwan

6. Vietnam

7. Philippines

8. South Korea

9. Sweden

10. Canada

11. Germany

12. Portugal

13. India

14. Ireland

15. Austria

16. Ireland

17. Australia

18. Singapore

19. Netherlands

20. UK

21. Indonesia

22. Malaysia

23. Argentina

24. Spain

25. Israel

26. Saudi Arabia

27. Pakistan

28. Hong Kong

29. Romania

30. Belgium

31. U.S.

32. Mexico

33. Italy

34. Japan

35. South Africa

36. Kenya

37. Egypt

38. Greece

59. Brazil

40. Morocco

41. Turkey

42. Chile

43. Colombia

44. Peru

45. Thailand

46. Russia

47. Algeria

48. Ukraine

49. Nigeria

50. Poland

51, Hungary

52. Iran

53. Venezuela

NATO (not in its own name but via an allied polling firm that’s run by a former NATO Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen) sponsored these polls of a thousand people in each of 53 countries, to determine the extent to which the public there believe that their country is a democracy, as measured, first, on the above-mentioned question, but, secondarily, on what might be considered to be a good definition for “democracy”:

Q4 Which of the following statements comes closest to your view? “My government usually acts in the interest of…”

… most people in my country

… a small group of people in my country

If “democracy” means rule by the majority, as opposed to rule by “a small group in my country,” then the scores here should be the same or fairly close to the scores on the first-mentioned question; and, therefore, to the extent that any significant divergence exists between the rankings on these two questions, it would indicate irrationality in the public’s answers to one or both questions.

This particular question (Q4) had also been polled in the 2020 report, and I shall present here the rankings for 2021 (and, in parentheses, show what the ranks had been in 2020), on question Q4 (as calculated from column Q4 here). This will provide information on current trends. (Incidentally: one of the reasons why the rankings are suppressed, instead of publicized, might be that in America, which the NATO-front “Freedom House” labels as “Free,” 52% of respondents said “Government serves a small group,” whereas, in China, which the NATO-front “Freedom House” labels as “Not Free,” only 13% did. NATO — basically the U.S. Government — is propagandizing for war against China. The findings in these polls therefore do not confirm but largely contradict NATO’s propaganda. Perhaps it is largely for this reason that the rankings were not calculated and published in the report. As was earlier mentioned, I have calculated these rankings from the percentages of people in each country who said that their “Government serves a small group.” For examples: in the 2020 report, that percentage was, in Vietnam 12%, in Ukraine 70%, and in U.S. 52%. The U.S. regime wants to get Ukraine into NATO, and is against both Vietnam and China; and, therefore, some findings — such as that “Not Free” Vietnam and China are shown in the polls’ data to be the most “democratic” countries — are unwelcomed, and need to be suppressed, instead of published, by the regime.)

So, regarding the question

Q4 Which of the following statements comes closest to your view? “My government usually acts in the interest of…”

… most people in my country

… a small group of people in my country

Here are the Ranks in 2021 (& 2020)

1. Vietnam (was #1 in 2020 — the most democratic country in both years)

2. China (#2 in 2020)

3. Singapore (was #3 in 2020)

4. Saudi Arabia (was #4 in 2020)*

5. Denmark (was #5 in 2020)

6. Switzerland (was #6 in 2020)

7. Norway (was #15 in 2020)

8. India (was #8 in 2020)

9. South Korea (was #10 in 2020)

10. Malaysia (was #11 in 2020)

11. Taiwan (was #12 in 2020)

12. Philippines (was #9 in 2020)

13. Hong Kong (was #33 in 2020 — improved more than any other region)

14. Australia (was #17 in 2020)

15. Sweden (was #16 in 2020)

16. Canada (was #18 in 2020)

17. Germany (was #20 in 2020)

18. Turkey (was #14 in 2020)

19. Austria (was #13 in 2020)

20. Netherlands (was #7 in 2020)

21. Egypt (was #26 in 2020)

22. Indonesia (was #21 in 2020)

23. Ireland (was #25 in 2020)

24. Morocco (was #22 in 2020)

25. UK (was #27 in 2020

26. Pakistan (was #23 in 2020)

27. Algeria (was #24 in 2020)

28. Japan (was #28 in 2020)

29. Belgium (was #31 in 2020)

30. France (was #36 in 2020)

31. Thailand (was #39 in 2020

32. Portugal (was #32 in 2020)

33. Mexico (was #38 in 2020)

34. U.S. (was #34 in 2020)

35. Israel (was #37 in 2020)

36. Russia (was #44 in 2020)

37. Argentina (was #19 in 2020)

38. Spain (was #35 in 2020)

39. Kenya (was #41 in 2020)

40. South Africa (was #30 in 2020)

41. Italy (was #42 in 2020)

42. Colombia (was #43 in 2020)

43. Greece (was #40 in 2020)

44. Iran (was #47 in 2020)

45. Chile (was #52 in 2020)

46. Hungary (was #45 in 2020)

47. Poland (was #46 in 2020)

48. Peru (was #29 in 2020 — sank more than any other nation)

49. Romania (was #48 in 2020)

50. Brazil (was #51 in 2020)

51. Venezuela (was #53 in 2020)

52. Ukraine (was #49 in 2020)

53. Nigeria (was #50 in 2020)

One might therefore wonder why NATO would have anything to do with such polls. However, if these polls had been kept entirely confidential, then their findings would nonetheless likely leak out, and not only because over 53,000 persons had been respondents. Leaked-out findings would be even more embarrassing to NATO, and to its claims that it represents “democracies” who are fighting against ‘dictatorships’ (or ‘authoritarian regimes’ or ‘Not Free’ nations). Consequently, the best option for NATO has been to not publicize the poll-results, and to instead make the meaning of the findings as confusing as possible, and especially not to publish any rankings from the data. Furthermore, the first polls in the series, which were issued as “Democracy Perception Index 2018”, had used as their survey-question “Do you feel that the voice of people like you matters in politics?” and received responses very different from the more recent polls. (That was a very different question.) Furthermore, that year’s report was remarkably honest, and even went so far as to state explicitly that “The most surprising result is Russia, where the fewest share of people (26%) feel like they can’t speak their mind freely. This directly contradicts such indicators as the Freedom House Ranking, where Russia scores poorly for ‘Civil Liberties’, including freedom of expression.” That first year’s surveys might have been done simply in order to help the U.S. regime to determine how ripe for a regime-change, coup (or perhaps even a NATO invasion) its various target-nations are. However, to keep the findings entirely confidential wouldn’t have helped NATO’s PR, and might even have turned out to be very counter-productive.

Interestingly, the public responses to these polling-reports — to the extent that there has been any, which (due to the virtual absence of publication of any of them) has been only slight, has not only cooperated with the sponsors’ pro-U.S.-imperialistic (or “neoconservative”) agenda, but has done so even in the rare instances when the contrary findings were made explicit in the report. For example, a Reddit posting from Sweden, titled “Democracy Perception Index 2018”, received a reader-comment that noted the report’s having said “The most surprising result is Russia, where the fewest share of people (26%) feel like they can’t speak their mind freely,” and a Reddit reader ‘rationalized’ this finding in an anti-Russian way: “It might also show that there is a lot of political and social uniformity in Russian society. Hard to feel free to speak your mind if your mind aligns with the values and ideas of the Kremlin.” Hate-organizations such as NATO can always rely upon their admirers’ confirmation-biases whenever the actual facts contradict the organization’s (and its admirers’) prejudices. In fact, every one of the six reader-comments at that post exemplified confirmation-bias and ignored the reality that had just been documented. The public are far more receptive to their existing prejudice than to reality that disproves it. Very commonly, when a human encounters evidence that disproves existing belief, the existing belief becomes strengthened instead of weakened. Perhaps this is one major reason why dictatorship is common, and democracy is rare. Most humans are willing to be mental slaves.

Among the other unexpected findings in that 2018 report were that in answer to the question “Do you feel like the news you read or watch gives you balanced and neutral information?” the top five countries where the respondents answered favorably were China 61%, Vietnam 60%, India 58%, Philippines 56%, and Malaysia 53%.The highest unfavorable (negative) responses were in Iran 74%, Greece 74%, France 68%, Argentina 68%, and Israel 66%. U.S. was 60% unfavorable. Russia was 48% favorable.

Although the present news-report is being distributed to all news-media in U.S.-and-allied countries, U.S.-government-controlled news-media might decide not to publish it, since the findings contradict some of the U.S. regime’s major lies. Wherever you happen to be reading this news-report, the news-medium is obviously not controlled by the U.S. Government (meaning by any of the billionaires who participate in controlling that Government), but is instead authentically independent. Normally, fewer than a half-dozen news-media in the U.S.-and-allied nations are independent.

* Saudi Arabia not only scored fourth-best on the percentage who said that its Government (the royal Saud family) “usually acts in the interest of most people in my country,” but the 2018 (the first) version of the “Democracy Perception Index” poll-report (which had sampled 125,000 people in 50 countries), found that in answering the question “Do you feel that your government is acting in your interest?” the percentage who marked “Never” or “Rarely” was far lower there than in any other country — only 15%, as compared, for example, to the second-lowest-scoring country, Egypt’s, 38%, all the way up to the highest-scoring country, Kenya’s, 80%, saying that their government wasn’t “acting in my interest.” (66% of Americans said that their government wasn’t “acting in my interest”; 46% of Russians said that; 40% of Chinese — the fourth-lowest percentage — said that; and 39% of Turks — the third-lowest — said that.) The poll-report added a comment that “people in non-democratic countries are less likely to say their government doesn’t act in their interest: 41% in non-democracies compared to 64% in democracies.” (Their definition for “democracy” wasn’t derived empirically but instead from existing theories in the social ‘sciences’.) They continued: “The country where dissatisfaction is the lowest is Saudi Arabia, where only 15% think the government ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ acts in their interest.” Obviously, social ‘scientists’ don’t have any explanation for these data — data that severely challenge just about every theory that they do  hold. All that one can say for certain about theory in the social ‘sciences’ is that it’s false. And nobody seems to care about, and try to rectify, that falseness. They’re satisfied simply to go on as before, not to throw out their assumptions and restart from scratch. But, obviously, theory in the social ‘sciences’ — as those currently exist — is garbage.

—————