Democracy is in crisis, but blaming fake news is not the answer | Evgeny Morozov | Opinion | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/08/blaming-fake-news-not-the-answer-democracy-crisis?CMP=edit_2221
The big threat facing western societies today is not so much the emergence of illiberal democracy abroad as the persistence of immature democracy at home. This immaturity, exhibited almost daily by the elites, manifests itself in two types of denial: the denial of the economic origins of most of today’s problems; and the denial of the profound #corruption of professional expertise.
The first type manifests itself whenever phenomena like Brexit or Donald Trump’s electoral success are ascribed primarily to cultural factors such as racism or voter ignorance. The second type denies that the immense frustration many people feel towards existing #institutions stems not from their not knowing the whole truth about how they operate but, rather, from knowing it all too well.
Blinded by these two denials, policymakers prescribe more of what alienates voters in the first place: more expertise, more centralisation, more regulation. But, since they can’t think in terms of political economy, they inevitably end up regulating the wrong things.
“#experts” #démocraties #Fake_news #politique #dépolitisation
