Tariq Ali Quotes
Western enthusiasm for democracy stops when those opposed to its policies are elected to office.
Ali, Tariq. The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity. Verso, 2002.
As a member of the electoral college, he refused to vote for Richard M. Nixon who had won the North Carolina vote. Extremist fundamentalists often oppose democracy in favor of republicanism. A major distinction for them is in the republic, there is not direct
His use of the noun “Democracy” refers not to a form of government but the specific institution of the Democratic Party. Smith, like many of the Founding Fathers was deeply suspicious of political parties. See also {614907}. Smith had written to most of the then likely Presidential candidates of both major parties asking for their position on the Mormons who were facing persecution wherever they went. None of the politicians would make any satisfactory commitments. Smith took Direct Action and became the only major religious official to have run for the Presidency of the United States until Pat Robertson tried and failed in 2000. Smith’s assassination shortly thereafter cut his run for the Presidency short before it made much headway and politically he had no chance to affect the race.
Kishi was an ultra conservative who was one of the politicians who signed the Declaration of War against the U. S. and then served in the Japanese War Cabinet and was the Minister of Commerce and Industry. In the latter post he presided over and made policies about the utilization of slave labor and brutal and illegal treatment of prisoners of war. After Japan’s surrender he was jailed as a “Class A” war crimes suspect along with several other cabinet ministers. In 1948, General MacArthur decided not to prosecute the Cabinet Ministers as he had decided not to prosecute the Emperor Hirohito. His brother was the secretary to the prime minister’s cabinet who had arranged a job for him. However, all the people in government were now building a democratic government. Being a right wing pro military, pro empire politician was no longer feasible and he discovered all his ex-colleagues who hated democracy before were now extolling its virtues. He went with the flow, and reorganized his political constituency, and gained control of the Diet, but now they were all democrats. Then he became prime minister. He was an ardent anti-communist and the Cold War was raging so his previous right wing dictatorial, pro war positions and his war crimes were overlooked by MacArthur and the allies.
A major problem of new and emerging democracies is that many people believe that majority rule per se is democracy. In Egypt for example, Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood won the election. They then assumed that they had the right to do anything including exempting the government from judicial review or deciding the role of women in society or denying freedom of religion to non-Muslim citizens. Democracy is not a serial autocracy with each new autocrat being selected by a free and fair election.
Tariq Ali is a British political activist, writer, journalist, historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books. He read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Exeter College, Oxford.
