Free spaces let ordinary people become participants in governing decisions

Evidence

Inclusion and participation as indices of democracy have been separated off from the powers and the unbounded field of deliberation that would make them meaningful as terms of shared rule. Put another way, while inclusion and participation are certainly important elements of democracy, to be more than empty signifiers, they must be accompanied by modest control over setting parameters and constraints and by the capacity to decide fundamental values and directions. Absent these, they cannot be said to be democratic any more than providing a death row inmate with choices about the method of execution offers the inmate freedom. Rather, this is the language of democracy used against the demos. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 247 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

The invisible presence of the homo sacer as the potential of the modern state – the potential which can be made into reality once ‘the conditions are right’ – brings into relief once more the most terrifying, and still most topical, aspect of the ‘Holocaust experience’: that in our modern society people who are neither morally corrupt nor prejudiced may also still partake with vigour and dedication in the destruction of targeted categories of human beings; and that their participation, far from calling for the mobilization of their moral or any other convictions, demands on the contrary their suspension, obliteration and irrelevance. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 707 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Before the printed word became an inexpensive source of rival information, one would not be surprised that the king—or whoever controlled the money and politics of the era—really could “create his own reality.” This is why the idea of a free media—even one polluted with fake news—was such a revolutionary (and recent) concept. But where did we get the idea that this should come at no cost to us or that we are not required to be active participants in ferreting out the truth? — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 212 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: EJ activism shifts from facility opposition to contesting decision-making legitimacy; Participation without control over parameters is not democracy but its evisceration — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 247; Freedom from monarchical reality-control is recent and requires active citizen participation — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 212 (+1 more)

Related

• Participation without control over parameters is not democracy but its evisceration (similarity 0.82)
• Freedom from monarchical reality-control is recent and requires active citizen participation (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Participation without control over parameters is not democracy but its evisceration #qualifies (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 247
• Freedom from monarchical reality-control is recent and requires active citizen participation #expands (0.72) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 212
• Moral suspension, not mobilization, enables ordinary people’s participation #complicates (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 707