DEMOCRACY

A lot of weird things have happened over the last couple of years in the world. This include things such as climate change, massive immigration, war around the world etc. This has lead to a couple of changes of the democracy. A lot of right-wing political parties rise around Europe and America and Donald Trump, a man you wouldn't have exactly expected to run for president, got elected. These new changes are threatening our democracy. Donald Trump is a brilliant example as he abuses the freedom of speech, does not apply to human rights, and he blames the free press for publishing fake news. The Donald Trump wave has also reached Europe, and almost in every European country you can find a right-wing party that has become popular, for example the AFD in Germany, Geert wilders in the Netherlands, RN in France, and Rasmus Paludan in Denmark, Santiago Abascal in Spain and Salvini’s Lega in Italy. Another thing currently happening is Brexit. This has risen the question all among Europe whether EU still works as it should. This is very troubling because a Europe without a sense of community is frightening to think about.

Another factor threatening the EU is social media. Social media can be an advantage as well as a disadvantage in relation to democracy. People can interact with politicians directly through social media and, in that way, get their personal opinion heard and debate political statements. These social forums online have, because of the influential politicians with hateful opinions and amongst others things, become a forum of hateful speeches, where people are fighting and arguing about political statements instead of making compromises and trying to understand other people’s point of view.

Climate changes and immigrants are discussed heavily nowadays in politics in all of Europe’s countries. Some people are tired of discussing and want quick solutions. Therefore, almost every country has politicians as Donald Trump who has really strong opinions, as mentioned earlier. Social media are used by these political parties to criticise the other political parties and certain layers of the society, like immigrants: their aim being to gain more supporters.

Democracy as we know it today, hasn’t always been so perfect as it is depicted nowadays. Democracy means that people rule, but ironically, when it first came around, only the rich men were allowed to vote; since then, democracy has evolved into accepting all genders, races and social status. Democracy was created because people thought that decisions would be more efficient and fair. It first formed 2500 years ago in ancient Athens; their way of creating laws was very different from what we know today. 500 names from all the citizens of Athens were chosen, citizens only included wealthy men, so slaves, women and poor men weren’t considered citizens. They created new rules, and controlled every step of the political process. When a new bill was created, all the citizens in Athens had to attend an assembly, where the law was then discussed. In most of the democratic countries the voting age is 18, there are few exceptions to this though (in Austria the voting age is 16). On the one hand, there are negative aspects of being able to vote at an earlier age, like being uninformed about the election, and not being mature enough to make proper decisions. But on the other hand, you have the opportunity to make a change at an earlier age. Even though democracy is the leading of making new laws, it still has its flaws, it takes a long time to come to a conclusion regarding the laws.

As you can see our democracy has to be protected from those who try to tear it apart. Our goal should be to stick together as a community.