It is “super election year” worldwide. As democracy seems to be globally in decline, some commentators have portrayed these elections asthe last resort to save it from its “enemies”. The ballot box as the symbol of enlightened choice has however become cracky. In the EU, the ghosts of the pasts are haunting the elections in the form of the far-right, economic colonialism and war. Which perspectives do we need to see to be able to overcome increasing division and shape a common future?

As Europeans, we like to portray ourselves as the inventors of democracy. Our narrative of enlightened progress was a promise of material prosperity (“output legitimacy”) together with choice over governance (“input legitimacy”). Our narrative has omitted the Global South, the voice of nature, and potentially different ways of conceiving democracy. Today, the hypocrisy is increasingly blatant if we look at debates within the EU:

-          We can hear that we need to “defend democracy” by the same people that make deals with dictators.

- We condemn war crimes of some, but remain mostly silent about those of others, despite growing legal evidence. We send arms to the perpetrator and food to his victims.

-          We can hear EU complaints about industrial economic colonialism by China but have invented colonialism and industrialisation in the first place.

-          We could hear the appeal to a “rules-based international order" that we have created after WWII but now subvert it because it’s no longer in our interest, while praising the “international community” that only consists of the so-called West.

-          Democracy-deficit is a problem for others but not for us, as the treatment of issues like Hungary, the rule of law in the EU, the insufficient role of the EU parliament, many transparency issues (cf. EU ombudsman) or the near-absence of legitimation of the Commission President von der Leyen may highlight.

Today, we can hear the legitimate warning about the danger of the comeback of the far-right, which has already entered many governments. Yet, who else than the political mainstream has co-opted far-right narratives and policies on issues like migration (instauring for instance abominable prison camps at our borders for people who flee the historical cruelty we have been creating and continue to) and backtracking from the EU Green Deal.

At the same time, again an expression of hypocrisy, the same ones have also sought to fight the far right by othering, marginalising, ridiculing its voters. I have been one of them and I believe it was a mistake. Their vote may be an unheard expression of anger and fear – fear about the future, anger at feeling disempowered, sadness about the loss of community inour modern age, or feeling powerlessness about deciding about their very ownbody (COVID).

Maybe the symptom of the far-right is an expression of all the things we did not want to see, did not want to feel. Because it is a deeply painful insight about ourselves.

-          It is painful to realise that our not-listening, that our marginalisation has been fuelling anger and division. Studies have shown that for instance core AfD-voters are from the same families as NSDAP ones. Trauma reloaded.

-          It is painful to realise how our consumption is perpetuating exploitation of nature and people worldwide. That democracy meant democracy for us and dictatorship for others, that our rules and rights do not apply to workers and nature elsewhere.

-          It ispainful to see your long-held assumptions vanished when realising that maybe, democracy is more than putting a piece of paper every few years into a box. That maybe, we have have been outsourcing our own responsibility towards politicians that can actually not do better in the current system of competitive party politics.

-          It has also been painful for me to realise that, despite all good intention, writing reports with good ideas, will not change the course of things.

Regardless of the outcome of the elections, we need courageous politicians, business leaders, civil society actors realizing that we need to change the logic of what we re doing. We cannot do more of the same in a system that is designed to create losers, that excludes symbiotic solutions, that is based on a limitative, anthropocentric and individualistic understanding of free choice and power. We need the courage to reimagine democracy or loose everything to opportunists.

What is at stake this time is moving beyond being afraid of our own power. The power to reimagine. The power to dream into being. The power to shift narratives of there is no alternative. The power to learn from the past and draw energy from it on our journey. If we think about World Wars, colonialism, or national socialism – which lessons do we retain? What is the message of Holocaust survivors like Gabor Maté and so many others to overcome the abominable reality of totalised fear - the fear that eats our soul, that creates wars, ecocide and all types of escape mechanisms from addictions to narratives of leaving to Mars?

The antidote to fear, anger, and powerlessness, to fascism is not having the better answer. It is moving beyond our fear to embrace what is really at stake. Who dares speaking up for love? Who dares looking behind the angry faces of fascists to embrace the hurt child, the marginalised family, the horrors they may have been exposed to themselves, and are now reproducing? Who dares speaking up to learn to love the expressions of a sick culture screaming, crying, escaping the horrors we have remained silent about? The may be a grain of truth behind the hateful facades.

Can we actually understand and listen to what the horrors of not-listening, of remaining silent, of othering, of creating borders between us and them, of dividing and killing our inner truths because we have never learned to love ourselves actually mean, actually feel? Which power could we unleash if we would dare to speak from a place of love, even for people like Trump, even for all those we label as far-right, or other extremists?

What if we dared looking beneath and beyond, if we dared healing the soil of our toxic reality to make space for life-affirming narratives, for the choice of having a choice at all? Which greater power than love can you imagine as the last resort to escape a world ruled by fear and anger? After all, maybe the great days of democracy have only begun. If we dared.

‍