*Sir Humphrey: East Yemen, isn’t that a democracy?
Foreign Office Official: Its full name is the Peoples’ Democratic Republic of East Yemen.
Sir Humphrey: Ah I see, so it’s a communist dictatorship. *
From the tropes page on “People’s Republic of Tyranny” - the trope that countries that feel the need to include that their some sort of democratic people’s republic tend to be fascist juntas. The page offers a few explanations - maybe the countries started off that way, maybe the leader is so deluded he believes his own BS.
What’s the most likely explanation for the real life application of this trope - of which there are many, with the “Democratic (nope) People’s (they’re all starving) Republic (hereditary dictatorship) of Korea” being the most famous example. Wouldn’t they be better served just dropping the transparent nonsense that marks them as a dictatorship? A rider question - why do these places even bother with show elections that the entire world can see through?
It was common for satellite states in the Cold War to be called “People’s Democratic Republic.” The matched the Communist myth that they were representing the voice of the people (even if the people really didn’t agree). “Democratic” had a good reputation, so they used it. The show elections kept up the scam.
As for why they did this, read George Orwell or ask at the Ministry of Truth.
It would certainly be interesting if the leadership of a country were to be brutally honest about the form of government and chose an appropriate state name, for instance:
Tyranny of Elbonia, Despocy of Berzerkistan, Totalitarian State of San Seriffe
Just as likely to fool themselves as much as the foreigners. Country titles are aspirational, and even if a leader is currently executing dissidents en masse under a dictatorship, few imagine that this is an ideal state of the world, even among the executioners.
I think George Orwell nailed it with his “Newspeak.” And perhaps Plato with his famous cave analogy. Most people nowadays want to feel like they’re part of a democracy, that they have rights and can be heard. Whether it’s reality is irrelevant, so long as they FEEL comfortable, they won’t rise up in rebellion. “Better the slavery we know…” and especially if it’s not verbalized as slavery.
The US isn’t immune, as we look at these ridiculous sound-bites that people accept as political theory. “Cut taxes and government spending!” yells the politician whose party has consistently raised taxes and increased government spending. “We have the best health care system in the world!” shouts the people whose infant mortality rate is 34th among nations.
Hell, the US pretends verbally to be a “democracy” when it never was (it’s a republic, and now it’s an oligarchy.) Keep the masses quiet by feeding them propaganda that tells them how wonderfully well-off they are… and if your PR is good enough, they’ll believe it.
Looking at how often the “The Nazis were socialists - see it’s right there in their name” meme comes up, even on these boards, it clearly works. And works quite well.
The USA called itself and and its elections democratic, when George Washington was re-elected to a second term with fewer than 2% of the citizenry casting a vote for him.
That’s true, but the Nazis did not pick any euphemism of the “People’s Democratic Republic” kind. They never changed the official name of Germany, which remained, right until the end, German Reich (Deutsches Reich in German). OK, there was this semi-official “Greater German Reich” (Großdeutsches Reich) after the annexation of Austria, but that was for different reasons (it related back to the discussions in the 19th century about whether Austria should be part of the process of establishing a German nation state where that terminology was used). In fact, the Nazis were very outspoken their dislike for democracry; they openly used that term to attack the system they opposed and would thus never have adopted “democratic” as a euphemism for their own ideology, unlike the Communists.
This is not GD, but I’d still like to point out that you will find quite a few points on the NSDAP party programme that do resemble socialist demands. Which is not to say I want to equate the Nazis with present-day socialism; but it cannot be denied that, irrespective of the name issue, there is some overlap between Nazi ideology and socialist ideology.
This is nonsense on stilts, except inasmuch as there is some resemblance between any two things in the world that you can point to or name.
Nazi practice and Communist practice, during the 20th century, had some similarities, in that both resulted in brutal totalitarian regimes, but Nazi/Fascist and Communist ideology are about as far apart as two political ideologies could possibly be. Furthermore, although the Nazis and Fascists were presumably quite comfortable with the totalitarian, regimented and top-down structure of their regimes (which was in accord with their ideology of strength, human inequality, national solidarity, and charismatic leadership), Communists never were. The major Communist governments always justified their totalitarianism, not just to their subjects but to themselves, as being an unfortunate, temporary expedient, necessary only because they were both trying to impose rapid social change on their societies, and were surrounded and under severe threat from hostile capitalist (and, later, fascist) powers. Totalitarianism was never supposed to be the end-game for Communism, indeed, according to the ideology, the state (and all semblance of nations and nationalism) was supposed, eventually, to “whither away”.
These radically different ideologies explain why Communists and Nazis/fascists passionately hated each other, and why the Nazis and fascist routes to power were often facilitated by wealthy capitalists, who saw them, quite accurately, as a powerful countervailing political movement with the potential to stem the rise of Communism.
This, to some extent, also answers the OP question. Communist regimes call themselves democratic because this is what they aspire to be (once - per impossible, perhaps - they have created a stable and well functioning communistic economic system).
Divide and conquer? A show election tells your opposition: “You are alone.” It makes them think they cannot take you in a fair fight, and it makes them think conspiring with others (and thereby potentially learning it’s a lie) is more dangerous than it really is.
Well, thanks for proving my point very effectively.
Without delving into the minutiae, it’s quite apparent that effective marketing works for governments, political parties, etc and can have an effect that lasts decades.
And without diving into GD territory, that’s really what ties all of this to the OP. Yes, the appropriate choice of name can and does have a desirable impact, even if some people aren’t taken in by the propaganda aspects.
I asked the man at MiniTru and he told me that democracy is impossible and the Party is its guardian.
Would democracy have such a good reputation when their capitalist enemies clung to it? Or was it a ‘no, ours is the real democracy, theirs is the fake one’ propaganda vibe? I can’t find anything with that gist from democracy’s most famous false advertiser, it’s all ‘the leader is great, ignore the fact that you’re eating sawdust’.
I dunno, I think you guys are being a bit harsh on the world’s foremost republic; she doesn’t claim to be “The Direct Democracy of America”, just a union of states, which is…or was, YMMV…an accurate description.
On those wacky Nazis; Hitler was always consistent that Germany didn’t need some weak parliamentary democracy but a ‘great leader’ - later, himself - to return Germany to greatness, ‘ein volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer’ and all that. Although their abuse of the word ‘volk’ - community - might count, they were constantly banging on about the ‘people’s community’, rather forgetting about members of a community who were disabled or Jewish.
Maybe, although they must think the opposition is pretty damn gullible. Perhaps whipping up support from those who are already mindless supporters? Dictators can always find a use for enthused idiots.
After the war, the satellite states established by the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe tended to be called "People’s Republic of . . . ". This is because the states they were succeeding had themselves commonly been republics, and styled as such. E.g. prewar Poland was the “Republic of Poland”; postwar it became the “Polish People’s Republic”. In the Soviet view, while the prewar states had indeed been republics, they had been bourgeois republics, dominated by the bourgeoisie. The new states would be true popular republics; hence the name. For the same reason the Republic of China became the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
A similar evolution explains such constructions as “Democratic Republic” and “Socialist Republic”; the intention is usually to distinguish a new regime from the preceding bourgeois “Republic”. Or, in cases like North Vietnam, North Korea and East Germany, to distinguish it from an adjacent bourgeois republic for the same nation.
I suspect constructions like “People’s Democratic Socialist Republic” result either from an excess of enthusiasm, or from one supposedly communist state being succeeded by another even more communist state.
Yes, I’ve always caught a vibe that generally, if you have to give your polity some sort of elaborate corporate name composed of flattering terminology or references to a specific ideological program, you may be compensating for something or trying to lay a smokescreen. Thus:
People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (only accurate part is that it’s in Korea)
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (C’mon it didn’t even have a geographic designator! Could have been anywhere! Probably expected it to eventually BE everywhere…)
United Arab Republic (OK at least this one *was *Arab and *was *a republic, but was only united in the sense it was a union of exactly One for most of the time they used that name)
As observed, the more respectable communist nations were satisfied with just “People’s” or just “Democratic” or just “Socialist” rather than piling on the epithets.
On the other hand, there are those with names that are just what it says:
United States of America (they’re united, they’re states, they’re in America)
United Mexican States
Federal Republic of Brazil
French Republic (it’s a republic, and they’re French, I sort of noticed.)
Republic of Namibia
State of Israel
Kingdom of Thailand
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (wordy, but a true description… for now)
The former type do seem to have become fewer after the fall of the communist bloc, but some still show up now and then.
There was a People’s Republic of the Congo too (the former French Congo), it was theoretically communist between 1975 and 1990, though I don’t know how far the communist transformation really went.
Don’t forget the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, or most recently the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic.
I kind of wonder why Cuba never officially changed its name to the Socialist Republic of Cuba.