On Religion, Authoritarianism and Technology

I don’t want this to be an incendiary piece where I condemn religion, but it seems that political Islam, Christian Nationalism, and right-wing Zionism are part and parcel of a framework of religious fundamentalism derailing good governance. Bernard Lewis is famous for his writings asserting that Islam is incompatible with democracy and has very few examples of democratic processes in its history, never mind that Ataturk reconfigured Turkey into a beacon of democracy until Erdogan took it to an authoritative space.

We may be living in a world with many truths. The first one is the three Abrahamic religions, which have played an essential role in world history, are being used to justify extremist ideas about gender, race, state administration, and government in an effort to hold power and shape public opinion throughout the world. We see this in Iran, where the Islamic Republic, though its name claims for itself some democratic legitimacy, is ruled by a twelve person Guardian Council who vets all Presidents and laws to be in line with the Islamic Republic’s philosophy on political Islam. To a certain degree, religion builds community and purpose, but it can also be used to justify oppression, as we’ve seen in Iran, as protestors fight for their right to democracy and are killed without any rhyme or reason for the crime of demanding freedom and democracy.

We can say that authoritarianism, much like the one that predated the rise of Hitler, is reappearing, with as much vigor as it did during Hitler’s chancellorship. In understanding Hitler’s ascent to German Chancellor, there are many parallels to what has gone on in Trump’s America. Like Hitler, Trump was accused of a federal crime and convicted and then served no sentence, which in turn made him more popular with his base. In contrast, Hitler was sentenced to five years but spent about eight or nine months in jail writing the myths of Mein Kempf. Hitler told many lies about his belonging to certain parties, that have been widely discredited, further bolstering his credentials to Germans. In a way, the combination of propaganda and indoctrination the Nazis used on their people may indeed be what our bespoken realities are spoon-feeding us now as we fall deeper into the abyss of religious fundamentalism and authoritarianism.

You may ask, how do people believe what amount to lies? Renee DiResta writes in her book, “Invisible Rulers: The People who Turn Lies into Reality”, that once a lie goes viral, it is truth. Efforts to dispel the lie leave less of a viral imprint. We are basically a populace at the mercy of humanity’s impulse to lie and create outrage. We are seeing the seeds of years of misinformation, growth of anti-democratic forces, social media as a tool for deception and self-aggrandization grow to their full potential. This has led to this period in our history, which doesn’t yet have a name, which is a time of incredible unrest, authoritarianism, and rise of religious fundamentalism coopting state administration.

I read history to acknowledge that there are times of great unrest throughout modern history, and we are not unique and it does give us a kind of guidebook on what we should do. Reading through the experts and leaders in democracy, authoritarianism, social media’s impact on the populace, there’s a sense of urgency to our belief that we are fighting for the future of democracy as the powers that be see democracy as infringing on their capitalistic right to be rich. Only when the data social media and AI collect hinders the future of their companies, whether by the AI bubble bursting or increased pressure on private companies to act on misinformation and undemocratic trends on their social media networks, can we get to a point where maybe we can start to untangle all of the threads and begin to address the elephant in the room: Did Americans know when they voted for Trump that they were voting against democracy? If they didn’t, could they join our goal of banding together to preserve democracy?