Many countries include ‘Democratic’ or ‘People’s’ in their names, even though they are not democratic and do not serve their people. Examples: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Lao People’s Democratic Republic People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria Democratic Republic of the Congo And German Democratic Republic (East Side) in 1949–1990. None of these states are democratic, power and wealth are concentrated in the hands of a small ruling elite. Who are they fooling with these names?
How is North Korea a democracy?
These seem to be distributed communities that internally use direct democracy (public assemblies). And I agree that direct democracy is a form of democracy. A very inefficient form that doesn’t scale past the size of Greece or EZLN, but still a democracy.
Voting is incredibly minimal at best but has marginally expanded since 2023 with some primaries.
North Korea is basically if a trauma victim was a country, shellshocked after a genocidal bombing campaign. Blowback Season 4 goes into crazy detail about the war. That’s what caused them to pioneer the tunnel technology we saw in Vietnam and also Gaza today.
Neither of those supports the stance that it should be considered a democracy though…
You’re missing the point…
That’s their version of Democratic Republic represention within the party, shaped by the material conditions of both the before-mentioned genocidal bombing campaign and the continued attempts of outside forces to collapse the state via CIA Activities and Sanctions designed to starve and isolate the entire country.
You should check out the Blowback podcast if you’re interested in The Korea War and how those events shaped Present-day North and South Korea
OP’s post is a simple observation about the names of countries and their political alignment. There are probably numerous reasons and causes for both the name and the political alignment. But the observation still holds.
It’s a massive simplification that removes all context of each of those countries anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist histories, all of which is incredibly important to understanding their current political organization and the scope that democracy holds in each.
Sure, but the root comment was implying that the countries mentioned in OP, like North Korea, are democracies. Which is clearly wrong. That’s all I was saying.
Or alternatively, the names of these countries is just marketing, and socialist movements usually tend to be authoritarianism in disguise.
You can either investigate yourself or lean into your preconceived biases, if you’re choosing the latter that’s your choice.
You clearly don’t want to have an actual discussion that includes those nuances that take into account the geopolitics of global capitalism and material conditions, so let’s just agree to disagree or something
I’m just calling out what I consider bad justification under the guise of “nuance”. Earlier in the thread, a user was claiming that North Korea was a sort of democracy. Now the goal posts have shifted to “yes it’s authoritarian but here’s why”. If this were the argument from the start, this would be less of an issue. But what’s problematic is this silent goal post shifting that I constantly see in these sorts of discussions.