With the arrest of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, global capitalism -and neoliberal democracy as the foundation of today's hegemony- is dying for the third time, although it keeps coming back as a zombie.
Slavoj Zizek had argued that it died twice: "first as a political doctrine in the tragedy of the attacks of 9/11; then (with) its farcical collapse as an economic theory when the meltdown at the end of 2008 brought an end to the utopia of global market capitalism."
And now it is dying socially in the fractal space of the Internet, while everybody is listening to the echoes of a public secret: King Midas has donkey's ears, even though it is as rich as Croesus.
So what?
I believe that we are in a point of realization, that we're suddenly enlightened as it is obvious to us now that democracy is not really practiced anywhere in the world. As long as certain interests (class or individual) are threatened, "Western political elites obfuscate, lie and bluster – and when the veil of secrecy is lifted, they try to kill the messenger," as John Naughton says.
This democracy simulation is global. It is the Assange-esque drama in western Europe and the United States. In the twilight zone of capitalism, with the tragic limbo that we call Turkey as an instance, the spectacle changes its shape: The oppressor is an Islamist neoliberal here, while the victim is the last frontier of any agonizing democracy: university students.
In Western Europe and the United States, the democracy simulation is more successful at pretending as if it is really democratic, really for and by the people. Unfortunately, it is much more vulgar and obscene in Turkey.
Recently, I reported about the police brutality a couple of times (here and here). This week, the police kept beating the students who just wanted to peacefully protest the Prime Minister. Considering the anger and the intolerance of Tayyip Erdogan, the actions of the police force, which is directed by the Minister of Interior, are normal. "The police was not brutal," the chief EU negotiator Egemen Bagis told, "The students were brutal."
If it is obviously clear that AKP is not democratizing Turkey, but turning it into another Iran or -most optimistically- Russia, then why does the EU and several American opinion-makers keep praising it?
The answer is WikiLeaks. The people who praise AKP even though they see it clearly that their neoliberal Islamism is a danger for any real democracy share the mindset of the people who would like to see Julian Assange executed.
In a democratic world where a website can easily be banned, blocked and attacked by the government...
...in a democratic world where the champions of free press can suddenly turn into tyrants, starting to defend that there may be exceptional situations to restrict freedoms...
...in a democratic world, where merciless dictatorships like Saudi Arabia can be tolerated by developed countries, in spite of their fundamental hate of democracy and the documented support for terrorism on their behalf...
...those Turkish students should not only be executed, but also be crucified...
...in the neo-Ottoman style...
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