Youtube and the Regeneration of Democracy: Belarus.

there's a small country in europe called
belarus right now the official opposition the party that has a chance to depose and replace a dictator a dictator has ruled for 26 years comes straight out of youtube this is not the first youtuber to transform the world of electoral parliamentary politics and it's not going to be the last this is august 8th 2020 and we're passing a really interesting milestone in terms of the whole world waking up to realize the political potential of youtube the political potential of video and audio being shared over social media if some other website rises up to compete with or replace youtube there's an election being contested in the tiny country of belarus population 10 million right now and the official opposition so to speak is a phenomenon entirely created by youtube that's risen up to challenge what most people regard as a kind of dictatorship that has been in power in belarus for 26 years there was a man who started making youtube videos complaining that the government was corrupt again youtube isn't special i'm sure these videos were also shared on facebook or what have you he was himself formerly a bank manager and when it became clear that he wasn't just content to criticize the government and when he was gaining more and more followers and more and more viewers for his critique of what was wrong in the politics of belarus when it became clear that he was in fact going to nominate himself to stand for election the government went through the records of what he'd done in his job as a bank manager and they found some pretax to put him in prison i wasn't born yesterday i don't presume that he's innocent um it's malicious prosecution either way of course he was put in prison to stop him participating in the elections and to stop him from uh chastising the government however it's quite possible that anyone who's been a bank manager for a few years at some point or another has done something wrong or that there's some paper trail for that can get them put imprisoned so he's in prison right now and his wife is standing in his place his wife is quite good-looking and quite well-spoken i have not studied any of the languages concerned but it seems to me i'm just listening to the clips of the two of them and seeing the english translation on screen it seems to me that mainly she's a better candidate uh for president of belarus and she's delivering the same message with a great deal of charisma and a palm so this is a case where real politics right right i'm gonna let me word this carefully it would be so easy for me to say this is a case where social media and youtube intersect with and derail the world of real politics and that's not what i want to say at all what i want to say is this i want to say that we have been kidding ourselves to think that youtube and real politics are two different things they're not this is not the first youtuber to transform the world of electoral parliamentary politics and it's not going to be the last do you guys remember when sargon of akkad made the leap from youtube political commentator to actually running in elections i completely despise sargon of akkad no sympathy for him i'm not a fan of his videos nevertheless when that happened we can say hey i'm not sure if this is the first guy to make the transition from youtuber to standing for election front it's not going to be the last right and why it's because this medium has unbelievable wonderful advantages over so-called real world politics this whole ego trip we're on in the modern western decadent world that were somehow superior to other cultures because back in athens they came up with this thing called democracy really really think it through really think through how crummy and limited the process of receiving and debating and discussing and deciding on ideas was back in athens all right you get together a couple hundred people in a room at the bool people give these very passionate over-the-top lectures demagoguery all our vocabulary in the english language related to politics derives from this brief period in athens the origin of these ideas and these words in english even demagogue and so on right people would practice rhetoric can read aristotle's book on rhetoric etc you know and uh then it's like okay you've had five minutes to think about it you heard this side of the debate you heard that side of the debate now you guys make a decision and you decide if we're gonna go to war or not you decide if these couple hundred people are gonna be slaughtered or not you decide if socrates is guilty or innocent if you're going to kill him or not terrible finding decisions with long-term consequences were made with no research no reflection no ability of the people in that crowd to fact check something by googling it you know what i mean oh you claim that the sewage system is working just fine why just googled it and this this is how much particulate matter is in the river and this is you know what i mean like there are levels to this democratic participation we have so many advantages gathering in this assembly right now with you and you and you in your kitchen in your living room even if you're washing the dishes while you're doing it that you can hear this and you can chit chat with your husband or wife you can google you can fact check you can compare another opinion and if you scroll down the um if you scroll down the list of videos of this guy uh victor i'm sorry i'm not going to attempt to pronounce his last name okay victor babarka you know the numbers on these videos are not huge so you know 30 000 views 50 000 views 80 000 views right but the number of people who have participated in any of the important decisions in our western democracies at any stage of our history is also you know not very huge i mean how many people really participated in the decision to make an amendment the u.s constitution to make alcohol illegal this is considered one of the great misadventures in american history if you look through that well there was this tiny minority of actually women activists who wanted to make alcohol illegal and they got the legislation through and so on how many people participated in the decision to make seat belts mandatory on and on it goes how many people participate in the decision to put warning labels on cigarettes how many people participate in the decision for the government to support the nicotine industry with subsidies whatever issue it is if you actually try to evaluate how many people not how many people could participate how many people actually do participate it may be very worrying it's not what youtube can be it's what youtube really is in our lives for me and you and you and you and the next step is doing exactly what they already did in belarus which is taking those discussions taking this fundamentally participatory and thoughtful and transparent model of people engaging one another in debate and sharing information and so on and take the next step to connect it to the formal democratic process if you think this is trash if you think what we're doing right now you and i face to face i know if you think if you think this conversation we're having is worthless have you ever actually been to a uh political convention it's awful you never get this much honesty you never get this much exchange of views i mean you get a couple hundred people organized in theater seating like imitating a parliament right people stand up and they read very kind of procedurally defined statements and then votes are taken it's a very phony very procedural very robotic very dry sort of thing and most people go to those conferences will tell you after they've been to a few of them they just show up for the party afterwards or something they show up beforehand and afterwards they don't want to actually participate in the proceedings because it's a complete waste of time uh we are debating the amendment to the committee report and that amendment is to uh swap uh six of the deal is to um uh the amendment is to take six different delegates from to recognize six different delegates from east bay from what the committee report set could someone please run a mic to the comrade and the jean jacket of which there are many most people aren't aware of how great this is this technology we all take for granted because they don't have that contrast clearly in mind of what it's really like to go out and try to participate in party conferences party congresses what it's like to actually give a deposition at city hall what it's like to try to get your voice heard in provincial parliament in federal parliament in congress whatever the system is in of government where you happen to live try go out and try get disappointed get pissed off get your heart broken come back to youtube and appreciate this wonderful opportunity we've got all right it's really wonderful it's i will never say to you youtube's a good way to make money it's not it's terrible okay it's not it's a wonderful way to change the world it's a wonderful way to improve yourself as a human being as an intellectual it's a wonderful way to inspire yourself and motivate yourself to read more books you get questions from your audience you ask your audience questions you know again sometimes i recommend a book to people in the audience and say hey i'm reading this book i recommend it to you also and then i get email from people that they've finished the book i'm still only on chapter six like oh i gotta spend more time reading there's a really positive galvanizing effect on my life that way can have that effect on your life also we're gonna take a hand count right now uh and hopefully this online voting system will work soon uh when a counter has gone around and confirmed like nodded at you or the delegate who brought clickers uh you can uh lower your hand but only when the person who's like counting has like verbally or uh confirmed with their body language that they've counted your vote i'm rising to speak against this uh amendment to the rules as it would inhibit the inherent the democracy that is inherent to our organization if you look at it most of the time that has been wasted in this body was not wasted on debate it was wasted in vote after vote after vote and voting on whether we're going to vote on voting the reality of participation in democracy i'll just say you know i engaged in debates with buddhists for like 10 years on the internet and a lot of these people had really really strong opinions about the history of buddhism but then sooner or later would come up have you ever been to a buddhist temple like have you ever been to one just once whether in cambodia or japan or like in england like anywhere it would always be revealed that these people who had you know the the deepest convictions about this religion actually had developed these convictions totally just reading articles on wikipedia just sitting alone at their computer it's like well you know maybe if you actually participated in a buddhist community you'd see things a little bit differently i don't mean not necessarily better for better and worse you'd see things differently you know if you think about politics entirely as sort of abstract set of principles on the chalkboard that's one thing when you start actually attending party conferences if you actually try to participate in debates at city hall at your provincial government whatever kind of government you have in the country you're living in whether at the level of a party that's an opposition or the government as it's sitting and making decisions debates and things you will be shocked and dismayed at how hollow and meaningless the process is how hard it is to get anyone to speak to you honestly or listen to you honestly or to deal with the real substance of whatever the problem is at your time it's very disheartening you might even walk away feeling my time would have been better spent giving a deposition to youtube or watching someone else's video on youtube discussing this kind of thing the difference isn't just quantitative it's also qualitative right 50 000 people who are spread out all over the place and can sit and think about this and talk about it with a friend and can fact check can look things up can google some of the claims you're making maybe you're telling the truth maybe you're lying maybe there's some inaccuracies in your political claims they can look up another youtube video and hear a contrasting perspective qualitatively this is profoundly better than what they had going on in athens at the penins at the bull it may be difficult to appreciate just how special what we've got going on here on youtube is i don't know why you know why you know why because it's cheap maybe we just take youtube for granted because it's so cheap and it's so easy whereas paying two hundred dollars to attend a party congress or a party conference and then having to drive there and then spending at least a hundred dollars on a hotel room or stay in an airbnb and then you stay in the hotel room and then you go then you get to sit in this theatrical seating you get to sit in silence and listen to these lectures and you never get this level of honesty never get kind of face to face meaningful interaction with everyone and you know whatever you hold your hand to vote at different times whatever the voting system is you vote on resolutions for your party you vote on this kind of crap you have this highly procedural highly unnatural totally dissatisfactory you know ostentatiously rational but really completely irrational ritual for democratic participation you know what maybe we still value that just because it's expensive it's difficult to do and we assume for those reasons that it's something much more valuable than what we've already got going on here on youtube i think what i want to emphasize about youtube is not that it's a substitute for real political discussion real political organization it's that this is real political discussion all that you or i or anyone needs to do is take that next step to plug it into the democratic process and start getting real political outcomes and the threshold for participation has become lower and lower and lower i remember just how much of a sacrifice it was i was flat broke and busy and going to university classes to scrape together the money to buy a train ticket to go and attend a green party conference the green party of canada and even to pay to attend it and so on a lot of money went into political organization and even the lowest and humblest levels and these parties the green party included but even big parties the liberal party the conservative party they rely on donations primarily from elderly retired people to be able to do anything to be able to even just print pamphlets right the bar to entry is higher the cost of participation is higher and this makes them fundamentally unresponsive to the problems of their day and much more responsive to whatever their sources of funding are and what we're doing here on youtube doesn't require any of that at all all we need to do is make that effort to start taking this opportunity seriously um [Music] the dutch