Why ‘democracy’ always produces fascism [a parable]

It’s sure nice standing in solidarity with “the common people.” Until they decide to end your existence for being an inconvenience to their collective agenda.

Once upon a time, there as a great lion (Arabic: أَسَد, transliterated asad, or Assad) who ruled over a glorious kingdom of diverse sheep families. His empirical policy was plainly simple: any sheep who accepted the legitimacy of his rule and lived in harmonious subjection was protected by his clan of lions, and anyone who rebelled were crushed and devoured. The sheep were granted absolute protection by the lion to live in peace so long as they accepted his authority.

There arose since early times a bitter feud within the carnivores, for the wolves, hyenas, and jackals hated the lion for curtailing them from unrestrained savagery against the sheep. Why not, they insisted, just use the full potential of their physical brute power and consume the sheep already for breakfast to fill their own stomachs! The lion refused to capitulate to their suggestion, and banned the wolves, hyenas, and jackals from his kingdom by penalty of death, and continued to proceed on governing his kingdom enforcing societal harmony between the different families of sheep.

It came to pass, that the wolves, hyenas, and jackals formulated a plot to end the great lion’s kingdom: if they could not successfully invade it from without, they would collapse his governance from within. The hyenas and jackals suggested this masterful plan: that the wolves dress up in sheep’s clothing, ingratiate themselves among the sheep as a fifth column, and incite provocations within the sheep families of the kingdom against the lion’s authority on the basis that the sheep’s communal and social interests as a collective group were not represented by the lion, and that therefore the sheep held an innate right to overthrow the lion’s kingdom by reason of popular will and the right to majority rule.

Not every sheep supported the agitation, however. Many suspected the dubious identities of the chief instigators and held their peace in quietist non-support, and they became increasingly scorned by their neighbors as “traitors” for lacking conformance with the “sheep revolution.” Eventually, the entire sheep population was divided amongst themselves, for the daughter rose against her mother and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A sheep’s enemies were those within his own family, many from both sides of the dissension departing from the kingdom into exile for fear of life endangerment.

And it came to pass, that when the wolves in sheep’s clothing provoked the sheep into mobilizing a popular uprising against the lion, the lion’s clan eventually could no longer suppress the wolf-manufactured so-called sheep’s revolution, but collapsed at long last. The wolves who dressed up in sheep’s clothing, who passed themselves as sheep representing the popular interests of the sheep, became by self-appointed determination the new rulers of the kingdom. Among the self-exiled sheep, those who supported the so-called sheep’s revolution all returned in delight, excited at the beaming promise of a new kingdom heralded by the so-called revolution that would cater to popular representation as opposed to the tyranny of the great lion.

Shortly upon obtaining the kingdom, all of the fifth columnist wolves tore off their sheep’s clothing, revealing to the sheep who they really were, and their jackal and hyena friends then immediately joined in to devour the sheep. All the sheep in the kingdom were consumed into extermination by the new rulers, including those who supported the falsely-so-called revolution.

For rulers are not a terror unto good works, but to the evil.