Nayib Bukele claims landslide victory and says Spanish democracy is a colonial fraud in impassioned speech to supporters

Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s millennial president, attacked Spanish colonialism and imperialism in a fiery victory speech after he won a landslide victory.

Amid claims he is turning the country into a dictatorship, he boasted to flag-waving crowds below the presidential palace that El Salvador would be the first country with “a one-party system in a democracy”.

“The entire opposition together was pulverised,” Mr Bukele, who once styled himself the “world’s coolest dictator”, told the cheering masses.

The baseball cap-wearing Mr Bukele, 42, has become vastly popular for his war on gangs, but he has also been accused of stifling the courts and silencing opposition.

In his speech he said a Spanish journalist had recently asked him why he wants to dismantle democracy.

  • maness300@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Dictatorships are not intrinsically bad.

    You can have good dictators, even if they are rare.

    If you can’t comprehend this, then you are a victim of propaganda and indoctrination.

    Sometimes, it’s easier to convince the masses to vote against themselves than it is to convince a dictator to sell them out.

    For example, Mexico vs. El Salvador.

    15 years ago, nobody thought Mexico would have a worse gang problem than El Salvador. Without Bukele’s heavy-handed approach to suppressing gangs, they would still be running rampant like they are in Mexico.

    • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Dictatorships are not intrinsically bad. You can have good dictators, even if they are rare.

      Yet they can’t handle competition, accountability or limits to their power? Fuck off fascist.

      • maness300@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        The results speak for themselves.

        Try to focus on pragmatism over whatever other ideology you think trumps it.

        Mexico is democratic and they’re practically run by gangs. Do you really think that’s preferable for the people of El Salvador?

        Should they go back to being ruled by gangs just to look good in the eyes of indoctrinated Westerners?

    • osarusan@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      Dictatorships are not intrinsically bad.

      You can have good dictators, even if they are rare.

      Hard disagree there.

      But it really depends on what you value as good and bad.

      For instance, if you think that people have an inherent right to have a say in how they are governed, then a dictatorship can never be good because it infringes on that right in the most serious of ways.

      If you think a stable and sustainable system of government that will last beyond the life of a few leaders is important, then dictatorship is not a good system, because one good dictator creates no guarantee that the next dictator will be good, and establishing a system of dictatorship affords a bad dictator that much more power to ruin lives.

      • maness300@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        if you think that people have an inherent right to have a say in how they are governed

        What about when people vote against their own interests?

        What about when the majority suppresses minorities?

        • osarusan@kbin.social
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          10 months ago

          What about when people vote against their own interests?

          They have the right to do so.

          What about when the majority suppresses minorities?

          That is a bad thing. But talk about a dictatorship?? That’s one person suppressing everybody else.

          • maness300@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            So it’s better to be ruled by gangs than a dictator?

            The people who were afraid to leave their homes that can now go outside made the wrong decision by electing a government to solve their problems?

            Or, more realistically, you’re too indoctrinated to understand how their real problems are more important than your philosophical ones.

            That’s one person suppressing everybody else.

            Oh no! Somebody think of the gangbangers!

            • osarusan@kbin.social
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              10 months ago

              The fuck are you talking about?

              You’re replying to things I didn’t say. Are you hearing voices or something?

              Try again. Do better.

        • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          If people vote against their own interests, it is solely their fault, there is no way around it, deal with the consequences and do better next time. Saying that people must be protected against themselves means that you believe that your fellow human beings are inherently inferior to you and that they are not rational beings, akin to animals.

          If you believe that you have intellectual superiority but you are not able to communicate that to your fellow countrymen, then you have failed thoroughly at being a politician, or you are not as superior as you think you are.

    • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
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      10 months ago

      Name one “good” dictator. This shit has played out plenty of times and it always ends up the same.

        • fluxion@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Most of society throughout history has been ruled by dictators. There are probably a few who would pass for decent rulers, statistically speaking. A few, out of thousands.

          But even if you’re lucky enough to get one of the good ones, some shit bag will inevitably take their place and everyone is absolutely fucked with nothing they can do about it. Even rebellion is less and less of an option as militaries becomes increasingly efficient vs. armed citizenry.

          It’s a losing bet every time. Not ever worth considering in any modern society.

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          Dictator didn’t mean back then what it means now: It was a time-limited emergency position, then oligarchy resumed. The Romans would call our current-day dictators tyrants and they tended to go the way of Caesar: Stabbed in the back (literally) by the senatorial power they usurped.

    • ours@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      One good dictator is one thing but what happens after him? What are the chances he’ll be succeeded by another supposedly benevolent dictator? It also increases the chances someone gets tired of the dictator and coups him which may turn into yet another bloody civil war.

      Democracy sucks but it’s the best system we have,

      One can argue for his emergency decisions to handle the gangs but democracy should be restored once the dust settles.

    • small44@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      You said that they are rare, so what do you do if the ruler is bad and has the power to ruin the country for decades and can pass the rule to his song who may be bad too?