Eric Zuesse: Suppressed NATO Study Finds U.S. Ranks Low On Democracy

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NATO and its supporters and member-nations are hiding the fact that the predominant belief in many of these nations is actually that they’re dictatorships that merely pontificate ‘democracy’ to other nations as an excuse to defeat their targeted-for-conquest nations which they call ‘autocracies’ or etc. in order to fool the public to ‘justify’ the military-industrial complex and its war-games and invasions and their enormous arms-sales.

NATO, which is America’s propagandistically ‘pro-democracy’ military alliance against Russia and against China, polled the people in 53 countries — some of which are in NATO and some of which aren’t — and asked them whether they believe “My country is democratic,” and found that NATO’s own core country, U.S., was, itself, #35 down from the top, and China was #6, and Russia (NATO’s main target or ‘enemy’ nation) was #43, and that two of the most anti-Russian countries on the list were near the very bottom: the rabidly anti-Russian NATO member Poland was #50, and the NATO-aspiring Ukraine was allegedly #17 (enormously improved performance for NATO, since Ukraine had been #47 out of the 53 nations back in NATO’s 2020 poll). Anyway, since NATO hid their results, instead of publicizing them, the complete list, with the indicated rankings, are finally being published here (wherever that will be effectively allowed), for the very first time anywhere.

The rankings have been figured out only by a careful analysis of the visuals that the NATO-affiliated polling organization did publish. The NATO-affiliated organization that paid for the polls of those 53 countries was the billionaires-founded group that calls itself the “Alliance For Democracy,” and they issued a report on the poll’s findings, but excluded from their report, the rankings, and made very difficult for a reader to figure out what the rankings were. No one till now went to the trouble of finding out what the rankings there were. (Even now, at the Wayback Machine, which is the standard Web-archive for pdf documents such as this, it is saying “Saved 4 times between May 11, 2023 and May 17, 2023,” and that’s remarkably few times for such an important document, which was uploaded to the Web on May 9th, almost three weeks ago.) The NATO-affiliated international-corporate advisory organization, the Rasmussen Group, had selected the German corporate PR firm Latana (back in 2020 the polling was done instead by the German PR firm Dalia Research) to do the polling, and the data are presented by them as being “based on nationally representative interviews with 53,970 respondents from 53 countries conducted between February 7th and March 27th, 2023 (back in 2020 it was instead “124,000 respondents from 53 countries conducted between April 20th and June 3rd 2020” — and so NATO is now cutting corners on its propaganda in order to intensify its physical wars against Russia and China). So: this is a major research-endeavor for NATO-affiliates (agencies of U.S.-and-allied billionaires); and, since the scores and rankings were hidden by them, instead of having been published by them, the information that is being published here may reasonably be considered to be American samizdat, or prohibited to publish in the United States and in its NATO vassal nations. In other words, publication of this information is effectively blocked in all NATO countries, though the information comes basically from NATO. Publication of this information is effectively banned throughout the U.S. empire, but perhaps this information will become published in whatever news-media are not controlled by the billionaires who control the U.S. Government. Presumably, media such as CNN, New York Times, Fox News, and The Atlantic, will reject this article, which is being simultaneously submitted to virtually all English-language news media throughout the U.S. and its allied countries.

Here are the findings, and the rankings:

“Democracy Perception Index 2023”

(p.10, headlined “Governments are not living up to the democratic expectations of their citizens” instead of “Buried herein are how the residents feel about whether ofr not their Government is a democracy,” or)

“% believe ‘My country is democratic'”:

1.India

2.Taiwan

3.Malaysia, S. Korea, Vietnam

6.China, Singapore

8.Philippines

9.Indonesia, Denmark

11.Norway, Switzerland

13.Sweden

14.Mexico

15.Australia, Portugal

17.Ukraine

18.Argentina

19.Germany

20.Hong Kong, Ireland

22.Canada

23.Spain

24.Algeria

25.Austria

26.Romania

27.Kenya, Israel

29.UK, Colombia, Italy

32.Thailand, Belgium, Chile

35.U.S.

36.Netherlands

37.Saudi Arabia

38.Brazil

39.Egypt, South Africa

41.France, Greece

43.Russia

44.Pakistan, Turkey

46.Japan

47.Nigeria

48.Morocco, Peru, Poland

51.Hungary

52.Venezuela

53.Iran

(Here, for comparison and contrast, were the rankings in 2020.)

The 2023 surveys provide information also on the public’s opinions within each country regarding a number of other interesting questions, such as to identify possible reasons why their country is felt to be a dictatorship instead of a democracy. For example: on page 12 is shown that, whereas the percentage who believe that their Government “acts in the interest of a minority” instead of in the “interests of the majority” (and so this issue taps directly into the definition of whether or not a Government IS a “democracy” or instead a “dictatorship” — it’s the conceptual nub of NATO’s excuse for its own existence), the U.S. had a majority — and significantly higher than the global average) who said “in the interests of a minority,” whereas Russia had slightly lower than the global average who think that and it had slightly higher than the global average who instead said “in the interests of the majority.” (Of course, NATO will never publish that fact.) Furthermore: China had far higher than the global average saying “in the interests of the majority,” and far lower than the global average saying “in the interests of a minority.” That is a stunning NATO confirmation of NATO’s own ideological fraudulence, right there, on page 12. Consequently: who can now say that NATO isn’t a rip-off of the taxpayers, and a front for the U.S.-and-allied military-industrial complex? So, they keep this fact secret. (Perhaps it’s instead being widely discussed at the annual secret conference of the NATO strategic advisory organization Bilderberg group’s Lisbon Portugal meeting that started on 18 May 2023, whose attendees were listed here.)

One of the main topics in this survey were “threats to democracy,” but NATO’s targeted for take-over countries, such as Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran, and five others of the 53, were not reported on these questions and maybe weren’t sampled on them. (However: they might have been sampled but not reported, so that NATO is keeping entirely secret what the PR vulnerabilities within each of those countries are.)

An important finding was on page 14, that “Economic inequality is viewed as the biggest threat to democracy worldwide” and that “Economic inequality and corruption are seen as the biggest threats to democracy.” In other words, just like had happened in Europe during 1848 when the publics were rising up in failed revolutions against their country’s corrupt aristocracy, and against its control over their Government, it’s happening again now, throughout the world, and the aristocrats (the billionaires and their millions of hired agents such as at Bilderberg) are scheming for ways to conquer it before any revolution breaks out. Interestingly, in the entire western hemisphere except U.S. and Chile, “corruption” was the #1-named source to explain the dictatorship, and “economic inequality” (the very presence of an aristocracy) was the #2-named cause. So: the U.S.-and-allied aristocracies will need to increase their PR in favor of “small businesses” and of “draining the swamp” and other such clichés, in order for the aristocrats to fool the public more, so as to retain their own control. However (pages 15 & 16): Norway and Denmark were the publics that least considered either corruption or economic inequality to be a threat to democracy. They are the most libertarian (or “neoliberal”) of the 53 countries.

Page 17 is headlined “Most people view global corporations as a threat to democracy in their country”; and, on this ranking, the top six, in order (the most-skeptical of international corporations), were Philippines, India, Pakistan, Romania, U.S., and South Africa. The bottom six (in ascending unconcern) were: Morocco, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Japan, and Denmark. So, yet again, Norway and Denmark are highly neoliberal and thus ripe targets for global billionaires to fool — exceptionally vulnerable publics.

Page 18 is headlined “57% of people living in democracies are concerned with limits on free speech” (as “threatens democracy in their country”), and, yet again, both Norway and Denmark were among the most unconcerned about it. So: censorship there will be remarkably accepted.

Page 19 is headlined “Fear of unfair elections is widespread in most democracies outside of Europe“; and, again, Norway and Denmark were among the least-concerned, most vulnerable to being fooled.

Page 20 headlines “Half of the world’s democracies fear the influence of Big Tech companies” and Norway and Denmark were in the bottom third also on that, but at the very bottom were Ukraine, Argentina, Poland, Nigeria, and Kenya. (So: those are the places where censorship by the Web-giants and their contractors will be especcially effective at fooling the public.)

Page 21 headlined “49% of people living in democracies perceive the threat of foreign election interference“; and Norway and Denmark were in the bottom ten on that too. At the top were: Pakistan, Romania, Philippines, India, U.S., South Africa, and Taiwan.

Page 24 headlined “Threats to Democracy in America” and reports that the #1-cited such “threat” was “Economic Inequality” and #2 was “Big Tech.” “Corruption” (which was #2 globally) wasn’t even among the top five. That unconcern about corruption explains a lot about U.S. political campaigning: Americans have an extraordinarily high tolerance of corruptness.

Page 26 is headlined “Government Priorities” and reports that to “Reduce poverty” and to “Fight corruption” are the top-named ones, and that, remarkably, in both India and especially Pakistan, to reduce poverty was a lower priority than just about anywhere. As regards fighting corruption, that was especially low in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, and Norway. Then a special box showed the priorities in China — so, this WAS a sampled country on the other tables, but for some reason wasn’t shown there for comparison-purposes — and what stands out here is that “Fight corruption” was #1 among Chinese, at a very modest 43%; “Reduce poverty” was #2 at 37%; “Improve education” was #3 at 35%; “Improve health care” was #4 at 35%; and “Reduce income inequality” was #5 at 32%. In short: NATO found that the Chinese people are extraordinarily highly satisfied with their Government. This finding, by NATO, would suggest that NATO’s planning for an ultimate conquest of China is probably very long-term and likely to culminate in a WW III nuclear invasion of China.

In this regard, another relevant fact is that among the 53 ‘countries’ that NATO’s polling covered were both Hong Kong and Taiwan, both of which aren’t a “country” at all but instead Chinese provinces that the U.S. regime is trying to pull away from China.

However, right now, at the time of the 2023 annual secret meeting of the Bilderberg group, the main topic is the U.S.-and-allied proxy-war against Russia in the battlefields of (and using the soldiers of) Ukraine; and, so, pages 33-onward in this report address the PR issues for the U.S. empire; and one of the main headings (on page 53) is “Assistance to Ukraine,” where it’s shown that the most intensely supportive of that (in order) were: Chile, Peru, Ukraine, Colombia, Argentina, Israel, Brazil, Venezuela, and South Africa; and the least supportive were (from the lowest): China, Hungary, Vietnam, Thailand, Austria, Germany, and Indonesia.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.