By Enver Robelli/ In countries where democracy is only a facade, the splendor of autocracy overshadows everything. In the dark, rulers control not only the truth, but also all institutions, propaganda tools, state resources. They share these resources with oligarchs. Oligarchs are billionaires in the service of the ruler. A novella by Anton Chekhov provides ample material to illustrate the world where the truth is drowned.
1.
"Room number 6" - this is the name of a novel by the classic Russian writer Anton Chekhov. An official named Ivan Dimitrić Gromov survives in this hall. Because he suffers from paranoia, Gromov was brought here, to hall number 6, where the insane are treated. Doctor Andrej Efimić Ragin, director of the hospital, issued the instructions to Gromov himself. By chance, the doctor Efimiq Ragin starts talking to the patient Gromov and discovers that he is actually the most logical interlocutor in this entire province. The inhabitants of the town start to doubt doctor Efimiq Ragin, since he was talking to the patient, and a commission was even created to examine the mental state of Efimiq Ragin. He said that his illness is actually this: that only after 20 years has he managed to find a wise man in the town. And the wise man is treated as a madman. The authorities decide to declare the doctor insane. The message of the novel? In a world dominated by lies, noise, cacophony, toxic language, it is difficult to speak and defend the truth.
2.
In such a world, rulers control not only the truth, but also all institutions, propaganda tools, state resources. They share these resources with oligarchs. Oligarchs are billionaires in the service of the ruler. They manage the assets that the government makes available to them. The conduct of the oligarch's affairs depends on the mercy of the ruler. In parallel with the management of public wealth, the ruler tries to buy every public voice. In societies without a democratic tradition, this is easy. Because almost everyone is seduced by the glitter, believes that in a short time he can become a millionaire and on this path he is ready to step over corpses. The first corpse is the truth.
The ultimate goal of any autocrat is to undo not only critical thinking, but the entire idea of public opinion. So that in the end society does not exist at all, but only the ruler and his slave servants. To control these, neither great arbitrariness nor unbridled violence is needed, if the power is well consolidated. Then society does not exist, the opposition is destroyed, the owners of the media are actually road builders, license holders, building owners, news traders; civil society is crushed and trapped in particular interests, self-enclosed in the cage of cynicism, depressed that life has gone and others have become millionaires. As usual - irrelevant.
Thus, the general good loses its meaning and everything turns into a push and shove. The biggest tragedy of such societies is that no one takes anyone seriously, neither the driver the policeman, nor the policeman the driver, nor the minister the law, nor the defender of the law the bad deeds of the ruler. Everything is essentially bargaining, intrigues, lies, with one goal - robbery of power and control over resources. When the provincial gets a whiff of the fast and illegal money, he goes all fours for the booty. His idol is the ruler who makes decisions in dark corners. But every evil, every harm once has an epilogue, because the corrupt ruler, even if he does not know the ancient world and the works of the ancient Hellenes, will one day inform that figure of Greek tragedy, who with every step he takes hopes that it is avoiding its own sinking - and in fact it is only getting closer to the pit. The problem is that not only the ruler, his oligarchs and propaganda speakers fall into this pit. Such regimes risk taking society with them into the abyss.
