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.

  • Naich@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    40
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    9 months ago

    What the world really needs right now is another narcissistic dictator.

    • maness300@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      61
      ·
      9 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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        49
        arrow-down
        7
        ·
        9 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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          12
          ·
          edit-2
          9 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?

          • Anyolduser@lemmynsfw.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            10
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            9 months ago

            Results? If you want to talk results let’s talk about millions upon millions of dead Jews, political prisoners, and homosexuals.

            That’s just one bad example, right? How about the millions that starved because of bad management in a single party regime, I’ve got two of those to pick from.

            Read a fucking book and try not to choose Mein Kampf.

            • maness300@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              9 months ago

              about millions upon millions of dead Jews, political prisoners, and homosexuals.

              I didn’t know Bukele was responsible for all that.

                • maness300@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  5
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  9 months ago

                  And there are no exceptions?

                  It’s just a law of the universe?

                  What about all the atrocities committed by democracies?

                  This is what I mean by you being indoctrinated.

                  • Anyolduser@lemmynsfw.com
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    2
                    arrow-down
                    9
                    ·
                    9 months ago

                    Wow, a literal whataboutism.

                    The absolute best case scenario is a Francisco Franco. Absolute best case.

                    And yes, it’s an inherent part of human nature. The more consolidated power is within an organization, the more vulnerable it is to abuse. Dictatorships are on one end of the spectrum, direct democracies on the other.

                    Have you ever heard a parent say “eat your food, there are starving children in China”? The children were starving in China because Mao decided that sparrows were eating too much of the grain harvest and launched a pest eradication campaign. With nobody in a position of authority with the ability to stop the campaign (or even question the wisdom of it) and sparrows were killed en masse.

                    Sparrows eat grain but they also eat insects. With the sparrows gone the bugs got out of control and sparked a famine. It was the worst man-made disaster in human history. As many as 55 million people died because a dictator tried to do a good thing and was able to act without restriction or oversight.

                    One bad decision - even if made with the best intentions - can end in disaster. That’s why checks and balances matter. Do they slow things down? Yes. But the chart-topping governmental fuck ups are all put there by totalitarians.

      • osarusan@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        26
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        9 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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          16
          ·
          9 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
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            9 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
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              9 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
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                4
                arrow-down
                7
                ·
                9 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
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            9 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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        9 months ago

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

          • fluxion@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            12
            ·
            9 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
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            9 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.

      • Anyolduser@lemmynsfw.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        9 months ago

        Ah, yes the old “enlightened despot” routine.

        Europe tried it. Ended up with guillotines and the Great War. After that they tried it again but without the royalty branding and we got World War Two.

        But thanks to your comment now I see that my history books indoctrinated me. My belief that the enlightened despot of Germany that pulled their economy out of the Great Depression, built up a modern infrastructure, and was a champion of animal rights was a bad guy is clearly just propaganda influencing me. I should get redpilled and cheer for people’s power over their own government being taken away.

        God Lemmy has the biggest whack jobs on the Internet.

      • ours@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        9 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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        9 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?