Does it seem to you, especially in recent days, that what we are looking at is no longer the usual parade of thieves and the ordinary corrupt class, but something far more primitive? And what is especially disturbing is not only the primitivism itself, but the unpleasant tolerance of it.
How does kakistocracy sound to you? If you are encountering the term for the first time, you might think it is some invented satire. It is not. If kleptocracy is the rule of thieves, and plutocracy the rule of the rich, kakistocracy is somewhere nearby, but it goes deeper because it describes the criterion of selection. Namely, it does not only say what those in power do, but why precisely they are there. Kakistocracy is the rule of the worst (from the Greek kakistos – the worst). A classical term, though somehow lost over time. Unfortunately, it is time to return it to common use.
But what is it, really? It is not only corruption, nor the domination of capital, nor merely a network of relatives and godfathers. In contemporary use, it often implies a combination of primitivism, incompetence and cynicism. Technically speaking, it is a system in which it is not the most successful who climb to the top, but the most unpleasant, the most resistant to shame, the most skilled in petty revenge, the most talented at turning their own ugliness into a political aesthetic.
It is simultaneously the defeat of society and the victory of the individual. These people are the worst for the community, but in every respect the best for themselves. Their success is not accidental. They quickly learn where the gaps are, who is weak, who is hungry, who wants to be bought, and who wants to be humiliated. Their intelligence is not classical, but operational. It is the ability to promise and threaten in the same sentence, to replace morality with procedure, to reduce the state to inventory, and political speech to the rhythm of insult. And most importantly, they are not constrained by ideology. They can be left, right, center, "above divisions", "neither this nor that", believers or atheists, modernists or traditionalists, Europeans or sovereigntists. The kakistocrat has no program. The kakistocrat has a nose for opportunity. Programs are borrowed, stolen, repainted. The only thing that matters is the technique of survival.
Kakistocracy is not a spontaneous event. It does not arrive like bad weather. No society would consciously say: "Yes, we want to be ruled by the worst." That choice does not happen at that level of awareness. Kakistocracy appears only when a society becomes tired enough of even the potential possibility that it could be better. When the energy that would normally go into building goes instead into survival, and then into cynicism. And then a quiet turn occurs in the psychology of the masses. People no longer choose "the best", not even "the lesser evil". They choose kakistocratic scum, like a victim of violence who thinks they do not deserve better, while at the same time their psyche has deteriorated so badly that they can no longer recognize any affirmative qualities in their abuser.
Kakistocracy then ceases to be a scandal and becomes a mirror. This is no longer a society without perspective; it is a society that has crossed the threshold into a state of post-perspective, a phase in which perspective is no longer even sought. In that phase, hope sounds like naivety, and decency like weakness. Society begins to interpret itself through the logic of defeat, and defeat becomes comfortable. And then the worst no longer look like an aberration, but like some new form of honesty.
At that point, vulgarity is already welcome. Primitivism ceases to be a disgrace and becomes "authenticity". Public speech sinks to the level of instinct because instincts are the only thing that still feels reliable. The kakistocrat rules through the lowest passions. Fear, envy, humiliation, the desire for revenge, the need to "bring someone down", to "expose" someone, to "put someone in their place". And how do they rule? Not only through institutions, but through atmosphere. Through the constant production of noise, scandal, triviality. Society is kept in a state of mental overload, as if it were permanently trapped in an argument whose beginning no one remembers anymore. And then it happens that a person begins to appreciate the simplicity of the kakistocrat, as if it were a quality of character, and not a symptom of collapse.
Kakistocracy then naturally pairs with idiocracy, the ancient Greek idea of the "private person ignorant of public affairs". When public space becomes like this, effectively repulsive, normal people simply withdraw. Not because they are cowards, but because they are rational. They retreat into the private sphere, into a small circle, into their own worries, their own rituals for maintaining sanity. And then the public sphere is left only to those who feel no disgust toward the public. It is left to those for whom the public is a natural habitat, because that is where they hunt.
That is how ever more pronounced members of the kakistocracy emerge. Each next group must be louder, cruder, more ruthless, because the audience has already gone numb. What was a shock yesterday is a boring news item today. Then comes a phase that already resembles parody, but not a parody that undermines the system. This parody stabilizes it, because society no longer has the nerves for moral renewal. It has nerves only for one more episode.
And what comes at the end of that road? First, ochlocracy (from ochlos – mob), the rule of the mob. No, this is not a mob angrily demanding justice, or some spontaneous revolt from below. No, not at all. This is the mob as a permanent condition of political culture. The mob does not have to be in the street. The mob is a mentality. And when that mentality becomes established, the circle closes and the final act arrives: barbarocracy. This is barbarization from within, the moment when the civilizational framework is maintained only formally, while the content is no longer civilizational. Institutions become mere decoration, the law too, education, culture... and society becomes terrain on which the one willing to sink lowest wins.
Kakistocracy is not an anomaly. It is the logical endpoint of a long surrender. And that is why it is so stable. It does not win because it is strong - kakistocrats are weaklings who would be swept away by one powerful spark, but that spark is no longer there - kakistocracy wins because society is weak. It does not win because it is convincing, but because exhaustion is more convincing than ideals. In such a society, only the worst survive.
The fight against oligarchy and kleptocracy is very much possible. These are degradations of power that are obvious to everyone, and society dreams of rebellion. Kakistocracy is a far more difficult condition. While the corrupt and the thieves can capture almost any country in the world, kakistocracy can emerge only where society itself has stumbled. It does not happen overnight. It takes years, decades, little by little. But when it happens, or once it has happened, you will know you are living in a kakistocracy.
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