One trend that infuriates me, I often see in academic & political polemics is to call X state not a true Y, like ’democracy’, &/or that X state or cultural structure is ‘fake’ (or they use ‘constructed’ as a synonym for ‘fake’, which is even worse).

Almost always, their claims will depend on:
1. An esoteric & idiosyncratic definition of democracy they have to spend 100 pages defining, & thus which is of limited use, OR
2. They will list off features which are bad or which they dislike, as proof this project isn’t one

The problem is that for (2), in the present moment, at least plurality of states called ‘democratic’ will feature (2). Historically, features (2) will be part of what’s called democracy since the beginning.

Conjoining these two rules, we can say as a heuristic, that most projects called democracies with any longevity, will, in their history, have fundamentally featured (2), and features (2) can always be found in projects called democracies

This means that democracy gets reduced to some ideal that no project in history has ever met, OR, even more strongly, becomes an ideal that *NO* project to which it is applied as a term can meet its definitions.

This is similar to the more obvious issue with (1–idiosyncratic definition). Indeed, one often sees (1) & (2) occur simultaneously in an argument, both of which break against the rocks of history & present diversity.

As per things being fake, or even worse, using constructed as synonym for ‘fake’, it runs into the same problem as these two, because most examples of what they consider ‘real’, will feature the same components of construction or what they consider ‘fake’.

We all know the no true Scotsman informal fallacy, the equivocation fallacy, and the fallacy of begging the question, some or all of which are components of the above style of arguments.

My point is therefore general, and holds beyond the specific case of democracy or calling things ‘fake’, this is is just one of the more common examples I see, and one of the ones much easier to explicate.

For example, ethnocracy, minority discrimination, abuse of power, killing of civilians in war, genocide, disproportionate representation, exclusion, slavery, gender division of labor, class systems, etc.

Many democracies in the present and many in the past feature all or one of the above. I’d go further, all projects labeled democracies in the present or past, with any longevity, feature at least *one* of the above characteristics at any given time.

This is especially true for colloquial, academic, state centric, polemical, and ideological definitions of democracy, but it will also hold for most idiosyncratic ones, *if they have ever been met in practice*, I would bargain as well

Again, this holds for words like ‘leftism’, or ‘socialism’, or anything else too—it’ll hold in any case where a term functions as several or all of the following: a normative idea, an ideology, a colloquialism, a historical descriptor, and a self descriptor

In many senses this is inevitable, because we are making both present/historical, normative/descriptive claims in these political & scholarly discussions, but it can be lessened in effect if we are more specific & reflexive about our use of concepts

If one says real anarchism, communism, or democracy have ‘never been tried’ and/or ‘never succeeded’, but also seeks evidence & precedent from history & the present, one runs into a kind of tension

Compare that with the following ‘Every element of anarchist ideology has been tried, succeeded, or existed in human history, many exist in the present. The aspect most disputed—statelessness— was the historical norm for most of history’

‘However, since the rise of the state, there have been few generalized global bouts of statelessness—altho all states collapse, and states never totally controlled the world—and anarchism as an *ideology* has been tried, with successes, but has never *fully* succeeded or lasted’

Notice, this formulation achieves historical & present precedent, and postulates a category that as a descriptor, has many concrete instances, while, as a normative or ideological descriptor, allows room for improvement & novelty.

It therefore does not have the issue of claiming either a normative ideal which no historical cases meet, or a descriptor of historical cases, which never meet a normative ideal, nor does it have the issue of claiming it is both historically precedented & unprecedented.

Because it clarifies which parts are precedented and which parts are unprecedented ahead of time. This is just one example. For anarchism & communism I think this clarifying exercise is relatively easy.

For democracy, or legitimacy, etc., I do not think this is as easy. As in, I do not think the definitions of ‘democracy’ that refer to history, self-description, common use, or usual attribution can be squared with those that are about norms, ideals or idiosyncrasies.

For ‘legitimacy’ or ‘reality’ (as opposed to ‘fake constructions’) this is easier to see, because these concepts are self-referential, ‘performative’, and their descriptive & normative senses cannot be divided.

For example, when we say X is not a legitimate Y, what we usually mean is ‘although X is conferred legitimacy as Y by other Xs, & Ysit *should* not be conferred legitimacy, because they should instead use criteria X’