From the Degradation of Democratic Dialogue to New Infrastructures of Freedom
Introduction — When Speaking No Longer Persuades
Liberal democracies are living through a historical paradox. Never has it been easier to speak, publish, and express opinions. Yet the public sphere has become increasingly incapable of sustaining rational dialogue, productive disagreement, or legitimate collective decision-making. The core problem is not a lack of voices, but the erosion of the conditions that make speech politically effective.
This erosion rarely appears as an abrupt rupture. In most Western societies it advances incrementally—through shifts in economic incentives, technological architecture, and social norms. As Hannah Arendt warned, free societies do not usually collapse when liberty is abolished all at once, but when thinking and dissent acquire an unbearable social cost, even in the absence of formal coercion.
I. Democratic Dialogue in the Twentieth Century: Imperfect but Functional
Throughout much of the twentieth century—particularly in the postwar period—liberal democracies operated within a relatively stable ecosystem of mediation. Political conflict was intense, but it was institutionalized. Disagreement was expected, yet contained within structures capable of absorbing tension without collapse.
The commercial press played a central role in that system. Funded primarily by direct sales and local advertising, newspapers had clear incentives to deliver information that readers genuinely needed—even when it was uncomfortable for governments or elites. Investigative reporting was not merely a professional ideal; it was an economic asset. If a newspaper failed to provide value, readers stopped paying.
Brazil’s trajectory has its own constraints and discontinuities, but it still illustrates the point: long, costly investigations were more sustainable when editorial and business models could support them at scale, and when trust in mediating institutions was less structurally fragile.
Raymond Aron identified the key virtue of this older arrangement: pluralism did not depend on moral tolerance alone, but on institutions that forced adversaries to coexist. Democratic stability was produced structurally, not ethically.
II. The Contemporary Rupture: The Attention Economy and Incentive Collapse
This equilibrium began to unravel with the digitization of information. One of the most decisive—and least understood—turning points was the collapse of journalism’s economic model.
As advertising migrated to global platforms and print circulation declined, the reader ceased to be the primary financier of news organizations. In its place emerged a mix of institutional advertising, philanthropic funding, platform distribution, and engagement metrics. Journalism was no longer rewarded mainly for informing well, but for engaging quickly.
In Brazil, this shift is visible in the rise of “news deserts”—places where there is little or no local news coverage—documented over multiple editions of the Atlas da Notícia project.[^1] When local reporting collapses, corruption becomes cheaper, public services become less accountable, and polarization becomes easier to weaponize—because citizens lose shared, grounded information about their own communities.
At the same time, social media platforms introduced a new kind of mediation: the algorithm. Decisions about visibility, amplification, monetization, and silence are now made by opaque systems, often without due process or meaningful appeal. Power shifts from explicit prohibition to invisible marginalization.
Ernst Nolte’s historical lens is useful here. Many contemporary cultural movements emerge as reactions to real injustices and unmet promises of twentieth-century liberalism. Yet when moral conflict is fully absolutized within systems that reward outrage and symbolic punishment, the capacity for compromise—the lifeblood of liberal democracy—atrophies.
III. Informal Censorship and Social Authoritarianism
In most Western democracies today, censorship rarely takes the form of explicit state bans. Instead, it operates through informal social and institutional pressure.
Reputational sanctions, professional ostracism, funding cutoffs, and anticipatory self-censorship have become common features of public life. Universities, cultural institutions, and online environments increasingly function as spaces of unstable moral orthodoxy, where unwritten rules shift rapidly and error is rarely forgiven.
Brazil adds a distinct layer: strong judicial involvement in the informational environment. The 2022 suspension order against Telegram—issued by a Supreme Federal Court justice and later reversed after compliance—became an emblematic example of how disputes about enforcement, misinformation, and platform governance can spill into sweeping measures that affect millions of users at once.[^2] Even when motivated by legitimate aims, the scope and collateral effects of such actions matter, because they change the practical boundaries of speech.
Arendt warned that democracy weakens not only when the state represses dissent, but when society itself abandons individual judgment in favor of closed moral narratives. Fear replaces thinking; conformity replaces deliberation.
Aron’s conceptual clarity remains essential. This is not totalitarianism in the classical sense. It is a form of social authoritarianism compatible with elections, civil rights, and formally free media—precisely why it is harder to confront.
IV. Real Risks: Democratic Erosion Without Rupture
It is crucial to avoid exaggeration. Contemporary liberal democracies are not totalitarian regimes. They lack a single party, terror as a governing principle, and the formal abolition of pluralism.
The danger is subtler: the slow erosion of democratic substance while democratic forms persist. This erosion manifests in widespread self-censorship, excessive judicialization of political disputes, expanding surveillance under legitimate but poorly bounded rationales, and declining trust in mediating institutions.
Brazil’s recent history makes the “architecture of exception” visible in the informational domain: the Supreme Court’s “fake news inquiry” (INQ 4781) has produced a long sequence of platform-facing orders and enforcement pressures, including actions involving distribution and visibility of political content.[^3] Whether one agrees with specific targets or not, the institutional pattern matters: in a polarized society, tools created for urgent circumstances tend to normalize.
Yuval Noah Harari has repeatedly argued that twentieth-century political systems were designed for a slower, more predictable world. Today, emotional waves travel faster than institutions can respond. Without new shock absorbers, democracies drift toward improvisation, exception, and control.
V. Technologies as Political Infrastructure
How Software, Cryptography, Money, and Communication Redefine the Limits of Power
Democracy has never depended solely on constitutions or ideals. It has always relied on material infrastructures: printing presses, postal systems, funding mechanisms, and communication networks. In the twenty-first century, these infrastructures are digital—and increasingly centralized.
This is where movements associated with free software, cryptography, Bitcoin, and decentralized networks cease to be technical niches and begin to function as structural democratic shock absorbers. They do not promise harmony or virtue. They promise something more basic: limits on power when institutions fail.
Free Software: Institutional Sovereignty, Auditability, and Continuity
Free and open-source software is perhaps the least visible—and most foundational—democratic safeguard today. In a world where nearly all political life passes through digital systems, control over code is control over process.
Free software allows independent auditing, modification, replication, and forking. This means institutions are not fully dependent on a single vendor, corporation, or political authority to continue operating. Alternatives remain viable even when they are not actively used.
Brazil provides a concrete illustration of how “auditability as a civic mechanism” can be institutionalized. The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) runs a formal code inspection and transparency cycle that allows authorized institutions to inspect the source code of electoral systems ahead of elections, accompanied by periodic public communications about participation by oversight entities.[^4] This does not eliminate political controversy, but it establishes a procedural baseline: verification is possible in principle, and continuity is not hostage to a private supplier’s goodwill.
From an Arendtian perspective, this matters because domination begins not with explicit bans but with the silent disappearance of alternatives. Free software preserves real alternatives at the infrastructural level. It keeps exit possible.
For Aron, free software functions as an invisible institutional brake. It does not generate pluralism by itself, but it prevents technical monopolies that make pluralism impossible. It limits power structurally, without requiring moral virtue.
Cryptography: Privacy as a Precondition for Political Thought
Cryptography is often discussed in terms of security or crime. Politically, its role is more fundamental: it protects the private space necessary for thinking, dissent, and organization.
In twentieth-century democracies, this space was protected by material constraints: surveillance was expensive; correspondence was physically secure; monitoring required warrants and manpower. In the digital environment, these constraints have collapsed. Without strong cryptography, surveillance ceases to be exceptional and becomes ambient.
Brazil’s journalistic record demonstrates why that matters. Investigations built on leaks and source communications—such as The Intercept Brasil’s “Vaza Jato” series—were possible because sources could transmit information using modern encrypted channels.[^5] Without cryptography, the cost of speaking rises sharply, especially for whistleblowers and politically exposed insiders.
Arendt insisted that political judgment requires a protected space where individuals can err, test ideas, and dissent without immediate exposure. Pervasive surveillance destroys this space before any law is violated. Cryptography does not guarantee truth or justice; it guarantees something more basic: the possibility of thinking without automatic fear.
States frequently pressure for weakened encryption in the name of legitimate goals (terrorism, child safety). Aron’s caution is relevant: powers granted to the state rarely remain confined to their original justification. Technical capabilities tend to expand beyond initial scope.
Bitcoin: Money as a Political Chokepoint
If cryptography protects speech, Bitcoin protects something equally sensitive: the ability to fund political action, journalism, and dissent.
Throughout history, control over money has been one of the most effective instruments of political power. Even in democracies, account closures, payment bans, and financial exclusion can silence actors without any judicial ruling.
Brazil’s institutional environment already recognizes that banks can close accounts unilaterally under certain conditions, while courts frequently litigate abuses—especially when closure is abrupt or inadequately notified.[^6] This creates a structural vulnerability: financial access can become contingent on institutional discretion, “de-risking,” and reputational judgments.
Internationally, the 2022 Canadian “Freedom Convoy” episode demonstrated how quickly financial chokepoints can be activated under emergency measures: government communications explicitly described temporary freezing of accounts as an available tool, and official reports documented large-scale account freezes by financial institutions.[^7] Whatever one thinks of that protest, the precedent is instructive: it shows how funding can become a controllable switch in moments of political stress.
Bitcoin introduces a historical rupture: a functional, global, censorship-resistant monetary system that requires no authorization, identity, or intermediary. It does not decide what should be funded; it prevents any single actor from deciding what cannot be funded.
For Aron, Bitcoin would be understood as a limit on power rather than a political program. For Nolte, it can be read as a historical response to the extreme financial centralization of the twentieth century, shaped by war, emergency powers, and capital controls.
Bitcoin does not solve inequality or replace fiscal policy. Its role is narrower—and more disruptive: it removes an invisible veto.
Decentralized Networks: When There Is No Off Switch
If the twentieth century was governed by editorial gatekeepers, the twenty-first has been dominated by algorithmic ones. Centralized platforms do not merely remove content; they regulate visibility, reach, monetization, and, ultimately, public existence.
Brazil’s recent legal-political environment has made platform power (and platform dependence) especially visible. Supreme Court actions linked to the “fake news inquiry” have included platform-facing measures related to online distribution and political messaging, reinforcing the reality that centralized intermediaries are the easiest point of control—whether the controlling actor is corporate or institutional.[^3]
Decentralized protocols introduce a conceptual shift: no one controls the system as a whole. Moderation still exists, but it is local and contextual. Bans are communal rather than global.
This does not eliminate misinformation or conflict. What it changes is that censorship becomes competition among narratives and communities, rather than enforced silence. Arendt feared systems with no “outside.” Decentralized networks recreate an outside—not as physical exile, but as communicative continuity. Harari warns that digital systems naturally concentrate narrative power; open protocols act as a partial antidote by preventing global monopolies of attention.
Conclusion — Re-equipping Democracy
The contemporary crisis of liberal democracy is not a sudden collapse, but a progressive failure of mediation, incentives, and trust. The challenge of the twenty-first century is not choosing between centralization and chaos, state and technology.
It is rebuilding democratic shock absorbers compatible with a digital, accelerated, decentralized world.
The technologies discussed here do not create democracy. They do not guarantee truth. They do not replace institutions. What they do is more fundamental: they reduce the cost of dissent, eliminate single points of failure, restore exit options, and limit invisible coercion.
In Arendtian terms, they protect the space of thought.
In Aron’s terms, they function as technical brakes on power.
In Nolte’s terms, they are historical responses to excessive centralization.
In Harari’s terms, they attempt to rebalance power in an age of technological acceleration.
Democracy does not need to be reinvented.
It needs to be re-equipped.
And historically, the democracies that survive are those capable of limiting power—including their own.
Bibliography (Formal)
ARENDT, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1951.
ARENDT, Hannah. Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin Books, 1961.
ARON, Raymond. Democracy and Totalitarianism. New York: Free Press, 1965.
ARON, Raymond. The Opium of the Intellectuals. New York: W. W. Norton, 1957.
NOLTE, Ernst. Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917–1945. Frankfurt am Main: Propyläen, 1987.
HARARI, Yuval Noah. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. London: Harvill Secker, 2016.
HARARI, Yuval Noah. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2018.
HABERMAS, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989.
[^1]: Atlas da Notícia (Projor). “Brazil reduced ‘news deserts’ in 2023, but local journalism still needs incentives.” Aug 9, 2023. https://atlas.jor.br/v6/brasil-tem-reducao-de-8-6-nos-desertos-de-noticias-em-2023-mas-o-jornalismo-local-precisa-de-incentivo/
[^2]: Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF). “Justice Alexandre de Moraes suspends Telegram’s operation in Brazil” (news release) and the decision PDF (March 2022).
STF news release: https://portal.stf.jus.br/noticias/verNoticiaDetalhe.asp?idConteudo=483659&ori=1
Decision PDF (Telegram): https://www.stf.jus.br/arquivo/cms/noticiaNoticiaStf/anexo/DecisaoTelegram20mar.pdf
[^3]: Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF). Example of inquiry-related platform-facing action: STF news release referencing INQ 4781 (May 2, 2023). https://portal.stf.jus.br/noticias/verNoticiaDetalhe.asp?idConteudo=506578&ori=1
[^4]: Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE). “Source codes: from the transparency cycle to the public voting-machine test” (Nov 18, 2025). https://www.tse.jus.br/comunicacao/noticias/2025/Novembro/codigos-fonte-do-ciclo-de-transparencia-ao-teste-publico-da-urna
See also TSE notes on oversight entities inspecting source code (Apr 2024): https://www.tse.jus.br/comunicacao/noticias/2024/Abril/tres-entidades-ja-fiscalizaram-o-codigo-fonte-da-urna-eletronica
[^5]: The Intercept Brasil. “All the secret Lava Jato messages” (special index). https://www.intercept.com.br/especiais/mensagens-lava-jato/
Timeline index: https://www.intercept.com.br/2020/01/20/linha-do-tempo-vaza-jato/
[^6]: TJDFT (Court of Justice of the Federal District and Territories). “Unilateral closure of bank accounts” (theme page, Dec 2023). https://www.tjdft.jus.br/consultas/jurisprudencia/jurisprudencia-em-temas/dano-moral-no-tjdft/servicos-bancarios/encerramento-unilateral-de-conta-bancaria
Banco Central (Brazil) Q&A update referenced in coverage (updated March 26, 2024): https://www.poder360.com.br/poder-economia/bancos-podem-fechar-contas-por-falta-de-interesse-segundo-bc/
[^7]: Government of Canada (Finance). “Canada invokes the Emergencies Act…” (Feb 14, 2022). https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2022/02/canada-invokes-the-emergencies-act-to-limit-funding-of-illegal-blockades-and-restore-public-order.html
RCMP statement on enforcement/unfreezing (Feb 23, 2022): https://blockade.rcmp.ca/news-nouvelles/ncr-rcn221530-s-d-en.html
House of Commons report noting frozen accounts (FINA report, June 2022): https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/441/FINA/Reports/RP11697507/finarp05/finarp05-e.pdf