mfs who say “бодлогын залгамж халаа” gonna be the end of democracy fr (schizopost)
I feel like the point of this essay would have been far more succinctly made with a meme. But nonetheless, I have drank 2 liters of beer to force myself into turning it into an article instead.
As much as Mongolians like to rag on about the state of Mongolian democracy, whether about its inefficiency or corruption; a sort of upside to Mongolian democracy has been its relative resilience to the importation of anti-democratic narratives from abroad. Mongolians are not convinced by the promises of Chinese cameralism, Russian patrimonialism, Turco-Hungarian illiberalism, or Singaporean technocracy.
Well, to be honest, they are partly convinced. There remains a softly spoken envy towards Chinese developmentalism, a Soviet-era nostalgic bond with Russia, and also the mere appreciation of a counterintuitive courage to say no to Western corporations at the cost of self-sabotage shown by the likes of Ibrahim Traoré. But the conviction is nowhere near enough to start a coup or a mass movement over it. Imported pro-authoritarian narratives continue to rise and die within the halls of fringe Facebook groups and Ikon comment sections without much consequence to a greater society.
Because we probably won’t need to import a foreign-born anti-democratic narrative to end our democracy. We are already creating a local one.
Бодлогын залгамж халаа
So, what the fuck is “бодлогын залгамж халаа”? For all the non-Mongolian readers out there, it can be loosely translated into “policy continuity after transitions of power”. The translation is not perfect, but it is enough to evoke what exactly is being implied here. While this saying most definitely came out of Mongolia’s political circle, what’s surprising now is that it has become a sort of common adage used more by Mongolian businesses than Mongolian politicians.
I don’t want to divulge too much information in order to not doxx myself, but what I can attest to is that “бодлогын залгамж халаа” has become a sort of corporate lingo in order to invent an advantage for operating under a dominant-party system (which Mongolia is undoubtedly headed towards, if not full-on authoritarianism). Reading through internal documents of Mongolian companies such as MCS, Landbridge or Ehlel; especially their project proposal documents that are usually submitted to banks to receive loans and funding, I began to encounter this word a bit more frequently than I would like to.
Every time a large enough Mongolian company needs to conduct a PESTLE analysis (For the non-corpos out there, PESTLE refers to a framework in researching external factors that could affect business. It is often used by companies to convince banks into believing such external factors are either controllable or ignorable. Otherwise, they don’t get the loans they want.) for a project they want funding for, the word “бодлогын залгамж халаа” always seems to find its way into it. Always in the “Political factors” section, almost always without fail. There it is. Бодлогын залгамж халаа. Right there. They elaborate on it through the notion that since the ruling party is in no position to ever leave power in the long term, their businesses can adapt and plan accordingly to their predictable policymaking. They believe they could account for political changes a lot easier since there is little chance of power changing hands.
But then again, it could just be overworked newbies trying to fill out space for those documents so their KPI could look decent on their work trial period. I used to be one of those. And I did fill out space with a lot of dumb corporate lingo that I barely understood myself. But even if that was the case for all these corporations, the casualness in which these companies seem to readily accept this narrative without much fuss, and also the casualness of financial organizations who evaluate such supposed advantages and see nothing wrong with it seems disturbing to say the least.
You could reasonably argue that these organizations haven’t actually narratively accepted authoritarianism, but are essentially predicting that the competing parties within the Mongolian political system will bring no genuine change that could affect them. That IS true. The big two parties are famous for being pretty much aesthetically indistinguishable from each other, let alone ideologically.
But something is being left behind here; if these companies have internally accepted the ideologically unchanging system in one way or another, and have optimized and adjusted their operations in accordance with it, wouldn’t that mean they would feel threatened by the potential of actual change? Wouldn’t they perhaps feel inclined to preserve the “бодлогын залгамж халаа” in one way or another if it seems that very “бодлогын залгамж халаа” is under threat?
Narrative Hijacking
Political narratives should always be evaluated by their potential to be hijacked. Narrative hijacking can be a very frustrating problem when it comes to advocating for genuine change and reform. A narrative of queer liberation could easily be hijacked by corporate Pride Month paraphernalia and pointless diversity hires. A narrative of decommunization could easily be hijacked by anti-union lobbyism and a normalization of ethnocentrism.
But there is one ideological tendency that is the worst at actually achieving its ends due to it being easier to hijack than a Hyundai Excel parked at Sansar. It’s right-wing authoritarianism. All forms of right-wing authoritarianism are quite pathetic due to corporate interest having a tendency of entering its skirt as uninterruptedly as a bus pervert.
I am not saying that business dissatisfaction in Mongolia will lead to a big corporate-backed fascist takeover of the state (maybe I do, I don’t know yet). What I am saying is that Mongolian businesses have perhaps matured to the point that whether they live under democracy or dictatorship might not matter to them anymore, for they have learned to adapt and survive (establish the right government connections to keep their businesses).
The irony of all this ultimately being that the Mongolian middle-class had long continued to exalt the prosperity of private businesses as a pathway towards true democratic progress, while such narratives have already been discreetly left behind by those businesses themselves who seem to have accepted the inevitability of illiberalism. And thusly, Mongolians might need to get on with the rest of the world in realizing that businesses may no longer ought to be perceived as the antithesis to total oppression.
I get it, I get it. Back in the communist era, the concept of private enterprise was unheard of, and those taking on such private endeavors were seen as punk and rebellious, a middle finger to the status quo. And well, now we are in the same neoliberal paradigm of corporate panopticon and permanent precarity as any other country. And in this new global regime where “line go up” is supreme, the institutions and companies that make the “line go up” are inherently more integral to national security than anything else in the eyes of the government.
The thing is that citizens do not really take sitting down a government that is very openly and nakedly prioritizing the “line go up” organizations over the welfare of its citizens. That is why right-wing authoritarianism exists. To find some random bullshit excuse to halt the processes of democracy so the line can continue to go up. The rather undermentioned societal feature of the far-right Axis Powers of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy were that all of their governments were so profoundly taken over by corporate oligarch interests that it would almost be cyberpunk if it wasn’t so pathetic.
The family-owned zaibatsu corporations having utterly captured the Japanese government’s decision-making processes and by nature having monopolized the economy; the privatization and looting in Germany not only creating a new class of oligarchs with Nazi Party membership cards, but also literally the largest megacorporation to have existed in Europe at the time; the complete disenfranchisement of the people through the substitution of a civilian-elected democratic legislature with a corporation-elected oligarchic legislature in Italy. And those are just the famous regimes.
As a matter of fact, the biggest corporate oligarchy to have ever corporate oligarched, China, is prancing around in the aesthetic of communism and equality while being just as molested by its megacorporations as fascist regimes do. A Pandora’s Box of plausible deniability now opened thanks to Deng Xiaoping adding one more appropriable authoritarian aesthetic to the long list of aesthetics that shady companies can use as marketing for the dictatorship they are backing. A corporate-hijackable communism, how fun. Maybe Mongolia will copy it.
What in the fuck are you going on about?
Yeah, yeah. It’s a schizopost, bear with me. My alcohol still hasn’t left my body yet. This entire article started because I was triggered by three companies and two banks talking behind closed doors about how the Mongolian People’s Party never losing an election in the future is good for business.
…
The eternal precarity of liberalism is that during times of chaos and revolt; businesses can always end up as a fairweather friend happy to participate in the abolition of freedom as long as “line goes up”. I think it’s high time that the Mongolians who want to live in democracy swallow this bitter pill, for those who don’t learn eventually pay the price by losing their freedom.
And the next time the government talks about curtailing some civil rights to bring forth a “business-friendly environment”, or equip the police with anti-riot equipment to ensure “public stability”, you will know that the state is dipping its toes at the beginning of the end.
I think I am getting sober now. So I am going to publish this before I become fully conscious. Sober me hates everything I write and would never publish shit like this.
In the case there is an authoritarian takeover of the Mongolian government, I hereby declare that I disown this essay and I now believe it is doubleplusungood oldthink.
