A Brief Look at Political Ideologies of Global RuneScape

ello and welcome to today’s show, where we will pick apart and examine politics within the GRS forums! For those of you just joining us, a political ideology is a theoretical philosophy which underpins a system of government. All political systems boil down into two broad categories. First, we have democratic, which is government by consent of the people. Secondly, dictatorships are governments which are run by a select few individuals who are not held accountable to the will of the people, simply because the people do not have a voice. This may seem like a brutal structure which Global-rs would never employ, but believe it or not, the GRS we all have come to know and love is a pureblood dictatorship.

In theory, dictatorship is often portrayed as the political system of choice. The dictator isn’t bogged down in bureaucracy and whether we like to admit it or not, dictatorships run more efficiently. Put into practice, however, dictatorships aren’t so dandy. Famous dictatorships of the past century include the Nazi regime, under Adolf Hitler, and the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. Dictatorships are great in the sense that if you have a good, ethical, and just dictator, little stands in the way of making whatever it is which is under his control a success. Unfortunately, human nature is weak. During the reign of Stalin, 30 million soviet citizens were brought to their death by the hand of the dictator. Oh, right, that’s the other thing about dictatorships. They are bloody. Benito Mussolini managed to rule Italy for over twenty years (from 1922 until 1943,) but when his power came to an end his body was massacred by his own people. They stuck his body upside down hanging from a meat hook and spat on him and took turns beating the corpse. He was eventually buried in a common cemetery, whereby the people of Italy dug up his body and beat up the corpse a little more. Simply put, Dictatorships don’t work.

There is no question that GRS is a dictatorship. A multi party system, lobby groups, etc do not exist. The members do not elect leaders to represent them and fulfill the duties of staff. Aliensvortex, being the dictator, can essentially do anything he wants, unchecked. So how does GRS manage to stay successful? Because, the elements of democracy are sprinkled onto the fascist cupcake which is Global-rs.com.

The essential element of democracy is that leaders and politicians, or team members in GRS’ case, are held accountable to the people by competitive elections. If people don’t like what a politician (or moderator) is doing, they can rebel by not voting for him in the next election. This accountability does not exist in GRS. Still, the staff members take into consideration the majority will on certain issues when making decisions for the website. This is a modification of a democratic invention called a plebiscite. Another democratic idea that the GRS dictatorship has adopted is free will. Technically, a forum member who is displeased with GRS can vent his concerns publicly as long as they do not breach the forum rules. In democracy, this is called the right to dissent.

All in all, the main reason why the Global-rs dictatorship works is because the dictator does not have total power over the members. In a real-life dictatorship, the people are kept in line by force, usually employed by secret police organizations. This way, and with the help of technology, the dictator can control every aspect of his people’s lives. In a real-life dictatorship, you cannot decide to leave. You are stuck within the confines of the dictator’s power. On the flip side, forum communities are completely open bordered, meaning that people can leave any time they want to, putting extreme limits on the power of the dictator. No wonder Aliensvortex acts so nice…