Why Representative Democracy is Ideal for Woke Subversion
Compared to both authoritarianism and direct democracy, representative democracy is the perfect system for radical minorities to exert their will.
Richard Hanania’s article ‘Why is Everything Liberal’ reveals that the reason for Woke domination in the Anglosphere is that they care more, a phenomenon known as ‘Cardinal Utility’. They are more likely to spend time and money on political activism, confirming Auron MacIntyre’s maxim ‘the side that wants to win will always beat the side that just wants to be left alone’.
MacIntyre uses that phrase as a blanket rule, but I would add caveats to it; I think it is true in a representative democracy, though less true in an authoritarian regime or a direct democracy.
Representative democracy is the ideal system for these ‘militant minorities’, which is why Woke liberals prefer it. They have the freedom to protest and hold majorities to ransom, with the accusation that their ‘natural rights’ are being violated holding water. Not only are the activist judges allowed to find vaguely worded ‘rights’ in the constitution as an excuse to always indulge them, but these militant minorities also don’t have to worry about alienating the majority, as the opinion of the majority has no impact outside of elections, and issue prioritisation and the high barriers to entry for candidates and parties mean said elections only represent the popular will in a broad, limited way, on the most high priority issues.
When compared to liberal representative democracy, both authoritarian regimes and direct democracies, with citizens initiatives and referendums, are better at protecting the apolitical, ‘moderate majority’ against militant minority activist groups, whether Woke or religious fundamentalist.
In this article, I will compare representative democracy with both authoritarianism and direct democracy, argue why representative democracy allows cultural-extremists and totalitarians to exercise undue influence, and what I would replace our current system with.
How Do People Form Political Opinions?
The two notions that underpin universal suffrage are Enlightenment myths. First, the idea that man is a rational being, motivated by reason either by instinct or through teaching. Secondly, that before society existed there was a ‘state of nature’ of autonomous individuals, and so each individual has the right to ‘consent’ to the law (though children are excluded for inconsistent reasons, and one can also cry ‘natural rights’ whenever he doesn’t agree with the outcome of a democratic vote, like Proposition 8).
But David Hume was right when he said that it is not reason, but passion, that drives human behaviour, something that has since been proved by science. Human beings are born into cultures, and their values are shaped by the cultures in which they grow up, with a whole bunch of ideological assumptions that come with that.
The only thing that one can ‘objectively know’, is how ‘they’ feel about their ‘personal circumstances’, Ronald Reagan’s famous phrase ‘are you better or worse off than 4-years ago’ being the most realistic assessment of how democracy actually works for most voters. Therefore, democracy can make sense on a purely self-interest point of view, chiefly over material concerns like economics and public safety.
However, when it comes to questions of values, the opinions people have are shaped by their environment (education, media, and entertainment), and with all that, comes an elite. The creators of public opinion can be a much more diffuse, diverse elite than say, a formal government, particularly with platforms like Substack. But as Auron MacIntyre says, it does have a means of exerting its control. People want to appear ‘high status’, and what is considered ‘high status’ is shaped by education, the media, entertainment, and celebrities.
Social signalling is the reason why in the 1990s and 2000s 32 state referendums voted against same-sex marriage, but now they would vote the opposite way. As Darel E. Paul highlights in his masterpiece ‘From Tolerance to Equality’, social status has ‘manufactured consent’ in favour of gay marriage, as most people simply gravitate towards the ‘high status position’.
It’s the recognition of this, that the masses tend to be slaves to passions and are easily influenced by bad actors, that has been a cornerstone of critiques of democracy. Jason Brennan and Bryan Caplan have criticised the notion that voters are justified by ‘reason’ when making decisions. Indeed, centre-right philosophers across the ages have always been distrustful of unfiltered democracy, one of the few things they have remained consistent on. They tend to prefer a simple ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ type of democracy, which was the belief of Karl Popper and Joseph Schumpeter, and is echoed in Reagan’s ‘better or worse off’ mantra. This has been persuasive to the creators of most political systems, as most democracies are not direct democracies, which means that this essentially centre-right notion, that people aren’t rational nor have the knowledge available to make political decisions, is commonly accepted.
Of course, with the exception of states that make this explicit, like Singapore, which is the perfect example of a political order built around the centre-right principles of the moderate Enlightenment philosophers (Hobbes, Montesquieu, and Hume) harmoniously synthesised with Confucianism, most disguise this in the utopian language of universal human rights and equality, and also allow the freedom to protest, lobby, and in many cases actively obstruct and disobey the law under ‘civil disobedience’. However, when this is the case, it allows representative democracy to be a uniquely toxic system.
Who Representative Democracy Empowers
There is no egalitarian system. Every system has elites, and the more large-scale the society, the more distant, and ‘elitist’, the elites will need to be. Some systems may ‘appear’ to be more egalitarian than others, but in reality all claims of equality do is obscure the real power structure and make it more hidden and unaccountable, as John Carter discusses in his article Cryptocracy.
However, different systems have different elite dynamics. In an authoritarian system, the elite is centralised and explicit. In a direct democracy, the elite is very diffuse, with people given more choice as to which elites they listen to, something Robert A. Dahl called ‘Polyarchy’. For instance, in Switzerland, citizens are given arguments for and against each initiative on the ballot, which further diffuses elite influence. They still exist and shape opinion, but no single type of elite has a monopoly on public sentiment.
However, representative democracy empowers a specific type of elite, the militant organised activist and lobbyist.
In an authoritarian system, these actors are simply cracked down upon if they attack those in charge, and in a direct democracy, public perception matters, and as they are subject to the majority will, they must not alienate the majority.
But in a representative democracy with an expansive ‘right to protest’ and robust protection of ‘minority rights’, these militant activists are allowed to aggressively lobby politicians almost without limit. These groups are the most powerful influence on political actors because most of the time politicians are not beholden to their voters, only answering to them in elections every 4 or 5 years, and even less so if there is a limited choice of viable parties. The militant minorities can use the language of ‘rights’ to hold the majority to ransom, with little means to counter them, as neither an authoritarian state nor majority opinion can limit their reach.
In such a system, it is always ‘the side that wants to win which beats the side that wants to be left alone’.
This is worst in two-party First Past the Post systems, which is why the Anglosphere is so plagued with Wokeism, and the very worst in two-party systems without primaries, like Britain and Canada. In these systems, the people who can influence the two-parties are so powerful that the parties often become a ‘uniparty’ as they have the same fundamental worldview on cultural issues. It is the well-organised minorities who have the dedication to institute a long campaign of subversion, for instance, Stonewall in Britain.
This is where Karl Popper’s ‘Paradox of Tolerance’ comes in, that I will do a full article on as I feel he has gotten an unfairly bad rep, mostly due to his association with George Soros, who I feel distorts his ideas more in favour of Herbert Marcuse’s ‘Repressive Tolerance’. But if following Popper, it is the presence of these militant activists in a society that do not respect free speech, the so-called ‘anti-fascists’, that must be repressed, if an ‘open society’ is to remain open.
Representative democracy had no means of stopping Wokeism. Wilfully confusing Popper and Marcuse, the doctrine of ‘Repressive Tolerance’ was able to gain prominence, and end tolerance, demonstrating the ‘Paradox of Tolerance. If Popper’s maxim had been faithfully applied, the radical elements of the Civil Rights Movement and the student counter-culture of the 1960s would have been repressed. But due to a naïve commitment to free speech and pluralism, representative democracy and political liberalism allowed these poisonous ideas to do a ‘Long March Through the Institutions’ unchecked, imposing and then manufacturing the consent of the majority.
Back to Fresh Prince… and Staying There
The Intellectual Dark Web (IDW)-types are frequently described, sometimes by themselves but more commonly by those to their right, as ‘90s liberals’.
The 1990s represented the height of colorblind and J.S Mill liberalism in the culture. This was not actually the case on a political and legal level, as the Civil Rights Act continued to enforce what would amount to proto-Wokeness. But in the culture, ‘not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character’, was the ideal. Hence Academic Agent’s term ‘Back to Fresh Prince’. It was also the time when the dominant cultural mores were not towards sexual puritanism, and people could have casual sex, but without pathologies like homosexuality being ‘equal’, and transgenderism.
Now, looking back, this was an intermediate stage towards Wokeism. Civil Rights Law, including its expansion in 1987 and 1991, was taking its affect, and university education was being expanded. On the LGBT front, in 1996 there was an enormous opportunity to stop it dead in its tracks, with overwhelming majorities of politicians voting for the Defense of Marriage Act. This could easily have been a constitutional amendment, but as I have explained, tragically this was not thought necessary.
Even if we accept that ‘90s liberalism’ was always going to get to the point we are today, what is funny is that the IDW types that are described as ‘90s liberals’, really are far worse than that, they are Obama-era liberals. Gay marriage is an article of faith for them, something that was a fringe position in the 1990s.
But would it have been possible to ‘freeze’ what was the everyday outlook of the average person in the 1990s, without it degenerating into Wokeism?
I would say ‘yes, but not within liberal democracy’.
If America had been a direct democracy, the 32 state referendums against gay marriage would have been the end of it. Whilst Switzerland has recently voted for gay marriage in popular vote (something to be expected as it’s culture is downstream from the United States, controlled by the Woke), on other issues they have frustrated the liberal elite, maintaining conscription, banning minarets, restricting immigration, and rejecting a specific net-zero policy (before it was disgracefully overturned by the ECHR, that even as somebody pro-Net Zero I abhor.)
If it had been an authoritarian state, the LGBT extremists and Critical Race Theorists would have simply been banned. A lot of dictators do in fact inhabit a ‘moderate position’.
An example of this is Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Egypt. After the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood, the most well-organised, fanatical group, won the election, as they were a cohesive minority and the alternatives were mostly those connected to the Mubarak regime. Once Islamist President Mohammed Morsi started trying to implement hardline Islamism, public opinion started to sour. But on their own, the moderate majority were powerless; the Brotherhood was a militant, committed group that was not going to give up power easily, just like how the Iranian Islamists didn’t.
However, unlike in Iran, General Sisi, acting in the interests of the military and the ‘moderate majority’ of Egyptians, launched a successful military coup and overthrew representative democracy as a ‘Centrist Caesar’.
Egypt has a middle-ground position in the culture war, both Islamic fundamentalism and Wokeism (homosexuality remains illegal) are harshly repressed, they are not allowed to indoctrinate people, and people therefore can live an apolitical, individualist life. Sisi is a very interesting character who deserves an article of his own.
There are other examples of this as well, in fact most authoritarian (not totalitarian, who tend to be true believers who want to reshape the human soul) leaders generally are only interested in maintaining power, and so take out extremists from both the Woke left and the religious right, and have it as their goal to de-politicise society.
Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko operate regimes which, whilst I have issues with them due to their lack of formalism, effectively freeze ‘90s liberalism’. Homosexuality is not illegal, but it is not given equal status. Women are not barred from politics or from most professions, but there is no concern given to ‘equity’ or ‘gender representation’. It is superficially religious, but fanatics that threaten the state are cracked down upon. Putin shows what a ‘90s liberalism with teeth’ would look like. If he simply formalised his rule (declared himself Tsar) instead of continuing on with rigged elections and legendary corruption, his regime would be something of a model.
Therefore, it was the liberal representative democracy system in the United States that allowed the 90s paradigm to evaporate. Wokeness could neither be repressed, nor could the majority act as a buffer. A highly committed group of activists, following an outline from Kirk and Masden’s book ‘After the Ball’ and the Critical Race Theory of Derrick Bell and Kimberly Crenshaw, set out to subvert society. In fact, the activists for gay marriage explicitly chose states, for their first targets, which had no direct democracy mechanisms.
An Alternative to Liberal Democracy
De-Wokeification and the Constituent Power
When developing an alternative to the current system, it is important to recognise that whenever direct democracy is first instituted, the previous cultural hegemony is enshrined. People will have been indoctrinated under a particular system, and so their expressions of popular will, will be reflections of the values of the previous system.
If direct democracy was immediately brought in to replace representative democracy, it would be the Woke that would benefit, as they have the organisation as well as the hearts and minds of many people, disproportionately the young. They would be the ones collecting the signatures for referendums, campaigning in the streets, and winning votes. This is why the referendums on abortion have so overwhelmingly come out on the pro-choice side to the lament of the pro-lifers.
Because we are not in a neutral starting position, direct democracy should not be immediately brought in. Rather, we should have a far more autocratic, centralised system to begin with, to root out Woke tendencies within the ‘Cathedral’ and to indoctrinate people into our beliefs, akin to the De-Nazification process in Post-War Germany and what J.D Vance has proposed doing. We should create our own ‘Cathedral’ of educational institutions, media outlets, and NGOs. Then, we should set the ‘transition to democracy’ on our terms, using direct democracy and decentralisation as a means to cement our hegemony and to stop the Woke from ever returning to power.
This is what Carl Schmitt called the ‘Constituent Power’, and it was effectively wielded in Chile when the Pinochet regime folded up but was able to set the ‘transition to democracy’ and maintain its constitution, which enshrined many neoliberal policies. Whilst there was an uprising in 2019 and two failed attempts at a new constitution, the Pinochet-era constitution has endured, which makes it worth studying.
It was the brainchild of Jaime Guzman, a scholar of Carl Schmitt and a figure from whom we could learn a lot. He has similarities with Chris Rufo, a former centre-left liberal and secular Catholic who turned to the right when the left radicalised, and I’m guessing Rufo is familiar with some of his work.
However, there is room for improvement from the Chilean experience.
Firstly, I am not an advocate of a Pinochet-style military dictatorship. The executions and political prisoners were excessive, and only succeeded at creating deep-seated resentment. When I am talking about a ‘centralised regime’, I am more talking about something akin to Viktor Orban’s Hungary or even Putin’s Russia, where elections are tilted in our favour through control of the media.
In addition, some of Chile’s mechanisms for ideological enforcement, explicit prohibitions and mandates within the constitution, created illegitimacy that led to the 2019 uprising and near overturning. A more decentralised, direct democratic system would be superior at maintaining legitimacy. We can more easily do this as our enemy is the cultural left, not the economic left, and the natural inclination of the masses is towards social conservatism (little disruption and pro-status quo), and economic leftism (redistribution and interventionism).
Here is the system I would recommend to entrench anti-Wokeism.
Accountability and Agenda-Setting
Authoritarianism isn’t desirable long-term because there is no accountability mechanism. Those who raise genuine questions are often penalised, allowing for a bad policy to escalate to truly terrible conclusions. An example of this is in China, where the Great Leap Forward, the One Child Policy, and the Response to Covid all were catastrophes resulting in a fear to criticise policies before it was too late. People like Peng Dehuai when it came to the Great Leap Forward, and Li Wenliang when it came to Covid, were sanctioned for speaking the truth to power.
A dictator is always a giant gamble, you might hit the jackpot with Lee Kuan Yew, but you are more likely to lose it all with Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin, or Nicolas Maduro, and so an accountability system is crucial as a damage limitation mechanism.
The lack of formal accountability mechanism also means there is no means of switching out bad rulers without armed conflict, which was the greatest flaw with the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ system that Francis Fukuyama talks about. Whilst the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ describes a real process of the state being the imposition of force and victor’s justice, something I discussed in my article on Starship Troopers, a controlled simulation of a revolution, personified in an election and a peaceful exchange of power, is preferable to the real thing when it can be helped.
The state should not tolerate speech that fundamentally threatens its values. No long-lasting political order does this, and the fact post-war liberalism was one of the few that didn’t meant Woke could subvert and destroy it.
However, it is important to separate that kind of political dissent, and criticism of politicians and specific policies, the latter of which is essential to a stable, sustainable political order and suppression of which leads to inevitable error.
Many people justify allowing protest on the basis of accountability and needing to bring certain issues to the government’s attention. However, representative democracy, by not having a formalised means by which the citizens can directly set the agenda, allows this agenda-setting to be completely dominated by a militant minority intimidating others, ensuring that its demands are prioritised over the demands of the majority.
Citizens initiatives in a direct democracy should be seen as an alternative to protest, allowing issues that the authorities may have overlooked to be debated by society. But unlike protest and civil disobedience, it involves a much larger section of the population needing to ratify it in a public vote, which will stop the militant minority tyranny that plagues representative democracies today.
Protests to democratic votes like Proposition 8, in a defensively pluralistic society that was not prepared to tolerate intolerance, would have been cracked down on, and their organisers punished.
This way, minorities do not get to bully and pressure politicians who are beholden to them the vast majority of the time, they have to take their case to the moderate majority, and no matter how virtuous they think their cause, and no matter how much they think they are on the ‘right side of history’, the moderate majority can still give them the middle finger.
Need for Small-Scale
Before he foolishly abandoned Neocameralism and Patchwork, Curtis Yarvin seemed to have developed a system that could ensure a ‘benevolent dictatorship’ by solving the problem of accountability. He seems to have gone back on this for a more ‘realist’ approach, similar to the Academic Agent view of shunning any ‘positive visions’ (his Trumperton video I believe was deliberately designed as a joke, to demonstrate the inherent autism around positive visions.)
The first notion, Neocameralism, is that the leader should total power throughout most of the year, but is accountable to a small board of directors and shareholders that can remove him if necessary.
However, the notion of ‘patchwork’ is that of small city-states, which adds another element of accountability as bad rulers are unable to do as much damage as leaders of a large nation like Mao or Putin, because they only have rule over a tiny city-state. People can ‘vote with their feet’ if they feel they’re getting a bad deal.
Smaller-scale is inherently better. People will have a much closer connection to their elites, and have a chance of knowing people who can affect changes. As Federal Farmer, the famous pseudonymous Anti-Federalist writer, said, at large distances government naturally become more hierarchical and less accountable, as they are less connected to the organic community.
Localism is also an ideal way to stop Wokeism. Different communities can make their own laws. Progressive dictates from liberal cities would apply to only that city, and if people didn’t like it, they could move elsewhere. It would be a way of diversifying elite structures, as localities could do things their own way.
Need for Ethnic and Religious Homogeneity
A pure direct democracy can only work in an ethnically and religiously homogenous society. Switzerland works because the cantons themselves are ethnically and religiously homogenous, with a strong sense of identity going back to Medieval times, and therefore can operate direct democracy effectively. Switzerland is a highly decentralised system, with all new initiatives needing both a majority of the Swiss population AND a majority of the individual cantons to pass into law.
Despite this, there is a risk that the unlimited nature of constitutional amendments on the federal level could lead to, and has led to, an expansion in the size of the Swiss federal government. Cantons that voted against certain measures are forced to adopt them, with only a simple majority of cantons required for a binding constitutional amendment.
Having an unlimited amount of functions that can be put to citizens initiative risks eroding canton autonomy. A minimum of two-thirds or even more drastic, three-fourths, would stop the constant erosion of subdivision autonomy and ensure that the federal authority remains only for core functions. The fact Switzerland is a multi-linguistic, multi-religious entity makes this particularly important. On this issue, the Old Swiss Confederacy had some important advantages over modern Switzerland.
As the West becomes increasingly ethnically diverse due to immigration, unfiltered direct democracy will become impossible without leading to major ethnic clashes. Modern London could not survive a Swiss-style referendum system. It could only work with a Singapore-style system, perhaps with initiatives only on specific issues (not related to ethnicity, race, or religion), and with a limited recall system to ensure the elites do in fact work for the people.
Patchwork/Switzerland Synthesis
The model of Liechtenstein provides a perfect synthesis between a formalist autocracy and a direct democracy. It is a semi-constitutional monarchy where the Prince has considerable executive powers, including the right of initiative and an absolute veto. However, it also has a citizens initiative and referendum function like Switzerland, hence the term ‘Helvetic Model’.
It has the advantage over Switzerland in that the elite is less of a hidden bureaucracy; it is explicit and formalist, with the Prince having total power over the Deep State. The fact that it is a microstate, with less than 40,000 people, proves that granting a maximum degree of autonomy to the smallest possible level does not create the complications it is accused of creating. In fact, Hans-Adam II, the current Prince, is a conservative who has not led Woke infect his small country, saying that he would veto any liberalisation of abortion law (not that I care much about that issue), and indeed is close to Hans-Hermann Hoppe, himself influencing Curtis Yarvin.
For Britain, I would propose that the historic counties are restored to their original borders, with Bristol, Birmingham, and Greater London also made counties as they traditionally crossed county borders.
Each of these counties would have a ‘Warden’, elected through an electoral college for an 8-year term, with no election necessary if 3/5 of the legislature approve them, and being able to serve an unlimited amount of terms. The constitution would say that dynastic rule is not a failure of the system, but evidence of it working.
The Warden would have total power to initiate the budget, hire and fire bureaucrats except those explicitly outlined in law, issue decrees with the force of law, and put referendums to the people. Despite the long term, they can be recalled if 20% of the electorate sign a petition and the majority of voters vote in favour of the recall.
As mentioned in the Starship Troopers article, only those who have done military service and possess a firearm have full political rights. They would elect the ‘Sovereign Assembly’ in each County, with 1000 members, similar to Patrick Deneen’s proposals in Regime Change, all made up of volunteers and term-limited (to stop their power rivalling the power of the Warden), and electing a ‘Control Board’ that serves full-time and calls the whole assembly for votes. The Sovereign Assembly could impeach the Warden through an anonymous 2/3 majority vote.
There would also be a ‘Taxpayers Assembly’, also with 1000 members, elected by all who pay a flat income tax above a threshold able to vote, that would approve the budget and give the Warden a ‘lump sum’, to spend how they wish.
Finally, there would be a ‘Vocational Assembly’ elected on a corporatist basis, similar to that which existed in the Portuguese Estado Novo, Bavaria, and still exists in Slovenia.
Direct democracy initiatives are always present, though are modified depending on the ethnic composition of the County. For multicultural counties, there should be constitutional protections for religious freedom that cannot simply be amended by a citizens initiative and majority vote, but require a supermajority to change. For counties that are overwhelmingly White and Christian/irreligious, there should be few limits on the power of initiative.
The Jeffersonian idea of ‘a constitution per generation’ would also be enshrined, and there would be a US/Swiss style equal bicameral chamber on the national level. Freedom of speech would be enshrined federally, but also the ‘responsibility of authorities to remove anti-pluralist elements’.
However, this article will get too long if I was to articulate all aspects of my ideal system, so I will refer mostly to just the interplay between authoritarianism and direct democracy. The best way to describe my system is that every historic County in Britain is its own Liechtenstein. I will explore more aspects in later articles.
Conclusion
Representative democracy has a serious problem controlling militant minorities, and a post-Woke political order will have to learn the lessons of these failures. It will become a far less ‘rights-centric system with less indulgence for entitled minority groups who believe that their personal desires come above the majority will, though that majority will should be at the smallest possible level, based on the principle of subsidiarity.
Rights should be limited and strictly negative, with the right to public protest and unenumerated rights not among them, as well as also coming with duties to obey the law, which if not obeyed, leads to the forfeiting of most rights.
The Right needs to get more creative at exploring alternative models. For the record, I don’t expect my exact political blueprint to be implemented, but it is fun to theorise and also helpful at the conceptual level.
The Woke have a political vision, they have numerous think-tanks and political science departments developing ways of how to institute DEI into every aspect of the political system. It is important that we attack these ideas at their absolute root, and construct our own models that are not simply the default ‘liberal democracy on paper but corrupt and rigged’ that modern authoritarian states like Russia have.
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Some good points here. I would note that Taleb thought of "a small but intransigent minority can rule over an apathetic majority" before Hanania did, and it's probably been observed even further back than that.
Also, there are cases where representative democracy has worked for right-wing ends. While the majority of Americans support more restrictions on gun rights, the NRA has massive lobbying power and can basically block any attempt at stricter gun laws. And of course, gun owners cares far more about guns than people that care about gun control. Although it would depend on whether or not gun rights is inherently right-wing, as some leftists valorize gun rights too.
And I would argue that it's more about civic homogeneity than it is about racial or religious homogeneity. I am Asian (as you can tell by my name...), yet my political outlook is completely rooted in Western tradition. So while me, Patrick Deneen, and Sohrab Ahmari are of different races, we have fundamentally similar mindsets. Although it is true that many immigrant groups do not assimilate and end up voting for ethnic interests, it doesn't mean that everyone is like that.
Impressively detailed, even though it's hard to agree with big chunks of it. The part about changing county boundaries is rather sudden and unexplained relative to the rest of your essay.
The biggest and most obvious problem with your plan is the part where you establish a temporary dictatorship to "fix" wokeness and only then migrate to direct democracy. The Soviets had a similar plan, if I recall, but of course once you take power in that way keeping it becomes necessary for survival. There's no stable way to let go because you're going to upset a lot of people during the dictatorship period and the moment you release your grip, they will attempt to kill you, arguing that it is morally justified to kill dictators. And a lot of others will have sympathy for that even if they disagree with the exact reasons why the dictator is being chopped.
So it makes more sense to just try and go straight for direct democracy. Yes it may encode parts of the status quo by default, but it at least is stable and of course things can always get worse. It's not like dictators are NOT subject to sophisticated lobbying efforts. Interestingly, it seems the defenders of the current system do understand how dangerous direct democracy is for their schemes. More referendums is a part of the AfD manifesto in Germany, and it's one of the aspects that the left find most terrifying. See eugyppius's recent post on the Verfassungsblog, where managerialists come right out and demand that "The AfD should not be allowed to conduct popular, non-binding referenda":
"The problem with such referenda, we read, is that they would lend legitimacy to the AfD programme and make it hard to oppose popular initiatives. Thus they “are not instruments of direct democracy, but rather campaign instruments” which somehow “bypass democratic institutions.” Also, Viktor Orbán is fond of “national consultations” so they are ipso facto bad for that reason alone. The Thüringen constitution must be emended to make such referenda illegal, that is how bad and dangerous it is, to ask the voters what they want."
See also the endless stuttering hatred of "populism", which we are told is dangerous to "democracy".
There's a contrast here where you fear referenda would entrench their power, and yet they feel the opposite. I'm inclined to agree with them and not you. It's also just far healthier to rely on referenda. Instead of imposing your rollback of wokeness by conservative fiat it'd require you to actually coherently explain why it should be done and win that argument, which is the core arena of intellectual combat in which bad ideas are slaughtered and good ideas become valorized. Why aren't you confident enough to enter that arena immediately?