I think they make good points broadly, but I don’t like the framing of democracy as bad. I would rather they say “bourgeoisie democracy” or “liberal democracy.” I don’t think we should be ceding the word to the capitalists and imperialists. The US, for example, is documented as having policy that rarely aligns with what regular people actually want. If democracy is supposed to be “the will of the people represented”, then I would say most western “democracies” fail this simple test. The multi-party western model is less like democracy and more like a performative tug of war between two factions of the bourgeoisie, in order to give the impression of social change, by frequently changing the faces who pull the levers on mostly the same policies; policies which primarily benefit the imperialist, the capitalist, the white supremacist, etc.

People are socialized to think that a hard-won “reform” is a validation of the system as democratic and representative. They are socialized to cherry pick outlier examples of reforms getting through (typically with harsh struggle outside the electoral system erased) and to ignore how the majority of pressing concerns continually go unaddressed for years or decades on end. It is a pitiful farce that struggles to hold together when you can look at a country that has a communist vanguard party model and is actually doing stuff for its people on a regular basis, which is one reason the empire goes to such lengths to try to slander and destroy every example of real representation and real social good in the world.