Comment by AnthonyMouse

> Those tends to be based on variants of democracy being "institutions that enable a peaceful transfer of power". This usually includes the so called democratic freedoms, overseeing journalists, and a non-politicized judicial system.

You can pretty clearly have a democracy without a peaceful transfer of power. Suppose the state of California had entered open revolt after the 2016 election and the rebellion had to be put down by the military. You could hardly have called that a peaceful transfer of power even if the end result was that people voted and the winner took office. And the reverse can also be true; some aging dictator undemocratically chooses a successor who comes into power without bloodshed.

Also, it is not the role of governments to oversee journalists, it is the role of journalists to oversee governments.

> Every practicing democracy however includes some exceptions for law and intelligence services, as that is required to uphold the system in times of uprisings and uncertainty.

These things are not inherent requirements, they are the implements of tyranny. Notice that the US constitution doesn't have these exceptions written into it, they were read into it by authoritarians and cowards in times of weakness.

The day you find out if you have principles or just empty words is the day when following them is hard.

> Advocating genocide or revolting against the democratic institutions is not considered within the bounds of democracy anywhere.

You can advocate whatever you want, you're just never allowed to actually do it.

Think about it. A system of checks and balances that can stop them from doing it even after they're already in power is the only thing that matters. If you have that, they can say whatever they want. If you don't have that, censorship doesn't help, because they can gain power under false pretenses (politicians lie) and your system isn't configured to stop them once they do. Indeed, a censorship apparatus would even make it worse, because now they're the ones deciding what gets censored.

Censorship is always the tool of the villain because lies and bad ideas can be openly refuted but the only solution to a ban on the truth is to defeat the ban.