I am delighted to see a Portuguese translation of my Democracy: The God That Failed in print.

Of all my books, Democracy has been by far the most successful. From its original publication in 2001 until today, the book has been vociferously both condemned and hailed. In some intellectual circles, it has made me a persona non grata, an "unwanted" person -- not just with the dominant leftish and relativist mainstream intelligentsia, but also among many self-styled classical liberals and libertarians. Yet at the same time the book has also become a source of inspiration to many independent and self-thinking people and helped in the formation of a steadily growing international network of intellectual friends, allies, students, and affiliates.

The book is an intellectual assault on democracy. It explains and elucidates democracy as a machinery of wealth destruction, of economic waste and impoverishment; and it identifies and explains democracy as a systematic cause of moral corruption and degeneration. In short: democracy is revealed as a "mild," and especially insidious form of communism. At the same time, the book presents a rigorous defense of the institution of private property as a necessary requirement for any lasting peace and prosperity.

It favorably contrasts traditional, pre-constitutional monarchies and kings to modern democracies and prime ministers or presidents -- a thesis that likely appears only slightly less alien to contemporary Brazilian or Portuguese ears than it does to US-Americans'. But the book is not a defense of monarchy. Rather, it advocates a "withering away" of the state altogether, whether monarchic or democratic, and its successive replacement by a private law society, a "natural order." And as suitable means to this end it advocates decentralization and secession -- highly contentious issues in the history especially also of Brazil.  It advocates the progressive de-composition of the contemporary world -- of large central states subject to even more centralized controls by three superpowers, in particular the US as the world's dominant military and financial center, and exercised through a number of international organizations set up for this very purpose (UN, IMF, World Bank, etc.) -- into a progressively increasing number of its constituent parts -- of independent regions, cantons, cities, communities, and ultimately individual households and their voluntary associations -- all connected through an inter-local network of free trade, and yet separate, distinct, and diverse in their local culture, norms, standards, and traditions.

Instead of promoting forced integration and cultural uni-formation and homogenization -- euphemistically called "multiculturalism" and "non-discrimination" -- as all political centralization and centralizers do, the book argues to the contrary in favor of a great and increasing multitude and variety of different cultures and norms, and of different standards and criteria of discrimination, inclusion and exclusion at different places, and it at the same time opposes, as incompatible with peace and prosperity, all attempts of creating, by means of central-state-legislation, some elusive "non-discriminating" "sameness" or "equality" and cultural uniformity and homogeneity everywhere and at all places.

Not least, then, the book also presents a "revisionist" -- and politically highly "incorrect" -- account of modern history that stands in radical opposition to the "orthodox" view of history propagandized throughout the world by the world's supreme imperial power, the US, and its ruling elites and their armies of hired intellectual bodyguards: of the US as an "exceptional nation," as the beacon of freedom and civilization, and as destined to create, under its forceful missionary guidance and direction, a New Democratic World Order, as mankind's final destination and the "End of History."

The book also makes clear that this view of history is just intellectual rubbish -- and dangerous, destructive, or even deadly rubbish at that.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Istanbul, May 2014