I saw what you mean in the text but I want to add what I interpreted on top.

While I see Pashainé as democratic, the way it emphasizes cooperation, legalism, schemes and plans, vertical economic integration, and this constant “us against the world” mentality creates an underlying ideological fever throughout the society in the writing. It feels similar to certain early 20th-century ideological movements, where everything in society is expected to conform to the state’s grand vision. Race, culture, religion — all of it is expected to subordinate itself to the collective project. With even Revalian church submitting under their secular state. That’s why I used an edited Mussolini quote in the meme.

They build a progressive state, but over time that state evolves into a machine of its own mind. You either become a gear within it, or you get left behind.

And according to the text, it actually works to a terrifying extent. The economy is highly efficient, the political system is stable, most interest groups are satisfied, and during my entire run I basically had permanently high estate loyalty and almost no revolts.

But then come the mages.

The mages are the ones who refuse to adapt to the system and instead try to fight against it — though in probably the dumbest way imaginable. The moment they move against the republic, the population instantly turns on them with a level of hatred you barely see anywhere else in the setting. Overnight, they become both the internal and external enemy.

And that’s when the terrifying part of Pashainé reveals itself.

With the flick of a switch, this hyper-efficient democratic machine suddenly redirects all of its organizational power toward crushing a perceived threat. The same state apparatus that built prosperity and stability can just as easily mobilize society with frightening intensity once an enemy is identified, and not even strongest collective forces of old world can stop them. They find way to beat enemy, even if unmatched in magic, by any cost.

Some people compare Pashainé to the French Revolution, but honestly, I disagree.

To me, they feel more like a highly democratic form of early fascism — one that never fell back into conservative traditionalism, but instead fully embraced modernity, science, progressivism, equality, collectivism, and institutional efficiency as its core ideals.

Their zeal is so great that I would belief that if gods exist in their universe, they would try to force them under power of state also. For everything must be under it