The reasons why democracy is
in decline around the world
From Poland to Britain
to the U.S., antidemocratic political movements have enjoyed the support of the
conservative elite, says Anne Applebaum.
August 31, 2020
- By Barbara Spindel Correspondent
Back
in another time, journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum
and her husband, Radosław Sikorski, threw a high-spirited New Year’s Eve party
at their manor house in rural Poland to celebrate the turn of the millennium.
Sikorski was then a deputy minister in the country’s center-right government,
and his native homeland had become his American wife’s adopted one. The guests,
a klatch of journalists, diplomats, and civil servants, belonged to a highbrow
conservative crowd that shared a set of common beliefs: They were
anti-Communist and pro-democracy, and they supported Poland’s entrance into the
European Union.
Twenty
years later, in her compelling new book “Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive
Lure of Authoritarianism,” Applebaum writes that “I would now cross the street
to avoid some of the people who were at my New Year’s Eve party. They, in turn,
would not only refuse to enter my house, they would be embarrassed to admit
they had ever been there.”
While
the author and her husband have held tight to their core convictions, a number
of their guests drifted further right to the nationalist Law and Justice party.
The party’s standard-bearer, Andrzej Duda, just narrowly won reelection to a
second term as Polish president after appealing to anti-immigrant, anti-EU, and
anti-gay sentiment; during his first term, Law and Justice instituted
antidemocratic measures that have gravely undermined the independence of the
country’s judiciary and its media.
The
question that animates this slim volume is personal for the author: Why have
her former friends embraced Duda’s authoritarianism? The crude stereotype of
the followers of authoritarian movements is that they live on the fringes,
having been left behind by economic, demographic, and technological change. Her
erstwhile acquaintances in Poland, however, are worldly, educated, and
employed.
Applebaum
is aware that, as she puts it, authoritarians “need members of the intellectual
and educated elite ... who will help them launch a war on the rest of the
intellectual and educated elite.” Why, though, do the elites accept the gig?
Poland, of course, is not the only country experiencing a rise in illiberal and
antidemocratic political movements, and Applebaum extends her analysis to
include Hungary, Spain, Britain, and yes, the United States.
There
is no single reason that liberal democracy is in such a precarious state,
Applebaum notes. In crisp, elegant prose, she explores several explanations,
some of which readers may find familiar. She describes the emotional power of
conspiracy theories and of simple narratives that encourage national unity
against a common enemy, even if that enemy is often more imagined than real. In
Hungary, for instance, the government of autocratic prime minister Viktor Orbán
demonizes Muslim immigrants even though the country hardly has any thanks to
exceedingly restrictive immigration laws.
Applebaum
also cites the easy lure of a certain type of nostalgia, one that papers over
the ambivalent legacies of the past. Nostalgists “want the cartoon version of
history, and more importantly, they want to live in it, right now,” she writes.
She sees this type of longing as pivotal to the success of the Brexit campaign,
some of whose proponents were fixated on returning England to its former
preeminence on the global stage.
Finally,
she observes that the intense fracturing of the media landscape, which
encourages people to get their information from hyper-partisan and polarizing
news sources, facilitates movement away from the political center. Many sources
traffic in false stories and propaganda. “People have always had different
opinions,” she notes. “Now they have different facts.”
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But
for elites, Applebaum suggests, the support for illiberal democracies can often
come down to simple opportunism. Those in Poland who’ve stuck with Duda have
seen their loyalty rewarded with lucrative and influential positions.
Describing the director of Polish state television, she writes that he is less
an ideologue than “a man who wants the power and fame that he feels he has been
unjustly denied.”
The
same dynamics are at play in America, according to Applebaum. She writes about
her onetime acquaintance Laura Ingraham, who started out as a speechwriter for
President Ronald Reagan’s administration and later swapped a career in law for
one in right-wing media, where she pined for her own television show. Reagan
famously spoke of America as a shining city on a hill, whereas President Donald
Trump, asked on Fox News about his praise of Russian president Vladimir Putin,
shot back, “You think our country’s so innocent?” Applebaum believes Ingraham
has undergone a similar transition in thought, writing that “at some point her Reaganite
optimism disappeared and slowly hardened into the apocalyptic pessimism shared
by so many others.” For Ingraham, Applebaum speculates, the calculation seems
to be that if the America she sees – increasingly godless, losing its soul to
immigrants, with no useful leadership role to play in the world – is no longer
exceptional, why not look out for No. 1? Ingraham was an early and ardent
supporter of Trump, and in 2017 she finally got her Fox show.
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