Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all of our societies eventually will.
This is the thesis put forth by Anne Applebaum, an American writer, a Reagan conservative a while ago, an expatriate living in Poland for many years. Which credentials surely have given her two things: an up close view of the rightward shift in Eastern and Southern Europe, and a credible fear of the rightward turn in our own country in our own time. She has inched leftward, and now appears to be a committed centrist. Which I don’t believe in.
(It’s also worth noting that I’ve read her work for years in the Atlantic and elsewhere without realizing her right-of-center orientation, which must mean she is a reasonably objective reporter.)
Twilight of Democracy is part journalism, part history, part personal reflection. It is bookended by parties. Not political parties, but backyard parties — one in 1999 and one in 2019 — with reflection throughout the middle on how and why the guest lists changed over two decades.
“Any political system built on logic and rationality was always at risk from an outburst of the irrational.… Authoritarianism appeals, simply, to people who cannot tolerate complexity.”
She takes us through short lessons on Russia, Spain, Germany, Britain, France, Venezuela, Hungary, plus Poland and the U.S. — history old and recent — to set the stage for what we are witnessing now in the world. She shares reflections of intellectuals and political thinkers from all those places. Like Stathis Kalyvas, a Greek political scientist, who told her over dinner that “unity is an anomaly. Polarization is normal… And the appeal of authoritarianism is eternal.” Which wasn’t really a lot of comfort.
“When people have rejected aristocracy, no longer believe that leadership is inherited at birth, no longer assume that the ruling class is endorsed by God, the argument about who gets to rule — who is the elite — is never over.” And we can surely see the marks of that in our own political machinations today.
So, here are themes that stood out for me.
Right v Left
Applebaum is strong in her contention that Right and Left are equally problematic. But I wish she'd defined what she means by each. I'm not sure there is an American Left of the sort she fears. She mentions the French Yellow Vests, which I’ve admired, and Jacobin Magazine, to which I subscribe, as “leftist.” This punctuated for me how clearly right of center she is still. It is my own contention that, while the American Right is falling off the edge, the Left here is mostly a boogeyman created in the imagination of the Right — Antifa, perhaps. The American version of Left, represented alternately by Bernie Sanders, the Progressive Congressional Caucus and the Movement for Black Lives would be barely left of center anywhere else.
I'm also more a fan of communism than she. But she never sorts socialism/communism as economic systems from the authoritarian/totalitarian political systems. She mentions Vox in Spain, Law and Justice in Poland, Erdogan in Turkey, Orban in Hungary, Bolsonaro in Brazil — all from the Right. On the left, she refers rather abstractly and anachronistically to the “Soviet Left,” which was more about totalitarianism, and certainly not the Democratic Socialism that American progressives embrace.
She correctly point out that Left and Right both want revolution, but she lacks any discussion of the very different means and and very different reasons for each side: one side armed to the teeth against people who threaten to undo whiteness; the other side organizing people to protest and agitate for a better common good. Interestingly, in a single issue — Brexit — she describes the British Right as desiring nationalism and a single national identity, replete with racist immigration policies, plus “an abandonment of the welfare state…. Oligarchs would be happy; everyone else would simply have to adjust.” On the Left she quotes Jacobin magazine describing Brexit as “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show that a radical break with neoliberalism, and the the institutions that support it, is possible.” The latter is my choice.
The role of Nostalgia
She talks about the dangers of a particular kind of nostalgia, “restorative nostalgia,” vis-a-vis “reflective nostalgia. Adherents of the latter miss the past and perhaps mourn, but have no desire to go back. “Deep down, they know that the homestead is in ruins… it has been gentrified beyond recognition…. Once upon a time life might have been sweeter or simpler, but it was also more dangerous… more unjust.” Adherents of the former, restorative nostalgics, “don’t just look at old family photographs and piece together family stories. They are myth makers and architects, builders of monuments and founders of nationalistic political projects. They do not merely want to contemplate or learn from the past,” they want to rebuild it.
In our own country, in our time, (and perhaps in every generation) we see the conflict between those who want to see the past with clear eyes and those who want to gloss, erase, rewrite and return. This is the conflict over Critical Race Theory vs our founding myths, yes? and whether we celebrate Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples Day? “It is not by accident that restorative nostalgia often goes hand in hand with conspiracy theories and the medium-sized lies…”
And eventually, she gets to the Big Lies that feed authoritarianism, though her book went to press before the events of our last presidential election and the Big Lie that the election was stolen. Still, we can surely see ourselves in this mirror of a book.
The “Clercs”
Applebaum cites and returns to a 1927 book by French essayist Julien Benda, La Trahison Des Clercs, which translates The Treason (or Betrayal) of the Intellectuals, in which Benda describes the ones he calls fallen intellectuals who would support and promote authoritarianism on the right as fascism or on the left as Soviet Marxism. Benda accused them both of “betraying the central task of the intellectual, the search for truth, in favor of particular political causes.” And we can see where this might be going.
A damning moment, she notes that the word Benda uses, clercs, is “a word whose oldest meanings link it to ‘clergy.’” And I’m reminded of Daniel Erlander’s graphic showing Pharaoh’s domination system (Pharaoh at top, slaves at the bottom, and several layers of regents, bureaucrats and laborers in the middle), in which the entire system is propped up by the priesthood and the military. (See Manna & Mercy, p 4). It has been true since Constantine; it true in this American empire that the church is a pillar of American civil religion, seeking favor and trading its soul — even celebrating the military in our worship services. The clercs and the churches they lead have a great deal of which to repent.
Applebaum returns to these themes over and over again. She has more faith than I in the institutions and founding principles of the US, and gives the founders more credit for egalitarian intentions than I. “Democracy itself has always been loud and raucous, but when its rules are followed, it eventually creates consensus,” she writes, to which I would forcefully object on behalf of people of color, queer people, indigenous people, incarcerated people, the working poor, potentially pregnant people, and anyone who watched Mitch McConnell manipulate the system to hand President Trump two Supreme Court seats that should have been filled by another president.
Still, she is a good storyteller, and has tremendous connections with the right people to tell the stories first-hand. She includes discussion of the role of the internet, the early effects of Trump’s campaign and presidency, and Trump’s response to COVID. (Again: Authoritarianism appeals, simply, to people who cannot tolerate complexity.”) She assumes a bit of knowledge on the part of the reader — especially a rudimentary knowledge of which world leaders are left and which are right, what the Spanish Civil War was about and who Mussolini was. Perhaps be prepared to google.
We may be on the precipice of something life-giving, she asserts, or something really awful and tyrannical.
“Maddeningly, we have to accept that both futures are possible. No political victory is ever permanent, no definition of ‘the nation’ is guaranteed to last, and no elite of any kind, whether so-called ‘populist’ or so-called ‘liberal’ or so-called ‘aristocratic,’ rules forever….”
She channels the Italian novelist Ignazio Silone: “There is no final solution, no theory that will explain everything. There is no road map to a better society, no didactic ideology, no rule book. All we can do is choose our allies and our friends… with great care, for only with them, together, is it possible to avoid the temptations of the different forms of authoritarianism once again on offer.”
Someone gave me a piece of art recently that says this: “If I’m quiet it is because there is thunder inside of me … or I’m just chillin. May the odds be ever in your favor.”
That’s about how assured I was when I was done reading this book. May the odds — and the gods — be ever in our favor, and may we choose our friends and allies carefully.