Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism (2020)
Anne Applebaum (1964)
206 pages
Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all of our societies eventually will. (14)
Such a statement would have seemed outlandish in the early 1990’s, with the West celebrating victory in the Cold War as an end of history moment, certain that liberal democracy had demonstrated itself to be the final word in civilization’s political, economic, and social evolution. Since the mid-to-late 2000’s, however, those earlier, halcyon days have given way to first concern, and then despair, as increasing polarization and partisanship have fractured public discourse and come to weaken support for democratic principles. In this environment, extreme political movements on both the right and left have exhibited strong tendencies toward autocratic rule, even in many long-established Western democracies.
While much has been written and said about these growing challenges, the focus of such arguments has generally been at a societal level. By contrast, in
Twilight of Democracy, journalist and historian Anne Applebaum takes a more personal, intimate approach; through the political schisms she has experienced with several of her friends and colleagues over the past two decades, she captures the essence of what has happened these last years, revealing what her subtitle refers to as
The Lure of Authoritarianism.
She opens by describing a party that she and her husband gave on New Years Eve at the turn of the millennium, at their home in Poland. As an American journalist having worked in various capitals in Europe, and with her husband a member of the Polish government, the wide variety of local and international friends and acquaintances who attended included journalists, diplomats, and others in the cultural elite. Politically, Applebaum writes,
you could have lumped the majority of us, roughly, in the general category of what Poles call the right – the conservatives, the anti-Communists. But at that moment of history, you might also have called most of us liberals. Free-market liberals, classical liberals … [who] did believe in democracy, in the rule of law, in checks and balances. (2)
In the years following that party, however, Applebaum found that a not insignificant number of these friends shifted to the extreme political right. More fundamentally, she observes, they abandoned classical, liberal democratic values, and began aligning themselves with organizations and political parties that emphasize loyalty to party ideology over meritocratic and democratic principles. In her book, she explores the political evolution of these former friends as a basis for describing what she finds to be a broader shift toward authoritarianism in the West.
Though she mentions at the outset that she “will not offer either a grand theory or a universal solution,” (14) she does reference the work of a behavioral economist, Karen Stenner, who she cites as claiming
that about a third of the population in any country has … an authoritarian predisposition … that favors homogeneity and order [as opposed to] its opposite, a “libertarian” predisposition, one that favors diversity and difference. (16)
For Stenner, the issue is not a political one of left versus right, but rather that “authoritarianism appeals, simply, to people who cannot tolerate complexity.” (16) This framing, of intolerance to complexity, struck a deep chord with me: as readers of other of my reviews may have discovered, one of my favorite New York Times front page headlines is Lost in Abortion Noise – Nuance, since it seems a fitting, generic headline that could be used for any fill-in-the blank topic in these days of disagreements filled with strident over-simplification.
Applebaum argues, however, that the mere presence of a nuance-averse portion of the population –those with an authoritarian predisposition – does not on its own make autocracy inevitable. To animate this group, a dictator requires the support of those “who can use sophisticated legal language, people who can argue that breaking the constitution or twisting the law is the right thing to do … [that is] members of the intellectual and educated elite.” These “fallen intellectuals,” as she refers to them, will willingly “launch a war on the rest of the intellectual and educated elite, even if that includes their university classmates, their colleagues, and their friends,” to support and curry favor with an autocratic leader. (17-18)
To understand the motivations of this group, she tells the stories of several of her own former classmates, colleagues, and friends who had attended her New Years Eve party in 1999, and with whom she has since become politically estranged. She finds them to have felt marginalized in one way or another in the existing liberal democratic regimes in their countries; and so, seeking the influence they felt was their due, they have aligned themselves with populist, authoritarian political parties and leaders, and often thereby earning the positions of power they craved.
Having made a convincing case for the rise of these “fallen intellectuals,” Applebaum turns to the question of how a sizeable segment of the population has come to align with them. Here, she seems to offer a mixed message, before settling on a particular answer.
Initially, she makes an argument based on economic realities, noting that
democracy and free markets can produce unsatisfying outcomes, especially when badly regulated, or when nobody trusts the regulators, or when people are entering the contest from very different starting points. The losers of these competitions were always, sooner or later, going to challenge the value of competition itself. (59)
Later, however, she backtracks a bit, arguing that:
“The economy” or “inequality” does not explain why, at that exact moment [in 2015-2018], everybody got very angry. … This is not to say that immigration and economic pain are irrelevant to the current crisis: clearly they are genuine sources of anger, distress, discomfort, and division. But as a complete explanation for political change – as an explanation for the emergence of whole new classes of political actors – they are insufficient. (108-9)
Instead of anger with the economy, she finds the decisive factor to lie in the segment of the population with the authoritarian predisposition described by Stenner. The fallen intellectuals, in their work, target those intolerant of complexity, knowing that “the noise of argument, the constant hum of disagreement … can irritate people who prefer to live in a society tied together by a single narrative.” (109) Using newly available information tools, they
invent memes, create videos, conjure up slogans designed to appeal precisely to the fear and anger caused by this massive international wave of cacophony. [They] can even start the cacophony and create the chaos … knowing full well that some people will be frightened by it. (118)
Through such methods, these intellectuals “persuade a chunk of voters to vote for someone who promises a new and more orderly order.” (116)
Applebaum also notes that the foundational conditions for such populist anger form a latent part of the present-day world:
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. (158-9)
The essayist Pankaj Mishra makes just such a claim the central theme of his book
Age of Anger. (My review linked to at right.) Mishra argues that coming out of the Enlightenment people embraced the idea of liberty and equality for all, with the unanticipated consequence that
power lacking theological foundations or transcendent authority, and conceived as power over other competing individuals, [is] inherently unstable … [and] condemned the rich and poor alike to a constant state of [resentment] and anxiety. (327, Mishra)
Thus, he observes, civilization finds itself enveloped in an anger whose level may wax and wane, but that never completely disappears.
Applebaum’s view of the shift to autocracy as largely driven from the top down has instructive similarities, but also important differences, with the arguments of economist Martin Wolf, in
The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. (My review linked to at right) Wolf identifies similar current challenges to Western democracies, but points to a somewhat different, if not wholly unrelated, culprit. Describing democracy and capitalism as “complimentary opposites,” and “always fragile,” he argues that if independence between them is not maintained, “the delicate balance between politics and market can be destroyed,” which can bring down the entire project of democratic capitalism.
For Wolf, the current crisis has originated as a result of those with economic power using their wealth to acquire political power, and so pervert the system to their benefit. This has led to a rise in frustration and anger, as significant numbers of people decide that the system is rigged against them, and that they are “losing control over their livelihoods, status, and even country.” (85, Wolf) The consequence, he argues, is a disillusionment with democracy that leads people to embrace an authoritarian leader who promises them the return of what they have lost. Thus, Wolf gets to the same result as Applebaum – authoritarianism – but by a different path.
And yet, perhaps the deeper answer is that both forces are present, and self-reinforcing. Wolf’s wealthy business owners co-opt the political system, thereby creating increasing inequality, which leaves people frustrated and angry, and looking for ways to fight back. Applebaum’s fallen intellectuals enflame this disillusioned public through conspiracy theory, hyperbolic exaggerations, and outright lies, in order to empower a populist dictator who they hope will give them the positions of power they feel they deserve. And, not surprisingly, business owners generously fund the efforts of such autocrat-supporting intellectuals, in a symbiotic relationship that each hopes will benefit their own interests.
In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum argues that embittered members of the intellectual elite have pursued positions of power by exploiting those who find the siren call of authoritarianism seductive when faced with the challenging and often raucous debates present in democracies. She makes a convincing – and bracing – case for the danger these fallen intellectuals pose, by leveraging personal stories of friends and colleagues who have come to take up the work of supporting autocratic elements and regimes in Western democracies. Her palpable disquiet at how these former friends have abandoned liberal democratic values to aggressively support demagogues and authoritarians makes evident her view of the depth of the danger it poses.
Of course, as history has made eminently clear, demagogues can be difficult to control, and can turn to wield their power against even supporters – when one destroys the system, it becomes notoriously difficult to control the end point. In that sense, given the dark and disturbing portrait Applebaum paints of both our present and our immediate future, one can hardly help but latch on tightly to the thin sliver of hope she offers late in her essay:
No political victory is even 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. The history of ancient Egypt looks, from a great distance in time, like a monotonous story of interchangeable pharaohs. But on closer examination, it includes periods of cultural lightness and eras of despotic gloom. Our history will someday look that way too. (186)
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