How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship by Ece Temelkuran
What they really demanded, was not “respect,” but an unquestionable silence.
Ece Temelkuran
As I write this, in the United Kingdom we are still discussing Brexit – if you are prepared to call this act of political insanity that will change the destiny of the nation, discussion, riots take place in France, and Russian soldiers land in Venezuela. And let’s not forget what’s happening in Trump’s America. It really looks like that we live in an increasingly dark period in time.
In her new excellent book, How to Loose a Country, Ece Temelkuran talks about the challenges that democracy currently is facing. It's an excellent and painful book to read. It mixes personal experience, she looks what has happened to Turkey, but it is much broader than that. Ece Temelkuran looks globally, what’s happening across Europe and the world, and she points out the dangers to democracy. What she basically tells us is: Look, these are the dangers, the warning signs, if you will, this is how you lose a county, and this is how you can lose yourself in this serious transformation of morality.
“It is this exhausting, terrifying immorality that forces you to look for a somewhere else. It is not the emperor who pushes you to the edge of the arena to become merely a disassociated observer, but his subjects.”
Ece Temelcuran
The seven steps from Democracy to Dictatorship are:
Create a Movement
Disrupt Rationale/Terrorise Language
Remove the Shame: Immorality is 'Hot' in the Post-Truth World
Dismantle Judicial and Political Mechanisms
Design your own Citizen
Let them Laugh at the Horror
Build your own Country
This is a book that needs to be read. The sooner the better.