Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum
In the New Year Eve of 1999, the historian and writer Anne Applebaum gave a party in her house in Poland. Twenty years later, she does not speak with many of the people who were invited to that party. In 1999, Poland was a democracy, recently freed from Soviet domination. Everyone in the party was optimistic and supported the democratic values. But the world has changed over the last twenty years. Today, some people in that party support Poland’s populist and authoritarian ruling party which has denounced gay people and has attacked the independence of the courts and media.
This is not something that happens only in Poland. It also happens in Hungary, Turkey, in the Philippines, in Brazil. It takes place inside the Republican Party in the United States. It’s not something that happened suddenly, It's rather a process that takes place over time. People change, and “given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all our societies eventually will,” writes Anne Applebaum, in her book Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Power of authoritarianism.
Almost every democracy in history ended in authoritarianism, Applebaum writes, starting with ancient Greece and Rome. Hamilton was one of many in colonial America who read over and over again the history of Greece and Rome, trying to learn how to prevent a new democracy from becoming a tyranny. When the American Founding Fathers wrote the founding documents and the Constitution, they had those Roman examples in their heads. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were always aware of how fragile a democratic system can be. That is because it requires something that goes against human nature. It requires all of us to allow our political opponents to rule for a while. It requires patient and effort to try to beat them back and take power from them using legal methods. She writes:
They sought to create a system, stuffed with checks and balances, that would encourage people to behave better. Neither then nor later did their lofty words always reflect reality. Neither then nor later did their institutions always function as intended. But over time, the words proved powerful enough and the institutions flexible enough to encompass ever larger circles of fully vested citizens, eventually including not just men but women, people without property or wealth, former slaves, and immigrants from every culture.
Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy
It is a wonderful passage, nevertheless are words that were written by men who, when it came to the vital matters of race and gender, failed to act upon them.
Karen Stenner, a behavioural economist and political psychologist who began researching personality traits argues that there is a critical distinction between authoritarianism and conservatism. Authoritarianism, is “an aversion” to different “people and beliefs,” while conservatism “is an aversion to… change.” Authoritarianism appeals to people who cannot tolerate complexity. It is anti-pluralistic. It is suspicious of people with different ideas. It is a frame of mind, not a set of ideas. Authoritarians need people who will give voice to anger and fear; they need members of the intellectual elite who support the authoritarianism and "who will help them launch a war on the rest of the intellectual and educated elite, even if that includes their university classmates, their colleagues, and their friends."
As resistance to authoritarianism and Trumpism widens in the United States and it is likely to mount in the next few months, let’s not forget that change is coming all the time and from everywhere. As Olivia Laing said, “for those of us who are living outside the walls, those of us who are leaning on the doors get out the way, freedom might be a possibility.”