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American-born journalist Anne Applebaum is one of the most influential intellectuals of our time, now based on Atlantic magazine. She is also the author of acclaimed books on the dark history of Soviet Communism.
In his new book, the essay “The Twilight of Democracy”, he sheds light on his own time and his own environment: European academics, journalists and opinion leaders who not many years ago shared worldviews and values. They were convinced that the future belonged to liberal democracy, the market economy, freedom of the press and internationalization. They liked both the EU and NATO. They could be liberals or conservatives or both, but they were all within a broad right-wing current.
In Sweden they would have been called “bourgeois intellectuals”. I want to remember that about 15 years ago, Neo magazine did an issue of, and yes, that same concept.
Read more. Anne Applebaum: Andrzej Duda wants to divide the Polish population, hatred of opponents will continue
Anne Applebaum.
Photo: James Kegley
Half a decade beforeAt the turn of the millennium, Anne Applebaum and her husband, the Polish journalist and politician Radek Sikorski, had invited a hundred friends and acquaintances to a New Year’s Eve party at the Sikorski family farm in Poland. The guests came from Warsaw, London, New York and Moscow. They were journalists, government officials, diplomats, politicians, acquaintances from the area. And the vast majority belonged to the “right” of that time:
“We agree on democracy, on the path of prosperity, in the direction in which everything was going. That moment is over. Now, twenty years later, I was crossing the street to avoid some of those who were with me that night. They, in turn, would not only refuse to enter our home, they would be ashamed to admit they were ever there. “
The “intellectual bourgeoisie” has been blown up. The gap is abysmal. The distance between the two sides is so great that it is almost impossible to speak. Instead you scream. I remember the outbreak on Twitter by Christian Democrat Sara Skyttedal when the Center Party and Annie Lööf in the election between Stefan Löfven and Jimmie Åkesson let aversion to an illiberal party with Nazi roots make the decision: “Klåpare. Scammers Quislingar. We never forget it, ”Skyttedal yelled.
Now there are many indications that Sweden in a few years will be ruled by a “conservative bloc”, which includes the Swedish Democrats. Anne Applebaum recalls in her book how little conservatism there is in the “conservative” wave that in recent years has swept across Europe and the United States and swept away not a few of her former friends and like-minded people.
The new right hates to hear it, but they are more Bolsheviks than Burkese
Today’s right-wing extremist and populist movements, with their revolutionary and apocalyptic leanings, indeed more in common with twentieth-century left-wing extremism, Applebaum asserts: “The New Right hates to hear it, but they are more Bolsheviks than Burkeses.”
The conservatism associated with the 18th century thinker Edmund Burke pays homage to the principle of precaution and respect for institutions. The “new right” wants to take control. or smash, the institutions; both independent courts and free media. The first model (“take control”) is applied in Poland and Hungary. The other (“crush”) is personified by American and British nihilists such as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and Boris Johnson strategist Dominic Cummings.
The intellectuals have in it Modern history has been repeatedly drawn to The dark side of the force. Anne Applebaum leans toward French author Julien Benda’s classic essay “La trahison des clerks”, The Betrayal of the Clerics, of 1927. Benda argued that the “clerics”, that is, the intellectuals, had failed in the task of defending the truth and the reason to be able instead, to enter service with political ideologies.
What is it that attracts contempt for democracy? Anne Applebaum does not provide an unequivocal or complete answer. Probably nothing. But the sweetness of power cannot be underestimated. Illiberalism has proven to be a salable concept. It has not only led opportunists like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump to positions they shouldn’t have; it has also opened the doors of the corridors of power to “clergymen”, who have come to realize that “the people” and “the nation” are the answer to the questions they have sought in vain to answer in a lifetime before more. liberal.
Anne Applebaum rather than suggesting that there is also a psychological dimension here
Perhaps the most interesting it is with Anne Applebaum’s book that she names them, tells her story. Many were friends or at least acquaintances.
She could be the godmother of one of Applebaum’s sons, who now invites Poland’s strongman Lech Kaczynski to home-cooked lunches and advises him on the right ministers. It could also be a Hungarian historian and museum director whom Applebaum had known “for a long time.” Now she is spreading conspiracy theories about George Soros.
But can’t power be the only explanation?
Anne Applebaum rather than suggests that there is also a psychological dimension here, an “authoritarian sense” that makes some people, including intellectuals, unhappy in times and societies marked by change and conflict, that is, in almost all times and societies.
In a preface to a new edition From “The Betrayal of the Clerics” in 1946, Julien Benda pointed out that precisely because democracy provides space for individual freedom, it is at the same time always associated with an element of disorder. He backed up his claim with a rule formulated by Montesquieu: when you don’t hear the noise of a conflict in a state, you can be sure that there is no freedom.
In other words: as long as the new right screams and snorts, there is still hope for democracy. So freedom still resists.
Read more texts by Per Svensson.
