Welcome to this Brennan Center for Justice
event. For those of you who don’t know,
the Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and
policy institute affiliated with New York
University School of Law.
I’m Larry Norden, director of the Election
Reform Program at the Brennan Center.
We’re producing this event with NYU’s
John Brademas Center, which advocates for
civil debate on politics and public policy;
and NYU Votes, which strives to give every
eligible NYU student the information they need to cast their ballot. Please visit NYU.edu/NYU-Votes
for lots of resources about registering and
voting. Again, that’s NYU.edu/NYU-Votes.
I’m thrilled to introduce our distinguished
guests this afternoon. In America and around
the globe, democratic institutions have begun
to deteriorate. Unfortunately, what’s gaining
traction are authoritarian movements. Anne
Applebaum, journalist and Pulitzer Prize–winning
historian, argues in her new book, “Twilight
of Democracy,” that this trend should come
as no surprise given what she calls “the
seductive lure of authoritarianism.”
This conversation will be moderated by Max
Boot. He is a CNN global affairs analyst,
Washington Post columnist, and senior fellow
at the Council on Foreign Relations. Welcome, Max.
Thank you very much, Larry. It’s going to
be a terrific conversation at a very unusual
time in U.S. history and the history of the
world.
Before jumping in, I just want to invite those
listening to share your questions by typing
them into the Q&A box and let us know where
you’re watching from. We’ll take as many
as we can during the program.
Now it’s my pleasure to welcome Anne Applebaum.
In the Washington Post review of Anne’s
book, Sheri Berman writes: “‘Twilight
of Democracy’ offers many lessons on the
longstanding struggle between democracy and
dictatorship, but perhaps the most important
is how fragile democracy is. Its survival
depends on choices made every day by elites
and ordinary people.”
And we’re here to talk about Anne’s book,
“Twilight of Democracy,” which I highly
commend to you, not only in the way that Sheri
Berman did but let me just say that just as
a reader I found it to be a very fast, very
informal read. I got through it in an afternoon.
But it’s packed with wisdom and insights,
which is exactly what I would expect from
Anne because there is really no writer writing
today who I respect more than Anne.
So it’s a pleasure to be with you again,
Anne, and to discuss your important book.
Thank you so much, Max. That’s very kind
words. And thanks so much to NYU and to the
Brennan Center for organizing.
Great.
Well, let me start off by talking about the
way you start off the book, which is by writing
about a party that you had to mark the new
millennium on December 31st, 1999. And I believe
it was in the very house where you are currently
sitting — a much more impressive backdrop,
I might add, than the hotel kitchen that I
have behind me at the moment.
But, you know, you wrote about this in the
book as well as in an Atlantic article previously.
And it’s really something that I think caught
people’s attentions, because you wrote about
how you partied at the end of the 1990s with
all of your fellow conservatives, people who
believed in classical liberalism, in essence,
and who felt like their vision had been vindicated
by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse
of the Soviet empire. And there was kind of
this giddy sense of triumph, of new possibilities,
of — even of history ending, as Frank Fukuyama
wrote.
And you look back on that from the vantage
point of 20 years on, and it seems like a
much more dismal picture. And what you point
out in the book is that so many of the people
who were fellow well-wishers at this party
are essentially no longer talking to one another
because they have gone in such different directions,
with many of them turning out to be illiberal
nationalists, conspiracy mongers, anti-Semites,
et cetera, et cetera, and others, like you,
sticking to what you view as being a fairly
consistent belief in conservatism, meaning,
I guess, essentially classical liberalism.
So, you know, I would start off by asking
you, what do you think changed? I mean, did
these people change or were they simply not
who you thought they were in 1999? Were they
always like this, or have they just gone — have
they just changed because of changing circumstances
over the last couple of decades?
So it’s — I mean, the book is the answer
to that question. I mean, it begins with the
party. And let me hasten to explain that I’m
not a great hostess and I don’t give lots
of parties or anything like that. It just
seemed like the party is really the metaphor
for a group of people for a kind of group
of not even so much friends, but a group of
political associates, people who thought alike
and kind of hung around together, and now
no longer do.
And the book is an answer to that question.
And I answer it by looking at the same problem
in several different places, not just Poland
but also the U.S., U.K., Spain, with some
references to other, other countries. And there isn’t
a single answer. It’s not a political-science
book with a sort of big thesis that can be
defended. It’s partly — you know, it’s
very — it’s from my point of view. It’s
a subjective view of what happened.
And I give different answers for different
people. And mostly, most of the explanation,
sooner or later, comes down to disappointment —
either people being disappointed with their
societies, disappointed with how something
turned out, disappointment at a very general
level. They feel their countries are degenerate
or they are going downhill or they are not
as good as they used to be or they are weaker
or, you know, less authentic than they used
to be, or in some cases it’s disappointment
with their own personal circumstances.
In Poland, there are a number of people who
I write about who, for example, expected that
the transformation, the transition from communism
to democracy in the 1990s, would be personally
good for them. And actually in most cases
it has been good for them. I mean, you can’t
— these aren’t — this is not a book
about people who are starving or are somehow
victims of the transition or anything like
that. But they weren’t quite as successful
as they thought they should be. They didn’t
become prime minister or, I don’t know,
bestselling authors. And many of them became
very resentful of the system that was created
and of the people who were running it and
of the values that it espoused.
So the book is about how people then dealt
with that disappointment. And the argument
is that when you’re really disappointed,
when you really think your society is dead
or declined or undermined or changing in ways
that you don’t like, then that’s one of
the paths that sometimes leads to political
radicalism.
Extreme views often are — you know, are
— you find them in people who are really
quite angry and they feel that nothing left
can be done, that democracy has failed or
the political system has failed or the elites
have failed or the society has failed, and
it needs a radical, dramatic, even violent
or disruptive change. And that’s the mood
that leads people into radicalism. And I kind
of — I trace that path in different ways
and how different people have followed it
over the last 20 years.
But is it possible that some of those people
were kind of radicals or illiberal to begin
with, and those differences between them and
you were papered over by the Cold War, by the
mutual fight against communism? And I’m
thinking of people like Solzhenitsyn who,
of course, was a great hero of the Cold War
struggle, a great — not only a great Russian
writer but great Russian dissident but not
a liberal democrat, somebody who didn’t
actually believe in the system that you and
I hold dear. Do you think that was true of
more of those people at the time than you
realized?
Yeah, I think — I mean, that’s certainly
true but, I mean, I think that’s true in
the United States as well. I mean, all of
these anti-communist coalitions everywhere
were just that. They were coalitions, and,
you know, why were people anti-communist?
I mean, you know, look, even if you take the
United States, well, so some people were Cold
Warriors because of realpolitik and they were
worried about nuclear weapons and they worried
about Soviet influence in Europe and around
the world and that included, by the way, a
lot of Democrats.
Some people were Cold Warriors because they
believed in human rights and democracy and
they believed that human rights — that democracy
was the opposite of communism and, therefore,
communism had to be fought.
Some people were anti-communists or Cold Warriors
because they were Christians and because communism
was atheist and they thought that by — you
know, by engineering the fall of communism
they would spread Christianity and they expected
that to be one of the outcomes of the fall
of Berlin Wall.
And one of the things that happened, I mean,
and I think actually happened quite fast in
the 1990s if you look across different countries
— rather, Poland, the U.S., the U.K. — is
that those coalitions quite quickly began
to break up and there was a lot of, initially,
disappointment with — you know, in the 1990s
in the U.S. and the U.K. you had the George
Bush, Sr., administration, you had the John
Major administration, and these were run by
people who were pragmatic and believed in,
OK, now the drama is over and now it’s time
to rebuild Europe and put the pieces back
together again, and that was a process that
for a lot of people was quite boring. I mean,
people missed their — the radical days when
they were on the cutting edge of politics
and, you know, they were in disagreement with
everybody else and then they proved to be
right, and they sought bigger challenges.
And that was one of the things that happened
in the U.S. and then, actually, as you say,
in Eastern Europe, yes, there were a lot of
people who were anti-communists but that didn’t
mean they were democrats. It meant that they
were nationalists or they were — you know,
or they also had a religious vision of society
and they believed that society should be organized,
as in Poland, around the Catholic Church,
or in Russia as around the Orthodox Church.
And so yes, very quickly people found that
they had great differences. I mean, one of
the effects of that in Eastern Europe initially
was that in a number of countries former communists
came back to power and that was very often
because the anti-communist opposition turned
out to be so fragmented and to have such — so
little unity.
So, yes, I think you’re right. I mean, I
think these big coalitions broke up, but I
think that’s something that also — that
just happens every generation or so. You know,
we have moments of big change when the coalitions
or the things that held people together suddenly
seemed to break up.
I mean, in the book I talk about a case that —
or a moment in history that probably seems
quite remote to most Americans, but it’s
the moment of the Dreyfus case, the Dreyfus
trial in France, which was a moment when a
part of the French elite, which had hitherto
seemed to have quite a lot in common.
You know, the military and the upper levels
of society suddenly broke up and started shouting
at one another over the case of Alfred Dreyfus,
who was a Jewish officer who was accused of
spying, as it turned out, incorrectly. And the
society split because it turned out that beneath
the surface of, you know, an agreement about
the — you know, the nature of modern France
there were actually quite deep differences,
different ideas of what the state should be,
what — you know, whether the state was about
an ancient idea of Frenchness connected to
old mythology or whether the state was about
justice and equal rights for all.
And that broke up France and broke up the
sort of French elite at the end of the 19th
century. And so maybe it’s not surprising
that these big political shifts also broke
up our alliances or changed what we think
the Right means or the Left means in modern
America or modern Europe.
What about your own views? I mean, I think
you’re very eloquent in tracing the changes
in many of your friends — or maybe, as Norman
Podhoretz would say, ex-friends — but what
about your own views? I mean, are you the
same person politically and ideologically
as you were in 1999, or have you shifted, as
well? I mean, this is — this is something
I grapple with all the time, too, because,
you know, I like to repeat Ronald — because,
you know, as a former Republican — I think
we’re both former Republicans, although
you earlier than me — I like to repeat Ronald
Reagan’s line about I didn’t leave my
party, my party left me, but I’m not sure
that’s 100 percent accurate because I feel
like my views have shifted in some matters,
as well. And I’m just wondering, what about
you? Because you don’t talk too much about
your own views in the book.
I mean, my own views I find less interesting
than the views of other people. Maybe that’s
the explanation. (Laughs.)
I find your views interesting, though.
(Laughs.) I’m glad someone does, yes.
I mean, I — I mean, I — in essence I feel
the same way as you, that my principles are
still the same and the reasons why I was an
anti-communist remain the same as now, and
I was one of the people who was interested
in democratization and human rights, and that
was what I thought was at stake in the 1980s
and early 1990s. But I also think that, you
know, any intelligent person — and I think
on the Left and the Right this is true — changes
their views as circumstances change. There’s
that famous quote from [Keynes], which is, you
know — you know, when the facts change,
I change my views, you know, what do you do?
And I do feel like life throws up different
circumstances and new problems, and not all
of your old frame of mind fits the new problem,
and not all of the ways that you thought in
the 1980s or 1990s are appropriate, you know,
to 2020.
And so, yeah, I probably have changed what
I — what I think about some things. I mean,
on some basic levels — you know, clearly
one of the solutions in 1989, one of the — one
of the solutions to the catastrophe of communism
in Eastern Europe was the import of free markets
or the construction of the conditions for
free markets and the conditions for entrepreneurship
and capitalism, which actually have in much
of the region, at least in the European — you
know, the piece of the ex-communist bloc that’s
now part of the European Union, in much of
the region has been a great success. In Poland,
where I am right now, it was a great success.
That doesn’t mean, though, that you can
keep screaming, "Markets, markets, markets,
the markets are the answer to everything" forever,
and there have to be some other solutions
for different times. I mean, clearly, one
of the — we’re at a moment when people
are now much more willing to give economic
power to the state. I’m thinking of the
moment of the coronavirus, which has suddenly
and unfairly robbed people of their livelihoods,
and it seems like this is a good moment for
the state to step in. How that’s done and
whether it can be done fairly and whether
it can be done without creating too much debt
and too many — too much trouble down the
road is a — is a different question. But
I mean, clearly, you have to adjust your views.
I mean, to be a market fanatic at this moment
in history would be to just ignore what’s
going on.
But there are also other issues. There are other
— there are other causes that have — you
know, that have emerged and appear different
to me now than they — than they used to.
You know, here in Poland, for example, the
cause of gay rights and the — and the cause
of gay marriage, it’s not — it’s not
an issue — it wasn’t that I’ve changed
my views about it. It just wasn’t to me
an issue that seemed central to politics or
something that I needed to editorialize or
worry about. But here in Poland, the government
has made this into a really important wedge
issue and has tried — and during the most
recent presidential election here, you know,
literally tried to polarize the country around
this issue — are you for or against
something they call "LGBT ideology"? And you
know, this is an ideology which they say has
nothing to do with people, it’s an ideology
worse than communism. And they’ve tried
to create a kind of anti-gay, homophobic coalition,
you know, based on — mostly based on ignorance
and people, you know, not knowing much about
the subject, or they create fear with crazy,
radical-looking pictures and photographs,
and they scare people, you know, and they
imply that, you know, if you accept LGBT ideology
than you can’t be Catholic anymore and so
on. So they’ve used it as a wedge issue,
and this now seems to me something that is
really central here and has to be fought.
So in a way, the issues present themselves
differently and they — and they have different
weight, perhaps, than they used to.
So, you know — I mean, and I think the other
thing that’s important is that many of the
— you know, anybody who sticks to a rigid
set of ideas, you know, or a rigid set of
solutions to problems, will find that those
solutions no longer match the situation at
some point. But that doesn’t mean, you know,
returning to your own view, you know, my party
left me.
That doesn’t mean that very basic or fundamental
commitments have to be lost. And I would say
that I’m still fundamentally committed to
a society in which there is an even playing
field in politics in which — you know, in
which there is — there are independent courts,
in which there are separations of power — of powers,
in which, you know, there are some forms of
independent media that are not either dependent
on the state or dependent on — you know,
on oligarchs with close connections to the
state.
So there are sort of — there are certain
fundamental rules that I would say I haven’t
changed on. But how the issues present themselves
and the importance that they have, I think
that has changed in my head over time. And
I think it should.
Have you changed your views on whether democracy
is destined to triumph? I mean, I can’t
speak for you, but I feel like we were both
basically part of the generation of 1989,
you know, coming of age as the Soviet Union
and the Eastern bloc were collapsing. And
I think that led to a certain — I mean,
I can’t — again, I can’t speak for you.
I’ll speak for me.
That led to a certain triumphalism and giddiness
on my part, or Frank Fukuyama’s “The End
of History” seemed fairly plausible that,
in fact, liberal democracy was the final destination
of this centuries-long ideological struggle.
And it sure doesn’t feel like that right
now. In fact, obviously your book is called
“The Twilight of Democracy.” So I’m
just curious — and I don’t want to put
words into your mouth — but have you gone
from being, you know, super optimistic about
democracy to being super pessimistic? Is that
accurate?
I’ve certainly — so, I mean, that is what
my book is about. It’s about the loss of
certainty and the loss of, you know, our — exactly
that sense that, you know, there’s something
inevitable about democracy.
But I actually think that that feeling of
inevitability, you know, that it has to be
that way, you know, that history is progressive
and it unfolds in a certain manner, and of
course that’s — which, you know, that’s,
of course, a caricature of what most people
thought. I mean, it was clear from the beginning—
The (inaudible) view of history.
Yeah. But it was clear — you know, even
in the ‘90s it was clear that it wasn’t
going to be smooth sailing. I mean, it was
clear to me that Russia wasn’t going to
be a democracy quite early on, for example.
In fact, my party opens on December 31st,
1999, which is also the day that Boris Yeltsin
resigned and Putin began what would be his
— the beginning of two decades long in power.
So even at that moment it was becoming clear.
So, you know, I don’t want to oversimplify
what people thought, but certainly the — this feeling
of inevitability was a mistake. And it was
a mistake not only because it was — you
know, it made us predict the future incorrectly,
but also because I think it gave people a
sense of complacency about — particularly
about our own democracy, about American democracy,
about West European democracy, and not just
about the new democracies of Eastern Europe
— newish. They’re not so new anymore.
And that feeling of complacency, I think,
meant that for a lot of people, you know,
they kind of checked out of politics starting
in the 1990s. Well, politics is something
that professionals do. We don’t have to
worry about it. You know, it’ll somehow
manage itself. We don’t need to vote. We
don’t need to be members of parties. We
don’t need to be part of civic institutions.
We don’t have to worry about get-out-the-vote
campaigns. There’s someone who will do that.
You know, there’s some kind of professional
caste or class who will do it.
And I think that was a major mistake because
that really — that was one of the reasons
why people’s faith in democracy began to
weaken. And it was one of the reasons why
democracy in the U.S. in particular was taken
over and began to be harmed by these, you
know, just torrents of spending and by lobbyists
and special interests who sought to twist
it in various ways and that — which then
undermined people’s faith in it further.
So, in fact, one of the things I hope to achieve
with the book is a — it’s a kind of clarion
call, you know, a reminder to people, don’t
be complacent. Democracies do fail, and in
fact, all democracies in the past have failed
and, you know, even most of the ones that
exist now are very recent. You know, ours
is — ours is a couple of hundred years old.
It’s one of the oldest by some — it depends
how you want to compare us to Great Britain.
But by some — by some measures, it is the
oldest and most of the ones around are far
more recent. And you know, we’ve seen democracy
collapse multiple times. We’ve seen it collapse
many times in South America over the last
several decades. We saw it collapse in Europe
in the 1930s. Many European democracies that
we think of as fairly stable, they’re quite
recent, you know. Forget Eastern Europe, I mean, Spain and Greece, you know, became democracies
in the 1970s, which is not so long ago. And
keeping that in mind and remembering that,
you know, politics is really cyclical rather
than progressive — that it doesn’t go
in one direction, it can go in many directions,
and that there’s no — there’s no law
that says once you’ve had a democracy for
X numbers of years you’ll always have one.
I think that’s a good reminder, especially
for Americans, who have this sense of, you
know, this — you know, that our democracy
is somehow inevitable or guaranteed.
Let me press you a little bit more on the
title of your book and the thesis of your
book. And you’ve said repeatedly that it’s
not a strongly thesis-driven book, but let
me just ask you about the title because I
notice it is called “Twilight of Democracy”
and it doesn’t have a question mark. And
at some points in the book you seem fairly
pessimistic about the outlook for democracy,
where you write for example on page 14: “Given
the right conditions, any society can turn
against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything
to go by, all of our societies eventually
will.” And yet, by the end of the book — by
page 185 — while you say that "we may be
doomed like glittering, multiethnic Habsburg
Vienna or creative, decadent Weimar Berlin
to be swept away into irrelevance, it is possible
that we are already living through the twilight
of democracy, that our civilization may be
heading for anarchy or tyranny," and so forth
and so on. But then you write: “Or maybe
the coronavirus will inspire a new sense of
global solidarity. Maybe we will renew and
modernize our institutions.”
Do you have a — at this point in time — and
I realize the story remains very much unfinished,
but I mean, which way are you leaning? Is
this actually the twilight of democracy, or not?
So I — you know, I — first of all, I don’t
do predictions.
Second of all, one of the things I came to
— one of the conclusions I came to while
writing the book, actually, is that it is
irresponsible for people in my generation
to be pessimistic and to say it’s the end,
you know, it’s all over, because that is
unfair to people who are 20 and 30 years younger
than us who are just beginning their lives
and their careers, and who have a chance to
change things and make them better. I mean,
the book is really a warning rather than a
prediction. It is — you know, it points
out that democracies do die. It shows and
indicates how some of them could die. It points
out that, you know, some die and then are
revived, and you know, history’s been circular
in many places, and there are countries that
have — like Greece that have gone back and
forth between democracy and dictatorship over
many decades.
But ultimately, it leaves — it points out
that the — you know, there is no — there
is no — you know, there is no way to predict
the future. And decisions that are made now,
both by people in power and by people who
are younger, can affect the outcome. You know,
it’s — you know, we can — we can revive
democracy. We can bring it back. We can change
the way its rules works. We can — you know,
we have the power, for example, to eliminate
the flows of money that go — in our democracy,
we have the power to eliminate flows of dirty
money around the world. We could end tax shelters
tomorrow by making them illegal, you know.
We have the power to change things, and I
hope that the book inspires younger people
to see that.
(Pause.)
So Max is frozen.
So I’m guessing that’s a question about where the threat the threat to democracy emanates from, or perhaps
what’s
the appeal of authoritarianism.
I mean, look, there is a part of every society
— there is a part of humanity — I mean,
this is something else that I write about
in the book — that is naturally skeptical
or wary of moments when there is a great deal
of change, that dislikes the cacophony and
noise of democracy, that dislikes loud exchanges
between people — that prefers something
more stable, something more consistent, something
more — something more — you know, something
more predictable. And in fact, it’s interesting
because I think Max’s questions — you
know, what’s the future, what’s the answer
— you know, for a lot of people the uncertainty
of the future, and in particular the uncertainty
of — democracy is always uncertain. You
never know the outcome. It often feels fragile
and unstable. And the uncertainty of this
kind of political system is bothersome and
difficult and distressing even, and there’s
some people for whom an alternative would
be preferable, whether that’s an alternative
— you know, whether that’s a one-party
state or whether it’s a single leader or
whether it’s even just, you know, a democracy
in which the rules are suspended so that — so
that there’s not so much noise and debate.
You know, we’ve seen in a number of Eastern European countries over
the last several years that there are — that
there are — you know, there are people who
are delighted when some of their compatriots
are unable to vote or who are frozen out of
the political process. I mean, we even have
the spectacle, you know, in America today
of some people [inaudible] by
Americans being unable to vote or for the
Post Office being damaged by decisions taken
by the administration. That seems to them
right and fair because they prefer that only
— you know, only people like them or only
people who agree with them have the right
to vote, and they define that to be — (inaudible)
Well, is it fair to say that the threat today
emanates primarily from the Right, or is there
also a threat to the Left, I guess — from
the Left? I guess another way to put that
is, how concerned are you about, quote-unquote,
“cancel culture,” which has become kind
of a buzz-phrase on the Right? — Been picked
up even by President Trump, who is in no position
to talk about intolerance, but he constantly
accuses liberals of being intolerant, of wanting
to cancel everybody who doesn’t — who
doesn’t agree with them, et cetera, et cetera.
Is this a real danger, or is it just camouflaging
the threat and trying to distract us from
the threat that comes from right-wing intolerance
of the kind which is in power from Warsaw
to Washington?
So I’m asked this question a lot, and you
know, I think — you know, I think I can
— I’m allowed to speak about it because
I have written three books about left-wing
dictatorship — about Stalinism, about postwar
Eastern Europe, communist Eastern Europe.
I have written extensively about Marxism and
the danger of that ideology. I am very well
aware of the way in which Marxism has evolved
into new forms and it’s available on college
campuses.
I do think that the atmosphere, again, in
some universities — not all universities,
actually, but some universities — or, rather,
some departments of some universities, because,
you know, biochemical engineering is not usually
— is not usually afflicted — and the way
in which that atmosphere or that stifling
of debate, the rules about what people are
and aren’t allowed to say in public discussions,
some of those rules have moved into other
spheres — into parts of the media and to
other walks of life.
I think all of that is extremely bad. It’s
negative. It’s worrying. But I don’t think
it compares to the kind of danger that’s
posed to the United States and to American
institutions from so-called right-wing authoritarianism
— and in fact, it’s a kind of kleptocratic
authoritarianism — that is now currently
in power. The Trumpist version of the Republican
Party, which is so different from the Republican
Party of even five years ago, you know, sees
the state and the institutions of the state
as instruments that it can use to enrich itself
and its members or to enhance the political
careers and fortunes of its members. You know,
remember we have a president who used tools
of American foreign policy — so military aid
to an American ally, you know, in Ukraine
— used that money or tried to use it as
a bribe to convince a foreign government to
launch a fake investigation of his political
rival.
I mean, take a step back from that. That would
be — that would have been sort of unthinkable
in any U.S. administration in living memory.
I mean, you know, I can’t speak for every
White House in the 19th century but, certainly,
there’s none who you can remember in recent
times who would have done such a thing. And
the instrumentalization, the use of the state,
for the personal and political needs of the
ruling party and of some of the — of the
president or the president’s family is absolutely
unprecedented and poses a danger to American
democracy of a kind that I don’t think we’ve
seen.
And, to me, you know, when the Left poses
that kind of problem, when — you know, when
there’s a, you know, a left-wing party in
power that behaves that way and that abuses
the state that way, then I’ll worry about
it as well and I’ll raise the same kinds
of alarms.
But, for me, this is not a — you know, this
is not a moment of symmetry. You know, these
are not equal problems. They are both problems
but they are not — they are not equal problems.
Now, for some reason it seems like the only
place where left-wing populists consistently
come to power is Latin America, and we can
debate why that is. But I want to ask you
about the role of social media, and you had
a very interesting story a few days ago in
The Atlantic about this 22-year-old from Belarus
who has been organizing protests, even though
he’s in exile, and using a web app to do
that. And, of course, there’s a long history
over the last 20 years. I mean, we’ve seen
that with the Arab Spring and color revolutions
all over the world where they’ve been organized
on social media.
And so I think there was kind of sense in
the 1990s and for years after that the rise
of the internet would be this great tool of
democratization and would lead to the overthrow
of dictatorships and, of course, in more recent
years we’ve seen that dictatorships in places
like the United — like — I was about to
say the United States. We’re not yet a dictatorship.
But in places like Russia or China, those dictatorships
are actually quite adept at censoring the
internet. And what we’re seeing in the United
States, of course, as well as in other countries
is the way that illiberal movements spread
disinformation online, and, of course, that’s
been a central story of Donald Trump’s rise
to the presidency.
So, you know, I guess my question is, is social
media a danger or a boost for democracy, or
both, and which way do you think it’s going
to shake out?
So social media, like any media, is neutral
in that, you know, it can be used by different
people in different ways. It’s sort of neither
good nor bad. I mean, it’s like asking whether,
you know, TV is good or bad. I mean, TV — you
know, you can do fantastic things on television
and, you know, amazing, creative documentaries,
you know, or you can put out, you know, reality
television garbage 24 hours a day.
And social media is a little bit like that
in that it’s a reflection of how people
speak and talk to one another, and both the
best of humanity and the worst of humanity
can be found on social media. And social media
has, clearly, been used to organize people
in an empowering way, and it’s been used
to divide people in a disempowering way. And
you know, much depends on which channels are
being used and who’s using them.
In my book, I do talk about the ways in which
the authoritarians have sought to use social
media, which is, interestingly, almost the
opposite of the way the guy I — the Belarusian
I wrote about last week is using them — namely,
they have sought to use social media as a
tool of division in order to, you know, create
wedge issues to — and also to create a sense
of fear and to create senses of "us versus
them" community online. You know, we need to
hang together to protect ourselves against
the — you know, the rest of the evil society.
And so, you know, again, it’s a tool that
can be used either way. I mean, there’s
a — there are a number of ways in which
some forms of social media, and particularly
Facebook, but also actually even YouTube and
Twitter have been — you know, certainly
have been used to increase extremism. The
way their algorithms work is that they — you
know, they favor — they try and get people
staying online as long as possible. They tend
to show people or guide people in ever more
extreme directions.
I mean, this has been shown over and over
again. People who begin by being interested
in, you know, in their pets can then get led
into animal rights websites and from there
can be led into extreme animal rights terrorism.
And you can sort of follow — if you follow
the recommendations on YouTube, you can get
into more and more extreme views.
And so there is a national conversation, I
think, that needs to be held about whether
we want social media to do that, and should
there be some insight into these algorithms
and transparency about how they work? Is it
— you know, given that that’s increasingly
the way in which people get their information,
don’t we want there to be some — you know,
some input from the entire society about what
the rules are?
You know, so I think social media can be very
destructive or it can be very constructive.
You know, it depends how it’s used. It depends
what the rules are. I mean, certainly I think
we can say that it’s very — it’s undermining
of whatever current system is in place.
You know, any media revolution, you know,
whether it was the invention of the printing
press at the beginning of the Reformation
or whether it was the invention of radio in
the early 20th century, any time there’s
a new system of information or people getting
information in different ways, there’s always
a political revolution that follows. And I
think that’s really what we’re in the
middle of now.
So certainly it is bringing change. It changes
the way in which people hear things and understand
things. It changes their relationship to people
in power. And that can be both for better
and for worse.
All right, we have about 20 minutes left in
our program. So I want to turn it over to
audience questions at this point. And let
me begin with the first one, which is asking
about to what extent has there been open dialogue
between pro-democracy movements around the
world? For example, in Southeast Asian countries
like Thailand, democracy activists today are
teaching Hong Kong tactics. Has there been
more coordination in recent years between
democracy movements?
And let me also ask you, the flip side of
the question is, is there also more coordination
between dictatorships? Are dictatorships also
working together to stymie freedom fighters?
Some people have spoken about an illiberal
international with these populist movements,
many of them backed by Russia.
So the question is about the international
aspect and the coordination between both the
pro-democratic and the anti-democratic forces.
So, yes, absolutely. I think I once wrote
a column with the headline — it was either
"The Illiberal International" or the "Alt-Right
International." I’ve forgotten now which
it was. But I think both are absolutely true.
You know, of course — and remembering, of
course, that they’ve always been true.
So what happened in 1989, which was a pre-
— you know, pre-internet, pre-social-media
era, was that people, you know, in one Eastern
European country saw the revolution happening
next door and imitated it or imitated aspects
of it. You know, and actually you can look back
at 1848 or other revolutionary moments in
history or other, indeed, authoritarian movements
in history and you can often see countries
copying one another or importing ideas. So
ideas have always moved very fast from country
to country.
But you asked specifically about whether dissidents
are helping one another. The answer to that
is yes. There is — in some cases it’s
voluntarily. There are some groups that have
— that go out of their way to make that
happen, to make that — you know, there are
people who have dedicated themselves to explicitly
trying to learn the lessons of what makes
a successful nonviolent movement, for example,
or a successful street demonstration. And
they have tried to spread that knowledge from
one place to the next.
And by the same token, I mean — and this
again is in my book — there is no question
that both authoritarians learn from one another
and learn technologies from one another. In
some cases it’s explicit. You know, China
explicitly, for example, exports its form
of social credit, so its form of social
control, which uses social media and uses
the internet and uses spy cameras and all
kinds of things. It is explicitly exporting
that to other countries and teaching them
how to do it. So that is absolutely happening.
But it’s also — there are other — the
sort of illiberal international also functions
in a different way, which is that there are
online activists who copy one another’s
style and techniques, and sometimes even literally
repost their memes and their jokes, which
works also across borders. So there is something
like an international alt-right, which takes
some cues from the U.S. and some cues from
Europe and sometimes organizes itself even
spontaneously around themes and ideas.
I mean, there was a moment — I write about
this in the book — there was a moment when
you remember the fire at Notre Dame some months
ago. This was a moment that led to a whole
series of cross-European, you know, alt-right,
far-right memes and arguments where people
began — you know, there was a whole conspiracy
theory that Muslims had set it on fire or
that it was a curse from God about the end
of Christianity in the West. And those ideas
were repeated and reposted in multiple languages,
you know, almost in real time and
it happened very fast.
So these are now movements that can coalesce
around particular moments or pictures or videos
and pass them on quite quickly. So, you know,
one of the ironies of this moment actually
is that although, you know, it is a kind of
nationalist moment when nationalism is enjoying
a revival in a lot of countries, it’s also
a moment when it’s really never been so
clear that ideas are international and that
they’re fungible and that ways of organizing
in Thailand or Hong Kong or Belarus can be
passed from country to country.
And the openness of the internet actually,
you know, makes possible both versions of
it. As I said, it makes possible both the
kind of, you know, positive exchange of, you
know, how to use nonviolence constructively,
and it makes possible the knowledge of how
to create, you know, fear and hatred and more
social division.
Next question: what’s inspired the reaction
against liberalism in the United States and
Europe? Are elites leading this or are they
following popular cues?
That’s — I mean, that’s a chicken-and-egg
question. You know, it’s a bit of both.
I think there is a — there is a lot of disillusion
in the United States. You know, you can go
back to the financial crisis, which was a
moment when a lot of people lost faith in
the idea that many had had that people in
power — you know, they may not know a lot,
but at least they know how to run financial
markets in the United States. And this was
quite powerful, actually, outside of the U.S.,
around the world. You know, faith in American
leadership really was damaged at that moment.
You can also look to the feeling that many
had that they were left out of the arguments
in the 1990s and that the, you know, economic
changes and demographic changes didn’t include
them or they weren’t consulted. And so some
of that disillusion and sense that we’re
not heard or our voices aren’t heard does
come from the bottom.
But, you know, again, one of the things I
argue in the book is that much of that disillusion
has also been packaged and formed and sold
by elites — so by, I mean, right-wing intellectuals
or far-right intellectuals or makers of memes
or presenters on Fox News or people who’ve
thought long and hard about how to package
and sell and promote that sense of alienation
or that sense of fear, how to make people
angrier and how to make people more discontent
and how to prepare people, therefore, for
more radicalism.
And then, of course, there’s a feedback
loop whereby the efforts of the elites creates
more alienation on the ground, and then the
alienation on the ground feeds a demand for
the fear and anger that you see on Fox News.
I don’t think you can point to one another.
I think they feed into one another. And both
are important.
But, you know, normally the way political
reporting works is people immediately — everybody
wants to know what the voters think. You know,
and of course that’s where any argument
about politics has to begin. But very often
the role played by elites — and by which
I mean right-wing elites or radical elites
or extremist elites — is overlooked and
forgotten, because — and they also have
a role in channeling and formulating and giving
voice to a certain kind of negative energy.
Next question, very succinct. Could it happen
here? Is it happening here? Did it already
happen here? So basically, asking what is
the status of democracy in the United States.
How endangered is it?
So I do believe it is deeply endangered. I
believe we are at a critical moment. I believe
that this is a very critical election. I believe
there are now people inside the Republican
Party who are thinking about how to cheat
— you know, how to — how to make sure
that they don’t lose, even, you know, against
what appear to be the odds, although of course
those odds in the polls could change between
now and November. They’re thinking about
how to undermine the Post Office, as I’ve
said, to prevent people from voting. They’re
thinking about how to spin the coronavirus
to prevent people from voting, the story of
the coronavirus. You know, and I think there
are more and more people in power who are
trying to figure out how to use the organs
of the state, you know, to preserve power
or to benefit themselves.
And the — you know, the weight is — you
know, and these are — you know, the language
that’s being used and the divisive tactics
are very difficult to stop, you know. We’ve
seen a number of other — in a number of
other countries anti-populist movements have
often not succeeded because the appeal of
a message of unity or a message of niceness
or a message of let’s all be together, let’s
not be divided, sometimes the appeal of that
kind of message is just less powerful than
the appeal of fear and anger and hatred and
division.
And so the — you know, one of the things
I worry about in the — in the upcoming election
is that the — you know, the center — you
know, by which I — by which I mean the Democrats
and a part of the Republican Party — will
fail to find language that’s powerful enough
to counter the language of fear and anger
and, you know — and exaggeration.
You know, I mean, we are lucky in the United
States that we’re such a big country and
we’re such a decentralized country. We don’t
have an interior ministry, although we saw
— we had the little glimmerings of what one
might look like when we saw the sort of strange,
camouflage-wearing troops sent to Portland
a few weeks ago. We don’t have an interior
ministry and we don’t have — you know,
we’re not a centralized state. Washington
doesn’t control the police in every state.
It doesn’t control the voting systems in
every state. It doesn’t control the media
in every state the way in some much smaller
countries — you know, in Hungary, something
like 95 percent of the media is now one way
or another controlled by the government. You
know, we have — in that sense, our size
and our — and our great variety are a kind
of bulwark against authoritarianism, as are
our courts, you know, our — and the division
of power.
But it is — it’s a dangerous moment. I
mean, the Trump administration has shown how
much of what we thought was kind of baked
in, many of the rules that we thought held,
weren’t really rules or they weren’t really
laws, they were sort of norms, you know, accepted
ways in which things are done. For example,
the norm that a president publishes his tax
information and his financial information
so that we can see whether he’s influenced
by his personal interests, you know, Trump
broke that norm and has appeared to pay no
price for it. And you know, numerous other
norms, you know, over the past, you know,
three-and-a-half years have also been broken, and
at apparently no cost. And that should lead
us to question whether — you know, whether,
you know, our assumptions about — you know,
about the solidity of our democracy and the
solidity of our rules are really as — whether
those assumptions were a little too optimistic.
So I mean, you know, I don’t think democracy
in America is over. I think in a lot of ways
it’s very lively. But it’s proved to be
weaker in some ways than we thought it was.
Next question. In the United States, will
elements of Trumpism outlast Trump in the
Republican Party? Is the national conservatism
of Josh Hawley going to be dominant in the
party? And obviously, not just Josh Hawley
but Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, and others struggling
to create something that would be Trumpism
post-Trump, and that gets directly to the
point that you were just addressing about
the danger to democracy in the United States.
What’s going to happen with the Republican
Party? Is it going to become an illiberal,
nationalist, racist, white supremacist party
in perpetuity?
So I think a lot depends on the outcome of
the election — by which I mean it’s not
just about whether Trump loses, it’s about
how much he loses by, what happens in the
Senate, what happens in the House, what happens
in other down-ballot races. I think if Republicans
continue to believe that this is a winning
tactic, that this — you know, this kind
of strange white nationalism plus, you know
— plus fake populism, you know, which is
— which, in fact, benefits the wealthy rather
than the poor, whether this kind of language
continues to be popular, whether it can continue
to win votes, I think if they become convinced
of that then I think yes, it will survive.
And I think you’ve just — you’ve just
given us a list of the — of the people who
could — who could be its next leaders, you
know, and I would add some to that list. I
would add members of the Trump family — you
know, Trump Jr. — Don Trump, Jr. I would add Tucker Carlson. I would add other, you know, nonpolitical
figures who might emerge from the woodwork
and try and become leaders now that Trump
has proved that that’s possible.
So I think the — you know, watch very carefully
what happens after the election if the election
is lost, which of course there’s no guarantee
it will be. But if, you know — if it’s
lost, what happens afterwards and what conclusions
people draw. If they think that they can’t
win with these kinds of tactics, then we’ll
find perhaps a different kind of Republicanism,
one designed to appeal at least — at the
very least designed to appeal to the entire
country rather than a narrow base. We’ll
find, perhaps, that returning.
Next question. Besides voting, what is the
most important thing individuals can do to
prevent/stop those intent on authoritarianism
from winning the day?
I think the most important thing to do is
to join civic organizations. If you don’t
want to join a political party or you don’t
want to work for a political party, then work
for or join or help a get-out-the-vote campaign
or even participate somehow in your local
or neighborhood politics. I think being part
of public conversation — being on the school
board or being in the PTA or being in some
way a participant in things that we all design
jointly — is really the best way to contribute.
And you can have as much influence, as much
impact at a very narrow, local level as you
can at the national level.
And that’s been shown — you know, those
— the real building blocks of our democracy
have always been, since — you know, since
de Tocqueville first wrote about them, you
know, in the 19th century, have always been
these associations, these groups, these organizations
of people who seek to make change in their
communities, you know, for their societies.
And I think some kind of public participation
is the best thing that you can do.
Do you feel like — and this one might be
our final question — I mean, do you feel
like actually the participation that so many
people have on places like Twitter and Facebook
and other social media, is it helpful or hurtful,
or both? Because it just seems like the more
the public gets involved and the less the
gatekeepers matter, the more vitriolic the
debate has become in many ways.
So I think social media is a kind of substitution
for real participation.
OK.
It’s not — you know, by clicking something
or by talking to people online, you aren’t
actually participating. I mean, I say that —
this is such an odd moment when so much has
to happen online because of the pandemic.
But if it’s over, when it’s over — and
I hope it will someday be over — being part
of, you know, real groups that do things offline
is also really important, and making sure
that you have sources of information and sources
of connection to people that aren’t just
via random Facebook or Twitter connections
is extremely important. You know, putting
time into real organizations, into these real
institutions, that’s, I think, how democracy
is built, rather than by scrolling through
things on your phone — tempting, though,
that, of course, is for all of us to do.
Well said, even though I feel like I personally
spend way too much time scrolling through
my Twitter feed.
Yes.
Well, on that note, thanks to Anne Applebaum
for joining me in this discussion. I wish
you the best of luck with your new book, “Twilight
of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism.”
I hope that everybody listening today goes
out and buys the book. It’s not very costly
and it doesn’t take a long time to read,
and I think it really rewards a close read.
Thank you to Larry Norden and all the folks
at the Brennan Center for Justice, NYU’s
Brademas Center, NYU Votes who produced this
program. I’m Max Boot. Thank you for joining
us.
