{"id":9317,"date":"2020-08-28T23:59:31","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T23:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/?p=9317"},"modified":"2026-08-27T04:07:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T04:07:52","slug":"the-lure-of-totalitarianism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/2020\/08\/28\/the-lure-of-totalitarianism\/","title":{"rendered":"The lure of totalitarianism"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>he American journalist and historian Anne Applebaum starts her brief\u2014yet punch-packing\u2014memoir with an account of the Millennium Eve party that she and her husband, the former Polish Defence Minister Radek Sikorski, threw in their mansion in a remote Polish village.<\/span><\/p>\n

The mood, recalls Applebaum, was buoyant (although, with characteristic diligence, she abandoned the festivities for an hour to write a newspaper column about Boris Yeltsin\u2019s resignation, before returning to party until dawn). The guests, including several junior members of the Polish government, were mainly from \u201cthe Right\u201d, which Applebaum defines as anti-Communist, free-market liberals, believing in \u201cdemocracy, in the rule of law, in checks and balances\u201d, embodied by such institutions as Nato and the EU. \u201cIt felt as if we were all on the same team,\u201d she writes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nearly two decades later, Applebaum throws a second party where the guest list has changed completely. She would now \u201ccross the street to avoid\u201d some of her closest friends from the original bash. Half of that party\u2019s attendees would no longer speak to the other half.<\/span><\/p>\n

Such awkwardness has become only too familiar. Across the Western world, friends and families have fallen out over their diverging views on the populism that has flourished in the past two decades, be it in the form of Brexit, Trump, Poland\u2019s Law and Justice party, Hungary\u2019s Viktor Orb\u00e1n or Spain\u2019s nationalist Vox party.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the well-connected Applebaum, this has gone a step further with many of her former friends actively backing alt-right regimes and policies. One now peddles online antisemitic conspiracy theories. Another with a gay son vocally toadies to Orb\u00e1n\u2019s homophobic regime. Then there\u2019s Boris Johnson, Applebaum\u2019s former colleague and, apparently, friend\u2014despite her description of his \u201coutsized narcissism\u201d and \u201cremarkable laziness\u201d. She says that when an EU Referendum was being mooted, Johnson told her: \u201cNobody serious wants to leave the EU.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Why have these formerly tolerant, cosmopolitan types performed such volte-faces? Why did Johnson boot every Tory who refused to mindlessly support every aspect of Brexit from his cabinet? Why have so many Republicans stood silently for years observing Trump\u2019s falsehoods and bluster?<\/span><\/p>\n

These people aren\u2019t fearful of being economically left behind or anxious about immigrants\u2014two oft-cited reasons for the rise of populism. Applebaum posits that it is their cynical lust for power that has set us on a frightening course to a totalitarian future.<\/span><\/p>\n

She warns that: \u201cGiven the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy.\u201d In their quest to rule, \u201cilliberal politicians\u201d will ruthlessly clamp down on dissenting press, judiciary, civil service, diplomats and public broadcasters and promote sycophants.<\/span><\/p>\n

Applebaum writes pacily and engrossingly about the ascent of these former mediocrities, who far from representing the \u201cleft behind\u201d, come from elite backgrounds but\u2014often\u2014feel that their potential has so far been unrecognised. She doesn\u2019t name them but several British journalists who in recent years have embraced every alt-right cause from climate-change denial to the supposed uselessness of face coverings spring to mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

At times her pessimism seems over-the-top. She herself points out the US constitution is designed with checks and balances to hobble corrupt leaders, and while Johnson\u2019s regime may share some tactics with Orb\u00e1n\u2019s, in other respects it is hardly comparable.<\/span><\/p>\n

She fails to acknowledge the irony of the fact that she deplores the \u201crestorative nostalgia\u201d of the leaders evoking a greatness that never existed, while simultaneously yearning for the days of Thatcher and Reagan. And, possibly because it is already so well documented, she pays only lip service to the most startling change to our society since those halcyon days; the inexorable rise of arguably the world\u2019s true despots\u2014Facebook\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter\u2019s Jack Dorsey. Their algorithmic echo chambers have helped \u201cmake everyone very angry\u201d, something the likes of Dominic Cummings\u2014a name you sense Applebaum can hardly bear to type\u2014has been quick to exploit.<\/span><\/p>\n

The book concludes with coronavirus, which led Orb\u00e1n to decree journalists who criticised his government\u2019s handling of the pandemic should be jailed. We could see a lot more of this. But perhaps, Applebaum wonders, the common enemy of a virus could bring us to a turning point. Her Generation-Z sons\u2014many of whose idealistic friends made up the guest list at party two\u2014are fighting for a new era of global solidarity.<\/span><\/p>\n

As befits a wishy-washy centrist, Applebaum can\u2019t tell us which future is more likely and herein lies the problem. Fellow liberals will nod approvingly at her honest ambivalence yet the many who find the \u201ccacophony and complexity\u201d inherent in democracy too difficult to deal with will look elsewhere for reassurances that may be untrue but that one of Applebaum<\/span>\u2019<\/b><\/span>s former friends will still be delighted to provide.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of\u00a0<\/b><\/span>Politics and the Parting of Friends
\n<\/b><\/span>By Anne Applebaum
\n<\/i><\/span>Allen Lane, 224pp, \u00a316.99<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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