Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, professor, and historian offers an expert guide to understanding the appeal of the strongman as a leader and an explanation for why authoritarianism is back with a menacing twenty-first century twist. Across the world today, from the Americas to Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege while populism and nationalism are on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum offers an unexpected explanation: that there is a deep and inherent appeal to authoritarianism, to strongmen, and, especially, to one-party rule--that is, to political systems that benefit true believers, or loyal soldiers, or simply the friends and distant cousins of the Leader, to the exclusion of everyone else. People, she argues, are not just ideological; they are also practical, pragmatic, opportunistic. They worry about their families, their houses, their careers. Some political systems offer them possibilities, and others don't. In particular, the modern authoritarian parties that have arisen within democracies today offer the possibility of success to people who do not thrive in the meritocratic, democratic, or free-market competition that determines access to wealth and power. Drawing on reporting in Spain, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, and Brazil; using historical examples including Stalinist central Europe and Nazi Germany; and investigating related phenomena: the modern conspiracy theory, nostalgia for a golden past, political polarization, and meritocracy and its discontents, Anne Applebaum brilliantly illuminates the seduction of totalitarian thinking and the eternal appeal of the one-party state.

Applebaum's book is a bit of a hot mess. Her underlying thesis mirrors that of The Narrow Corridor by Acemoglu and Robinson, but her approach is highly personalized and observational to the point that it feels at times to be just a venting of her internal monologue without a truly cogent structure. Much of the book is focused on a few public intellectuals she has known personally that have shifted from the center right to right wing nationalism. It's entertaining in a DC/Brussels parlour game type of way, but all feels a little too insular...

Applebaum is also a little too self referential to be taken seriously. In her point of view, she and her fellow travellers are the enlightened public thinkers, while others are cynical opportunists. The notion that the very nature of elite centrism that controlled the halls of power for generations might have its own problems, blindspots, and failures seems lost on her. Nevertheless, she makes some interesting arguments about how democratic institutions and norms can be subverted from within, with some interesting examples from central Europe.

Overall, an interesting thesis, but there many books that cover this issue more competently.

I see that a lot of people had an issue with the name dropping and evident establishment of the author's “polite conservative” street cred, I think she spent such painstaking time on that stuff because she is trying to reach a certain type of people. People on the left generally do not need to be warned about authoritarianism these days, we see it even if we suck at fighting it, both the one within (let us be honest with ourselves the left can be extremely carceral at times and thus we cannot ignore that these tendencies are within us too) and the one on the outside and she is aware of that. By and large this book does not offer solutions it tries to bring to people's attention the urgency in which we find ourselves and calls us to not fall into doomerism/apathy. Yes, it's from a vehemently center-right-liberal position which occasionally resorts to false adequations to offer a lukewarm takes that can range from the mildly-infuriating to the eyeroll inducing but I think it is done in full awareness of who it is attempting to speak to.
It's a decent book, at times it feels like having a chat with someone while you're both stuck waiting for something, you don't necessarily agree with them but they're not offensive or unpleasant enough that you would take umbrage to what they're saying and occasionally it gets a little deeper. It's a way of speaking/thinking that even the author recognizes as disappearing from public discourse and it's worth the read be it just to remember that there are times where it is still an option.