Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

Applebaum notes that the “authoritarian-nationalist, antidemocratic wave” emerged in the past decade (55), not in 1989 with the fall of the Soviet Union when it might have been expected. She cites a Greek political scientist, Stathis Kalyvas, as saying that anti-democratic movements are the rule, not the exception. Since the fall of aristocracy, Applebaum argues, societies have tried to decide “who gets to rule—who is the elite” (59). Liberal democracy and capitalism now serve this purpose. Since they often leave people behind, Applebaum writes, some are “going to challenge the value of the competition itself” (59). She argues it is an issue not just for specific countries, but for democracies across the world.

Moving on to Britain, Applebaum describes how Boris Johnson, the future prime minister of Britain, used to write for the conservative English newspaper Daily Telegraph. For the newspaper, he deliberately wrote false stories about the bureaucracy of the European Union, for example claiming the European Union was going to try to ban double-decker buses. The stories about the European Union struck a chord with conservative English people who had “a nostalgia” for “a world in which England made the rules” (63). However, when he was mayor of London, Johnson would note that nobody in power wanted Britain to leave the European Union.