Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

Applebaum begins the chapter by comparing the current political moment to the Dreyfus affair in France that began in 1894. During the Dreyfus affair, French society was divided by the debate over a Jewish army captain, Alfred Dreyfus, who was arrested and convicted on the charge of being a German spy. The charge would later be disproven. However, there were what Applebaum terms clercs who resorted to outright deception to maintain the argument that Dreyfus was guilty, and they characterized their opponents as not true French (173-75). More than an argument over one man’s innocence or guilt, it became about “two versions of the nation, this disagreement about ‘who we are’” (175). On one side there was a France “based on rational thought, rule of law, and integration with Europe” (177), while the other showed a socially conservative, rigidly nationalist France.

Applebaum describes another party she helped host in August of 2019. It was a diverse party with people of different social and national backgrounds. Her encounters with the guests made Applebaum think, “Europe, America, and the world are full of people—urban and rural, cosmopolitan and provincial—who have creative and interesting ideas about how to live in a world that is both more fair and more open” (182). Applebaum sees the coronavirus epidemic as a possible “turning point”: It might spur on the collapse of democracy in the West or cause a revival of institutions and global cooperation (185-86). Still, Applebaum finds comfort in the fact that since ancient times history has shown periods of optimism and periods of despair and that liberal democracies “always required some tolerance for cacophony and chaos” (189).