Everybody is lying to you

A couple days ago Steve Inskeep of NPR’s Morning Edition talked to Anne Applebaum about her book Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism.

Applebaum begins the book by discussing some of her Polish friends. She lives there part of the time. Twenty years ago these friends were very much in favor of democracy for a country that had been freed from Soviet domination only ten years before. But now those same friends support Poland’s authoritarian ruling party. Across the globe there is a rise in authoritarianism and fragility in democracies. This isn’t just a problem in Poland. She wanted to figure out how and why her friends changed. She said during the talk:

And what they want to create is a kind of one-party state where they want to eliminate a lot of debate. They want to control press and universities. They want to politicize institutions throughout the country of all kinds. And, you know, the question is, who are those people? And how did they come to believe that those things were preferable? So the book is partly about them.

Alas, this talk didn’t get to that last question. Even so, she did have a few other things worth mentioning. Such as:

So in the book, I talk a lot about conspiracy theories because it was the creation of a conspiracy theory that originally brought both the Law and Justice Party in Poland to power as well as Donald Trump. In Trump's case, it was birtherism (ph), which is the theory that Barack Obama was not really American and, therefore, was an illegitimate president. In Poland, it was the theory that a plane crash that killed a previous president of the country had been secretly caused - it's sort of not even clear why - either by the Russians or by the Polish government at the time.

And if you think about it, you know, in both cases, what were these conspiracy theories telling people? - you know, that, look; there is a - everybody is lying to you. Congress, the White House, the justice system, the media - they're all lying to you. The president is illegitimate. And you're being lied to and not told the truth about it. And in the case of Poland, it was, the president was murdered by his own government. And you're not being told the truth about it. And, you know, once you can convince people to believe that, then you can convince them that everything else is fake and false and that all of these institutions need to be destroyed.

And …

Well, let's be clear, almost every democracy in history ended in authoritarianism, starting with ancient Greece and Rome. Some of the most brilliant writings on what ends democracy come from Cicero, you know, from Roman writers. When - in fact, when the American Founding Fathers wrote our founding documents and our Constitution, they had those Roman examples in their heads. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were writing to one another about Cicero all the way up until the ends of their lives.

So everybody who founded and created democratic systems has always been aware of how fragile they can be. They require something almost, you know, that goes against human nature. Namely, they require all of us to allow our political enemies to rule, you know? We are going to let them rule for a while. And then we're going to try and beat them back and take power from them through using these legal methods. And, you know, if you think about it, that's a tough ask. That doesn't mean it has to fail, but it means that it can.

I wasn’t quite satisfied with all that, so I looked up the book on Barnes and Noble (I don’t do Amazon). The book was published only three days ago so there aren’t any reader reviews yet. From the overview on the B&N page for the book:

In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else.

Despotic leaders do not rule alone; they rely on political allies, bureaucrats, and media figures to pave their way and support their rule. The authoritarian and nationalist parties that have arisen within modern democracies offer new paths to wealth or power for their adherents. Applebaum describes many of the new advocates of illiberalism in countries around the world, showing how they use conspiracy theory, political polarization, social media, and even nostalgia to change their societies.

The “loyal to the exclusion of everyone else” – yes, the appeal to the in-crowd is supremacy.