American Thought Leaders - How Free Societies Fall for Totalitarian Temptations: Ryszard Legutko

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Ryszard Legutko fought for freedom in Poland as an underground editor in the anti-communist Solidarity movement. But after democracy was restored in Poland, he began seeing trends he didn’t expect i...n not just Poland, but many other liberal democracies as well.A professor, philosopher, and most recently a politician, Ryszard Legutko explains his findings in his book “The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 The freedom that we have is being more and more restricted and the legal system is being more and more repressive. Ryszard Legutko fought for freedom in Poland as an underground editor in the Solidarity Movement. But after democracy was restored in Poland, he began seeing something he didn't expect. There are some tendencies that remind me of what was happening under the communist regime. I find it really astonishing.
Starting point is 00:00:27 He observed that despite being free, liberal democracies display some unsettling characteristics. There is some kind of convergence of the totalitarian tendencies which we had under communism. A professor, philosopher, and most recently a politician, Rishad Legutko explains his argument in his book, The Demon in Democracy. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Starting point is 00:00:55 Rishad Legutko, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you for having me. I've been reading your book, The Demon in Democracy, and you make some pretty startling observations. And I actually want to start there because you're issuing a challenge to liberal democracy itself. It's kind of shocking. I mean, obviously, it's the best system we have, right? Well, not necessarily. Well, the book has several layers, but the main point I'm making is that the political system which is called liberal democracy, which you find here in the States or in Europe, Western, Eastern, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, that this system resembles more and tendencies which we had under communism,
Starting point is 00:02:15 some kind of despotic tendencies in the countries I mentioned, all considered to be liberal democratic. We shouldn't be deluded by the names, by the terminology. If something is called liberal, it does not mean that it expresses the spirit of liberty or if something is called democratic it doesn't mean that it implies the rule of the people we live in a time where manipulation of language is a widespread sort of phenomenon so don't think about the words.
Starting point is 00:03:06 Think about the reality, which is behind those words. Well, I mean, what's fascinating, you make a point very early in the book where you say, you know, if I was in communism, and you were, by the way, right? Of course, you were an editor of a very prominent underground magazine, Arca. You were very familiar with the realities of this system, and you saw the transition through 89. But you say, in under communism, I wouldn't be able to write my book, right?
Starting point is 00:03:36 Right. Yeah, sure. I mean, in some ways, you're appreciative of liberal democracy, actually. The point I'm making is not that these two systems are identical. That would be preposterous. What I'm saying is that there are some tendencies that remind me of what was happening under the communist regime, and I find it most disquieting. I find it really astonishing. And the sooner we realize that these tendencies exist, the better, because we could change things
Starting point is 00:04:23 if we still live in this illusion that this is the best of all possible worlds when we will discover that this is not the case it might be too late another observation that you made was that and this i guess this is one of the things that got you started thinking about all this, is that 1989 happens, we have the roundtable, and then on the other side, democracy happens. But the communists, many of them just very neatly and seamlessly transition into some kind of social democrats, and actually are quite successful in working in the system. Meanwhile, some people who are anti-communists, perhaps from Solidarność Valcząca or one of these groups which are explicitly anti-communist, they have a lot of trouble, which isn't what you expected.
Starting point is 00:05:15 Icky, tell me a little bit about that. That was something that struck me when I became a member of the European Parliament, which was I think 2009, and when I saw former communists, former apparatchiks adapting themselves to the system, accommodating, being accepted as exemplary Europeans, liberal, perfect, impeccable liberal Democrats, whereas people like myself were considered to be a sort of troublemakers, people that shouldn't be there in the first place, because we have some weird ideas right about I don't know family okay or
Starting point is 00:06:14 tradition European tradition or nation-state things like these so what So, what I saw was the rule of one political coalition, one political party in a way, and the hands of liberal left since the very beginning, at least for quite a long time, and they impose one and the same ideology. If you are a dissenter, you are considered to be a dangerous person, and you are surrounded by a cordon sanitaire. Thank God you're not incarcerated or arrested, but you are ou something that contradicts the principles of the modern democratic state, as it is described in the books, in theories, right? Democracy should be a system for everybody. We compete. We, that is, political groups compete. We want to attract if you will, population, and we represent the interest. We have our ideas. We have been delegated to advance certain principles, but we cannot do it because we are not accepted as part of the system. So this is extremely, I would say, dangerous. Especially this quasi one-party rule. You can see that what has happened over the last decades, especially in European politics,
Starting point is 00:08:48 is the disappearance of the traditional division between the left and the right, that is the party of change and the party of continuity. European politics for a long time was determined by a conflict, a competition, right, between those two political orientations. Now you don't have it anymore. After 1968, symbolically speaking, of course, the European politics shifted radically to the left, the right is no longer considered to be a legitimate part of the political life. So the difference between today's right and today's left is very small. I would say it's negligible. The Tories and the Labour in Britain, are they different? The Tories is really a leftist party.
Starting point is 00:10:07 At least its leaders are. Take Christian Democrats in Germany. Christian Democrats are Christian Democrats by name only. And their agenda is the leftist agenda. Same-sex marriage was introduced in England by the Conservatives, in France by the Socialists, in Germany by Christian Democrats and the left by the Grand Coalition. That's the common agenda and you can take all the items one by one and you see that the differences are really negligible. So what you have is some kind of what somebody called extreme center,
Starting point is 00:10:58 right, extreme center which is the leftist agenda which is considered to be the only one that is legitimate, that is acceptable, and whoever does not accept it is surrounded by a colonel sanitaire. And what you explore in the democracy is that somehow this phenomenon might actually be inherent to the system, to liberal democracy itself. One of the things you talk about, and this is where you challenge my assumptions, is, well, you said a similarity. In communism, communism is a process. It's also the end in itself. This is where we're heading
Starting point is 00:11:45 towards the perfect communism, and you can't challenge the goodness of communism, right? And so with liberal democracy, similarly, you said, actually, this is a very similar situation. So in that sense, it's a totalizing system. I don't know if it's the exact words you used, but that's what I got out of it. And I thought to myself, my goodness, I actually, in my own mind, I don't feel like I can challenge liberal democracy as a concept. No, obviously that's a good, obviously that's good, right? This is my own kind of self-reflection, right? And it becomes kind of a blind spot because, like you said, language can be changed, right? And that affects us all.
Starting point is 00:12:29 Yeah, we are too much attached to words and we react to words, to certain slogans, and do not see reality behind those words. This was fascinating, something that you mentioned that, I mean it just didn't occur to me, but in communism, communism politicizes everything, right? But you make a really good point that just inherently, inherent to liberal democracy, we're voting about everything, or we're electing people to vote about it.
Starting point is 00:12:58 We're politicizing everything too, in fact, right? Yeah, we politicize, that's exactly one of the points I meant. Yes, exactly. This system initially should have retained and preserved a lot of non-political areas. Just let people do what they want. There are certain areas of life that should be protected against the intrusion, the political interference. But that's not
Starting point is 00:13:40 the case, for the reasons which I will not go into. But as under the Communists, everything had to be Communist. Communist, not just family, but Communist family. Not morality, but Communist morality. Not art, but Communist art, and so on and so on. So now everything has to be liberal democratic or liberal or democratic or liberal democratic. I mean, art is not democratic, right? Family is not a democratic institution. It's a hierarchical institution. So trying to democratize family is, in fact, a step towards the destruction of the family.
Starting point is 00:14:54 Schools, universities are inherently hierarchic, or I will use this word, which is a hateful word nowadays, aristocratic, right? In the original etymological sense, right? Aristos in Greek means the best. It's not hereditary, aristocracy, of course. So these are aristocratic institutions, hereditary. They are teachers and they are pupils, disciples.
Starting point is 00:15:26 They are the masters and those who try to follow the masters and learn from them. All these things are necessary for the well functioning of the society. And really we live in a society that is more and more politicized, which is the same, ideologized, right? Ideology. You see political ideology. You go to a theatre without not being exposed to, I don't know, woke emancipation, racism,
Starting point is 00:16:09 repression. You cannot go to a university without being exposed to the same language, the same political ideology and literature and everything is the same, right? You cannot read the papers without having the same ideas pumped into your head all the time. So this is something extremely dangerous. And the consequence of it is, of course, that if you dissent from what is acceptable, if you dissent from the ideological directives, you are in trouble. You may lose your job, right? You may be reprimanded.
Starting point is 00:17:07 There are some countries where you can be arrested well at the very least looked at with suspicion as opposed to just kind of another normal member if somebody told me 10-15 years ago that it would be possible to have a liberal democratic system in which you can go to jail for using a wrong personal pronoun. I would consider him insane. I mean, this is impossible.
Starting point is 00:17:41 What was impossible is now possible. You may go to jail for, which is in this newspeak called misgendering, right? This is simply outrageous. So in the freedom that we have is being more and more restricted. And the legal system is being more and more repressive. All these things, sooner or later, are inscribed into the legal system, into laws. So it's not only that socially you will be ostracized, or you will lose your friends. You will be repressed simply. I mean this
Starting point is 00:18:28 this is shocking. You use this term coercion to freedom so explain that to me. Well that's a that that goes back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau who had this idea that the society should be what he called Volonté Générale, the general, goals that we pursue. And there might be some people who will, mavericks, eccentrics, or troublemakers, who would say, no, no, I want it my own way. And then you can coerce them. And it is a good kind of coercion
Starting point is 00:19:31 because you coerce those people to freedom. It sounds, of course, awful now when we read this. Having all this experience, you know, Rousseau was,au was mid-18th century. You hadn't seen the application of that yet. For instance, today as toute proportion gardée we have something which is similar to what was
Starting point is 00:20:09 happening in the Soviet Union or under the communist regime that if you were one of those troublemakers who did not fit into the system did not follow the rules, right? They were outsiders or they defied the system. He was considered not only dangerous, he was considered to be sort of sick. It's a form of disease. And then he should be treated, right? He should go to hospital and some kind of medication, therapy. And we have something like this today.
Starting point is 00:20:58 Isn't that where the term re-education comes from? Yes, re-education. Now, today, if you are considered to be an unruly person, having wrong ideas, the court, I think even the management of the company, can order you to undergo a therapy. The ideas that you express are not just wrong ideas or controversial ideas or whatever. There is something wrong with you, so you have to undergo therapy.
Starting point is 00:21:34 You have to be a different person. In the Soviet Union, they sent us to the psychiatric hospital. It was called Psyhushka. You are sick, so you have to be treated by the psychiatrist. And then you will become a normal person. You will conform. So something like that is going on today. And it's considered to be normal.
Starting point is 00:22:05 Or take another example, raising consciousness. That's also the expression that goes back to the communist times. You were not aware of the blessings and the goodness of communism. So you have to undergo all sorts of courses. Well, you have to take some lessons. And the teachers were telling you, they were trying to open your eyes and see how happy you are to live under the communists and what precious and valuable message the communist ideology conveys.
Starting point is 00:22:55 I've been on this show, I've covered, for example, multiple times I bring references to Herbert Marcuse and his work around the concept of repressive tolerance. I see that as a kind of seminal work in the sense that there's this idea that certain kinds of people or certain kinds of ideas shouldn't be tolerated. They're beyond the pale, so we have to kind of struggle against them. so that's a different view. That's saying, well, this communist neo-Marxist idea or cultural Marxist idea fed into our system and that has changed how politics works.
Starting point is 00:23:39 But you're actually saying something quite different. You're saying that the seeds of all of this type of thinking that you're describing, which you're comparing with the Soviet Union, actually comes from liberal democracy itself, I think. Which is a completely different way of looking at it. In a way. I guess what I'm trying to say is, in the imagination of a whole bunch of people who had subscribed to the first option I gave you right you were sort of imagining that the communists have caught at some level sort of you know infiltrated into the Constitutional Republic of America the liberal
Starting point is 00:24:17 democracy of Canada so forth this is a different way of looking at it this is saying something like you know people who just truly believe in liberal democracy, right, that this is their vision. They may fall into this autocratic-type thinking and, you know, coercive policy and so forth outside of needing any of that, right? That's what I mean. Yeah, I understand. I would say this is's what I mean. Yeah, I understand.
Starting point is 00:24:46 I would say this is both. I mean, because, yes, Marxism or neo-Marxism infiltrated and became a part of today's culture in liberal democratic society. But you're right that my argument was slightly different. But let's take first liberalism and democracy because I think it would make it make clear why why is it that liberalism may result in a kind of despotic system. I don't believe that liberalism is about liberty.
Starting point is 00:25:29 And when I say that, I do not mean today's liberalism. I mean liberalism as such. John Locke, John Stuart Mill, all the big guys from the liberal tradition. The liberal would say something like this. We defend freedom. And freedom is
Starting point is 00:25:52 that is the absence of coercion. Freedom is like having free space where you can do whatever you like. You may smoke a cigarette having free space where you can do whatever you like, right? You may smoke a cigarette or you can refuse to smoke a cigarette.
Starting point is 00:26:19 We want to be safe in our homes, in our private life. Whenever we go, we like to have this free space to do what we like, of course. And now if you want to introduce or establish a liberal order, then you have to distribute this freedom, right? So that everybody is happy with the freedom they have. And how do you do that? Who's responsible for distribution of freedom, of distribution of these free spaces for each person or each community? And the liberals would say, well, we are in favor of freedom.
Starting point is 00:27:00 And then I would say, why you? I mean, why do you put yourselves above everyone else? If you distribute freedom, that means you claim for yourself quite a menacing power. I mean, there are several other groups who also can be responsible for that. And then what is the criteria of distributing freedom? And most of the answers is equality. That is, everybody should have more or less the same amount of freedom. Now that is again another controversial, if not dangerous, notion. You have a society that is somehow historically structured. That is you have, for instance, you have a Christian society, in the sense that the society that was created or evolved in the Christian tradition, and you have powerful Christian communities, you have Christian institutions. Now, if you as a liberal are in control of the society,
Starting point is 00:28:17 then the power that you have gives you the opportunity or the instruments to say, no, you have too much freedom, right? You Christians have too much freedom. Those guys, I don't know, Buddhists or whatever, right, have little. So we take some freedom from Christians and give it to Buddhists. Or heterosexual men have too much freedom. The space they have for themselves is too big. But homosexual men have too little. So you see, liberalism is in fact a kind of social engineering. And it may be very brutal because it implies restructuring, even recycling of the society. That is, liberalism is not about live and let live.
Starting point is 00:29:18 It's this constant restructuring of the society always in the name of freedom. David Plylar, Right. Now you're answering the question, coercion to freedom again. And democracy, well, democracy is again a very, well, interesting and complicated notion. I will not go into it. But America was considered, I mean America,
Starting point is 00:29:47 the United States, right? Was considered to be the first democratic nation. And I recommend the book, classical, right? The book on the states, Democracy in America by Tocqueville, right? A French aristocrat who visited the United States in the early 1830s, and he wrote a book which is kind of... Seminal. Seminal, yeah.
Starting point is 00:30:21 Well, I was going to say, it's the first modern democracy. Of course, we have the demos from... Right, right. Of course, of course. And he was very much in favor of what he saw. You can find some beautiful passages about how Americans in democracy they build up, they organize themselves. There's energy and all this.
Starting point is 00:30:51 But then the book ends with a sort of prediction which is very disconcerting. I mean this system can develop into something new for which, he says, for which I have no name, but this is a new despotism, which he called despotism bienveillant à tout, despotism that is benevolent and mild. and that people will sort of lose their will and will be satisfied with the pleasures, with fun they will have, entertainment, and they will lose their will and they will be controlled by this benevolent despot, bureaucracy, modern state, or corporations, or whatever.
Starting point is 00:31:50 And then there's a series of books which shows that this is something that democracy can generate, and often generates, a mass society where people are really indistinguishable from one another. They are the products of corporations, fashion. They dress the same. They use the same language, the same expression. Their imaginations are more or less alike
Starting point is 00:32:28 because they are fed by the same images so all these things are happening and you cannot be satisfied with the notion that it is the best of all political systems
Starting point is 00:32:44 by the way it is not the best of all political systems. By the way, it is not the best of all political systems. When the book was published, one of the criticisms that was usually raised, if you are not dissatisfied, if you are dissatisfied with liberal democracy, what, pray, is the alternative? Give me the alternative. What do you want? And I say, well, I'm not very original. I'm in favor of something with which the Greeks, the ancient Greeks, Plato and Aristotle,
Starting point is 00:33:21 called the mixed regime. That is a system that is sort of structurally pluralistic. By the way, I think the United States was constructed, I mean the system of course, was constructed basically as a mixed regime by the framers, right, those who wrote the Constitution and who set up the system. But 50 or 60 years later, Tocqueville did not see the mixed regime. What he saw was democracy.
Starting point is 00:34:02 But if you read the Federalist Papers, people like Madison, you see that they were all very well educated people, educated on classical political thought. They did not want America to become democracy. They wanted America to become republic. That was their word, right? Republic. And that was some kind of a mixed regime. The president being American president, having enormous power,
Starting point is 00:34:35 was sort of equivalent of the king, right? Senate was to be, I don't know, equivalent of the Council of the Elders as it was in ancient systems. And of course the House of Representatives was the representatives of the demos. So these ideas were very much alive and the framers of the American system found them inspiring and most of the countries in Europe
Starting point is 00:35:12 Britain, Britain was a monarchy but Montesquieu when he wrote about Britain he said it's a sort of republic formally it's a monarchy but it's a republic in the sense of mixed regime. The word politia, which the Greeks used, was translated into Latin by the word repubblica, republic. So this idea of mixed regime was quite, I would say,
Starting point is 00:35:43 entrenched in political thought. Later on we became infatuated with the notion of liberal democracy and it made our minds very dogmatic and we do not want to discuss these things because immediately somebody will accuse you of being illiberal or anti-democratic and a Nazi, a fascist. So you better shut up. A lot of people prefer to shut up
Starting point is 00:36:18 than risk being in trouble. I recently was looking at what the most popular texts being read in the U.S. and Canada are. And you have, you know, Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto, always near the top. The Bible's also near the top.
Starting point is 00:36:36 You know, it's sad that de Tocqueville's Democracy in America isn't near the top because it's a very, you know, I guess a very apropos. It's a fantastic book. Right. Absolutely. One of the fundamental things.
Starting point is 00:36:50 It would be helpful because it provides, it shows the great, you know, the wonder and the beauty. It also shows, you know, the possible outcome that he's already kind of seeing beginning. It's fascinating. So one thing that you've written that really struck me is you said, you know, the idea of human beings having inalienable rights is counterintuitive and extremely difficult to justify. I just take it for granted. Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a. It sounds very illiberal. It sounds blasphemous. Sacrilege.
Starting point is 00:37:33 Yeah, it's a vital part of the American creed, right? We hold these truths, we serve evidence that all men are created equal and are endowed by the creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I find it very strange. Why is it self-evident? Self-evident for whom?
Starting point is 00:37:55 You do not find it anywhere. It's not one of those tautologies like two plus two is four. It's not a Christian notion. It's not in the Bible. It's not in the theological tradition. It's not in the classical philosophy. It's not self-evident at all. I mean, why should we have any civil rights? You may say that for people, for human development, for life, you have to have some liberty, freedom, because it's an indispensable condition for a decent human being. But there are other things also that are essential for development. The ancient sages talked about virtue, courage, wisdom, spiritual sensitivity. So all these things are important. Now if you define a human being by the concept of rights, it means by the mere fact that you are born, you can make certain claims. And I don't see why.
Starting point is 00:39:33 It's like in hereditary aristocracy. You could make certain claims because you are born in a good family or considered to be a good family. You could have, I don't know, slaves, right? You could have all sorts of riches because, well, you were born into a rich family. But the true aristocracy was different. There is the saying, noblesse oblige.
Starting point is 00:40:08 If you are a nobleman and have aspiration to be a good human being, well developed human being, you are defined more by duties, by obligations, not by rights. Yes, you have to defend your freedom, but freedom is all these things, all these virtues, and all these duties to your loved ones, your family, your country, your community, to truth, beauty, and all these things. I mean, this is how a human being should be defined not by rights, especially that
Starting point is 00:40:49 the rights have derailed, nowadays you have the multiplicity of rights, rights killing rights you have people talking about rights, freedom of speech is diminishing. It was considered to be the essential right. But now it's argued that it infringes on other rights, basically.
Starting point is 00:41:17 Well, it infringes on the rights that are the expression of power of one group, right? If people hope at the beginning, the declaration of human rights, that this will somehow make us safer, that our freedoms will be guaranteed, it didn't work. We have less and less freedom. Or a right to life, right? Abortion is everywhere. So, right to life? I mean everywhere so right to life i mean it's a laughing stock doesn't exist in in most of the countries so this did not really function well because i think the notion itself is is misconceived it's uh It's not defensible
Starting point is 00:42:06 because it makes a wrong assumption about human beings. We are not rights-bearing entities. We are more than that. Your book, The Demon in Democracy, is an incredible, I think, contribution to thought because I don't think anybody would disagree that there's something wrong at present with our democratic systems, the way they function.
Starting point is 00:42:32 There would probably be strong agreement on all fronts on this question, right? And I think you provide some very insightful ways to try to understand where some of those things went wrong. That's why I want to encourage our viewers to actually read your book. Any final thoughts as we finish? Well, I think the basics, we have to start from politics. I mean, one way to start was, of course, politics,
Starting point is 00:43:01 because politics now is everywhere. Politics is about equilibrium, that we should regain this equilibrium. That is, again, the party of change, the party of continuity. There should be an option, an alternative, right, between the left and the right. Not one mainstream. And whoever does not belong to the mainstream
Starting point is 00:43:34 is a Nazi, right? Or a fool or an insane person that should be treated by psychiatrists. or an insane person that should be treated by a psychiatrist. So I think this is basic. There should be some balance. And that's where democratic politics works. We should have a choice whether we
Starting point is 00:44:02 want to move towards more radical change or whether we want to rather stick to the continuity, conserving what we have, making some adjustments. This is the natural political process. If we have only one direction, and this is what is called extreme center, radicals, right? Radicals having power and making more and more crazy things, crazy experiments with then we are on the slippery slope and the system will become more and more despotic and that has to be prevented. So choice, equilibrium, some kind of political and ideological balance.
Starting point is 00:45:01 This is a healthy political structure. If we don't have it, then the system will degenerate. Well, Professor Richard Legutko, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you. It's been a pleasure for me. Thank you all for joining Professor Richard Legutko and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.

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