Dan Snow's History Hit - How Democracy Dies

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

I was thrilled to be joined on the podcast by the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, Anne Applebaum. Anne's written extensively on Marxism–Leninism, the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe, and was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West. In this podcast we asked big questions about democracy - does it still appeal to us, and where does it stand in the modern world?Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Anne Applebaum is one of the writers that I admire most. She's a phenomenal intellect, she writes beautifully. She's been on the podcast before, she's a great talker. She's told me all about the Ukrainian famine. Go back and check out that episode. But now she's on talking about the twilight of democracy. Kind of depressing, this one.

About the growing authoritarian strain which is attacking many Western democracies, many democracies around the world. She points out some democracies have collapsed hungary poland turkey the u.s isn't looking too hopeful at the moment and britain has got its problems as well and so she tells this story of how and why this strain of authoritarianism came to be embraced celebrated by members of the elites in all these countries. Not the left behind, not the people that were feeling the pain after the great crash of 2008, but by affluent,

self-conscious members of the ruling class who sought in their political interest to dispense with democratic ways of doing things, with norms and decades-old practices. It's a fascinating podcast. She's a wonderful thinker. I hope you enjoy this. You can go back and listen to our other podcast, as I said, if you subscribe to History Hit TV. It's my digital history channel, historyhit.tv. You go there, you sign up with the code POD1, P-O-D-1, and you get a month for free, and then you get a second month for just one pound, euro, or dollar. We've got documentaries on there from the Stone Age to the Nuclear Age. We've got hundreds of podcasts, hundreds of audio shows, and hundreds of video shows as well. It'd be great to have you subscribe. It's some way you can support everything we're doing here at History Hit.

We're getting bigger all the time, we're growing, and it's a very, very exciting time. In the meantime, here is Anne Applebaum. Anne, thank you so much. Great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you. Delighted to be here. You had me up all night, I'm afraid. I read your book in one sitting, and then I tossed and turned after that. Such a remarkable personal and political journey over the last 30 years. The big question I kept coming back to is, why were elites that were prospering so much in the 90s? I mean,

listeners to this podcast will be so familiar with me talking about the 90s and how history had finished and it was all very relaxed and Clinton and Blair and everything. And why did some people who were doing so well in that period, affluent, booming economy, lack of geopolitical competition, so British, Americans, Europeans, why did they become disenchanted with what in retrospect we may look back on as one of the most extraordinary decades in the history of the world? If you were a white affluent Western, particularly male, let's say, why did that particular group or some of them get so disenchanted with it? That's the question behind the whole book and there isn't a single answer to it. You know, look, the book began with me starting to think about people who I know and people who I'd been friends with in the 90s,

which was a moment, as you say, when there was this sense of unity. You know, the Cold War was over. We all kind of agreed about which way things should go, which direction our societies should go in. We should become, you know, democracy was the only thinkable political system and global integration was the only path forward. But as you say, there were some people who even then were beginning to lose faith. And there are a number of answers. One of the answers, when I look back at my Polish friends from that time, and that's where the book begins, is that the system as it was created then

was not favorable to them. In other words, in Poland, there were all these systems of competition were created after 1989, kind of political competition, economic competition, meritocratic competition inside the civil service, for example. And some people did not succeed to the degree that they expected to succeed. They felt that they were owed more. They were the real patriots. They were the people who were truly loyal to the country. And somehow all these scruffy businessmen were doing better than they were. And so there was a kind of sense that they weren't sufficiently recognized.

There's another feeling that begins in the 90s and that deepens over the subsequent decade, which is one that I describe as a kind of cultural despair, that in this process of modernization and integration and globalization, we're losing something essential about our society. You know, I think it's very pertinent to Britain, actually, that something is disappearing, something is being lost. pertinent to Britain, actually, that something is disappearing, something is being lost. And this is actually a feeling that has come with modernization at different times in history. And in fact, the word cultural despair wasn't my invention. It's the invention of a German

historian who wrote about Germany in the 19th century. You know, there was this moment when people felt like, well, we, okay, we have this democracy, but these leaders are mediocre and there are no more great men and there are no more great men, and there's no more great victories. And, you know, it's felt that this lack of grandeur and glory in world politics, you know, now we're all we're just arguing about is petty trade deals, and there's no big cause to attach yourself to. And I think that was the other piece of the story. You know, it's almost as if once they had won, and this is particularly true, my book is a book about kind of intellectuals or politicians or, you know, you can call them elites if you want on the right. And I think for them in particular, this, you know, we won the Cold War, now what? You know, now what's the next battle to fight? battle to fight. Yeah, I think, you know, you mentioned Simon Heffer in the book. There's other thinkers like Peter Hitchens here in the UK, people recognise. And in the States,

obviously, very notable people on the right. And I keep coming back to it. It's like, but you guys won. You know, even when Tony Blair, the left one, even when Bill Clinton, even when Barack Obama won, it's still a very centrist, arguably post-Reagan, post-Thatcher party of the left. Like, what do you guys want? There's never been a better time to be a multi-millionaire white guy in the history of the known universe. There's never been a better time. The Queen is safe on her throne in the UK. Like, what do you want? Like, it's fascinating the anarchy that these people have tipped us into, which, as is the way anarchy goes, is likely to sweep away much they hold dear. As you saw, potentially, you know, you're Jeremy Corbyn,

of course, in the UK, and you're Bernie Sanders you know, your Jeremy Corbyn, of course, in the UK, and your Bernie Sanders in the US. It's almost like they've been provoked by the disenchantment of these people on the right who didn't know what they had till it was gone. It's like a pop song. If we return to the people who I talk about in Britain, I mean, I talked about Simon Heffer and I talked about Roger Scruton, and I think, you know, both of them are people who, again,

feel that some essential Englishness has been lost and something that was special and unique about England is in danger of disappearing. And it's disappearing. I mean, in Roger's case, I mean, I think he eventually came to blame forces of capitalism, in fact. In Simon's case, he came to blame the European Union. Those are two people in the book, by the way, who I think of as very sincere. I mean, they are people who had these deeply felt beliefs. But then there are other people who manipulated that deep feeling, which they detected in the culture, you know, which was expressed particularly well by Simon and Roger. But there were other people who then manipulated that feeling and used it to win power. I mean, you know, look, I don't think

Boris Johnson had a deep feeling that, you know, something has been lost in England. He was perfectly happy with England as it was. He just wanted to be prime minister, you know. The book is about how people then manipulate these deep dissatisfactions and then use them to do politics and win power. Let's deal with the non-cynical group, the people that are genuinely helped to provide lots of the intellectual firepower of this movement. In Spain, you mentioned, of course,

Pone, the US. I was very struck by similarities with Margaret Millen, who I know is a friend of yours. Her book on Germany, on the outbreak of the First World War, this sense that decision makers in Germany went, it was a good time to be German. They'd won. I mean, they were killing it. The Germans were on the way to becoming one of the most significant military and industrial powers on earth. And yet the German ruling elite, all older men, had this terrible sense of decline, of the darkness closing in, of the rise of socialism. And they precipitated, in order to head those kind of phantasms off, they precipitated the complete destruction of their entire world. And I wonder whether there's a problem here with just men growing old.

Like, I just think, you know, the world was better when I was 21. And I feel like that, you know, and it does feel like that before we get onto the economy and technology, which I want to talk about, it feels like there's a very human thing. As you say, having won, they felt an emptiness that they had to try and fill with other enemies. There is something to that. So again, the book is about what happened after the great victory of the Cold War. And this is, again, what for the center right, it was a moment of great victory. And, you know, having won this, you know, if you look at Poland and Hungary, this kind of apocalyptic battle between, you know, good and evil and defeated finally the evil empire and the Soviet troops finally withdrew from their countries. Then suddenly

they found themselves arguing about, I don't know, interest rates and housing prices, which is what normal, successful and prosperous societies talk about. And for a lot of people, that was insufficient. You know, what is the next great battle? We were on the cutting edge of saving civilization. And now we're just going to talk about where our children go to school and pension funds, you know. And I think for a lot of people, there was a sense of lacking a cause. I mean, I mean, I think you've pinpointed exactly the piece of the story that holds all these different countries together. You know, we're talking about, as you say, people who won, and then discovered that the world of prosperity and gradual integration and so on was not glorious enough anymore.

And you throw in a healthy mix of strange historiographical Roman Empire declinism about how the empire fell apart because they all got too sort of soft and corrupt, which we now think is nonsense. And I remember arguing with people, they're saying, oh, you know, young people only care about X Factor and, you know, Pop Idol, whatever. And I say, but that's great, don't you see? When young people have got pictures of fighter pilots on the wall, you know you've got a massive problem on your hands. But there's a sort of nostalgia for the vigour of those times. It's very, very dark.

Let me ask, because we should also talk about the economic collapse of 2008, particularly because we're going through another once-in-a-lifetime event now, only 10 years later, just over 10 years later. We shouldn't probably do down the dislocation, the pain that that caused. Yes. I mean, I agree with that completely. This is a very specific book. It really is a book about kind of intellectuals and elites and spin doctors and journalists. And it's not a book about the massive story of what happened after 2008 and then why. It's not about voters, let's put it that way. I mean, that doesn't mean I'm not interested in voters. Let's put it that way. I mean, that doesn't

mean I'm not interested in voters. It's just that that's not what this particular book is about. There are a lot of other books about voters. It doesn't offer a complete explanation as to, you know, what happened after 2008 and how it moved people. I do think, though, that you have to be very careful when talking about 2008 and what its real impact was on how people think. and what its real impact was on how people think. So first of all, it's worth noting that the political impact of 2008 did not occur, or anyway, you need to explain why it didn't happen in 2010 or 2011 or 2012, and why it's only talked about in 2016. And that leads me to believe that there are other things going on besides the economic impact and that economics don't fully explain what happened in 2016, either in the UK or the US or actually in Eastern Europe

or anywhere else. Also, I think the economic story has to be understood as a story about how people reacted to this economic collapse. So it's not just the dislocation, the people having to find new jobs, the people losing their houses. It's also kind of, I hate this expression, but I can't think of a better one, you know, the sort of meta narrative, the feeling that we had this collapse and nobody paid a price for it. So in other words, financial system fell apart. And then eight or nine years later, there were all the bankers, they hadn't lost their jobs, they were all doing fine. You know, they were sort of powering forward, The stock market was going up again. You know, there was a sense of unfairness. So it wasn't just that there was an economic collapse. It's sort of that people felt there was a deep injustice attached to

it. I mean, I think if there was an economic collapse of the kind, maybe even of the kind that we're having now, and we'll see, we won't understand this for another five years, but one that really affected everybody and causes did not lie in the city of London. You know, they're much broader and deeper, you know, then maybe people can accept that the virus caused this terrible change and so on. But 2008 was a very specific event. You know, it was caused by mistakes made in financial markets and the people who made the mistakes paid no price. And I do feel that that was an important piece of the story of the dissatisfaction, not just economics in the pure sense, but also in the moral sense.

Very important pillar in your book, of course, which is technology, which is alternative facts, which is the information space that we inhabit following the proliferation of the internet and social media. And I'm talking to you now in July of 2020. We're having the Guardian media group announced yesterday that massive job losses. Atlantic, which is a publication that you're closely associated with, has announced job losses. The media landscape is changing. It's being accelerated by this COVID crisis. Just how important is that? You've got members of the elite becoming disenchanted, growing older, getting grumpy, whatever it might be, and they've got this unimaginably powerful tool

that drops into their laps to radicalise, to communicate, to connect with people. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer.

Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. I would take a start by taking a step back and saying, you know, we are going through a profound information revolution of a kind that I just, you know, even though, of course, people talk about it all the time, I still don't think the depth of it and the importance of it is sufficiently acknowledged. Every time before in human history, when there's been a major change in the way that people kind of get and process information, there's been a major change in the way that people kind of get and process information, there's been a political change along with it. And you can go right back

to the invention of the printing press, you know, which led to the loss of power of the monasteries, which had until then controlled information, led to the rise of the Protestant Reformation, and then, you know, a century of religious wars in Europe and other kinds of profound changes, as well as good things, as well as the spread of literacy and so on. And if you look at the moment of the invention of the radio, this is when you get the rise of fascism, both fascism actually and communism or both Stalin was obsessed with radio. These mass movements were able to use radio in new ways. You know, now we have, it's not just the end of so-called mainstream media and the rise of social media. You know, we also live in a completely new information environment. You know, how do we get information?

You know, we see our phones, we flip through them, we see an ad for hairspray, and then we see a piece of news about climate change. And then we see, you know, something about a celebrity. There's no hierarchy of information. There's no sense that one thing is more important than another. You know, you can become kind of lost in this world of floods of information and facts and stories and so on. And people begin to pick their way through it by identifying with a certain party or group of people whom they trust. You know, people don't know who to trust now. Does the trust for the information still come from the BBC? You know, does it come from somebody you follow on Facebook? Does it come from someone you follow on YouTube? And you have division so that people begin to live in very

different kind of information universes. Whereas we once all, if not exactly the same universe, we once shared some public space in which we could have our democratic debates and so on. And that's now splintering. And what you were referring to is then, you know, many of us either get our information from social media or we're from media that are influenced by it. In other words, I think a lot of, again, so-called mainstream media is in fact taking its news cues from social media. And what is social media and how does it work? I wonder if you look at the way Facebook works. Facebook is based on algorithms that favor emotion. So anger, jealousy, disgust, you know, these are the kinds of stories and news and items that spread fastest on Facebook and in social media. That's also led to the temper of the anger

of news and the emotional register of our conversations has tipped up. We see much more angry and conflicting and kind of cacophonous information that we once used. And then, as you say, what also has social media given to some people? It's given people the means to send those kinds of messages to people. So if you are someone who wants to create your own identity group and bring together the people who are angered or disgusted or furious about one or two aspects of society of the kind that we were discussing before, you now have the ability to create such a group. Put together a WhatsApp or Telegram group in which you send them daily messages to create websites that are designed to put out those kinds of messages. to create websites that are designed to put out those kinds of messages, to use the Facebook advertising system or even just the Facebook organic algorithms to send out and multiply those messages, use Facebook. In other words, you now have the ability to create social and political groups around these emotional feelings and issues in a way that wasn't possible before. And that, too, is shaping our political landscape. There are some people, and this I explained by referencing a behavioral

psychologist called Karen Stenner, there are some people who are particularly predisposed to this kind of anger and this kind of dislike of these warring conflicts, for whom a kind of authoritarian message, you know, make everyone shut up, keep everyone silent, find this moment particularly threatening and particularly kind of authoritarian messaging particularly appealing. So on top of the economic changes, on top of the demographic changes, other kinds of social changes, we also have this completely new kind of media, which is particularly conducive to political conflict. It's a very important point you make there about people seeking authoritarianism sometimes. We've just recently had Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the UK

shouting at the leader of the opposition, that the clue is in the title, you need to support the government, particularly during this crisis. That's your job is to be here and you need to somehow support the government. The whole point of democracy is we balance, we encourage opposition,

we encourage critical thinking. And that makes for a kind of choppy C. That's the whole point. If you look at the partisanship, the age of the rage of party in the early 18th century, in the late 17th in the UK, in the 19th in the US, democracy is kind of messy and a bit scary and very partisan. And you've identified that maybe we overestimate the extent to which people like that. Maybe people were freaked out by that. People are freaked out by it and always have been. I mean, that's why democracies historically have been so fragile. You know, if you think about it, it's a very unnatural kind of political system.

It's one in which if you lose an election, you know, you have to let your political enemies rule, you know, without complaining about it for a set period of time before you can contest them again. And if you win, you are obliged to maintain a system that will allow your political enemies to beat you in the future. If you think about it, it's kind of almost antithetical to human nature. Look, I mean, throughout history, most democracies have failed for that reason. They are fragile. They can be overcome by anybody who seeks to destroy the system, undermine the institutions. You know, and once the consensus around them begins to dissolve, it can be very difficult

to build up again. I think one of our great failings, I think, over the past couple of decades was to make this assumption that democracy is inevitable, you know, and that the current systems that we have will always go on being like the way they are. And to forget that, you know, these are fragile systems. They require constant reform and tending and civic education and conversation. And now, of course, they require much deeper thought about, okay, now that we've lost this kind of shared public sphere where we were all able to debate things in a shared way, you know, how are we going to recreate that? You know, how are we going to think about recreating that in the future?

If we don't focus on these things, then it is possible, you know, we could lose it. I mean, look, American democracy failed before. It failed in the 19th century. That's what the Civil War was. It was a, you know, some of the U.S. states didn't accept the decision of what was an increasing majority and they seceded and there was a huge civil war. Democracies all across Europe failed in the 1930s. It wasn't that long ago. You know, democracies in all over the world, you know, have failed. You know, the one in Turkey has failed. You know, the one in the Philippines is failing. Hungary is a country that was a

democracy that is no, really isn't anymore. Even the United States and Great Britain, I think, need to make sure that the fundamentals of our democracy remain safe. And that might require some changes and some investment in the institutions. Some housekeeping. Well, then that's the last question, Anne Applebaum. I'm looking to you because you're my favorite tweeter. I mean, you know, you're part of the problem, if you don't mind me saying, because I get

my news from you rather than anywhere else. So anyway, I'm in the Applebaum echo chamber here. The Applebaum-led, you know, proto-whatever group. Anyway, the point being, what are we going to do about it? You know, again, as my book does not offer one answer or one explanation, I'm not going to give you one answer. You know, I think there are multiple answers, starting with this question of recreating the public sphere and thinking about

how we're going to regulate social media, by which I do not mean censorship, but I mean, make sure that it's a civil place to have conversations. You know, what we're going to do about, you know, money in politics, money laundering around the world, which is one of the things that reinforces authoritarians and allows them to bribe politicians all over Europe and the world, really. What we're going to do about our own democratic institutions, how do we update them for the modern era? I mean, look, we live in an era when you can buy a pair of shoes by clicking a button on the internet. And yet it can take weeks and weeks for people to decide things, you know, democratically. And people become frustrated by what feels like the weakness of democracy or the weakness of our judicial system. You know, maybe we need to

think about making the move faster. Maybe we need to look at our voting systems to make sure they're fair enough. In the U.S., there's this movement towards something called ranked choice voting, which would make voting less polarized. You know, maybe we need to think about why our party systems are so polarized. Are there ways in which we could pull people back into the center? You know, this is an American problem in particular, but in the U.S., very fanatical groups inside both of the main political parties have pulled the parties apart in ways that don't necessarily reflect what most Americans think. So we need to think about how the institutions work to understand that. And finally, I would say, this is a task for you. I mean, maybe we need better discussions of history. You know,

how have democracies succeeded and failed in the past? You know, what's the real history of our countries? You know, I mean, it is amazing how many Americans don't really understand the U.S. Constitution. And you tell me, I mean, how many in Britain understand the role of judicial independence in British history? You know, how many people really understand the origins of British democracy and how it works and why? All of those are issues that are worth spending a lot more time on and thinking about. You know, history shouldn't just be, you know, as cliche goes, you know, Tudors and Hitler. You know, it should be, what are the history of our institutions? Where does the UK Parliament come from? How has it behaved over the years? All of these things, you know, the more public conversation we can have about who we are, how did we get here?

What has worked and hasn't worked in the past? What works and doesn't work in other countries and other people's history? I mean, I think all of that is hugely fruitful and useful. How optimistic are you feeling on this sunny morning? Was the process of writing this book depressing or is there a cause for optimism? This is a very personal book. And so it was kind of cathartic, really. I mean, it was for me a way of explaining something to myself. And you reconfigure your alliances.

You think again about, you know, who you want to be. I mean, so the book, as you said, it begins and ends with parties. And those are really just a metaphor for who's on our team and who's allied politically at one moment in history and who's allied at another moment. And, you know, one's alliance has changed throughout life. And that's, of course, always been true. But, you know, I have moments of optimism. In the U.S. at the moment, there are a lot of different kinds of people coming together who would have been in different camps and in different eras. There are a group of so-called never Trump Republicans, a lot of whom I know who are aligning with Democrats. There are a lot of groups springing up which seek to be bipartisan. You know, some of that is happening in the UK as well. I'm hoping that the appeal of liberal

democracy, by which I mean not just elections, but the institutions that make it possible to go on having these, you know, more or less fair elections year in, year out, that the appeal of those ideas will triumph in the end and that people will continue to see those as important to their lives. But, you know, a lot depends on what we all do in our lives and, you know, how we vote and how we speak and how we seek to reach across into different political camps ourselves. Well, you're certainly leading by example. So thank you for all the work you're doing. Congratulations on the book. Well done for all the great tweets. You're one of my favorite tweets. And my God, that thread you tweeted the other day about criminality in Trump Tower was jaw-dropping.

I've been thinking about it ever since. Anyway, the book is called? The book is called Twilight of Democracy. In the English and American editions, it has a different subtitle. And the English subtitle is Twilight of Democracy, the failure of politics and the parting of friends. So that gives you some idea of what it's about. And you will learn just how many children are lacking godparents in your family nowadays. I mean, it's pretty, you know, it's pretty hectic. Okay, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and very good luck with the book and all of your other projects as well thanks so much for your time i really appreciate it

hi everyone it's me dan snow just a quick request it's so annoying and i hate it when other podcasts do this but now i'm doing it i hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes wherever you get your podcasts and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps and basically boosts up the chart, which is good. And then more people listen, which is nice. So if you could do that, I'd be very grateful. I understand if you don't subscribe to my TV channel. I understand if you don't buy my calendar, but this is free. Come on, do me a favor. Thanks.