Twilight of Democracy

"I wanted to include a book on what might broadly be called the state of the world today. In the United States, United Kingdom, India, Brazil—around the world leaders have got into power by offering xenophobic, nationalistic messages. Why? Anne Applebaum’ s book is her personal experience of this trend, as an American journalist and author who has spent a lot of time in Poland (amongst other places). What’s fascinating is how a random event, a plane crash that killed the Polish prime minister Lech Kaczyński in 2010, seems to have been the trigger for the craziness and conspiracy theories that have followed, some of which have targeted Applebaum herself. In the UK, it was Brexit, and, again, there’s a personal connection. Applebaum knows the British prime minister Boris Johnson, because her husband was a contemporary of his at Oxford (they were both members of the Bullingdon, an all-male dining club). Applebaum chronicles how Johnson basically got into the EU-bashing because it went down well when he was a journalist in Brussels and has continued to pursue it haphazardly ever since for opportunistic reasons. There’s a lot to think about after reading this book, and it doesn’t offer any easy answers. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Finally, as editor of Five Books I’m a big believer in some of the book prizes that systematically go through hundreds of books and choose the best of the year as a somewhat more objective way of getting at the best nonfiction books of 2020. I’d particularly like to highlight t he British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize , named after the sponsor of the prize, which really has a fantastic shortlist this year, including a book about Lakota America with a different vision of what the United States might have been. The Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, meanwhile, is a less academic approach, and this year’s winner is a book about The Beatles by Craig Brown , who is an excellent and entertaining writer. Lastly, there’s the Financial Times , which also has a book prize, of which McKinsey is the sponsor. It’s supposedly about business books, but in reality is more about good, important nonfiction about the world. For example, this year’s shortlist includes Deaths of Despair by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, about rising mortality rates among non-college-educated whites in the United States. We interviewed FT Management Editor Andrew Hill about the shortlist , but I’ve also been buying books after looking at its longlist: including a book about Samsung, which I’ve currently got by my bedside, and two about Mohammed bin Salman, the 35-year-old Saudi Crown Prince who came to international prominence after dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was chopped to pieces in the country’s consulate in Turkey. Part of our best books of 2020 series."

"Although, at this point, there are many books about the attacks on democracy, Anne Applebaum’s stands apart both because she’s a particularly gifted storyteller and because she draws from her personal experience. The book starts with a New Year’s Eve party she organized at the start of this millennium at her countryside home in Poland. She chronicles how half of the people who attended went on to defend democratic institutions and the other half became leading members of the Polish populist regime and its media allies. This serves as a prism to start to understand the ways in which many individuals become complicit in the rise of authoritarian regimes. It’s a short book, it’s a light book. It’s not a systemic book. But, in many ways, it’s the most insightful treatment of what makes it so easy to take over democracy and the stakes of this moment. In terms of sociological profile, in terms of identity, and in terms of personal histories, they are, as Anne Applebaum paints them, people who thirst for power, who are driven by relentless ambition, and often people who, in an early period in their career, did not gain the recognition they felt they were owed. So, they decided the way to attain power and recognition was to cast their lot in with a political movement, which in many cases was diametrically opposed to many of the values they supposedly held."

"Applebaum demonstrates that the trend against democracy is worldwide and difficult to reverse. And Applebaum outlines the reason why human beings all across the world have moved toward authoritarianism in troubled times. Authoritarians promise easy and absolute solutions. They say they will make the trains run on time then insist the clocks are lying when they’re late. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount ."