Ivan Krastev on Anne Applebaum and the different kinds of 1989ers

Ivan Krastev (The Tragic Romance of the Middle-Aged Western Liberal Foreign Policy 08/15/2020) has a sympathetically critical take on Anne Applebaum's current political perspective as expressed in her latest book, which is titled, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. Writing from a European liberal political perspective - Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies - he reflects on how recent developments have shown that what in America was conservative anti-Communism was only nominally liberal and pro-democracy:

The contest with Soviet communism guided how Americans thought about the core principles underlying their basic institutions. For American liberalism was, or at least appeared to be, Soviet totalitarianism turned inside out. Freedoms of speech and the press, as well as freedom of conscience, were idealized precisely because they were cruelly repressed under Moscow’s sway. In the same spirit, Americans underscored the freedom of movement, the right to form private associations, the right to a fair trial, and the right to vote in competitive elections where incumbents might be toppled from power. Likewise emphasized was the latitude to accumulate private wealth, on the assumption that a decentralized and unplanned economy alone could provide the basis of both prosperity and political freedom. [my emphasis]

What most of the world calls political "liberalism" is different from how the term is used in the US and Canada. The classical liberalism of the parties of the Liberal International (yes, there is such a thing) is pro-democracy, pro-civil liberties, pro-rule-of-law but strongly oriented toward "free-market" economic policies of minimizing regulation and very limited public social-insurance systems. The US-Canadian form was more similar to that of the social-democratic parties in Europe and elsewhere.

Krastev writes:

What Applebaum’s book makes clear is that for people like the Hungarian historian Maria Schmidt or National Review editor-at-large John O’Sullivan or the vocal Trump supporter Laura Ingraham, liberal principles were valued only because they were an effective instrument for destroying communism. When this goal was achieved, values like free media and the division of powers started to be viewed as a threat to Western civilization and traditional Christian values. The new prophets of illiberalism used all their talent to persuade their societies that the rights of others were a threat to their own rights and that the liberal system of checks and balances was not a way to preserve individuals’ freedoms but an instrument for elites to abuse the will of the people.

Applebaum is a very good writer; her style is lucid, and her arguments are bracing. This has made her one of the most powerful voices of the anti-populist resistance. But the strength of her new book is not so much in exposing the authoritarian nature of populists in power but in revealing the intellectual hollowness of the anti-communist consensus. [my emphasis]

He also has this intriguing thought, "What we see in countries like Poland and the United States is that a democracy of citizens has been replaced by a democracy of fans."

At first glance, this looks like a validation of the Situationists' notion of the "society of the spectacle." Although I have to confess, I've never been able to find a lot in the Situationists' outlook that seems particularly helpful in understanding the world.

But I've become leery of formulations like this about American politics. Because a defining feature of the last four decades of politics in the US is the stunning level of asymmetric partisan polarization. The metaphor of "fans" can be useful as a way of thinking about depoliticization, a trend of passive cynicism about the ability of politics to improve people's lives, which I do think affects the constituencies of both parties in the US.

But the almost-unbroken continuity of the radicalization of the Republican Party during those decades (Reaganism and the Christian Right) has not been remotely matched by a parallel intensity of polarization on the Democratic side, either on the party of the party leadership generally or on the part of Democratic voters. Obviously, Democratic-leaning constituencies are intensely mobilized in the uprising we've had in 2020. But the Democratic establishment is still remarkably attached to a duck-and-cover strategy in front of the Republicans. It's the difference in intensity between Make American Great [White] Again and Make American Boring Again. That's asymmetric partisan polarization.

Krastev continues directly:

While for a liberal citizen the readiness to point out and correct the mistakes of your own party is a sign of the highest loyalty, the loyalty of fans is zealous, unthinking, and unswerving. Enthralled fans, with their critical faculties switched off, are central to populists’ understanding of politics as a loyalty game: Their cheers reflect their sense of belonging. Trust-but-verify is replaced by rowdy adoration. Those who refuse to applaud are traitors, and any statement of fact becomes a declaration of belonging.

For the United States, we could rewrite that to be: While the Democratic establishment is ready to aggressively fight their own party's progressive wing, that rather than fighting the Republican Party is their sign of the highest loyalty. They want their voters and activists to be unthinking and unswerving in their support of corporate Democratic position, but they don't want to see any zeal on their supporters part for anything in their own platform that's not considered totally safe for corporate lobbyists. Zeal is for the dirty, annoying hippies and whoever all those kids demonstrating in the streets are.

The Republicans, on the other hand, from the highest elected officials to the ordinary habitual Republicans voters, are willing to be "enthralled" by the Leader of the moment, even such as repulsive one as Bunker Boy. They are proud of practicing "loyalty of fans" in being "zealous, unthinking, and unswerving ... with their critical faculties switched off."

Finally, Krastev describes a group including Applebaum and apparently himself as "89ers", an analogy to the 68ers:

Applebaum is a classic ’89er; like many of us, she was shaped by the Cold War without ever really experiencing it. For the ’89ers, the Cold War was what the anti-fascist resistance was for the West’s student revolutionaries of the 1960s, the ’68ers—a time of inspiring heroism and moral clarity. In her worldview, the marriage between democracy and capitalism was made in heaven, and most of the conflicts in the world were not about a clash of interests but about a clash of values. It was this mindset that made many ’89ers first to detect the danger coming from Vladimir Putin’s Russia but also the last to condemn George W. Bush’s ugly war in Iraq. [my emphasis]

The Iraq War and the Cheney-Bush Administration that ginned it up may one day look like a more important turning point for American democracy than the election of Bunker Boy as President or the institutional homicide against the Post Office in 2020. The arrogance of American Exceptionalism in its post-Cold War triumphalist form came to full flower under that administration. The bipartisan tolerance toward the blatant lawbreaking and corruption of that administration set the stage for Donald Trump as Mob Boss of the American government. I know "corruption" gets tossed around casually in political rhetoric. But for the Cheney-Bush Administration's version of it, I'll just quote a line from a protest song of the time: "Halliburton, Halliburton, Halliburton, what else do I have to say?"