Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism is a 2020 work of political and social commentary by journalist and historian Anne Applebaum. The book is in many ways a response to what Applebaum sees as an early-21st- century international rise in right-wing, anti-democratic nationalism, specifically in Poland, Hungary, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Plot Summary

Applebaum begins by describing a 1999 New Year’s Eve party she hosted in Poland. Many of her guests were involved in Polish politics. They were also all generally in the center on the political spectrum. As Applebaum describes them, “you might also have called most of us liberals. Free-market liberals, classical liberals, maybe Thatcherites” (2). Years later, however, some of these guests have cut ties with Applebaum for political reasons and become supporters of the strongly nationalist and authoritarian Law and Justice party. Not only that, but these same people have become alienated from their own children. Applebaum writes that the purpose of her book is to investigate what changed for people like her friends. As part of this explanation, Applebaum takes the concept of clercs from French writer Julian Benda’s 1927 book La trahison des clercs (which she translates as “The Treason of the Intellectuals” or “The Betrayal of the Intellectuals”). For Applebaum, clercs are writers and intellectuals who support anti-democratic movements like the Law and Justice party.

In the second chapter, Applebaum delves into the Law and Justice party and its Hungarian equivalent, the Fidesz party. She argues that both parties operate by replacing civil servants and administrators in state-run companies with party loyalists. Overall, she describes this approach as “soft dictatorship,” with those in power relying on supporters running political, judicial, and media institutions rather than on force. In the third chapter, Applebaum shifts her focus to the United Kingdom and Brexit, the political movement to get the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. Tracing how British conservatives went from backing the European Union to opposing it, Applebaum draws on the idea of restorative nostalgia, the drive to recreate an idealized version of a nation’s past. The yearning for Britain’s past as a world-dominating power drove much of Brexit, she argues, along with the distrust of democratic institutions and extreme polarization that she also sees behind authoritarian movements elsewhere.

With Chapter 4, Applebaum offers a possible reason for these changes. She argues that the cause is not anxiety over immigration or economic recession, but the changes in technology that have created new forms of media, especially social media. In particular, the rapid changes in communication have affected people with an “authoritarian predisposition,” which makes them hostile to anything that challenges their sense of unity and consensus. Worse, individuals and groups can easily exploit these factors to generate support for political causes. Applebaum gives the example of Spain’s far-right Vox party and its reliance on social media to build a sense of unity.

Moving on to the United States, Applebaum argues that the rise of President Donald Trump and the changed Republican Party that supported him reflected similar changes. While once the Republicans embraced the idea of American exceptionalism—the argument that the United States has had a unique history of embodying and spreading democracy—under Trump the Republicans rejected it. Instead, they promoted what Applebaum terms a cultural despair. In this view, the United States is no better than any other country, even authoritarian nations, and any action that is believed to bring back the United States of the past is justified, no matter how violent or anti-democratic.

In the sixth and final chapter, Applebaum compares the current political moment to the Dreyfus affair. In late-19th-century France, the Dreyfus affair revolved around the trial and conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a French army captain tried and convicted for spying. He was later exonerated, but the affair politically divided France. Looking at this and other historical cycles, Applebaum sees a cause for optimism since dark and chaotic times never last. She speculates that the coronavirus pandemic could either cause a further slide into authoritarianism or reverse the trend and lead to greater global cooperation.