Booktv. Org or consult your television guiled with. Now, Anne Applebaum on the rise of authoritarianism around the world. My name is john francis is coney, and i manage the Louis Mcnally jackson in down drown brooklyn at downtown brooklyn at the beginning of march. If you go to Mcnally Jackson. Com, youll see all the amazing writers and programs that were hosting in the coming days and weeks, and im adding more every day as far ahead as fall, so Pay Attention to our web site or sign up for our newsletter. Were glad we can host events this way, and we hope that theyre palliative for you with as theyve been palliative for us during this difficult and confusing time. This event is free, but we do have copies of annes book, twilight of democracy, out today from doubleday. Youll find a link to buy it from us in the chat. As weve changed phases from staying at home to opening for curbside pickup, stores like ours need more support, so if you want us to host more events and youre able to order a copy of annes book from us, we would be greatly appreciative. If you have questions, use the zoom chat function to submit any questions you have, and closer to the top of the hour ill come back and relay them to anne. Were honored to present this Virtual Event in partnership with the United Nations association of new york, and we have with us today annie coal who wants to speak briefly about who they are. Thank you so much for the introduction. Were delighted to cooperate with Mcnally Jackson booksellers today bringing Anne Applebaum. Twilight of democracys subject matter is appropriate, relevant and timely. It provides tools of analysis that can be applied to many situations in the world today. The global tide between liberal democracy and authoritarian forms of government have long been intertwined with the work of the United Nations, and i know that we have a very stimulating conversation ahead of us. Anne applebaum is social movement, and today she shares her insight on the [inaudible] of nationalism. Anne, its great pleasure to have you address us today. Thank you so much. And ill give it back to john. Thank you very much. Were thrilled to have anne in conversation today with jacob weisberg, cofounder and ceo of a Podcast Company dedicated to putting artists and creators first. He was previously the editorinchief of the slate group. And the author of todays book, twilight of democracy, Anne Applebaum. Annes 2018 atlantic article, a warning from europe, inspired her new book and was a finalist for a National Magazine aa ward. After 17 years as a columnist at the washington post, applebaum became a staff writer at the atlantic in 2020. She is the author of three criticallyacclaimed and waredwinning histories of awardwinning histories of the soviet union, winner of the blitz or prize. Blitzer prize. Timothy snyder had this to say about annes new book Anne Applebaum is a leading historian of communism and an investigator of contemporary politics. Here she sets her sight on the big question, one with which she herself has been both deeply engaged, how did our democracy go wrong. This extraordinary document written with urgency, intelligence and understanding is her answer. And david fromm writes friendships torn, the ideals betrayed. In this, her most personal book, a great historian explains why so many of those who won the battles for democracy or spent their lives proclaiming its values are now succumbing to liars, thugs and crooks. Twilight of democracy fearlessly tells the shameful story of a a political generation gone bad. With that, ill pass things off to jacob. Great. Well, hello, everybody, and i want to first thank ann any nicol for fostering the event and john for hosting it. Its very nice to see it in a bookstore, even if it has to be virtual. And i want to make sure you all at least see this book which is very elegant. Very brief and to the point, this book is, among other things. Very efficient and quick and engaging read. So i want to start, above all, by recommending it. And then i want to recommend anne a little bit who is, you know, not only an old friend, but for me the person who first sounded the alarm about so much of what were dealing with now in the United States. And i think, you know, she has special insight not only because of her work as a historian as a journalist, but because of her orientation toward, around Eastern Europe and her experience in the soviet union. And when we started to see manifestations of authoritarianism in american politics, i think a lot of us did have the reaction that it cant happen here, that it would remain permanently a kind of fringe movement, something we didnt have to take seriously. And that turned out to be wrong. And, you know, i think anne because of her experience she writes about in Eastern Europe particularly sort of knew what was coming and started to talk about in a, with a clear warning voice in 2015 at the very least, but really before a lot of other people were making the same comments. So, you know, i think i read the book with that in mind. And the first thing i want to ask you, anne, is with the perspective you have on, the global perspective on authoritarianism, why you have focused the book in the way you have on the role of the people who are sort of exemplaries to authoritarianism. You might call them the intellectuals, but in a lot of ways many of them arent intellectuals or dont deserve or dont get that as an appropriate distinction. Theyre people who are publicists, pundits, propagandists. Some of them are intellectuals, there were intellectuals, but why are you looking at these people rather than the authoritarian leaders themselves . Well, first of all, thank you. I, too, am delighted to be in a virtual bookstore even though im joining you from across the atlantic. But its a nice feeling to have book people around me. And, of course, great to be with jacob who ive known for many years and who i think [inaudible] for my book called iron curtain which is about the soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. Theres a weird parallel between these two books, which we may discuss. So the book grew out of the reason why i wrote it the way i did is the book grew out of my reflections about people that i know. And it started with me thinking about people who i had known over 20 and sometimes 30 years, firstly in poland, then later i started thinking about people in britain and the u. S. And elsewhere and who i felt had made a kind of political journey and who had been on the centerright or would have called themselves reaganites or maybe thatcherites, part of the anticommunist movement in poland and hungary, people who were instrumental in arguing for and helping to bring about the end of communism and who had, over the next 20 and 30 years, had changed rather dramatically. In my view. And had become something closer to a new form of radical right. Some became nationalists, some became, some became part of, you know, or spokesmen for authoritarianleaning political parties. And i thought about how to write about this phenomenon, and i decided that the best way to do it was from the perspective of people i know. I mean, i had one issue which is that i am to some extent in the story. I live in poland. Im american, i grew up in the United States, i lived in england for a long time in the 1990s, but i have very deep ties to poland where im married to a polish politician who was defense minister and in government for many years, you know, and i, you know, somehow i felt that i couldnt tell husband his story without being in it because that would be cheating. I couldnt write a, i couldnt do what i did for the obfuscation of Eastern Europe after 1945 which is tell the story in a balanced way from lots of perspectives. I felt this was a story, you know, that i could best tell in my own voice and about people that i know. And who, you know, who do i know, you know . I knew other journalists, i knew people in politics, and i knew a lot of people who had, who were what i would call political entrepreneurs. So a although,ing jacob, if you dont want to use the word intellectual, thats fair enough. A lot of these are people who are interested in ideas and in sort of how to make ideas into politics. In other words, you know, they, theyre people who hang around think tanks, sometimes hang around universities, sometimes around political parties, some newspapers. And they, you know, and then they sought to bring about political change in a particular direction. And this is just a group of people that, you know, i know well and am familiar with. I also think that they have a, you know, we underrate their roles. In other words, lots and lots and lots of people have written about voters, or right . Why do voters vote for trump or why do voters vote for pilot, you know, or why do voter vote for choose authoritarian. And, you know, thats a legit may not pursuit and a legitimate question to ask. But not that many people have looked at, you know, what are, you know, what are the voters being presented with. Its not just, you know, its not just the question of an authoritarian leader. Theres an authoritarian leaders package, you know, particularly nowadays. So somebody writes the memes that are designed to create enthusiasm for him, somebody writes, you know, writes the speeches, somebody, you know, somebody prepares him. Somebody writing his speeches is thinking about how to sell him to the public. And this is a missing piece of the story, i felt. And as i said, one that i just felt uniquely able to tell because, you know, some of them are people i know. Yeah. I mean, theres a prehistory here particularly of the 20th century, people who were thought or assume to share the premises of a democratic or liberal society who then went over to sort of the thug side, as it were, and ended up supporting stalinism or fascism. Primarily where you are but also in the United States. You kind of put it in that tradition. You talk about a writer who developed this idea of the treason of the clerks as he calls them, or you know, which is his term for what were talking about, some intellectuals, some writers, but people from the sort of intellectual class, people who traffic in ideas. Who, at some crucial moment, make a terrible decision to ally themselves with authoritarianism against liberal democracy. And i guess the question for you is why does this keep happening, and why in the broadest sense do they do it. The most obvious answer is, well, they want power and its bargain where they get, they are empowered by the authoritarian leaders they support. Is there more to it than that . So, you know, there isnt one of the things that will annoy people about this book, and its already annoyed one or two reviewers, is that it doesnt have a single answer. I do not give you one thesis, you know, this kind of overarching theme that explains everything. You know, i do look at several specific people, and i do talk, you know, about several particular circumstances. And i think the you have to look at you have to look at a range of motives. I actually write some of the motives are to do with power, people who seek more and particularly from intellectuals or journalists who feel they were somehow excluded or theyre owed something more, you know . Theyre been left out by the elite or by some other group of intellectuals or by, you know, some other group of, you know, journalists or thinkers who are concluding their ideas. And thats a very common phenomenon. Theres sometimes almost a kind of resentment that leads people to attach themselves to illegal political movements. You know, sometimes its, sometimes there are true believers. Theyre people who have talked themselves into believing that, you know, that their societies is have failed. This is a particular theme that you can see over and over again from the 19th century, the 20th century and right up to the present. That, you know, modernization and the very rapid social changes that its spreading for some people presents a, you know, kind of crisis. Our society is losing something. Whatever, were losing tradition, were losing our old heros, were losing our old folk ways, the ways that we used to do things. And, you know, theres a kind of cultural fetch limb or despair. And if you listen to the language, even the language of the presenters on fox news. I talk about Laura Ingraham, but with you hear it if Tucker Carlson as well. Sometimes their language is designed to table exactly that, you know, weve lost something, were missing something, and we want it back. Sometimes theres that emotion as well. I think money is a reason, ambition is a reason. You know, almost sometimes nihilism is the reason, you know . The desire to mock and make fun of the pompous authorities in society. This is the mood that the altright in the u. S. Captured so well, you know, we can just make fun of liberals, and we can mock our democracy and, you know, have a really good time doing it, you know, playing video games. Theres some mood like that can also be part of it. But the, usually the primary motive is usually this sense of, you know, its the sense of somebody else has power, they dont deserve it, you know, and we do. And thats very often, you know, motivation. Yeah. And when you take that that further and say that the sense of dispossession that people who had power dont have it and somehow theres this theme of the countrys been stolen, the country has been taken away, we have to take america back again and our version of it. But theres some version of that in almost every country youre talking about, and it just implicitly raises the question of, well, you know, who is the we and who is the they. And the they comes back again and again to foreigners, immigrants, jew, you know, but in the Eastern European context its often, well, you know, its the communists. Is that way of thug fundamentally the same in the thinking fundamentally the same or is it significantly different . So maybe the claims thought pattern is very often the same although, you know, one of the odditieses is that a lot of this is about tribalism. Were the real poles or were the real trenchmen or were the real americans as as opposed to saying, whatever, the elite, the foreigners, people who dont really believe in our country. You can actually correlate that claim, that kind of polarization even in a homogeneous cup. Poland is 99. 9 [inaudible] everybody is polish. Everybody speaks polish. I mean, theres a tiny fringe minority groups that really its an overwhelmingly [inaudible] and yet it is a country where youve created, what they have managed to create kind of two deeply poe e lahrizeded tribes polarized tribes who hate each other as much as if they were, you know, speaking different languages and had different skin colors and belonged to different ethnic groups. And so, and, of course, we have a phenomenon liking that in the United States where, you know, blue america and red america. You know, we still have a large group in between, but there is a, you knowing, there are tribes on both sides who also now identify one another as, you know, really profound enemies. So, i mean, yes, the member number of thinking mechanism of thinking that someones has stolen the our country from us, whoever it is, you know, you can say that, but you can also create that same instinct, you know . The usurpers or the unpatriotic, you know, citizens are in charge. You can create that claim to division, and you can use through that kind of politics even in a country where there isnt any ethnic dispute. Yeah. I want to [inaudible] a little more before we get back to Laura Ingraham. I thought it was so useful the way you sort of bring us uptodate on whats happened in poland and hungary by picking out a few of these exemplaries but not the positive sense individual stories, you know . Because here even if you follow that part of the world, you lose track of elections and what was, you know, liberal protection is being suspended and wheres the rule of law, how much of it is left, you know, in one country versus one of its neighbors. But these people that you talk about, and i wondered if you could just talk for a minute about the percy brothers who really, for me, were so helpful in understanding what actually happened in poland in recent years. Yeah. So this is, this is a very salient example. Theres two brothers. They are twins, but theyre a few years apart in age wait, wait, ive got to stop you. How can they be twins if theyre two years apart . They are not twins. Theyre sometimes thought to be twins because theres another famous pair of twins in polish politics. They are not twins. They both grew up in the city which was the kind of heartland of the anticommunist opposition in poland are. They were both children of a kind of opposition family, and even when they were in high school, they were both very active anticommunist activists, and they both marched in protests when they were 16, 17, 18ing. They worked they ran one of the randle school, i dont know, solidarity committee, one of them worked on the trade union newspaper. And both of them were very active in the anticommunist movement. And over the years, they nevertheless began to take different pasts, and one of them now has ended up as the editor of the main polish liberal newspaper. Its kind of the polish New York Times, the paper of record in poland. The other one is now the head of state television, and this is a state television thats been taken over by the ruling party, and its been made into treal most crude form of party propaganda. So just to give you an example, during the last president ial election which took place a few days ago, state its put out these constant stories about, you know, what they call ld [inaudible] it was about how if the opposition candidate won, basically your children will all be forced to marry, you know, into gay marriages. The National Independence day parade will be replaced with gay pride. This extraordinarily vir you leapt, nonstop homophobic propaganda. Theres about 30 of the country that doesnt get any other television because they cant afford cable. So one of them is running an independent paper, and the other one is putting out really quite extreme by any standard farright, homophobic, antisemitic sort of propaganda every day. So the question is h