Just Finished Reading: The Demon in Democracy – Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies by Ryszard Legutko (FP: 2016) [182pp] 

I seem to be getting good at picking unexpected books these days – or at least books that turned out quite different from my expectations of them. From the title I had presumed that this would be an insightful look at the authoritarian drift in some democracies seen around the world seen from the knowing perspective of someone with experience of the uber-authoritarian Soviet Union. There was ‘something’ in that here but only something. The author had other thoughts in mind and other perspectives to put forward. 

Active in the anti-communist movement in Poland the author was, understandably, delighted both with the collapse of the Soviet Union and his countries entry into the European Union – at least at first. It seems, though, that he was under two misapprehensions – that his country would immediately move significantly to the Right (as it would be difficult to move much further to the Left) and that the EU was far more politically ‘Right’ than it turned out to be. Unfortunately for the author the EU turned out to be very different from both expectations and (probably) Soviet propaganda said it would be. Politically, whilst the US is (from a European perspective anyway) centre Right (Democrat) to further Right (Republican) the EU is largely centre Left with a predominance of Social Democratic voices both across the continent and in the European parliament. Whilst there are Right and indeed far-Right voices in many countries these are, by and large, in the minority. Without reading between the lines too much it appears that the author expected and wanted the US and instead got the EU – and was not happy about it at all. 

Despite the often-annoying background noise of axes being ground into dust, the author did make some interesting and indeed valid points. It is the case that Liberal-democracies use persuasion, propaganda and the law to restrict elements of free speech - ‘hate-speech’ laws and so on. Likewise, they mandate the way minority groups are treated and will step in if they are abused or discriminated against – often overriding people’s contradictory personal or religious views (for example on abortion or Gay marriage). The author repeatedly points to the fact that the Soviet authorities used similar tactics to enforce its own ideology on their populations and tars both regimes with the same brush throughout the book. Seeing both the Soviets and the Liberal-democrats using methods to convince their citizens of the superiority of their belief systems (to the exclusion of all others) thereby gaining their loyalty and convincing them that liberal-democratic nature is simply human nature by another name. Opposition to this liberal viewpoint is then seen as perverse, wrong-headed and out of step with both history and reality itself. In this way liberal-democracies slowly eliminate the very diversity they supposedly hold as a central tenant of their ideology. The author does have a point – if a slight one – and its interesting seeing something I’ve grown up with seen (in effect) from the outside. The problem I had throughout this slim volume was the author’s obvious right-wing bias and the pervasive feeling that he wasn’t being allowed to be as illiberal as he really wanted and expected he would be in the ‘Free West’. Whilst ‘interesting’ in some senses this really didn’t appeal to me and not just because it wasn’t the book I was expecting. 

Translated from the Polish by Teresa Adelson.