The Winter of Liberal Democracy (Part 2)

The Rise of the New Fanatics

This is the second of a three-part essay that I have originally inserted in an ebook titled The Winter of Liberal Democracy and Other Substack Essays. On top of this essay, the ebook contains a selection of essays that has been published on this Substack in 2024. It can be dowloaded as a PDF or EBUB. Part 3 will be published here in the coming days.

Analogies are always perilous, especially when they are historical. They can bring insights, though. Schlesinger argues that where liberal democracy goes a step back, totalitarianism, despotism, and autocratic authority take a step forward. This is what happened when liberalism entered into crisis a century ago. This crisis was partially rooted in liberal democracy’s own failures, as argued by Walter Lippmann in his 1937 book The Good Society.[9] Lippmann notably identifies the blind commitment to laissez-faire principles as one of the causes of the widespread rejection of liberalism. The problem was not merely the dire economic situation created by the Great Depression – which was not primarily due to extreme economic liberalism anyway – but the more general sentiment that liberal intellectuals and politicians’ economic dogmatism were making them indifferent to the fate of a large part of the population. On the other hand, Lippmann points out that the rise of totalitarianism and the beliefs supporting it were grounded in an inappropriate understanding of social complexity related to an increasing division of labor. In difficult times, the temptation is great to succumb to simplistic causal identification for problems that we want to be solved. Something similar is happening today. The economic excesses of neoliberalism are, rightly or not, commonly associated with the serious difficulties caused by the Great Recession and the rise of socioeconomic inequalities. In the meantime, populist leaders are pushing forward for the same old simplistic recipes (e.g., closing borders to merchandise and persons) as universal solutions to complex multidimensional problems.

As I note, analogies can misguide us. Besides the historical circumstances that are quite dissimilar beyond superficial similarities, 20^th-century totalitarianism and 21^st-populism differ in nature. The essence of totalitarianism lies in the establishment of complete control of the state over the population, in particular through the abolition of any notion of privacy. In a totalitarian society, the distinction between what is public and what is private disappears. Totalitarianism entails negating what liberal authors call “jurisdictional rights,” i.e., rights that establish an individual sphere of sovereignty within which nobody, including the state, can interfere.[10] Control is achieved by extensive means of state surveillance but also manipulatory devices and a generalized form of social control where individuals themselves monitor each other. In so far as this is an accurate characterization of totalitarian regimes, the type of “illiberal” democracy that populists defend should not, on pain of analytical irrelevance, be confused with totalitarianism. Populist politics does not aim for the total control of social forces and individuals. It does not pretend to shut down the private/public separation nor even to organize the systemic form of social control that characterizes, according to Vaclav Havel’s influential account, “post-totalitarian” societies.[11] As largely documented by contemporary accounts, all forms of populism share contempt for so-called elites and essentially reduce politics to a “us-versus-them” type of conflict.[12] This is surely a shared aspect with totalitarianism. However, in the case of populism, this takes place within a democratic setting where political legitimacy is still rooted in electoral success in the context where elections are supposed to remain relatively fair. It is still too early to evaluate whether the kind of illiberal democracy that populists promote can avoid drifting toward soft despotism at some point or another. In any case, totalitarian and illiberal democratic regimes should not be confused, hence lessening the relevance of our historical analogy.

At a more fundamental level, the analysis of the two kinds of regimes differs regarding the underlying role of history. The analysis of totalitarianism by so-called “Cold War liberals” like Karl Popper, Isaiah Berlin, and Raymond Aron indeed shares an emphasis on the particular conception of history that animates totalitarian thinking.[13] The totalitarian conception of history is one formulated in terms of inevitability. Popper notoriously attacked the “historicism” implicitly animating totalitarian ideologies, i.e., “an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is the historical aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the ‘rhythms’ or the ‘pattern,’ the ‘laws’ or the ‘trends’ that underlie the evolution of history.”[14] In his sophisticated critique of determinist philosophy of history, Aron argued that the belief in historical inevitability was central for totalitarian regimes – especially, for communist regimes, to explain and justify brutal political actions completely disregarding individuals’ rights and well-being.[15] This “historical fanaticism” as Aron called it, is an essential part of the ideological utopias that were grounding the nazi or communist projects. This is based on this fanatical belief that history was on their side that nazis and communists built what Aron characterized as a “politics of reasons” entirely dedicated to the realization of a small set of values whose tremendous importance was revealed by historical reason and that were viewed as unconditionally trumping all other considerations.

The illiberal democracy dreamed of by populists seemingly avoids this critique.[16] Populists, from the left and from the right, are wary of ideological utopias. Quite the contrary, their relentless attacks on (neo)liberalism can be read as denunciations of the ideological obsessions of the elites of Western countries and their consequences for populations. Populism cannot be easily characterized in terms of any ideology – indeed, it is sometimes associated with a “thin-centered ideology” with no other core than dividing the population into two parts (“us” and “them”)?[17] Also, there is seemingly no particular belief in historical inevitability behind populists’ claims. Illiberal democracy is not seen as a necessary and thus justified historical evolution. Populists’ views tend to be far more pragmatic and less principled. As a matter of fact, the argument goes, liberal elites are “corrupt” – not necessarily in the economic sense (though that may also be the case) but first and foremost because they conspire to impose an ideology that is against the interests of the “real people” and that the large but silenced majority rightfully doesn’t want. Liberal elites should therefore be systematically displaced so that the general will can finally be realized in democratic institutions immunized from liberal corruption.

Even if historical fanaticism does not fundamentally underlie populists’ illiberal democracy, populist politics is nonetheless grounded on a more general form of fanaticism that is oblivious to the pluralism and incommensurability of values. Cold War liberals like Aron and Berlin developed their critiques of totalitarianism by arguing that totalitarian regimes display an erroneous commitment to a supreme and indisputable hierarchy of values. Once a value or a small set of values is brought to the top of the hierarchy, not even individual freedom or well-being seems to justify stopping the state from pursuing it whatever the costs. While populists do not ground their hierarchy of values in historical inevitability as much as totalitarians, they nonetheless display the same attitude that the pursuit of uniquely important values and ends can justify trespassing liberal principles and institutions.

For Aron and Berlin, the incommensurability and pluralism of values are the fundamental justification for human freedom.[18] There is, prima facie, no reason to prohibit someone from pursuing the ends or acting based on the values of their choice because there is no overarching principle to rank ends and values. Freedom is the natural condition of human beings because any interference is presumably based on a claim that some value trumps another one, or more generally that the interferer has a reason strong enough to prevent the person interfered with from pursuing the end of their choice. Value pluralism indicates that such a claim or hypothesis cannot be taken for granted. By default, individuals should be free, and social institutions should be such that they organize the exercise of this freedom in an appropriate fashion.[19]

Even though acknowledging value pluralism may not necessarily lead to the vindication of liberal principles and institutions,[20] disregarding it is likely to have illiberal repercussions, as Cold War liberals noted. In the case of modern-day populism, value pluralism seems to have receded in the face of the insatiable and sometimes aggressive demands for recognition. Many of these demands are identity-based. More and more persons want to be recognized (and receive the corresponding rights) as “French,” “Catholics,” “non-binary,” and so on. The never-ending catalog of identities inevitably creates conflicting claims that liberal institutions are not necessarily equipped to deal with. They combine with more traditional demands for recognition based on economic considerations. Their pressing nature gives statesmen legitimacy to displace liberal safeguards when needed. It also provides a strong incentive to all political actors (officials and citizens) to reinforce their insistence on identity considerations in the context of a never-ending arms race.[21] This context provides fertile soil for “bellicose politics” where any political disagreement is viewed as an uncompromising conflict that justifies the use of any means to be won. Far from the Weberian “ethics of responsibility” cherished by Aron and others, the fanaticism that underlies populism is conducive to an “ethics of absolute ends” that turn politics into war.

As far as an illiberal democracy can remain effectively democratic with relatively fair elections, it would nonetheless put individuals at the mercy of arbitrary decisions made by the state in the name of some greater good. Such a regime could either take shape along “fortress nationalism” or “managerial multiculturalism,” as suggested recently by NYT op-ed columnist Ross Douthat.[22] None of the alternatives is appealing from a liberal perspective because they both convey the kind of fanatism and radicalism that hardly fits with liberal principles. Both are grounded on an idealistic utopia that is a recipe for tyranny.

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[9] Walter Lippmann, The Good Society (Routledge, 1938 [2017]).

[10] Jurisdictional rights are the topic of essay “Social Practice and the Harm Principle.”

[11] Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless (Vintage Classics, 1978 [2018]).

[12] Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism (London: Penguin, 2017). Yascha Mounk, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It, Illustrated edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England: Harvard University Press, 2018).

[13] See for instance Jan-Werner Müller, “Fear and Freedom: On `Cold War Liberalism’,” European Journal of Political Theory 7, no. 1 (January 1, 2008): 45–64.

[14] Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, 2nd edition (Routledge, 1944 [2015]), p. 3.

[15] Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: Essai sur les limites de l’objectivité historique (Paris: Gallimard, 1937 [1991]). Raymond Aron, L’opium des intellectuels (Paris: Fayard/Pluriel, 1955 [2010]).

[16] Jan-Werner Müller, “What Cold War Liberalism Can Teach Us Today,” The New York Review of Books (blog), November 26, 2018, https://www.nybooks.com/online/2018/11/26/what-cold-war-liberalism-can-teach-us-today/.

[17] Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction, 2nd ed. edition (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017).

[18] See in particular Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1990).

[19] Public reason liberalism provides another route to defend this “presumption in favor of liberty.” See essay “Is There a Presumption in Favor of Liberty?”

[20] See essay §14 “Is Value Pluralism a Remedy to Populism?”

[21] I develop this point in essay §13 “Identity Politics and Positional Goods.”

[22] Ross Douthat, “Opinion | The Regimes of the Post-Post-Cold War World,” The New York Times, December 6, 2024, sec. Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/opinion/south-korea-liberalism-nationalism.html.