Public ideas
Autocracy in America
Autocracy in America is a five-part series of podcasts (with transcripts) on the way democracy is lost, “one little step at a time”. It’s compered by Anne Applebaum, staff writer at The Atlantic, and Peter Pomerantsev of Johns Hopkins University.
The series was completed before Trump was elected. Although Trump features in the series, which draws on his behaviour during his first term, it is more generally about the fragility of democracy in America, and by extension, in other democracies. And it is historical: for example Episode 2 – “Consolidate power” – is largely about Huey Long: the similarities between Huey Long and our own Bjelke-Petersen are striking.
There are three strong themes in their podcasts.
One is that authoritarians gain power not by brute force but in democratic elections. They quote Amanda Carpenter, who once worked for Ted Cruz, and who now works at Protect Democracy:
Modern-day authoritarians typically come to power competing in and winning democratic elections, but then once they get into power, tilting the levers of government, tilting all the levers of power in their favor.
Just last week one of the survivors of Auschwitz, at the commemoration, said “It took Germany 62 days to go from a republic to a dictatorship”. Perhaps it was even shorter: Timothy Ryback has just written an article in The Atlantic: How Hitler dismantled democracy in 53 days. (It’s paywalled but an Atlantic subscription is good value.) America is now in Day 11 of Trump’s second term.
Another is about lying. When Putin lies about how he was elected fairly and when Trump makes up alternative facts, most reasonable people feel they should call out those lies. But Putin and Trump know that everyone knows they lie. They are signalling that they have the power to disregard the truth.
On a milder level in Australia, Coalition politicians make claims about how during their time in government they managed the economy well or protected our borders. Factcheckers prove they are wrong, but that doesn’t concern them, because with the help of compliant media they believe they have the power to create their own version of the truth.
The third is about ideology. Political analysts who grew up in times of clearly-defined class conflict try to work out whether strongmen like Trump and Venezuela’s dictator Maduro are “left” or “right”. But they are neither, rather their way of working is opportunistic and transactional. (Applebaum develops this theme strongly in her book Autocracy inc.) Hitler, Stalin and Mao were ideological in a way that Trump and Maduro aren’t.
Anti-Semitism in universities
Jonathan Haidt is inclined to engage in the age-old habit of warning that young people are going off track, but his post on After Babel – Why antisemitism sprouted so quickly on campus – has some explanation of how anti-Semitism has become such a major issue in US universities, particularly in elite universities, and some insights into reasons some young people on the “left” have allowed their sympathy for Palestinians become associated with support for terrorist movements.
He describes the idea of “common enemy identity politics”. If I don’t like the way the Israel government is behaving, and if Hamas doesn’t like the way the Israel government is behaving, then I have a bond with Hamas.
That’s really only a restatement of the idea that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. But he goes further into what he calls the “victim-oppressor” mindset, a form of Manicheism in which there are only good people and evil people.
This mindset certainly exists, but Haidt makes some extravagant claims when he asserts that it is “taught” on campuses, as some form of ideological conditioning. Politics lecturers would be negligent if they did not teach students about identity politics, just as economics lecturers would be negligent if they left Marx or Hayek off the agenda: universities are places where ideas should be studied and scrutinized.
Haidt supports his assertion with survey results revealing that people aged 18-24 are far more likely to adopt a “victim-oppressor” mindset than older people, and are much more likely to agree with statements that “white” people are categorically in the oppressor class – an aspect of critical race theory.
Anyone who has observed universities through the ages should not be surprised. Young people experiment with ideas, and in their formative years often take strong, uncompromising moral positions – it is the task of universities to help students examine their beliefs.
He gives the impression that this is a new development. It isn’t: 90 years ago many students at elite UK universities threw their support behind Stalin. More recently in the late 1960s many students opposed to Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war took out their anger at the first authority figure they could find: it was easier to occupy the dean’s office than to take on the Holt government.
Also Haidt is writing about the US, where the classification “people of color” arose. It is a particularly American way of thinking, because if problems can be put down to racism it allows people to ignore class conflicts and the legacy of slavery. Unfortunately that classification has made its way into Australia, where it is even less relevant.
Nevertheless Haidt’s article, which includes an extensive extract of his book The coddling of the American mind, helps us explain two phenomena. One is the way so many on the “right”, particularly those who have not been exposed to a liberal education, misunderstand universities. The other is the way some young people who consider themselves to be on the “left” have thrown their support behind authoritarian, misogynist, far-right religious fanatics in the Middle East.