The last decade registered an increasing frequency of authoritarian regimes all over the world, from the USA to Hungary. Some countries never experienced properly a democratic regime, but rather switches from an authoritarian variation to another. In some cases, representatives elected democratically abused in a totalitarian way democratic institutions and values. For instance, America under the Trump presidency.
There are different variations on the anti-democratic scale, which are rather individual cases based on very specific historical, geographical, social and intellectual circumstances.
There are big operational categories the political science operate with, like Fascism, Communism, Nazism, but it is very important to keep in mind the specificities of the system we are dealing with. Generalisations of any kind and gross comparisons are obliterating relevant details of the case-study. Instead of trying to find out the typical details, it focuses on the general lines without trying to identify the very specific information which may outline the differences.
Fascism, a Warning, by the ex-secretary of state during Clinton Administration Madeleine Albright, the first woman in America to hold the position of top diplomat, was written during the mid-term of president Trump. It was a time when America and the whole world was trying to understand what exactly this Trump administration was all about. Some may had the final revelation during the the very last weeks of the mandate when the Capitol Hill was under threat. Some, among which Albright, figured out long before. ´More generally, I fear that we are becoming disconnected from the ideals that have long inspired and united us´, wrote Albright, and the current US administration is way too ´green´ to make us hope that this values-oriented connection is restored.
Albright is uses her own personal history - as the daughter of a Czechoslovak diplomat forced to leave the country during the communism - when reading some of the cases presented: Chavez´s Venezuela, Milosevic´s Yugoslavia, Putin, Erdogan, Orban Viktor in Hungary. ´Repressive governments from across the globe are learning from one another´, and this is indeed, true, but mostly because the authoritarian regimes are not admonished in due time by using the complex international mechanisms. Orban Viktor, for instance, leads a party - Fidesz - with non-democratic tendencies, until recently member of the European People´s Party. The withdrawal in the end was Orban´s decision not the result of some outrage on behalf of the respectable parties part of the alliance.
The conceptual reference Albright used is fascism, as practiced by Mussolini. In her acception, ´a fascist is someone who claims to speak for a while nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have´. In full honesty, I may say that this theoretical basis does not stand a critical approach to the book in its entirety. I considered valuable - especially for further analysis and evaluation - the specific cases outlines, but the theoretical framework is very superficial and does not creates a good basis for understanding the phenomenon in its amplitude. In fact, the situation may be more serious than presented in the book, with autocrats from all over the world out and free from their caves.
In 1975, Hannah Arendt wrote: ´To look to the past in order to find analogies by which to solve our present problem is, in my opinion, a mythological error´. Entropy, the level of disorder within a specific system, is only increasing with time. Coping successfully with the current authoritarian wave can be done only through a straigthforward analysis of its risks and specificities, as well as the overall system-errors and disfunctionalities (mostly related to institutional mishapes). Generalisations and uniform translations are deemed to fail the path towards clarity.
Rating: 3 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
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