Defending Freedom

How We Can Win the Fight for an Open Society

Ralf Fücks, Nick Somers

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781509536245, 9781509536238
• eBook ISBN: 9781509536252
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

We are witnessing a crisis of liberal democracy. A widespread fear of social decline, rapid globalization and uncontrolled immigration have culminated in a prevailing mood of hostility towards the established order. Confidence in democratic institutions and mainstream political parties is fast eroding, with people increasingly drawn towards the rhetoric of populist demagogues and authoritarian leaders. What are the roots of this revolt against liberalism and how can it be countered? In this new book, the leading Green politician and thinker Ralf Fücks argues that the threat to liberal democracy lies within democracy itself. Democracy is the fundamental guarantor of freedom and it is our own failure to defend it that has led to the encroachment of an illiberal and divisive politics. In a powerful counter, Fücks outlines the foundations for an ambitious democratic renewal: greater investment in the public institutions to create a sense of belonging and political community; a focus on education as the key instrument for social advancement; the promotion of a democratic patriotism based on common political values; a better understanding of how to increase participation in the emerging digital economy; and sustainable innovation that will unleash the creative potential of liberal societies. This robust defense of liberal democracy will be essential reading for anyone concerned about the very real threat faced by our democratic freedoms today and wondering what we can do about it.

1
In Place of an Introduction: The Lie of the Land

A spectre is haunting the western world: a revolt against the open society. It has many faces and forms. In the United States, a rank outsider and his aggressive rhetoric made it to the White House. His election campaign was based on resentment – of migrants and free trade, feminists and Muslims, ‘Washington’ and the East Coast and Californian left-wing liberal elites. Donald Trump’s election victory turned everything on its head. An egocentric New York billionaire became the voice of an anxious and enraged America, a hero of the white working class and provincial America. He prevailed over a large part of the Republican establishment, over the outcry from cultural elites and over all conventional wisdom that elections are won in the centre ground. Trump polarized the country, regardless of the wounds he opened up. He did not require a perfectly orchestrated election campaign because he tuned into the emotions of millions of Americans who could not identify with the rainbow coalition of left-wing liberal elites and sexual and ethnic minorities. What remains is the bitter recognition that, in spite or even because of his demonizing of migrants, his misogynistic outbursts, his reckless foreign policy and his vanity and narcissism, he was able to advance to become president of what is still the most powerful country in the world: a man who cares as little about America as the bastion of liberty and free trade as he does about the West as a community of shared values. Since his election, Trump has shattered all illusions that the newcomer in the White House would be reined in by the professional politicians in the administration and in Congress. The first year of his presidency saw him rampage increasingly against America’s liberal tradition, transatlantic relations and a multilateral world order created to a large extent by the United States after the Second World War.

We Europeans have no cause to point the finger at America. Europe has also long felt the reverberations of the crisis in liberal democracy. From Scandinavia to Italy, from France to Poland, anti-liberal parties have risen to prominence. They have shifted public discourse to the right and pushed the established parties towards more extreme positions. Nationalist, xenophobic and anti-European forces are now part of the governments in Poland, Hungary, Austria and, most recently, Italy. Even in Germany, hitherto an anchor of stability in Europe, the dam has burst to let in extreme right-wing tendencies. An underlying feeling of anxiety, fear of the future and diffuse anger is spreading. It forms a springboard for radical movements and political demagogues and for the call for a strong state that secures its borders and screens society from the ravages of globalization.

However different they may be as individuals, Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Jarosław Kaczyński and their like-minded associates have some fundamental things in common. They claim to represent the voice of the people against an elite that is out of touch with reality; they appeal to strong feelings and passions – patriotism, identity, fear, envy – and they make a clear distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’, friend and foe. These are all main characteristics of populist politics. It is not only their political ideas that are dangerous. They are dangerous above all because they attack the institutional structure on which a democratic republic is based: the independence of the judiciary; freedom of the media; the impartiality of the public administration; and the protection of minorities. They conceive politics as a latent civil war in which the victors grab all of the power. The term ‘illiberal democracy’ is being bandied about to describe a form of government that is ostensibly democratic but in reality authoritarian, one in which the majority party can attack the foundations of the liberal rule of law – separation of powers, political pluralism, minority rights and cultural diversity.

In terms of ideology, it is a mixture of nationalistic, conservative, populist (völkisch) and socialist elements. The anti-liberals invoke national sovereignty and call for direct democracy as a means of attacking the political establishment. The new right borrows unashamedly from the traditional left – it styles itself as the protector of ‘ordinary people’, promises to defend domestic workers from the onslaught of globalization and calls for the priority of politics over markets. And it joins forces with a nationalistic left in its resentment of the United States and its indictment of ‘international finance capital’ and its call for the recovery of national sovereignty. The old fronts are becoming blurred when it comes to mobilization against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), protection of rural agricultural workers, general suspicion of NATO or sympathy for the politics of Vladimir Putin. It is no coincidence that most of the right- and left-wing populist parties in Europe are enthusiastic supporters of the autocratic regime in Moscow.

In early 2016, the right-wing nationalist candidate narrowly failed in his bid to be elected president of Austria. This was the prelude to the thunderbolt that shook all of Europe on 23 June 2016. On that noteworthy day, 51.9 per cent of the British public voted in favour of leaving the European Union (EU). As in Austria, a clear majority of elderly persons, workers and the rural population revolted against the political credo of the liberal elites.

The Brexit alliance embraced the entire political spectrum, from the far right to the far left. It was driven by a mixture of British nostalgia, fear of uncontrolled mass migration and a call for recovery of national sovereignty, coupled with a grotesquely exaggerated idea of the power of the bureaucrats in Brussels. Added to this was the illusion that the United Kingdom could ride the waves of globalization better on its own. As usual in such cases, domestic motives were mixed up with the condemnation of the EU. In the former industrial centres of England in particular, which had been among the losers in Margaret Thatcher’s neo-liberal revolution, the referendum offered a welcome opportunity to give vent to the stored-up bitterness towards ‘those in power’. Direct democracy, once a leftist ideal, has now become a weapon used by the disadvantaged and those who feel insecure or ignored in their fight against the cosmopolitan elites. A new cultural struggle has broken out in the centres of the western world. Issues long thought to have been settled – multiculturalism, religious pluralism, the end of patriarchy, sexual diversity, the embeddedness of national politics in multilateral institutions – are once again being called into question.

The West in this context is more than a geographical designation. As a political category, it stands for the modern liberalism project. It covers an area shaped by the Reformation, Enlightenment and the notion of human rights. The Bill of Rights (1689), the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) are founding documents of modern democracy. Freedom and equality are their guiding principles, the separation of powers, the rule of law, separation of state and religion and documented civil rights are their constituent elements. The era in which global politics and trade were dominated by the West is coming inexorably to an end. At stake now is the survival of the West as a democratic community of shared values – and with it the liberal universalism manifested in the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Anti-liberal cross-party coalition

Across Europe, there are striking points of contact between right-wing nationalists and left-wing sovereigntists. They see the European Union as a Trojan horse of ‘neo-liberal globalization’. They claim to be European but on the basis of a ‘Europe of nations’ and national self-determination. Antipathy to NATO as a representative of American hegemony goes hand in hand with sympathy for Vladimir Putin and his anti-western politics. Moscow today is in fact the headquarters of a pan-European network of antiliberal parties, associations and media. They reject the idea of universal values and regard the notion that human rights and democracy should be global as a liberal pretension.

After the failed interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, public opinion is averse to risks and seeks to avoid conflicts. By contrast, the Russian leadership relies on the calculated use of force as a political instrument. The large-scale offensive military manoeuvres and the provocative actions of Russian bombers and the threatened use of tactical nuclear weapons are designed to spread fear of a major war and to intimidate Europeans: a conflict with Russia is the last thing they want! At the same time, the Kremlin is expanding its propaganda networks. State-owned media like Russia Today and Sputnik are instruments of ideological warfare abroad, and a whole army of trolls and hackers are active partisans in the information war. Added to that is a wide-ranging network of foundations, institutes and think tanks in Europe, some controlled directly by Moscow, others in cooperation with Putin’s friends in Russia. Former top European politicians are lured into taking lucrative positions on supervisory boards and in foundations, not least a former German federal chancellor, who does not tire of speaking up for Putin. State-owned Russian companies acquire key positions in the European energy industry; a legion of financial institutions, law firms, real estate companies and PR agencies are involved in business done with Russian money. And finally there are the close connections between the Kremlin and both right-wing and left-wing parties in Europe.

For all the colourful diversity of the cross-party front of anti-western groups, what they have in common is their opposition to liberalism and globalization. They counter the notion of liberal universalism with the concept of a multipolar world order, characterized by large areas, each with their own traditions and norms: diversity on a global scale; and homogeneity at home. They fear the Islamization of Europe but grant Islam its own sphere of influence, in which the West should not interfere. In this ethno-pluralistic world, Russia forms a civilization in its own right – an uncontrollable counterpoint to the ideological and political domination of the West. Left- and right-wing actors also share an admiration for China. Surely the Middle Kingdom has the right to assume its historical role as a world power again? And surely China’s massive economic and social rise justifies its authoritarian form of government? In the eyes of many western observers as well, political stability and economic strength count more than democratic rights and freedoms. Sympathy for the Chinese approach even extends far into the environmental sector. Is a ‘benevolent dictatorship’ not in a better position to take the necessary measures regarding production and consumption than western democracies with their fixation on the next elections?

The offshoots of this anti-liberal counter-revolution can be felt right across the party spectrum. They are nourished by fear of globalization and of losing status, the sense that individuals no longer have control over their lives, or indeed anything else, a concoction of xenophobia mixed with toxic social envy, growing mistrust of the political and business elites and a basic feeling of being overwhelmed by the speed of cultural, technical and social change. The fear of being swamped by immigrants of a different colour and religion is just the tip of a huge iceberg of insecurity. Globalization and the digital revolution have led to a growing polarization of our society into winners and losers. Those who have acquired a good education, speak several languages, have international contacts and are technically literate are more likely to see open markets, migration and cultural diversity as an opportunity. The rest are more likely see them as a threat.

It is against this background that populist movements have been growing on both left and right. They claim to be the true voice of the people against the ‘regime parties’ (Systemparteien) and ‘regime press’ (Systempresse). It is no coincidence that these battle cries from the 1920s and 1930s are now being revived. The opposition of both left- and right-wing parties to the system is also nothing new. The idea of a revolutionary cross-party front was already popular in the nationalist communist and conservative circles in the Weimar Republic, as was the demand for a Berlin–Moscow axis as a counterbalance to London and Washington. The confrontation with anti-liberal movements today is not taking place on virgin soil. The revolt against modern liberalism and anti-western attitudes is deeply rooted in European thinking.¹

But, of course, history does not repeat itself, and caution is required when drawing historical parallels. Democracy in Germany today is far more stable than it was at any time during the Weimar Republic. But no nation is immune to the return of anti-democratic movements. In many European countries, they already attract 20–30 per cent of the electorate. The common denominator is contempt for liberal democracy, return to the nationalist fold, defence of an imagined cultural homogeneity and evocation of family, nation and state as the bastions against the threat from without.

Society, seen as cold, impersonal and alienating, is contrasted with a community longing for a sense of belonging; the abstractness of the market with the ideal of a local economy based on personal relations; the remoteness of representative democracy with the directness of a plebiscite; the excessive demands of a multicultural society with the desire for homogeneity; liberal universalism with the idea of a plural world order in which every cultural group lives according to its own values.

These regressive tendencies are by no means confined to those who have not been able to reap the benefits of modernization or have been left behind. The ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Quote
• 1 In Place of an Introduction: The Lie of the Land
• 2 Modern and Anti-Modern
• 3 The Long View of Democracy
• 4 The Left and Democracy
• 5 The Rise of the Anti-Liberals
• 6 The Migration Battlefield
• 7 Dealing with Islam
• 8 No Empathy for Freedom: The Germans and Ukraine
• 9 The Russian Complex
• 10 Modernity and Its Discontents
• 11 Ecology and Freedom
• 12 Civilizing Capitalism
• 13 Shaping Globalization
• 14 How We Can Relaunch the European Union
• 15 What is at Stake
• End User License Agreement