A knowledgeable, rational, necessarily dark take on dark realities.
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Equal parts memoir, reportage, and history, this sobering account of the roots and forms of today’s authoritarianism, by one of its most accomplished observers, is meant as a warning to everyone.
Known for her historically grounded commentary and such well-received histories as the Pulitzer Prize–winning Gulag (2003), Atlantic staff writer Applebaum, a reflective, deep-thinking conservative, explores the “restorative nostalgia” and “authoritarian predisposition” of the far right in the U.S. and Europe. Her motivation in writing is a fear of the possible “fall of liberal democracy.” Sadly, she writes, “given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all of our societies eventually will.” Well-acquainted with many of the figures she discusses, Applebaum analyzes the forces that have caused so many of them to turn ugly, revanchist, and unreasoning. She takes her examples mostly from Europe—Hungary, Poland, Spain, and Britain in particular—but also from Trump’s America. Sometimes too discursive, sometimes overlong (as on Laura Ingraham), the book is nevertheless critically important for its muscular, oppositionist attack on the new right from within conservative ranks—and for the well-documented warning it embodies. The author’s views are especially welcome because she is a deliberate thinker and astute observer rather than just the latest pundit or politico. In the spirit of Julien Benda, Hannah Arendt, and Theodor Adorno, Applebaum seeks to understand what makes the new right “more Bolshevik than Burkean.” Needless to say, any attack that places Viktor Orbán, Boris Johnson, and Donald Trump in the company of Lenin and Stalin is worthy of close attention. The author is highly instructive on what is happening in the increasingly grim realm of the far right: a hardening of bitterness and unreasoning vengefulness and a resulting shift of the spectrum that puts a growing number of conservatives like Applebaum in the center.
A knowledgeable, rational, necessarily dark take on dark realities.Pub Date: July 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-385-54580-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Categories: CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | PUBLIC POLICY | MODERN | POLITICS | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | UNITED STATES | WORLD
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Everyone’s favorite avuncular socialist sends up a rousing call to remake the American way of doing business.
“In the twenty-first century we can end the vicious dog-eat-dog economy in which the vast majority struggle to survive,” writes Sanders, “while a handful of billionaires have more wealth than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes.” With that statement, the author updates an argument as old as Marx and Proudhon. In a nice play on words, he condemns “the uber-capitalist system under which we live,” showing how it benefits only the slimmest slice of the few while imposing undue burdens on everyone else. Along the way, Sanders notes that resentment over this inequality was powerful fuel for the disastrous Trump administration, since the Democratic Party thoughtlessly largely abandoned underprivileged voters in favor of “wealthy campaign contributors and the ‘beautiful people.’ ” The author looks squarely at Jeff Bezos, whose company “paid nothing in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018.” Indeed, writes Sanders, “Bezos is the embodiment of the extreme corporate greed that shapes our times.” Aside from a few passages putting a face to avarice, Sanders lays forth a well-reasoned platform of programs to retool the American economy for greater equity, including investment in education and taking seriously a progressive (in all senses) corporate and personal taxation system to make the rich pay their fair share. In the end, he urges, “We must stop being afraid to call out capitalism and demand fundamental change to a corrupt and rigged system.” One wonders if this firebrand of a manifesto is the opening gambit in still another Sanders run for the presidency. If it is, well, the plutocrats might want to take cover for the duration.
Even if they're pie-in-the-sky exercises, Sanders’ pitched arguments bear consideration by nonbillionaires.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593238714
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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