Against Liberal Defeatism

The “fascists” haven’t won. Acting as if they have is self‑defeating.

By Karolina Wigura and Jaroslaw Kuisz
Ms. Wigura and Mr. Kuisz are scholars and activists.

Dec. 30, 2018

WARSAW — People here are no longer moved by warnings about the demise of democracy.
Why should they be? Poles have been living with “Nazis” for years.

It was February 2010 when a former prime minister first described Law and Justice, the right‑
wing populist party that has governed this country since 2015, as an “updated version of
National Socialism.” Since then, the comparison has been made thousands of times.

It’s true that Law and Justice displays an authoritarian streak. The party has attacked the rule
of law, and inveighed against minorities. In the three years that it has been in power, it has
tried to take control of the Constitutional Tribunal and it has changed the public news media
into instruments of government propaganda. Again and again, the response from the liberal
opposition has been the same: “Nazis! Fascists! Dictators!”

By now, these strong statements have not only ceased to shock, but they are ridiculed by the
populists against whom they are deployed. Hearing accusations that the government in
Warsaw is rebuilding authoritarianism, Law and Justice asks laughingly: “Do you see any
tanks in the streets?” In a country where just 37 years ago the military was deployed as part of
a coup, the contrast is indeed stark.

Those who want to defend liberal democracy seem not to notice that their weapons have been
blunted.

Poland, of course, is not alone. The government of Viktor Orban in Hungary is described as
“totalitarian;” President Trump is repeatedly called a “fascist.” Across the West, as a new
generation of populist politicians rises, liberal democrats have been quick to sound the alarm.
Accompanying this alarmism is an equally dangerous phenomenon: a feeling of fatalism.

The truth is, of course, far more complicated. This fall, for example, a young opposition
candidate for a mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski, trounced his Law and Justice opponent.
Liberals won similar victories in many other cities. Public protests continue, and sometimes
liberals have secured some victories, such as the Court of Justice of the European Union
preventing a package of “reforms” that would have destroyed the independence of the
Supreme Court of Poland. In other countries where populist nationalists have won elections in
recent years, the picture is also far more complex.
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So why the despair?

In a 1946 essay, George Orwell wrote about “a new intellectual phenomenon” that he was
observing: “catastrophic gradualism.” This is the belief that history proceeds by calamities,
and each succeeding age is as bad or nearly as bad as the previous one. In the 21st century,
“catastrophic gradualism” often takes the form of a belief in the inevitability of illiberal
democrats’ victory.

As a result, their liberal opponents start to adhere to a black‑and‑white vision of politics that
narrows possible interpretations of any given phenomenon to either “good” or “bad.” Liberals
perceive themselves only positively, as if they never made mistakes.

Moreover, this way of thinking makes the illiberal populists more influential in defining areas
of the political divisions. They are always more radical, for example, in naming the groups
responsible for political crises or suggesting the existence of hidden agendas. When such
strong divisions are drawn, the liberals usually find themselves in a reactive position, unable to
propose new subjects and agendas.

This catastrophic gradualism is dangerous, disheartening citizens opposed to populists. If

authoritarianism has already definitively won, why support those who disagree?

This is not just an academic debate; the consequences are real. While liberal European
intellectuals used to be enthusiastic about the idea of expanding the European Union to include
countries like Poland and Hungary, many are now reconsidering. A potential donor to Kultura
Liberalna, the liberal magazine where we work, recently told us that Poland had missed its
opportunity to become a part of democratic West, and there was no point in supporting our
organization.

But whether liberal democracy will be defeated or revived depends on the continuity of the
already existing organizations, both those producing liberal ideas and those that protest and
resist.

Liberal democrats need to forge a new way of talking about the challenges they face. Instead of
calling their opponents Nazis or fascists, liberals should focus on why the popular support for
their rule remains high and offer positive arguments for liberal values.

For example, many Poles are willing to overlook the government’s disregard for the rule of law
and its trampling of the Constitution. This is in part because for years, and under a variety of
different governments, Polish workers saw their rights disrespected while the state did
nothing for them. Consequently, they see no need now to defend a group of distant judges.

Liberals need to reckon with this. Rather than accusing their fellow citizens of being “clients of
fascists,” they need to make the case for why an independent judiciary is in their interests.
That is what will win the day — not name‑calling.
In Poland, as in many countries these days, we live somewhere between liberal democracy and
illiberal authoritarianism. This in‑between status must neither be disregarded nor
exaggerated, but carefully diagnosed — and gradually dismantled.

Too many liberals try to call people to action by oversimplifying the diagnosis, limiting the
range of possibilities to two: either everything is fine or democracy is dead. But this makes it
impossible to see that more strategies are possible, and in effect it makes liberals similar to
their opponents in their radicalism and their blunt language. It also makes liberals focus only
on the elections without creating a broader vision of what defeating illiberals means for the
future.

Liberalism means belief in the freedom of the individual; therefore it demands trust in the
people. It also requires optimism. In order not to fall into dangerous determinism or
counterproductive defensiveness, we have to remember that the greatest successes of liberal
democracies emerged from hope.
Karolina Wigura, a board member of the Kultura Liberalna Foundation, and Jarosław Kuisz, the editor in chief of
Kultura Liberalna, are co‑directors of the Knowledge Bridges Poland‑Britain‑Europe program at St. Antony’s
College, University of Oxford.