Anne Applebaum on Eastern Europe
Anne Applebaum is one of America’s most distinguished conservative reporters. (In the “classical liberal sense.) Interestingly, in 2018 we’ve reached the point where distinguished conservatives and center-left reporters are almost identical on a wide range of foreign policy issues. She has written the single best article I’ve ever read on the recent transformation of Eastern Europe.
Applebaum has dual citizenship with Poland, and is especially good on that country. But the essay ranges over a wide range of topics. For instance, until today I could never really “get” the Dreyfus Affair of 1894. I knew that a French military officer was wrongly accused of treason. And that the fact that he was Jewish probably played a role in this scandal. But I never understood why this event was viewed as being so important. It’s mentioned in almost every book I’ve ever read on French society in the late 1800s and early 1900s. You could be reading a biography of an artist or author, and they’ll always spend a lot of time discussing that person’s opinion on the Dreyfus Affair. Why?
After reading Applebaum’s story you’ll suddenly get it. History will start locking into place, at a psychological level. Indeed any future historian that wants to write a 21st century history of Europe should probably start with the Dreyfus Affair.
She’s also great on Hungary. It’s long, but read the whole thing.
PS. I see that Trump is gloating about how Nike stock dropped right after the Kaepernick ad was put out:
President Donald Trump had plenty to say about a topic he has been obsessed with, tweeting that Nike was getting “absolutely killed with anger and boycotts” and asking what the company was thinking with their divisive decision.
If the President were smart then he should have waited to see the impact on sales. But then if he were smart . . . well a whole lot of things would be different:
Ten days after Nike announced that Colin Kaepernick would be the face of its “Just Do It” 30th anniversary ad campaign, the sports apparel behemoth’s stock price closed at an all-time high on Thursday at $83.47, according to a report from Bloomberg.
People seem to have tuned Trump out, which bodes well for the midterms. And the good news keeps piling up, as the “brave” Manafort flipped today.
PPS. Robert Shiller is in the news today:
At the same time, the president’s apparent Teflon to slough off scandals, conflicts of interest, evidence of incompetence, and other issues that would doom traditional political figures is well documented.
Shiller says this mindset is reflected in the market, which he considers overvalued.
“I think Trump encourages us to be more risk-taking” when it comes to investments, said Shiller.
Shiller’s hypothesis that this thinking may have seeped into the public consciousness.
How can I put this politely . . . umm, no.
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14. September 2018 at 19:45
I find the piece of Applebaum extremely weak. She’s completely unable to see things from the perspective of her counterparts. I can imagine why you love it so much because you have similar difficulties.
She doesn’t even try to understand the positions of her opponents for a second, not even for the sake of the argument, or just to play it through, no, not for a second. When she portrays her opponent’s position, it’s just a distorted caricature. The whole piece is an uninspired mockery, a cliché with the intention to confirm the opinions she had before anyway. One gets almost no new insights, she herself, does not want to learn anything new.
She commits the exact mistake she accuses her opponents of. For her there’s only black an white. She is on the side of good and light, and whoever takes a contrary view must then automatically be dark and evil. There is not a single sentence in the entire piece, which indicates that her opponents might have one or two points as well. What’s the point? Personally, I could not live in such a bubble of lies.
15. September 2018 at 05:27
Applebaum mentions the Hungarian right wing’s obsession with George Soros. I was reminded of the American left wing’s obsession with the Koch brothers.
As for the Dreyfus affair, its outcome was obviously very important for Dreyfus personally, but she does not make much effort to explain the importance for France. If Deyfus had not finally been acquitted, how would French politics have unfolded differently?
15. September 2018 at 06:35
Branko Milanovic describes it similarly. http://glineq.blogspot.com/2017/12/democracy-of-convenience-not-of-choice.html?m=1
15. September 2018 at 07:25
Christian, Sorry, there is no moral equivalence between people who lie all the time and construct vast, absurd conspiracy theories, and those who do not. Pity you can’t see that.
Philo, Agree about the demonization of the Koch brothers, although with Soros there is a greater degree of outright lying. (And of course the anti-semitism, which seems to be in the DNA of Europe.)
The Dreyfus affair was clearly viewed as being extremely important; that’s what I find so amazing. Why? Now you can argue about whether an event viewed as being extremely important was in fact extremely important, but I think her point is that this event prefigured the ideological splits of the interwar period (and the early 21st century)
15. September 2018 at 07:36
Christian List,
“She’s completely unable to see things from the perspective of her counterparts.”
You mean, she failed to defend the subversion of the rule of law and the replacement of meritocratic elites by kleptocratic nepotistic ones, effectuated by a hysterical lynch mob? Sad!
The whole issue is indeed circular. Machiavelli had entire sections in the Discorsi devoted to describing how democracies degenerate into mob rule and eventually into autocracy. And Popper’s “Open society and its enemies” is pretty much the standard work on the contrast between open – meritocratic societies and tribal – nepotistic ones.
Then of course, Soros was a student of Popper’s before he turned to finance. I know, I’m not helping the paranoia here… Sad!!
15. September 2018 at 07:47
The United States had its own Dreyfus affair. Two Jewish immigrants, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were accused of passing nuclear secrets to the USSR. The trial was fiercely attacked in the European press. The French actually called it the U.S. Dreyfus affair. The U.S. was accused of being backwards, xenophobic, and anti-semitic.
Decrypted papers have now proven the Rosenbergs were indeed guilty. What should Poland learn from the U.S. Dreyfus affair?
15. September 2018 at 08:15
Mara, That the Rosenbergs were guilty. And the importance of EVIDENCE.
I’d add that Applebaum is one of the few intellectuals who has been consistently as outspoken about atrocities on both the left and the right. She’s written entire books exposing the horrors of communism.
15. September 2018 at 08:17
mbka, If he’d been alive in the 1920s, Christian would have complained that critics of Mussolini weren’t presenting “both sides”.
15. September 2018 at 11:28
I’ve started the Applebaum piece but haven’t finished it yet. It does seem to me that most of the concrete things she complains about the Hungarian and Polish governments doing are things those governments would not be able to do if they had opted in the beginning for truly limited governments. She complains about takeovers of state-run enterprises and state television, for example. Well, the party in power is either in charge of the government or it isn’t. Why shouldn’t they run things owned by the government? Who else is going to do it?
The problem is the existence of state-run media in the first place. Of course it is going to turn into a propaganda organ. That’s the nature of the beast. Ditto with state-owned and state-run businesses. Of course they turn into party employment machines. Again, it’s the nature of the beast. Why does Applebaum not see this? No, like most “moderates”, she only sees the danger of big government when the other guys are in power.
15. September 2018 at 11:39
Interesting article from Applebaum, but the countries in question (Poland, Hungary, Russia) had basically no democratic tradition in 1990. It’s not like flipping a lightswitch. Look at the decades-long arc toward democracy in South Korea, for example. Hell, our own history is dotted with Huey Long characters, and even FDR tried to pack the court.
15. September 2018 at 13:56
So, a Jew has nothing but complaints regarding Eastern Europe.
In other news, dog bites man.
Also, gotta love the unstated premise that Western-style liberalism is THE ONE TRUE WAY.
And anyone who deviates is a subhuman (who, knowing American sensibilities, probably needs to be liberated via aerial bombardment).
15. September 2018 at 15:10
Uh, no. Then she would be at Reason or something. She’s a Jewish vampire of the neocon hypocritical Zionist variety.
Yes. They’re imperialist. Foreign policy is sadly most often omitted from most political quizzes, which is why I have created my own, which includes it as the second dimension:
https://enopoletus.github.io/quiz/
Ironically, Netanyahu, king of the neocons, is a huge fan of Orban. He is an unhypocritical Zionist. And, yet, there is not a single mention of the most influential foreigner in American politics in that article. I wonder why. Perhaps what’s supposedly so good for the Gentile isn’t so good for the Jew?
? The New York Times has a bunch of polls on the midterms:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/elections-polls.html
Summary: bloodbath in the Clinton districts, less of one in the Trump districts. Dems easily take the House. Senate is probably a tossup at this point due to the GOP’s incompetence on every level (remember, the GOP lost in Alabama.
The people are angry at the do-nothing Congress.
It’s not. Unhypocritical Zionist influence in Hungary is strong.
15. September 2018 at 15:43
She is only “anti-Communist” (really; anti-Stalinist; her ideology is an outgrowth of Trotskyism, and she certainly falls under Category D of this ideological division: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/double-horseshoe-theory/ ) because she is anti-Russian. Not the reverse. She would have been a Communist in the 1920s because the Communists were anti-Russian, as well as against the native institutions of all Eastern European nations, as she is. BTW, she is not “one of the few” people to be a Jew neocon. Jewish neoconservatism is the near universal ideology of the media elite. Take a look at the recent NYT hires if you don’t believe me.
Bingo.
Rob, good comment.
A good portion of which are Russophobic fiction:
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/11/08/studying-stalin/
True. Applebaum is one of the former.
15. September 2018 at 19:55
Scott,
about the endemic antisemitism in Europe, you may have a point, but the comments here suggest that the US isn’t far behind (making some assumptions about the origin of the commenters). In Europe it seems to be differentiated, Poland and Hungary have a long tradition of antisemitism, ironically Austria and Germany were traditionally more tolerant – until Hitler. And on occasion, strange things happen, the Austrian far right today in particular has tried hard to switch from blaming Jews to blaming Arabs.
The main enemy of the alt right are still the “globalists”. In the 1930’s, they used the word “cosmopolitans”, but it’s the same smear for the same purpose, i.e. to agitate against diffuse “unseen power not from here”.
I used to have some limited understanding for people who fell for Hitler or Mussolini: economic hardship, naivete, revolutionary enthusiasm, whatever. But now I see these same trends develop in front of my eyes and I can clearly see how it’s all transparent. The lies, the propaganda, the gleeful brutality meted out to innocents (to me, the child separation policy at the US border takes the crown for repulsiveness). One can clearly see the brown tide rising, the corruption is plain to see. There is no excuse, and even back then there were enough critics who were first persecuted, then prosecuted, then executed. The voter, the people, HAS the blame, for all these governments, and for the consequences.
Related: back in the 90s I and a friend, both wondered why the neoliberal miracle happened so fast, how come in particular the European left, all these defenders of stalinism and maoism, were suddenly silent and embraced liberalism after the Berlin wall fell. We concluded they had not properly understood their previous ideology, and just jumped on the next bandwagon that they also didn’t properly understand. Well the same people are now jumping again.
Jeff, Brian,
democratic tradition and institutions, historically, are not a strong defense against authoritarianism. First thing populists do is change constitutions and disable the checks on power. The Nazis were the most famous example coming to power on a plurality and disabling the rest once they had enough power, but the playbook is always the same. All checks and all institutions can be changed, often democratically so, into useless shells.
15. September 2018 at 23:04
Meanwhile, back in the real world, even robots quickly learn that in-group favoritism (also known as “racism”) is VERY BENEFICIAL.
So either prof Sumner is suicidal.
Or he’s a cynical psychopath.
16. September 2018 at 02:14
democratic tradition and institutions, historically, are not a strong defense against authoritarianism.
And that’s the genius of James Madison, who understood this in his bones. He knew that small democracies up to that time had always fallen to one faction or another. His cure was to make the democracy large, with many competing centers of power, and with government kept out of most of civil society, to further limit its power. In one of the Federalist papers he specifically argues that the cure for faction is more faction, so many factions that no single one of them can ever overcome the others.
That’s what’s missing in places like Hungary and Poland: they have only a few centers of power, and that power is too great. But people like Applebaum continue to think the problem is just that the wrong people are in charge. Institutions have to be designed knowing that the wrong people are often going to be in charge, and the design has to account for that.
16. September 2018 at 06:20
Jeff,
“Institutions have to be designed knowing that the wrong people are often going to be in charge, and the design has to account for that.”
I completely agree with that, and with the genius of the US setup in that regard. BTW this is also what Tocqueville was about. He doesn’t write about democracy, accidentally in America. He writes about how democracy may actually work _in America_, as opposed to his skepticism of other democracies. Example, he talk about France in “L’ancien regime et la revolution”. There, he describes how the French kings slowly removed the checks and balances of the aristocratic factions, until France became a centralized monarchy with no factional opposition, and was therefore easily supplanted by the “pure” revolutionary democracy that immediately degenerated into terror and civil war.
What people don’t seem to understand about it is that the US system is specifically designed to NOT be a simple, pure democracy (rather, a republic). And “the will of the people” by design counts for far less than the power (struggles) of the various institutions. This includes the “deep state” of course, and is a good thing. You do NOT want to give “power to the people”, or say, like Brexit, power to 51% of the 60% who went to vote on a bad day. Referendums are a particularly bad idea.
Still, the US system is not immune to deconstruction, so it pays to be vigilant.
16. September 2018 at 06:21
I just love it when a bunch of autists harp abstractly about “institutions”.
As if people were fungible.
As soon as a Somali sets foot in Sweden – PRESTO! – he becomes Swedish.
You people are dumber than tadpoles.
16. September 2018 at 06:49
As soon as a Somali sets foot in Sweden – PRESTO! – he becomes Swedish.
Maybe not, but unless the schools are completely screwed up, his children will. And unless Sweden is dumb enough to put new immigrants on the public dole, he will be too busy working and trying to get ahead to act on his non-Swedishness.
16. September 2018 at 07:47
Jeff, I have my doubts. Black Americans have not been assimilated after 150 years; how would Somalis be in twenty? Serious question.
16. September 2018 at 09:19
Jeff, You said:
“Why shouldn’t they run things owned by the government? Who else is going to do it?”
I agree that state run media is a bad idea, but would you want Trump making personnel decisions at PBS?
Rob and Harding, And people complain when I point out that the alt-right is anti-semitic.
16. September 2018 at 09:23
Gypsies have been in Europe for centuries – and look how well they blended in.
Oh wait.
Like I said – some people are dumber than tadpoles.
16. September 2018 at 09:25
Prof Sumner,
Thank you for so graciously conceding my point.
Because that’s what happens when you deploy an “-ism”.
16. September 2018 at 10:09
Yes. The propaganda would still mostly be the same, but might be a little more interesting in some respects. It’s called accountability to the people, Sumner. Ever heard of it? True democracy.
I actually wish each state had its own state-run media. The cable channels (except Fox) already effectively function as CIA mouthpieces. There’s far less debate in American media than there is in Russian. Even the mediocre BBC is usually better than American privately-owned establishment media.
17. September 2018 at 08:42
@mbka,
Germany had no democratic tradition in 1920.
17. September 2018 at 09:14
Why is it anti democratic to stop one’s country from being flooded with foreigners? Like you realize Poland is an ancient land right? Not Poland without Poles. Poles have seen what’s happened in England, with the Rotherham scandal, acid attacks and plain old generalized alienation and don’t want it. This is a bald fact and no opponent of the Visegrad project can refute it. This IS democracy, the will of the people. This is why we get a focus on I’ll defined “corruption” and dirty political tricks rather that the truth that people want to have normal coherent countries. Well the left has been doing dirty political tricks for 60+ years (such as importing voters). Time for the right to play dirty.
Glory to Poland!
17. September 2018 at 17:24
Brian,
lack of democratic tradition doesn’t help, but having one is no panacea either – sounds about right now?
That being said, (and why 1920?) Germany (and its constituent parts) had parliaments before the Weimar Republic of course, Bismarck wasn’t an emperor, he was prime minister. Austria-Hungary had two parliaments and had Franz Ferdinand not been assassinated, it might have gotten a third. That’s why he was assassinated btw, Slav nationalists didn’t want representation within Austria Hungary, they wanted their own nations. France had no democratic tradition before 1789, promptly degenerated into civil war and a string of oscillations between emperors and democracy, plus an authoritarian regime smack in the middle of the 20th Century. It is also at its fifth republic in 200 years – and we regard France as a model democracy. Italy and Greece have democratic pedigrees going back 2000 years while we’re at it, that didn’t prevent periodic dictatorship either.
The point here is, history is littered with democracies that self-destructed, countries that oscillate between democracy and autocracy and the question is, is there any way to find inherently stable protections for democracy and basic freedoms? These two aren’t the same thing, because in the process of their degeneration, democracies tend to vote away freedoms, as majorities begin to democratically oppress minorities. Normally, that’s what constitutions are there for to prevent, but as I said, constitutions can be changed – democratically.
17. September 2018 at 17:31
I just controlled F and found only one mention of Catholicism or even Christianity in this entire article. How can she write about Eastern Europe and not even touch on religion? It’s a massive part of the culture. She knows Poland so well, I can’t understand it.
Just because you’re secular doesn’t mean everybody else is.
Alan Jacobs has a book coming out discussing the role of Christian intellectuals in the mid 20th century. One sentence in a recent interview about the book stood out to me:
“the older figures (Maritain, Eliot, Lewis) tend to believe, or at least hope, that it’s possible to rebuild and renew Christendom—to have a Western European society that is grounded in Christian tradition, though without any mandated acceptance of Christianity. (Their views are not altogether unlike those of Viktor Orbán in Hungary today.) ”
Did Applebaum ever think to consider something this idea when analyzing Hungary? Or does she just think this idea too retrograde to even discuss? If so, that’s a big mistake. You can’t just write off the religion of a religious country (even if you’d like to).
19. September 2018 at 16:25
Thomas, You said:
“Like you realize Poland is an ancient land right? Not Poland without Poles.”
Actually, “ancient Poland” was full of non-Poles. It only became relatively homogeneous after WWII. But in any case, if you think her primary problem was with the immigration policy, then you obviously didn’t read the article. That’s your choice, but then don’t waste my time commenting here.
Hoosier, So the European alt-right is carrying out the teachings of Jesus? Is this a joke?
20. September 2018 at 02:16
So when a white man notices a Jew is lying, he’s an anti-semite.
When a prominent public figure (who just happens to be a Jew) openly wishes for white people to drop dead … what the name for that, prof Sumner ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASirQL7DrvQ
20. September 2018 at 18:39
Rob,
“When a prominent public figure (who just happens to be a Jew) openly wishes for white people to drop dead”
Which is totally not what Krugman said in this clip. He’s alluding to the cultural power of rural white people fading away, as a reality.
And that’s the way the right wing extremist spectrum works. Hysterically misconstruing what people say, hysterically overreacting to problems that are real but manageable, and huddling together in panic, seeking the safety of the herd.
Note, the left is doing the equivalent thing too of course.
21. September 2018 at 02:30
mbka,
Either you’re autistic. Or this is a really lame attempt at gaslighting.
Either way, you’re an idiot.
23. September 2018 at 12:39
Scott, that’s just one of your straw man arguments. I never said there’s moral equivalence. That’s just absurd. And another thing: Don’t make anything about morality. That’s a huge mistake.
No, mbka, don’t do another straw man. I mean what I wrote. She needs to defend nothing but she should try to portray all events as accurately as possible, otherwise she’s just a very partisan hack.
For example Orbán came to power because his left-wing predecessors were viewed as extremely corrupt, not only by the voters but also by mainstream European media outlets, who reported it at that time. That’s the backstory to Orbán.
You and her talking about meritocracy is questionable for another reason: We explicitly don’t live in a meritocracy but in a democracy, which is something completely different. Meritocracy is a terrible idea in itself, not to mention that it is impossible to achieve because performance is always subjective.
Jeff’s point are quite right as well. In Europe we have way too much agencies, industries, and even media outlets that are heavily influenced by party hacks but Applebaum only complains that the “wrong” politicians (whatever that means) are in power. That’s the completely wrong approach to the problem.
23. September 2018 at 13:08
Again back to the piece by Applebaum:
That’s especially dishonest by Applebaum because the governments in Poland and Hungary are fighting since August 2015 that the migrant waves don’t hit them too hard. The first big waves in 2015 came directly through Hungary. It’s brazen by Applebaum to think that the Hungarians forget what they have seen with their own eyes.
The simple backstory here is that Soros-backed institutions heavily support the idea that Hungary must accept a lot more migrants than there are doing now. That’s hardly a conspiracy theory.
She repeated her claim that immigration poses a dire threat to Hungary, and became annoyed when I asked, several times, where all the immigrants were. “They’re in Germany,” she finally snapped, asserting that the Germans will eventually force Hungary to take “these people back.”
Again, that’s hardly a conspiracy theory but the official policy of the EU and Angela Merkel. The EU and Merkel want to force Poland and Hungary to accept a lot more migrants than they are doing now.
People like Applebaum still don’t seem to realize that all this nonsense makes campaigning for politicians like Kaczyński and Orbán extremely easy.
The surprising part seems to be that the rest of the EU is still standing, even though this might not be true, see Brexit, see Austria, see Italia, see Sweden, see Denmark, see the rest of the Visegrád states.
23. September 2018 at 15:57
If you think the governments of Poland and Hungary are alt right you’re seriously out of touch with reality. It would explain why you think this piece by Applebaum has explanative power though. As long as she ignores the cultural importance of Christianity in Poland she’ll continue to get it wrong.
23. September 2018 at 16:59
Christian List,
“Again, that’s hardly a conspiracy theory but the official policy of the EU and Angela Merkel. The EU and Merkel want to force Poland and Hungary to accept a lot more migrants than they are doing now.”
That part is true. Poland and Hungary didn’t accept any refugees, neither did much of the rest of the EU, contrary to their treaty obligations. Trouble is, due to absent external EU border policing, the refugees still came and stacked up in Greece, which had severe other problems at the time, and still has. Greece should have processed the refugees but couldn’t handle it and just let them through. (how come no one is blaming Greece since we’re at it??).
So what Merkel did was, to save Greece from ever more trouble, and Germany from the accusation of idly standing by while the South of Europe was burning, she allowed all these refugees to be swallowed by Germany. That was neither EU policy, nor desirable, it was to compensate for the other incompetent, unwilling, and hysterically NIMBYist EU countries who wouldn’t move a finger to buffer the blow to Greece (and yes, since Greece let them through, the blows to Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria, on the Balkan route). It was Realpolitik at its best, choosing the least bad solution to solve that problem. See what happens now in Italy, same issue – it’s the frontline state in the Mediterranean and migrants just stack up. If the distribution had worked, we wouldn’t have the current uproar in Italy either.
You always seem to assume that if it hadn’t been for Merkel, there wouldn’t have been any Syrian refugees. Truth is, the refugees were a given, and out of the 5, 6 million total, just a million plus made it to Europe*, a continent of about 500 million. Had the been distributed as intended by EU law, it wouldn’t have been much of an issue, but due to the pathetic and hysterical obstructionism by the likes of Hungary, we got the situation in Germany, the ONLY country, besides maybe Sweden and initially Austria, that would do anything about it at all. I don’t blame Merkel, I blame everybody else.
* mind you there’s about 3 million still sitting in Turkey and I don’t hear pathetic whining like from the Hungarians.
But who cares what actually happened if one can construct beautiful stories of betrayal, blood, and soil instead.
And frankly, meritocracy may have its own issues, but what’s so great with morons voting for morons such as Trump and Chavez?
29. September 2018 at 10:25
“Had the been distributed as intended by EU law, it wouldn’t have been much of an issue, but due to the pathetic and hysterical obstructionism by the likes of Hungary, we got the situation in Germany, the ONLY country, besides maybe Sweden and initially Austria, that would do anything about it at all. I don’t blame Merkel, I blame everybody else.”
Sorry, this is simply not true. Almost all migrants wanted to go to Germany or any state with a high standard of social benefits (Austria, Sweden). They refused to apply for asylum in Eastern Europe and many migrants who did it were a little bit later in Germany (it is called “Asyl Shopping”).
Merkel could have closed the borders. The Bundespolizei had done all preparations but she refused because she wanted to avoid ugly pictures (woman and children on the border) and she thought there will be only 20.000 – 30.000 and did not realized that consequences. And till today she has no really idea how to handle the situation.
In 2/2018 the “Zeit” (a liberal left leaning paper) published an article about the economic consequences of the migration. The summary is: we do it not for economic benefit (there are non because the average migrant is low skilled and receives more social benefits that he can contribute), we do it only for humanitarian purposes because White are responsible for discrimination, slavery, colonialism, unfair trade pacts, climate change and so on.