Few would have contended, just some years ago, that it would come to this. Armed with Rawlsian gibberish, the liberal establishment has finally decided to do away with the masquerade. Liberalism’s own altarpieces of political liberty, freedom of the press, and the rule of law have finally been cast aside with liberating frankness.
The examples are, by now, too many and too egregious to describe in detail. It likely began in France, that nation of liberty so adept in the ugly art of persecution. Many were surprised when, in 2017, France’s leader of the opposition, Marine Le Pen, had her European parliamentary immunity rescinded on the shamelessly bogus charge of ‘publicizing ISIS.’ She had, instead, tweeted gruesome images of the Salafist group’s crimes precisely in order to denounce it. Having enjoyed this first taste of judicial abuse, the international establishment took note and readied itself for more. It was not long until what had once been taboo became the new norm. In the U.S., President Trump had to undergo the ignominy of having his Mar-a-Lago home searched by the FBI. Democrats have, more recently, been playing judicial games to bar him from the 2024 Republican ticket.
In Brazil, former President Jair Bolsonaro was forbidden by the courts from running for office in the next decade. In Italy, Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing Lega Nord and then a former Interior Minister, was bafflingly put on trial for the crime of doing his job—he was accused of preventing an illegal migrant boat from coming ashore near the island of Lampedusa. In Germany, the AfD was placed under surveillance by the country’s domestic intelligence service, the BfV. Though the AfD is by now Germany’s second-largest party, it continues to be spied on by an agency that reports directly to a leading member of the ruling Social Democrats. The BfV, whose humorously chosen motto is ‘In Defense of Democracy,’ proudly confesses these appalling, liberticidal practices.
The Polish case well highlights establishment hypocrisy. In the months since EU darling Donald Tusk was returned to power, the country has seen a series of increasingly wanton violations of political precedent. The new authorities have shown no qualms in crushing dissent. Tusk denied the conservative, Eurosceptic PiS the right to elect a deputy speaker for both chambers of Poland’s bicameral parliament, even though the privilege has always been accorded to the main opposition party. In December, under the cover of Christmas, Tusk had State broadcaster TVP Media shut down and its entire leadership sacked. In scenes more befitting of Turkmenistan than Western democracies, Tusk had the police invade the premises of some of the most important media institutions in the land. And, in early January, he went even further by ordering the authorities into Belweder Palace, one of the seats of the Polish President, to arrest two leading members of PiS. The men, renowned in Poland for their fight against corruption, had both been pardoned by President Duda for any wrongdoing. The arrests come, thus, as a shocking assault both on the dignity of the country’s elected head of State and on the rule of law.
In Brussels, the EU mandarinate looked on with ill-concealed glee. When asked about the Commission’s stance on the ongoing Polish Yezhovshchina, the fanatically federalist fonctionnaires invoked ‘national sovereignty’ as a reason for standing aside. One can imagine the giggles.
Back in 2019, Russia’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta published ‘Putin’s Lasting State.’ The essay is as insightful as it is fascinating. Its author, Vladislav Surkov, is arguably among the most captivating minds of his generation. Once his country’s Deputy Prime Minister, Surkov has long been regarded as one of the chief authors of Putinism—and as Putin’s éminence grise. Reading him was once essential to anybody interested in contemporary Russia. Today, it is crucial for understanding the West.
In his analysis, Surkov contrasts the Western ‘deep states,’ eager to conceal their oligarchic, authoritarian nature behind the façade of electoral democracy, and Russia’s ‘more honest’ algorithm of political control. His assertion is that, whereas Western liberal regimes feel the need to mask or outright disguise the nefarious processes of societal manipulation by which their power is defended, Russian elites feel no need for such ‘embellishments.’ The historically brutal character of Russian political life has, in Surkov’s view, bred it with a healthy cynicism: the people need neither to be lied to, nor to lie to themselves, instead accepting the rottenness of politics as a fact of life. The ‘deep state’ is, thus, of no use. Everything, the good and the bad, is right on the surface, unrestrained by needless moralism or childish expectation.
It may be that Surkov was right about the cocktail of elite subterfuge and popular naiveté once commonplace in the West. But not anymore. A sense of terror-induced impunity has taken hold of the Western Establishment. Aware that the politics of wokery and demographic transformation are all but guaranteed to earn the rejection of the electorate, it abandoned every pretence of democratic bona fides. Confronted with the Gracchian, neo-populist risings of the 2010s, the ruling classes have resorted to a senatus consultum ultimum of their own, granting themselves the ‘powers of exception’ they regard as necessary to quell their foes. Recent events in Poland, the United States, and Germany are all eloquent examples of what is to be expected in this new age of unbridled authoritarian liberalism.
Dictablanda, a Spanish portmanteau for ‘soft dictatorship,’ was once used to describe the governments of Hugo Chávez, Aleksandr Lukashenko, and Vladimir Putin. It is now a fitting label for the majority of ‘Western democracies.’ Just as in countries long derided as Surkovian ‘managed democracies,’ no sane ideological opponent of the progressivist ruling classes can still cling to the illusion that he is allowed to play on an even field. Whether or not allegations of direct electoral fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election are correct, the rules are rigged, and everyone knows it.
In the contemporary West, if you are a conservative, ‘freedom of speech’ no longer applies to you. If you go on trial, you cannot, in truth, expect it to be fair. If you do not conform to the Leftist orthodoxy, the rule of law is not for you—you are no longer a citizen in any meaningful sense of the word. The men who represent you will see their homes burgled by the police. The parties for which you vote will be treated like domestic terrorist organisations, and the courts will be weaponised against them. The regime will threaten to take your job and livelihood. If you try to complain, the press will silence you. In Germany, spurious allegations that the AfD is anti-constitutional mean, among other similarly arbitrary consequences, that civil servants affiliated with the party can now be fired on charges of breaking their oaths to the country’s Grundgesetz. And if—like Gonzalo Lira, the Chilean-American journalist who recently died in a Ukrainian prison where he had been imprisoned for “justifying Russian aggression against Ukraine”—you are critical of progressive dogma and find yourself in trouble, no one will come to your aid. Harsh as these truths may be, they are the truths we now must face.
The wantonness of the Wokeshchina, like the impunity of the ruling class, is not an occasional moment of excess or an unintended bug. It is increasingly a feature—crucial, permanent, and structural—of progressivist-globalist rule. Its actions are not purely vindictive or pathological; they are instruments of power, carefully deployed to terrorise, exhaust, and disarm any opposition. They are our new reality. And they will become worse and more violent as the establishment finds itself weaker… Conservatives must understand the gravity of the moment.
The Age of Authoritarian Liberalism
Few would have contended, just some years ago, that it would come to this. Armed with Rawlsian gibberish, the liberal establishment has finally decided to do away with the masquerade. Liberalism’s own altarpieces of political liberty, freedom of the press, and the rule of law have finally been cast aside with liberating frankness.
The examples are, by now, too many and too egregious to describe in detail. It likely began in France, that nation of liberty so adept in the ugly art of persecution. Many were surprised when, in 2017, France’s leader of the opposition, Marine Le Pen, had her European parliamentary immunity rescinded on the shamelessly bogus charge of ‘publicizing ISIS.’ She had, instead, tweeted gruesome images of the Salafist group’s crimes precisely in order to denounce it. Having enjoyed this first taste of judicial abuse, the international establishment took note and readied itself for more. It was not long until what had once been taboo became the new norm. In the U.S., President Trump had to undergo the ignominy of having his Mar-a-Lago home searched by the FBI. Democrats have, more recently, been playing judicial games to bar him from the 2024 Republican ticket.
In Brazil, former President Jair Bolsonaro was forbidden by the courts from running for office in the next decade. In Italy, Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing Lega Nord and then a former Interior Minister, was bafflingly put on trial for the crime of doing his job—he was accused of preventing an illegal migrant boat from coming ashore near the island of Lampedusa. In Germany, the AfD was placed under surveillance by the country’s domestic intelligence service, the BfV. Though the AfD is by now Germany’s second-largest party, it continues to be spied on by an agency that reports directly to a leading member of the ruling Social Democrats. The BfV, whose humorously chosen motto is ‘In Defense of Democracy,’ proudly confesses these appalling, liberticidal practices.
The Polish case well highlights establishment hypocrisy. In the months since EU darling Donald Tusk was returned to power, the country has seen a series of increasingly wanton violations of political precedent. The new authorities have shown no qualms in crushing dissent. Tusk denied the conservative, Eurosceptic PiS the right to elect a deputy speaker for both chambers of Poland’s bicameral parliament, even though the privilege has always been accorded to the main opposition party. In December, under the cover of Christmas, Tusk had State broadcaster TVP Media shut down and its entire leadership sacked. In scenes more befitting of Turkmenistan than Western democracies, Tusk had the police invade the premises of some of the most important media institutions in the land. And, in early January, he went even further by ordering the authorities into Belweder Palace, one of the seats of the Polish President, to arrest two leading members of PiS. The men, renowned in Poland for their fight against corruption, had both been pardoned by President Duda for any wrongdoing. The arrests come, thus, as a shocking assault both on the dignity of the country’s elected head of State and on the rule of law.
In Brussels, the EU mandarinate looked on with ill-concealed glee. When asked about the Commission’s stance on the ongoing Polish Yezhovshchina, the fanatically federalist fonctionnaires invoked ‘national sovereignty’ as a reason for standing aside. One can imagine the giggles.
Back in 2019, Russia’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta published ‘Putin’s Lasting State.’ The essay is as insightful as it is fascinating. Its author, Vladislav Surkov, is arguably among the most captivating minds of his generation. Once his country’s Deputy Prime Minister, Surkov has long been regarded as one of the chief authors of Putinism—and as Putin’s éminence grise. Reading him was once essential to anybody interested in contemporary Russia. Today, it is crucial for understanding the West.
In his analysis, Surkov contrasts the Western ‘deep states,’ eager to conceal their oligarchic, authoritarian nature behind the façade of electoral democracy, and Russia’s ‘more honest’ algorithm of political control. His assertion is that, whereas Western liberal regimes feel the need to mask or outright disguise the nefarious processes of societal manipulation by which their power is defended, Russian elites feel no need for such ‘embellishments.’ The historically brutal character of Russian political life has, in Surkov’s view, bred it with a healthy cynicism: the people need neither to be lied to, nor to lie to themselves, instead accepting the rottenness of politics as a fact of life. The ‘deep state’ is, thus, of no use. Everything, the good and the bad, is right on the surface, unrestrained by needless moralism or childish expectation.
It may be that Surkov was right about the cocktail of elite subterfuge and popular naiveté once commonplace in the West. But not anymore. A sense of terror-induced impunity has taken hold of the Western Establishment. Aware that the politics of wokery and demographic transformation are all but guaranteed to earn the rejection of the electorate, it abandoned every pretence of democratic bona fides. Confronted with the Gracchian, neo-populist risings of the 2010s, the ruling classes have resorted to a senatus consultum ultimum of their own, granting themselves the ‘powers of exception’ they regard as necessary to quell their foes. Recent events in Poland, the United States, and Germany are all eloquent examples of what is to be expected in this new age of unbridled authoritarian liberalism.
Dictablanda, a Spanish portmanteau for ‘soft dictatorship,’ was once used to describe the governments of Hugo Chávez, Aleksandr Lukashenko, and Vladimir Putin. It is now a fitting label for the majority of ‘Western democracies.’ Just as in countries long derided as Surkovian ‘managed democracies,’ no sane ideological opponent of the progressivist ruling classes can still cling to the illusion that he is allowed to play on an even field. Whether or not allegations of direct electoral fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election are correct, the rules are rigged, and everyone knows it.
In the contemporary West, if you are a conservative, ‘freedom of speech’ no longer applies to you. If you go on trial, you cannot, in truth, expect it to be fair. If you do not conform to the Leftist orthodoxy, the rule of law is not for you—you are no longer a citizen in any meaningful sense of the word. The men who represent you will see their homes burgled by the police. The parties for which you vote will be treated like domestic terrorist organisations, and the courts will be weaponised against them. The regime will threaten to take your job and livelihood. If you try to complain, the press will silence you. In Germany, spurious allegations that the AfD is anti-constitutional mean, among other similarly arbitrary consequences, that civil servants affiliated with the party can now be fired on charges of breaking their oaths to the country’s Grundgesetz. And if—like Gonzalo Lira, the Chilean-American journalist who recently died in a Ukrainian prison where he had been imprisoned for “justifying Russian aggression against Ukraine”—you are critical of progressive dogma and find yourself in trouble, no one will come to your aid. Harsh as these truths may be, they are the truths we now must face.
The wantonness of the Wokeshchina, like the impunity of the ruling class, is not an occasional moment of excess or an unintended bug. It is increasingly a feature—crucial, permanent, and structural—of progressivist-globalist rule. Its actions are not purely vindictive or pathological; they are instruments of power, carefully deployed to terrorise, exhaust, and disarm any opposition. They are our new reality. And they will become worse and more violent as the establishment finds itself weaker… Conservatives must understand the gravity of the moment.
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