Fascism: A Warning

by Madeleine K. Albright

Earlier, I cited Oswald Spengler’s chilling century-old prophecy that “the era of individualism, liberalism and democracy, of humanitarianism and freedom, is nearing its end. The masses will accept with resignation the victory of the Caesars, the strong men, and will obey them.” This is the real danger posed by Putin: that he will be a model for other national leaders who want to retain their grip on power indefinitely, despite political and legal constraints.

Today, those who have been building democracy are seeing their techniques mimed by people who are out to destroy democracy. Repressive governments from across the globe are learning from one another. If this were a college for despots, we could imagine the course names: How to Rig a Constitutional Referendum; How to Intimidate the Media; How to Destroy Political Rivals Through Phony Investigations and Fake News; How to Create a Human Rights Commission That Will Cover Up Violations of Human Rights; How to Co-Opt a Legislature; and How to Divide, Repress, and Demoralize Opponents So That No One Believes You Will Ever Be Defeated.

An illiberal democracy is centered on the supposed needs of the community rather than the inalienable rights of the individual. It is democratic because it respects the will of the majority; illiberal because it disregards the concerns of minorities.

To a small “d” democrat, process matters more than ideology. The fairness of an election is more important than who wins. There is not, on most questions of policy, a single democratic answer. Concerns arise only when leaders try to augment their power through means that could cause permanent damage to democratic institutions.

Fear that Fascism might return to the continent where it was born is what spurred the drive for European integration, but the origins of that sentiment are now more than seventy years old, and anxieties, like human beings, eventually show their age.

The whole notion of pure blood is laughable, but that does not stop tribal instincts and their accompanying national mythologies from exercising a powerful sway over behavior, as World War II so tragically demonstrated. It took the shock of that war to create a reaction strong enough for countries to embrace regional integration, but that choice has always been more compelling logically than emotionally.

The EU and its predecessors were advertised as generators of prosperity, a means for combining markets, reducing the cost of doing business, and fending off a destructive struggle for competitive advantage among neighbors.

The EU’s advantage is that disentangling Europe from the single currency and a shared regulatory structure would be extraordinarily disruptive and expensive. Those nostalgic for the region’s good old days are not remembering; they’re daydreaming.

although too much bureaucracy can be annoying, there is an even larger threat to intra-European solidarity. That danger comes from the outside, from the dread that immigration—whether legal or illegal—will swamp countries, drown them economically, and further dilute people’s sense of who they are.

Today, nearly two-thirds of the citizens in EU countries believe immigration has a harmful impact on their societies. Cosmopolitanism, once considered a virtue, is less in vogue than nativism.

Party chief Alexander Gauland captured their motivation: “I see Islam as a foreign body which will gradually, through the birth rate, come to dominate this country.” That feeling, exaggerated though it clearly is, explains the rise of AfD. Ironically, the party did best in regions where the foreign-born population is relatively low. AfD supporters are responding, then, not to what is but to what they fear might be. That gives party spokesmen every incentive to go on talking about the dangers posed by immigrants and to propagate stereotypes that keep those anxieties alive.

One can imagine what the World War II generation might think of their countrymen celebrating the rebirth of German triumphalism. The European parties also receive financial help from external sources, notably Russia and sympathetic circles in the United States.

Its leader, Andrej Babiš, is a billionaire political novice who campaigned on his experience as a businessman and who pledged to fight corruption, though he is under investigation for precisely that. Many voters apparently believe that because the wealthy have no need to steal, they don’t. We’ll see.

Orbán’s strategy has been to pin responsibility for this imaginary plot on George Soros. Late in 2017, the government sent a questionnaire to every household asking whether it supported the “Soros Plan” to force Hungary to accept migrants, pay them welfare, and assure them lenient sentences for any crimes they might commit. This approach to consulting with the people takes what would ordinarily be considered a democratic tool—the plebiscite—and uses it to spread and validate a falsehood. By asking questions based on a lie, it makes the lie a central part of national conversation.

The complexity of immigration as an issue begins with a basic human trait: we are reluctant to share.

The world has long since agreed on norms that give states the authority to regulate their borders and yet respect, as well, the right of people to seek a haven from political persecution and war. In normal conditions, this is a workable balance. Men and women who are driven from their homes by repression or strife are entitled to protection, whether temporary or permanent. The broader and less clear-cut question is how to treat people who move from their native countries not because they must, but because they hope to attain a higher standard of living. The right to act on that understandable desire is not absolute; there are legal and illegal ways to go about it.

In general, the movement of people from their homes—the leaving behind of possessions, familiar sights, memories, and ancestral graveyards—does not occur without good cause. Most of us would prefer to remain in places where our names are known, our customs accepted, and our languages spoken. However, hope is another basic human trait, and so millions of people each year do try to migrate illegally,

The scope and pace of migration are a fair topic for debate, and, indeed, an unavoidable one. While it is morally repulsive to vilify newcomers as a group, countries have legitimate grounds to worry about their capacity to absorb large numbers of immigrants. This is particularly the case when most of the visitors are unlikely to return home soon and many already have family members lined up to join them. European leaders have reason to worry about the ability of recent arrivals to integrate themselves successfully into their adopted countries, qualify for jobs, and contribute to their communities.

Ultimately, illegal immigration is a symptom of failures that extend well beyond Europe and that will not be solved either by welcoming newcomers or by keeping them out. Humanitarian emergencies demand a generous response, but a sound policy will concentrate on preventing crises from arising. Such an approach would separate genuine political refugees from economic migrants, allow high levels of legal migration, share intelligence to prevent infiltration by terrorists, and strive to put human traffickers out of business.

More broadly, it is vital for leaders to work across international boundaries to minimize the number of people who feel the need to leave their home countries in the first place. That requires building healthy democracies, fostering peace, and generating prosperity from the ground up. However, success in that endeavor demands a way of looking at the world that recognizes the humanity we share with one another, and the interests that nations have in common. Those who are content to look inward, and who see no higher purpose than to shield themselves from the different, the new, and the unknown, will be of no help.

The history of Europe—and indeed the world—is stained by the blood of nations convinced that the path to glory can be found by disparaging others and going it alone.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PURPOSE OF FOREIGN policy is elementary: to convince other countries to do what we would like them to do. To that end, there are various tools at our disposal, which range from making polite requests to sending in the Marines. The incentives we can offer include everything from words of praise to boxes of seeds to shiploads of tanks. We can apply pressure on the recalcitrant by enlisting allies, friends, and international organizations to reinforce our requests. If right is clearly on our side, we can threaten to support economic and security sanctions, or go ahead and impose them, then tighten them again and again should the government in question refuse to do what we think it must. To concentrate minds, we can arrange peaceful, yet instructive, displays of military prowess in the country’s front yard. We can, if circumstances allow, use covert means to disrupt its activities so that when, for example, a missile is launched, it goes sideways not up. All the while, we can stress the benefits an accord might produce: an end to isolation, a new era of prosperity, long-term security, and peace.

the door to negotiations should always be kept open.

We have grown accustomed to speaking critically about the repression of civil liberties wherever such violations take place; but in North Korea, we must ask whether something can be repressed that has never been allowed. The DPRK is a secular ISIS; its existence provides further evidence of the tragedy that can result when power is concentrated in the hands of too few for too long.

Decades ago, George Orwell suggested that the best one-word description of a Fascist was “bully,”

The president’s admiration for autocrats is so ingrained

he often endorses actions by foreign leaders that weaken democratic institutions. Second, while he may think it rude to criticize a country such as China or Russia on human rights, he hasn’t hesitated to pick fights on immigration policy with our ally Australia, or with British leaders on anti-Muslim tweets, or on trade with such valued commercial partners as Mexico, Canada, “bad, very bad” Germany, or—with horrendous timing—a nuclear-threatened South Korea. When Ambassador Nikki Haley claims, oddly, that her boss “slaps the right people [and] hugs the right people,” she speaks the truth upside down.

TRUMP’S VIEW OF THE UNITED STATES IS DARK. AMONG HIS FAVORITE mantras are that U.S. courts are biased, the FBI is corrupt, the press almost always lies, and elections are rigged. The domestic impact of these condemnations is to demoralize and divide.

Americans have never heard a president speak with such persistent scorn about U.S. institutions. But Trump’s audience is a global one. Instead of encouraging others to respect and follow the example of the United States, he invites the opposite. That reversal has a harmful effect, partic...

The ability of a free and independent press to hold political leaders accountable is what makes open government possible—it is the heartbeat of democracy. Trump is intent on stilling, or slowing down, that heartbeat. This is a gift to dictators, and coming from a chief executive of the United States, cause for shame.

As to America’s standing to argue on behalf of human rights, my reply is that “standing” is beside the point. The real question is: who has the responsibility to uphold human rights? The answer to that is: everyone. If a blemished record were enough to disqualify a country from speaking out, governments could murder, torture, and otherwise brutalize their citizens without the least fear of criticism or sanctions.

To the extent that the United States lives in a glass house, we need to repair it; but there is no excuse for a “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to the clash between democracy and dictatorship. Being accused of having double standards is preferable to being convicted—due to our own refusal to act—of honoring no standards at all.

This gloomy assessment is greeted with whistles and handclaps by the many Americans who, for one reason or another, feel aggrieved. The sources of that ill feeling may include economic hardship, discomfort with social and cultural changes, or a skeptic’s conviction that most public servants are incompetent, crooked, or both.

His analysis is filled with full-throated assertions that are riddled with bunkum and his arguments are designed to exploit insecurities and stir up resentment.

His apparent intention, therefore, is not to address and alleviate anger, but to inflame it.

America First is a slogan with a past. Founded in 1940, the America First Committee (AFC) brought together pacifists, isolationists, and Nazi sympathizers to fight against the country’s prospective entry into World War II.

although it’s fair to say the world isn’t exactly Sesame Street, it is a place where people from all countries must live. To reduce the sum of our existence to a competitive struggle for advantage among more than two hundred nations is not clear-eyed but myopic. People and nations compete, but that is not all that they do.

Globally, there is hardly an economic, security, technological, environmental, or health-related challenge that any country can better address alone than through a joint effort with neighbors. It is the duty of diplomats to foster that cooperation.

Designating “(Fill in the blank) First” as the golden rule of international relations provides an all-purpose justification for tyrants to do as they like.

Underlying Fascism is the theory that nations are entitled to take what they want for no other reason than that they want it.

If every nation is focused entirely on gaining an edge over every other, there can be no trust, no special relationships, no reward for helpfulness, and no penalty for cynicism—because cynicism is all we promise and all we expect.

There are those who consider Trump to be an unintelligent man. I make no such accusation. I do, however, confess to concern about his steadiness and the transparent brittleness of his ego.

I continue to believe that the United States banked enough international goodwill in the interval between George Washington and Barack Obama to recover from the present embarrassment—but I am not sure how extensive or lasting the harm will be,

When arguing that every age has its own Fascism, Italian writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi added that the critical point can be reached “not just through the terror of police intimidation, but by denying and distorting information, by undermining systems of justice, by paralyzing the education system, and by spreading in a myriad subtle ways nostalgia for a world where order reigned.” If he is right (and I think he is), we have reason to be concerned by the gathering array of political and social currents buffeting us today—currents propelled by the dark underside of the technological revolution, the corroding effects of power, the American president’s disrespect for truth, and the widening acceptance of dehumanizing insults, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism as being within the bounds of normal public debate. We are not there yet, but these feel like signposts on the road back to an era when Fascism found nourishment and individual tragedies were multiplied millions-fold.

for Fascism to extend its reach from the streets to the high offices of state, it must secure backing from multiple sectors of society. This insight has value today because of the growing tendency in the media to portray Fascism as a logical outgrowth of populism and to attribute both allegiances to an unhappy lower middle class, as if anti-democratic sentiments were the exclusive property of one economic tier.

From the Republic’s earliest days, candidates for office in the United States have affirmed a deeply rooted belief “in the rights, wisdom, and virtues” of the common people. Why? Because common people are the majority, and having the majority on one’s side is a pretty good strategy for winning elections.

If populists are, as some suggest, the bad guys in an epic debate about the future of democracy, who exactly are the good guys? Elitists? I don’t think so. In fact, elitists pose a more lethal threat to freedom than populists,

There are two kinds of Fascists: those who give orders and those who take them. A popular base gives Fascism the legs it needs to march, the lungs it uses to proclaim, and the muscle it relies on to menace—but that’s Fascism from the neck down. To create tyranny out of the fears and hopes of average people, money is required, and so, too, ambition and twisted ideas.

Most political movements of appreciable size are populist to one degree or another, but that doesn’t make them Fascist, or even intolerant. Whether they seek to limit immigration or expand it, criticize Islam or defend it, lobby for peace or agitate for war, all are democratic, provided they pursue their goals by democratic means.

What makes a movement Fascist is not ideology but the willingness to do whatever is necessary—including the use of force and trampling on the rights of others—to achieve victory and command obedience.