Tilde Lowengrimm reviewed Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum
Congratulations slash I'm sorry that happened
2 stars
My favorite thing about this book is that it's short. Ostensibly a thematic discussion of how democracy falls to the seductive impulse of authoritarianism, it ends up feeling much more like a personal account of Appelbaum's individual experience. And it sort of sounds like she's mad that she doesn't get invited to cool salons and dinner parties any more, though that's clearly not the core message. Perhaps it's just that some of the other things I've been reading lately engage more thoroughly with the political theory, but I didn't find much more here than Appelbaum's voice. And that's not particularly appealing given her right/conservative views about say whether immigrants cause crime and steal jobs (they don't, but she thinks they do), or whether there's a crisis of free speech on college campuses due to cancel culture (there isn't, but she's worried about it). Overall, not fundamentally a bad book, but …
My favorite thing about this book is that it's short. Ostensibly a thematic discussion of how democracy falls to the seductive impulse of authoritarianism, it ends up feeling much more like a personal account of Appelbaum's individual experience. And it sort of sounds like she's mad that she doesn't get invited to cool salons and dinner parties any more, though that's clearly not the core message. Perhaps it's just that some of the other things I've been reading lately engage more thoroughly with the political theory, but I didn't find much more here than Appelbaum's voice. And that's not particularly appealing given her right/conservative views about say whether immigrants cause crime and steal jobs (they don't, but she thinks they do), or whether there's a crisis of free speech on college campuses due to cancel culture (there isn't, but she's worried about it). Overall, not fundamentally a bad book, but one I'd recommend skipping, there's nothing interesting here that you can't get elsewhere in higher quality.