A conscientious peeling away of the false democratic facade of contemporary authoritarianism.
A politically savvy exposé of the recent rise of “a global antidemocratic movement that claims to be acting in democracy’s defense.”
Beauchamp, a senior correspondent for Vox who focuses on right-wing populism, argues that the emergence of competitive authoritarianism, whose proponents hold (rigged) elections and undermine such democratic institutions as a free press and politically independent courts, is a consequence of a perceived need to defend social hierarchies from advances in social equality. This reactionary spirit pits democracy’s equal citizenship against a form of liberalism that embraces individual freedom and xenophobic nationalism. “Democracy, by its nature,” writes the author, “encourages the upending of social hierarchies,” and it’s “always possible for citizens to elect leaders whose policies would challenge the existing social order.” The rise of competitive authoritarianism was precipitated by postwar decolonization, the formation of welfare states, mass migration, and efforts to reduce discrimination against marginalized groups—e.g., Black citizens in the U.S. and the lower castes in India. Beauchamp uses four cases as illustration: the U.S., Hungary, Israel, and India, epitomized, respectively, by Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Narendra Modi. Although Beauchamp suggests American origins for competitive authoritarianism, his evidence is more congruent with it being a global phenomenon similar to the spread of democracy after World War II. As the author writes, it’s possible that “the consensus around the basic principles of liberal democracy in countries like the United States might not be nearly as widely shared” as many think. To counter the reactionary spirit, Beauchamp argues for democratic activism and evidence-based governance, and he thoughtfully presents the history of competitive authoritarianism and defines its major dimensions. As a broad assessment, the author’s approach is more than sufficient in detail and attentiveness to political theory and academic scholarship.
A conscientious peeling away of the false democratic facade of contemporary authoritarianism.Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781541704411
Page Count: 272
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.
Essays on current political topics by a high-profile actor and activist.
Milano explains in an introduction that she began writing this uneven collection while dealing with a severe case of Covid-19 and suffering from "persistent brain fog.” In the first essay, "On Being Unapologetically Fucked Up,” the author begins by fuming over a February 2019 incident in which she compared MAGA caps worn by high school kids to KKK hoods. She then runs through a grab bag of flash-point news items (police shootings, border crimes, sexual predators in government), deploying the F-bomb with abandon and concluding, "What I know is that fucked up is as fundamental a state of the world as night and day. But I know there is better. I know that ‘less fucked up’ is a state we can live in.” The second essay, "Believe Women," discusses Milano’s seminal role in the MeToo movement; unfortunately, it is similarly conversational in tone and predictable in content. One of the few truly personal essays, "David," about the author's marriage, refutes the old saw about love meaning never having to say you're sorry, replacing it with "Love means you can suggest a national sex strike and your husband doesn't run away screaming." Milano assumes, perhaps rightly, that her audience is composed of followers and fans; perhaps these readers will know what she is talking about in the seemingly allegorical "By Any Other Name," about her bad experience with a certain rosebush. "Holy shit, giving birth sucked," begins one essay. "Words are weird, right?" begins the next. "Welp, this is going to piss some of you off. Hang in there," opens a screed about cancel culture—though she’s entirely correct that “it’s childish, divisive, conceited, and Trumpian to its core.” By the end, however, Milano's intelligence, compassion, integrity, and endurance somewhat compensate for her lack of literary polish.
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18329-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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