About the author
American-Polish journalist and historian (b. 1964), a staff writer at The Atlantic and a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian of the Soviet Gulag and of Stalinism in Eastern Europe. Married to a Polish politician and long embedded in transatlantic conservative circles, Applebaum turned to the contemporary crisis of democracy in Twilight of Democracy.
Synopsis
Applebaum examines the intellectuals and propagandists who have lent their talents to illiberal movements in Poland, Hungary, Spain, Britain, and the United States. She draws on Julien Benda's idea of the 'treason of the intellectuals' and on social psychology to explain the appeal of authoritarian certainty, conspiracy, and restorative nostalgia to people who crave order and status — and warns how quickly a shared liberal-democratic culture can fracture.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workApplebaum argues that the gravest threats to democracy often come not from the masses but from disillusioned elites — writers and intellectuals who, craving certainty, order, and belonging, lend their talents to authoritarian movements.
By tracing democratic decline to the choices of its own educated class, Applebaum makes authoritarianism a temptation rather than an external invasion. Her focus on the psychology and self-interest of elites complements structural accounts of why democracies erode.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with critics on the right who argue Applebaum mistakes legitimate conservative or nationalist dissent for authoritarianism, and with structural analysts who locate democratic decline in economics and institutions more than in the psychology of individual 'clercs.'
Reading note
Short and personal; read it as a vivid companion to the more systematic accounts of democratic backsliding (Levitsky and Ziblatt, Mounk), and against conservative critics who dispute its framing.
Best paired with
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die; Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites.