History possesses many stories like this: a political party emerges, and most people think it a bad or sick joke. Everyone tries to ignore it; that is, when they are not laughing at it. Suddenly, the economy becomes bad or an external threat looms and that party marches toward power. When it seizes the government - think of Hitler, Lenin, Mussolini, even of Mullah Omar in Afghanistan - all laughter stops.
In Poland, a ``joke'' party of malignant intentions is emerging. Called ``Self-defense,'' it voices (it says) the discontents of poor farmers and those displaced and radically dissatisfied with politics here. The leader of ``Self-defense'' is a shrill primitive named Andrzej Lepper. A thuggish guttersnipe more akin to Aleksander Lukashenka, the dictator of Belarus, than to the great dictators, Lepper nonetheless represents a hideous post-modern form of irrational politics.
For this reason, I cannot laugh at him. Hitler, Lenin, and Mussolini sought power in order to use the state to impose their will and their programs. Today's anti-democrats, however, view the state as an obstacle. They want to gut state power so that jackals like themselves can feed on the corpse.
``Self-defense'' has participated in several parliamentary elections but never received more than 2% of the vote before this year. Three weeks before last September's elections, opinion polls gave it 7-8 % of the vote. Everyone thought this an exaggeration, but when the balloting ended, ``Self-defense'' had secured nearly 11% of the vote and was parliament's third largest party.
Everyone was shocked. But most Poles are committed to democratic norms and believe in civilizing the uncivilized. So Lepper became parliament's deputy speaker (one of four). Because he is provocative, political commentators and TV and newspaper interviewers were drawn to him. Not for long. Within a month the media elite was bored. Lepper sought to reclaim their attention by calling the foreign minister a traitor, and threatening violence if his program was not enacted.
Ideas about civilizing ``Self-defense'' ended. Parliament evicted Lepper from his deputy speakers's position. In Lepper's last speech as deputy speaker he accused many famous politicians of taking bribes, naming the amounts, times, and places where the bribery took place. Now Lepper seems unable to prove his accusations or offer any substantiation of them. No matter: he kept his profile high by asking to meet America's Ambassador, saying that he knew of a Polish role in the events of September 11 th .
I wish that I could say that by discrediting himself, Lepper self-destructed. This is what should happen in a democracy. After all, the American demagogue Joe McCarthy imploded when he failed to prove his charge that there were hundreds of Soviet spies infesting the US State Department. But Lepper is no empty windbag like McCarthy. He is not a nationalist like France's Le Pen; he is neither rightist nor leftist. Instead, he loathes the political system and wants to overturn and replace it with a nothingness in which feral politicians run amuck.
Lepper's supporters are not the poor and excluded, but are remnants of the lower Communist nomenclatura (the apparatchiks too stupid to steal as Communism collapsed) and those who made money during the grey period of 1989-1991, when state controls were practically nonexistent and when all that you needed to make money was a truck and enough petrol to drive to Berlin. You smuggled and you became relatively rich. Lepper's people are nostalgic for the profitable anarchy of a crippled state.
So who is their enemy? Not the Jews, masons or gypsies who were the traditional targets of lumpen anti-democrats. ``Self-defense'' loathes, instead, democratic government. They repudiate not only parliament and its necessary compromises, but the rule of law itself.
Parliamentary democracy was born centuries ago by Europeans sickened by domestic (mainly religious) wars. Indeed, parliamentary democracy's greatest enemy remains domestic war. I do not want to exaggerate the threat that Lepper poses, but I believe he represents a poisonous model of irrational politics. From Indonesia to Afghanistan, from Georgia to Ukraine, Lepper's movement is part of a new nihilism that seeks to make countries ungovernable.
As a political philosopher, I find democracy's internal enemies a true intellectual problem. Law, I believe, cannot be democracy's only defense, because even if Lepper's countless lies are proven false and he is jailed, his followers (and their rage) will remain. Like Hitler, he will likely emerge from prison even more beloved by them.
You cannot win domestic wars (even non-violent ones) through legal processes alone. America could not defeat Osama bin Laden's terrorists through arrests, indictments, and trials. Political means are not the only tools that can be employed against political dangers.
All the ordinary - and the extraordinary - weapons that democracy possesses must be employed. We must - to repeat the idea of the German political philosopher Carl Schmitt (no friend of democracy himself) - treat enemies as enemies. When democracy is at stake you must defend it, to borrow a line from Malcolm X, ``by any means necessary.'' This may be difficult for liberals to understand; more difficult for democratic-minded peoples to accept. But hard choices are inevitable if democracy is to prevail.
History possesses many stories like this: a political party emerges, and most people think it a bad or sick joke. Everyone tries to ignore it; that is, when they are not laughing at it. Suddenly, the economy becomes bad or an external threat looms and that party marches toward power. When it seizes the government - think of Hitler, Lenin, Mussolini, even of Mullah Omar in Afghanistan - all laughter stops.
In Poland, a ``joke'' party of malignant intentions is emerging. Called ``Self-defense,'' it voices (it says) the discontents of poor farmers and those displaced and radically dissatisfied with politics here. The leader of ``Self-defense'' is a shrill primitive named Andrzej Lepper. A thuggish guttersnipe more akin to Aleksander Lukashenka, the dictator of Belarus, than to the great dictators, Lepper nonetheless represents a hideous post-modern form of irrational politics.
For this reason, I cannot laugh at him. Hitler, Lenin, and Mussolini sought power in order to use the state to impose their will and their programs. Today's anti-democrats, however, view the state as an obstacle. They want to gut state power so that jackals like themselves can feed on the corpse.
``Self-defense'' has participated in several parliamentary elections but never received more than 2% of the vote before this year. Three weeks before last September's elections, opinion polls gave it 7-8 % of the vote. Everyone thought this an exaggeration, but when the balloting ended, ``Self-defense'' had secured nearly 11% of the vote and was parliament's third largest party.
Everyone was shocked. But most Poles are committed to democratic norms and believe in civilizing the uncivilized. So Lepper became parliament's deputy speaker (one of four). Because he is provocative, political commentators and TV and newspaper interviewers were drawn to him. Not for long. Within a month the media elite was bored. Lepper sought to reclaim their attention by calling the foreign minister a traitor, and threatening violence if his program was not enacted.
Ideas about civilizing ``Self-defense'' ended. Parliament evicted Lepper from his deputy speakers's position. In Lepper's last speech as deputy speaker he accused many famous politicians of taking bribes, naming the amounts, times, and places where the bribery took place. Now Lepper seems unable to prove his accusations or offer any substantiation of them. No matter: he kept his profile high by asking to meet America's Ambassador, saying that he knew of a Polish role in the events of September 11 th .
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I wish that I could say that by discrediting himself, Lepper self-destructed. This is what should happen in a democracy. After all, the American demagogue Joe McCarthy imploded when he failed to prove his charge that there were hundreds of Soviet spies infesting the US State Department. But Lepper is no empty windbag like McCarthy. He is not a nationalist like France's Le Pen; he is neither rightist nor leftist. Instead, he loathes the political system and wants to overturn and replace it with a nothingness in which feral politicians run amuck.
Lepper's supporters are not the poor and excluded, but are remnants of the lower Communist nomenclatura (the apparatchiks too stupid to steal as Communism collapsed) and those who made money during the grey period of 1989-1991, when state controls were practically nonexistent and when all that you needed to make money was a truck and enough petrol to drive to Berlin. You smuggled and you became relatively rich. Lepper's people are nostalgic for the profitable anarchy of a crippled state.
So who is their enemy? Not the Jews, masons or gypsies who were the traditional targets of lumpen anti-democrats. ``Self-defense'' loathes, instead, democratic government. They repudiate not only parliament and its necessary compromises, but the rule of law itself.
Parliamentary democracy was born centuries ago by Europeans sickened by domestic (mainly religious) wars. Indeed, parliamentary democracy's greatest enemy remains domestic war. I do not want to exaggerate the threat that Lepper poses, but I believe he represents a poisonous model of irrational politics. From Indonesia to Afghanistan, from Georgia to Ukraine, Lepper's movement is part of a new nihilism that seeks to make countries ungovernable.
As a political philosopher, I find democracy's internal enemies a true intellectual problem. Law, I believe, cannot be democracy's only defense, because even if Lepper's countless lies are proven false and he is jailed, his followers (and their rage) will remain. Like Hitler, he will likely emerge from prison even more beloved by them.
You cannot win domestic wars (even non-violent ones) through legal processes alone. America could not defeat Osama bin Laden's terrorists through arrests, indictments, and trials. Political means are not the only tools that can be employed against political dangers.
All the ordinary - and the extraordinary - weapons that democracy possesses must be employed. We must - to repeat the idea of the German political philosopher Carl Schmitt (no friend of democracy himself) - treat enemies as enemies. When democracy is at stake you must defend it, to borrow a line from Malcolm X, ``by any means necessary.'' This may be difficult for liberals to understand; more difficult for democratic-minded peoples to accept. But hard choices are inevitable if democracy is to prevail.