Madeleine Albright - Fascism

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2018

Copyright © 2018 by Madeleine Albright

Cover design by Milan Bozic

Cover photographs © themacx/iStock/Getty Images

Madeleine Albright asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reproduce from the following:

Tomorrow Belongs To Me

from the Musical CABARET

Words by Fred Ebb

Music by John Kander

Copyright © 1966 by Alley Music Corp. and Trio Music Company

Copyright Renewed

All Rights for Trio Music Company Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved

Used by Permission

Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC

TOMORROW BELONGS TO ME

Written by Fred Ebb, John Kander

Used by permission of Alley Music Corporation

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008282301

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008282288

Version: 2019-01-30

To the victims of Fascism

Then and now

And to all who fight Fascism

In others

And in themselves

Every age has its own Fascism.

—PRIMO LEVI

Contents

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

EPIGRAPH

PREFACE

ONE: A DOCTRINE OF ANGER AND FEAR

TWO: THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

THREE: “WE WANT TO BE BARBARIANS”

FOUR: “CLOSE YOUR HEARTS TO PITY”

FIVE: VICTORY OF THE CAESARS

SIX: THE FALL

SEVEN: DICTATORSHIP OF DEMOCRACY

EIGHT: “THERE ARE A LOT OF BODIES UP THERE”

NINE: A DIFFICULT ART

TEN: PRESIDENT FOR LIFE

ELEVEN: ERDOĞAN THE MAGNIFICENT

TWELVE: MAN FROM THE KGB

THIRTEEN: “WE ARE WHO WE WERE”

FOURTEEN: “THE LEADER WILL ALWAYS BE WITH US”

FIFTEEN: PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

SIXTEEN: BAD DREAMS

SEVENTEEN: THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

FOOTNOTES

NOTES

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY MADELEINE ALBRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

I AM AT MY FARM NEAR THE BORDER THAT SEPARATES VIRGINIA from West Virginia. This morning, upon awakening, I poured a cup of coffee, put on a jacket, and walked outside to greet the cows who replied with a hearty chorus of moos. Having exhausted their vocabulary, I returned to the house, took a deep breath, switched on the television, and began writing this.

My desktop calendar is turned to December 2018. Last month, I was among the tens of millions of Americans who went to the polls, thus participating in democracy’s signature rite. The balloting in the midterm election was described by many—including the president—as a referendum on the leadership of Donald Trump. As such, the results were inconclusive, but to me, mildly encouraging. The Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives although the Republicans, as expected, increased their majority in the Senate. Maneuvering for the next big election has already commenced. I pray the campaign will be uplifting—but confess to harboring doubts.

This book, Fascism: A Warning , rose from the wreckage of 2016, for many of us a year of bewilderment. First the British were lured into Brexit by the false promise of a new relationship with the European Union, one they mistakenly thought would enable them to retain their rights while shedding their responsibilities. Then, in November, Donald Trump won a majority in the American electoral college despite violating every precept of conventional political wisdom (aside from remaining in the public eye) from the beginning of his campaign until the end. Few believed that could happen, but it did.

Even before the 2016 balloting, I had decided to write about the toils and snares confronting democracies around the world. My idea was to make support for free governments a foreign policy priority in Hillary Clinton’s first term. The political upheaval following the election added urgency to the task, and partially shifted the focus to include Trump’s take-no-prisoners approach to governing. Where in the past I could assume that the U.S. government would put its foot down on the side of democratic institutions and values, Trump’s foot has been fully engaged in kicking America’s allies, the independent press, federal prosecutors, immigrant families, and the notion—stressed to most children at an early age—that facts matter.

The resulting book was published originally in hardcover in April 2018. I dared hope then that the fears I express in its pages would quickly prove exaggerated. Alas, that has not been the case.

During the interval between then and now, heads of government with an autocratic bent have won reelection in Russia, Hungary, Egypt, Venezuela, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Cambodia. In each case, the field of competition was tilted heavily in favor of the incumbent. These were not fair elections. In Brazil, voters fed up with corruption, crime, and recession turned to an openly misogynistic right-wing candidate who promises quick solutions based, in part, on a full-scale retreat from environmental stewardship. In Europe and elsewhere, extreme nationalist movements continue to scale the ramparts—shifting the terms of debate, moving into legislatures, and grabbing for themselves a thicker slice of power. Italy’s new leaders boast of their refusal to knuckle under to regional norms. In Syria, the brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad still flaunts his ability to dominate seven years after an American president urged his removal. In the Middle East, more fissures are opening due to such shocks as the cold-blooded murder and dismemberment of a reporter in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. Worldwide, there are more refugees huddled in camps than there have been since the Nazi surrender almost three-quarters of a century ago, and the United States is less welcoming to the international homeless now than at any time in modern memory.

According to an old Czech saying, it’s no trick to make soup from a fish, but making a fish out of soup is a challenge. In the chapters to come, I argue that ambitious, often arrogant leaders are intentionally undermining the institutions and democratic principles that have held the world together through much of my life. Without offering anything real or better, they ask us to abandon the ideals of international cooperation, political pluralism, civil discourse, critical thinking, and truth. The longer these false prophets have their way, the more damage they will wreak and the more difficult it will be to heal the wounds they are opening. The trend is worldwide, and among those most directly affected are Americans.