Ill Winds
Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency
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4.3 • 6 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
*Shortlisted for the 2020 Arthur Ross Book Award*
From America’s leading scholar of democracy, a personal, passionate call to action against the rising authoritarianism that challenges our world order—and the very value of liberty
Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Deeply attuned to the cycles of democratic expansion and decay that determine the fates of nations, he watched with mounting unease as illiberal rulers rose in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, and beyond, while China and Russia grew increasingly bold and bullying. Then, with Trump's election at home, the global retreat from freedom spread from democracy's margins to its heart.
Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on U.S. global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the twenty-first century into a dark time of despotism.
We are at a hinge in history, between a new era of tyranny and an age of democratic renewal. Free governments can defend their values; free citizens can exercise their rights. We can make the internet safe for liberal democracy, exploit the soft, kleptocratic underbelly of dictatorships, and revive America's degraded democracy. Ill Winds offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions to fight polarization, reduce the influence of money in politics, and make every vote count.
In 2020, freedom's last line of defense still remains "We the people."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Democracy is withering around the globe, including in the White House, according to this overwrought jeremiad. Diamond (The Spirit of Democracy), a Stanford political scientist and Hoover Institution fellow, lays out his worries about trends in fragile democracies, including right-wing populism in Eastern Europe, creeping authoritarianism in Turkey, corruption in Angola, and declining political civility, moderation, and tolerance everywhere. His emphasis, though, is on Russia's manipulation of social media to sway foreign elections, China's influencing of other countries through investments and charitable gifts, and President Trump, whose "mental and moral unfitness," "lack of impulse control," and "overflowing vengeance" constitute an "unprecedented" menace to democracy. Diamond's case against these three culprits is exaggerated and weakly argued. His agenda for reform includes international initiatives to support pro-democracy activists and journalists, nonpartisan redistricting, and censorship by social media platforms to counteract "their radical democratizing of information," which he paradoxically terms "a threat to democracy" because it "remov editorial filters and standards, thus enabling anyone, anywhere to act as a journalist." Diamond's scattershot analysis of democracy's discontents is marred by alarmism; readers who don't share his views already will likely not be swayed.
