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no bull and the aftermath.

You know, a lot of conservative thinkers and writers have this in common, this belief

that, you know, in profound contemporary decline and they, and it's often coupled to belief

you know, there are, we have weak leaders, they are, you know, the great men of the past

are gone, you know, we're now, we'll buy pigmies and buy people who are not up to the job.

Sometimes this is accompanied by a kind of nostalgia for a past era that some of them

then, you know, seek to bring back, you know, the modernity is terrible, what we need

is what we used to have.

I'm Benjamin Widis and this is the LawFair podcast July 27th, 2020.

Ann Applebaum is a long time columnist, writer, historian and she is the author most recently

of the Twilight of Democracy, the seductive lore of authoritarianism.

It is a brief book, but one with broad scope.

Why authoritarian ideologies are on the ascendance in countries as diverse as Poland, Hungary,

Spain, the United States and Great Britain?

Ann joined me in the virtual jungle studio from London in what turned into a wide-ranging

conversation about the themes of the book.

Why are all of these authoritarian ideologies on the rise now?

What is the role of social media in their rise?

...