BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: How To Lose a Country
By Ece Temelkuran
Published by Canongate, 2024, rrp £10.99
REVIEW BY TIM BARTON
Canongate have an imprint called The Canons, reprinting important titles. This book is a new edition of a 2019 bestseller, though given its release date it has no doubt had less exposure than it deserves. This edition includes a new foreword by the author, and is well-timed, coming as it does alongside the return of Trump, urgent but worrying snap elections in Germany, and the continuing annihilation of Gaza, and indeed all other border areas Israel wishes to add to its own lebensraum.
The book’s subtitle is ‘the seven steps from democracy to fascism’, told in seven chapters, whose titles give the baldest outline of the process as Temelkuran sees it. She came to the work by virtue of seeing her own country slip into ‘fascism’, as Erdogan’s populist but totalitarian party rose to power in Turkey. But, her examples of this process she sees rising all across Europe and the Americas.
Step one is ‘create a movement’, something that identifies as not ‘political’ in the ‘established’ sense, that includes ‘the real people’ of country x, y or z, a new and exclusive ‘we’ that clearly rejects ‘intellectuals’, a term applied to anyone who knows anything factual about politics, history, economics, et cetera et cetera. Knowing stuff is bad, condescending and oppressive by definition, experts must be disbelieved on principle. This festering and unanswerable swamp mentality is clear to see in the UK and America, Holland and Germany, France and Italy, Hungary and… well, everywhere. It is hard to understand how it isn’t blindingly obvious how dangerous such an anti-cultural ‘culture’ is.
TOXIC NARCISSIST RINGMASTERS
Donald Trump explicitly says ‘I play to people’s fantasies’. Worse, he, and others of his ilk such as ex-banker Nigel Farage, or Elon Musk, create or amplify deliberately misdirecting narratives, the blame is always on some scapegoat ‘over there’, such as the EU or NATO, or a minority scapegoat ‘over here’, such anyone that isn’t ‘us’ in the populist imagination. Anyone outside this circle is ‘an enemy of the people’, which includes apparently me and thee, and Ece too. And this populist ‘we’ sees itself as an underdog, and cries out that others must be more ‘tolerant’ and ‘respectful’ of their ever-changing pseudo-beliefs, even whilst very clearly and in the most violent language denying the right of anyone outside their narrow-minded insular worldview to be tolerated or respected.
Instead, they label people who aren’t asleep ‘woke’ as a pejorative, or ‘cultural Marxists’, which most on the left used to see as a good thing, at least up to a point. And so, the debate polarises to extreme and unnuanced positions, where giving ground to more complex narratives is a concession that will be used against you. The ‘debate’ around trans identity, and around vaccines, to take two live examples is like this. If you concede any issues, but don’t embrace the new cultural fascism, you are shot by both sides. With toxic narcissist ringmasters steering the ‘we’ by the nose.
As Ece puts it, ‘first and foremost, such leaders need to infantilise the people’. This isn’t hard to do, because, at risk of being, yes, someone conceding a point, it is obvious that there is indeed something rotten at the heart of our establishment and our democracies are failing to represent many of us; and that our tabloid culture has for decades infantilised the general public with cartoon versions of reality, in order to control us, in case we may otherwise try to use democracy to get all uppity. The owners of the papers, and social media platforms, and the blog websites, and the airhead TV so-called ‘news’ channels are billionaires, the natural enemies of everyone less well-off. Isn’t it remarkable how it is also their class openly pulling the strings and standing for the populist ‘we’? Admittedly, dressing themselves as outside the elite, but whilst clearly being of it. It is almost as if there was (yet another) civil war amongst the factions that hold power. Hint: that is what it is, on one level at least, as ‘democracy’ has been subverted by the neoliberal agenda. And let us not forget that Trump defines ‘real power’ as the ability to induce fear. I’ve had managers like that, I bet you, gentle reader, have too.
A SNOWBALLING PLUMMET INTO A TOTALITARIAN CHAOS
Ece takes us through seven steps, and all resonate with contemporary events. The two that called out most strongly to me as especially topical are ‘Dismantle Judicial and Political Mechanisms’, and indeed a ‘bonfire of regulations’ is at the heart of the alt-right agenda here and across the pond, and in the Argentine, Hungary… And, ‘Remove the Shame: Immorality is ‘Hot’ in a Post-Truth World’, essentially the gospel according to Trump, Tate, Farage, Jordan Peterson, Javier Milei and company.
Robert Bolt played fast and loose with history in A Man for All Seasons, at least a bit, but this quote attributed to Thomas Moore in answer to William Roper rings truer than ever today – ‘What would you do? Cut a great road through the law[…]? […] “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ‘round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”’
So say we all. Buckle up, we’re in for a rocky ride. We are creeping ever faster toward a snowballing plummet into a totalitarian chaos. Even Macron, albeit for his own nefarious reasons, realises there is trouble ahead, recently saying ‘The world is made up of herbivores and carnivores. If we decide to remain herbivores, the carnivores will win’. Unfortunately, the libertarian socialists are still drowned out by the authoritarian left who promote pacifism in the face of the rising threat from the loony right populists. People say ‘You can’t call it fascist’, ‘it isn’t that bad’, ‘there aren’t any deathcamps!’, and procrastinate until… you wake up one morning and realise you can, it is, and there are, and wonder, ‘How did we get to this?’, just before you hear the jackboots in the hall, the banging on your door… as experienced by Ece in Turkey. She knows the signs.
In good news, Ece’s new book is Together: A Manifesto Against a Heartless World, wherein she apparently will offer some hope and a path out of the swamp of eternal despair. I will review it soon, and let’s hope my conclusion isn’t ‘She’s pissing in the wind’.
How To Lose a Country is available from Bookbuster, 39 Queens Road, Hastings TN34 1RE.
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