Translator's note: After the drastic changes in Eastern Europe in 1989, Central and Eastern European countries fully embraced the liberal ideology and began the neoliberal transformation of privatization, liberalization, and marketization. But 30 years later, the idea of liberalism has become a rat in the streets of Central and Eastern European countries, and various anti-liberal currents of thought are surging. Ivan Krasdave and Stephen Holmes's Dim Light: Why the West Lost the "War for Democracy"? The Light That Failed: Why the West is Losing the Fight for Democracy) provides an in-depth analysis of the failures of Western liberalism in Eastern Europe and around the world. This article is an interview with Ivan Krasdave by NYU Law News, which provides a glimpse into the core idea of the book. 
What inspired you and your co-authors to write this book?
We are confused. We want to understand why Poland and Hungary, the countries with the greatest hope of achieving liberal democracy after 1989, have become anti-liberal and anti-democratic** countries in power. There are many other examples. Although each country has its own logic of transformation, we have tried to develop a theory that understands the rise of anti-liberal currents of thought such as populism, xenophobia, and **ism, which will help us connect the different versions of anti-liberalism.
YouWhen it comes to the United States, which sets itself up as an object to be imitated, and promotes its own ideas and political models to other countries. How did this "imitation politics" produce some unexpected effects?
If you think of democratization and liberalization as a process of imitation, then you will immediately realize that the relationship between the imitator and the imitated is an asymmetrical one, and in this relationship there is an implicit sense of superiority of the imitator over the imitated. A country that finds itself in a position to transform its own politics and economy according to a foreign model is humiliated or exasperated because of democracy, human rights, free markets, etc"Superior"In the face of foreign ideas, their own traditions had to be discarded or belittled.
This is the language of the anti-liberals and populists in Poland and Hungary: a phrase that they have been repeating for the past decade is: "We don't want to be copies, we want to be our true selves." We do not like this position of imitating foreign models. ”
To some extent, it is not difficult for us to understand the grievances. Just to name a few. If the Thatcherish concept of Western privatization is introduced to a country like Hungary, which has no private capital, the managers of state-owned enterprises will use the assets of the enterprise to appropriate the public property of the state for themselves. They will take for themselves the wealth that the entire nation has worked together for decades. This has created dissatisfaction with enormous and delegitimous inequalities.
This example also reveals the root of people's dissatisfaction with liberalism, which believes that the greatest source of dissatisfaction with ** or a certain system is its violation of individual rights. But when you privatize the public property of a country, you are not violating anyone's individual rights. Unfortunately, liberalism has a very poor understanding of public property. It mainly focuses on the protection of individual freedoms, including private property. In addition, Western-style liberalism at the time tended to recognize"Brutal privatization", considered this a normal step towards the establishment of a free-market economy in the East. Thus, the inhabitants of post-communist societies are resentful in the face of an immoral, unjust, unjust, unjust, and unjustified frenzy of privatization, but they cannot describe this resentment in the language of liberal individualism.
The second, very important example is that in 1989, the first freedom given to Eastern Europeans was the freedom to leave their own country. Over the past 30 years, there has been a huge exodus of people from the entire region. Millions of well-educated young people have left these countries. In this case, it is impossible for them to define maximum freedom as the freedom to leave their own country. It was seen as a terrible loss and even a threat to the survival of the country.
These are things that we didn't foresee in 1989. We don't understand how the development of a post-communist society can generate real resentments that can be exploited by the counter-elites.
Can you talk about the "parody politics" of the United States?
Eastern Europeans turn to populism because, as imitators, they feel inferior to the model they are imitating. In contrast, Donald Trump's career began by saying that the United States is a victim because other countries are imitating the United States. Especially in the 80s of the 20th century, he lashed out at Japan and Germany for imitating the export-oriented industrial system of the United States. After World War II, we opened our markets to German and Japanese industrial products so that they could develop peacefully and integrate into the world economy. Trump thinks it's stupid: if we beat them, they shouldn't be allowed to sell cars in the United States.
In the 80s of the 20th century, he was ridiculed, but in the turn of the millennium, due to the rise of China as an economic competitor to the United States, people gradually began to accept his zero-sum view, because deindustrialization created a group of American voters with bleak job prospects.
Trump exploits the grievances of being imitated, while Eastern European populism instigates the grievances of being "imitators." Of course, Trump is also consciously opposed"America is a city on a hill"This idea, because this idealized image will attract immigrants. When he accuses the Democrats of fraud, election fraud, he doesn't just mean tampering with votes. He was referring to the complicity of the Democratic Party with African Americans by helping them register to vote and by bringing in immigrants and making them citizens through liberal immigration policies. That's what the Democratic Party is deeper"Fraud"。They are trying to create a new group of voters. Similar anxieties have bred populism everywhere.
You call Donald Trump in your book"A politician of radical change", and not"A brief deviation from the so-called normal order"。Why do you see him that way?
He did something unheard of. He was the first person in American history to publicly declare that the United States does not represent an idea that needs to be emulated: that it should not be an example for other nations; It has no right to teach other nations; It's not outstanding; It should not go into Iraq and Afghanistan to help Iraqis and Afghans. In his opinion, if we go to Iraq and Afghanistan to seize oil and minerals, then there is no problem. The only justification for using military force is to steal the wealth of other countries. That's what he said. He said that the United States is not morally superior to any other country. He said this in the crowd and people would scream"USA, USA! "No other** has ever done anything like this.
Trump has convinced many Americans that America can be great but not great. Biden laid out a different vision. How do you think this will affect in the coming years?
Biden is right when he says his term won't be the third Obama. The world in 2021 is very different from 2008-2016. First, the United States no longer has enough economic power and diplomatic clout to restore post-Cold War global hegemony. In the past, we thought of an alliance as 60 countries doing what we said. Not anymore. Any international cooperation that Biden can rebuild will do so on fairer terms. Moreover, in the aftermath of the events in Iraq, the spread of democratic ideals seems to have become a dream. How the United States will position itself in the new international environment remains to be seen, but it will not return to the pre-Trump world.
Translated by Zhao Dingqi.