Democracy is messy

Your brain on authoritarianism: 

The inside forces that drive people to turn on democracy
WBUR, This program aired on October 5, 2021

Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale. Author of several books, including "Our Malady" and "The Road to Unfreedom." (@TimothyDSnyder)

Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of psychology at Northeastern University. Chief science officer for the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital. Author of “7 1/2 Lessons About the Brain." (@LFeldmanBarrett)

Interview Highlights

On the history of philosophical thought and democracy

Timothy Snyder: "We don't even need 2021 to tell us. There's a long tradition of philosophical thought about this. From Plato, who has Socrates say that none of us is self-sufficient, all the way up to Rousseau, who has a book called Emile about how you have to educate people to work in public. We've known for a very long time that if you want to have a complex form of politics, the kind that you described in your introduction, you have to have individuals who are educated in a certain way, and who are aware of what they are doing, who have a kind of reflectiveness.

"Democracy's about reflection. It's about seeing the world, it's about self-correction. Which means that it's not at all the default form of politics. Historically speaking, it's quite exceptional. And I think one of the problems we have in America is that we've kind of come to think that freedom just means, 'Whatever I happen to think, whatever I happen to be convinced of, whatever I feel like doing at this very moment.' And that notion of freedom is highly manipulable by larger forces, by media, especially by social media. And that version of freedom is probably incompatible with democracy. Because it makes reflection something that we just don't do."

On the 'most important purpose' of our brains

Lisa Feldman Barrett: "We don't have brains because brains are rational. They allow us to be rational and controlled in some deliberate way. That's not really the pinnacle of brain evolution. We have brains because brains are important for regulating bodies. And if you look all the way back to the dawn of when brains evolved, they evolved for the ... most important purpose ... to really regulate the systems of your body. So your brain, you can think is running like a budget for your body, all the systems inside your body.

"So right now, as we're talking, as our listeners are listening, there's a whole drama going on inside each of us that we're really largely unaware of because our brains are basically taking care of regulating our hearts, our lungs and so on. We can talk about it as a body budget, and the brain doesn't budget money. It's budgeting glucose, and salt, and oxygen, and water and so on to keep us alive and well. And the two most expensive things your brain can do is move your body around, like when you're exercising or just dragging yourself out of bed in the morning.

"And learning something new, particularly in conditions of uncertainty. And so learning something new, something unexpected, particularly when circumstances are uncertain, doesn't have to be a bad stress. Because a bad stress just means that your brain is preparing your body for a big metabolic outlay that isn't replenished after the fact. But you know, people who exercise every day know that if they replenish what they spend, it's just a good investment. And so education can be that as well."

On the hardships of American life, and the importance of monitoring brain health

Lisa Feldman Barrett: "In addition to all the political uncertainty and the difficulties that come from economic hardship and so on, there is also day to day ambiguities that are built into American life, and that make our body budgets just a little harder to keep in balance. Like the casual brutality of everyday life where people speak to each other in ways that you don't know if those harsh words are a greeting of friendliness, or a threat to your physical well-being. And we can't use salty words on air, so I won't give you specific examples.

"There is a certain degree of social isolation that everyone is experiencing, even people who are very wealthy. And you know, we are social animals. We evolved to have socially dependent nervous systems. So you don't manage your body budget on your own. Other people metaphorically make deposits and withdrawals. And one thing that seems important here is that when you join a social movement, you surround yourself with people who are like-minded. Who think the way that you do. Whose behavior is very predictable to you, because you're predictable to them.

"And that actually gives your body budget a bit of a break. It makes it just easier to get through the day when other people are very predictable to you. Because in the end, the best thing for a human nervous system, for your body budget, is another human. But the worst thing also is another human. And being around people who are unpredictable or who believe things that you don't believe ... you pay some metabolic taxes for that. And it doesn't really matter how monetarily impoverished or enriched you are. You'll pay that tax."

On the benefit of making eye contact and talking with each other, despite differences

Lisa Feldman Barrett: "We have this amazing capacity, when we talk about connecting with each other, that's not just a metaphor. So when we're in the same room with each other and we are communicating, our breathing and our heart rates can synchronize, our movements can synchronize. We regulate each other's attention by eye contact. Making eye contact can actually make someone pay more attention to you. It can direct what they pay attention to and so on.

"So in a very real way, we are the regulators and caretakers of each other's nervous systems as much as our own. And this is really important. Because it means that we are even for the briefest moment, creating a social reality that is different from one where everyone is in their own little sort of informational silos.

"And I just want to make a point. We haven't really talked about social reality and then what that is. But almost everything we're talking about here, democracy, the presidency, politics and so on. This is in the domain of social reality, where a group of people basically by collective agreement claim, make up a reality and then it becomes true. Like we impose the function of currency on little pieces of paper and then poof, those little pieces of paper have value, to trade for material goods.

"So much so that they influence people's actual [reality]. And so when people talk to each other and when they communicate with each other, that is the basis of a more robust social reality. When a president all of a sudden starts doing something that's different than other presidents did, and the public who elected that president don't do anything, or implicitly agree that it's OK. Then in fact, by definition, it becomes OK because the rule is defined by social reality. And the only antidote there is for people to actually communicate with each other."

On the role democratic institutions have in pushing back

Timothy Snyder: "We've identified, let's say, three problems. Social media, wealth inequality, the lack of a welfare state. If we solved all of those problems, would Americans all be perfect angels of democracy? No. But would America be a sounder democracy? And would people in general behave better? In general, have more time for one another? In general, be better listeners? And in general, be more open to the facts? Yes, in general, they would be.

"So I would say first, let's do all the things that we know would work and then confront the issue, which I agree ... exists of bad will. I mean, of course, there are people who don't like democracy. Of course, there are people who love authoritarianism. One of them was just the president of the United States. We got to watch it for four years and we're still watching it.

"So of course, there's also a moral side to this. And when one speaks of institutions and one speaks about neurological structures, there's still something left over, which is ethics. Democracy is also an ethic. I also think democracy leads to good outcomes. I have an ethical commitment to democracy. I think everyone has the right to be represented. And we can't leave that aside. That's of course, also part of the picture."

Resolution of the Association of German Historians on Current Threats to Democracy

Where are Japan's historians?

Resolution of the Association of German Historians (VHD, Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands) on Current Threats to Democracy

passed at the association members’ meeting in Münster, 27 September 2018

In Germany as in numerous other countries, excessive attacks on democratic institutions are currently threatening the foundations of the political order. As historians, we feel it is our duty to warn against these threats. Dispute is essential in a pluralistic society, but it must follow certain rules if it is not going to undermine democracy itself.

Historiography as a scholarly discipline has the task of analyzing historical developments in order to contribute to a better understanding of contemporary issues and to explore the complexity of their causes. Given that politics seems to be increasingly driven by the volatility of public opinion polls and ever faster-paced media dynamics, we would like to stress that only thinking in longer-range time periods can guarantee the future of our political system in the long run.

We therefore consider the following basic attitudes for democratic interaction in politics and society essential:

For historically sensitive speech, against discriminatory terms
Political discussion in a democracy involves pointed language that clearly expresses one’s own position but does not deny other people fundamental respect. Today’s derogatory descriptions of politicians as “enemies of the people” or the media as producers of “fake news” employ the same kind of anti-democratic language that was used in the interwar period. We also have many historical examples of the dangerous effects of using disparaging terms to exclude perceived “others” on the basis of their religion, their ethnic background, their gender or their sexual orientation.
For parliamentary democracy and a pluralistic culture of debate, against populism
In pluralistic democracies, public policy is the result of open debates in which a variety of political opinions and social interests are expressed. A unified will of the people that can be discerned by those regarding themselves as “called” is, in contrast, a fiction, used by people in political debates primarily for the purpose of making themselves invulnerable. In the Weimar Republic, the idea of “the people’s will” smoothed the way to power for a movement whose “Führer” saw himself as the incarnation of that will.

For unified European action, against nationalist unilateralism
Given the many violently waged intra-European conflicts of the past, European unification based on a commitment to pluralistic democracy and inalienable human rights is one of the most significant accomplishments of the 20th century. While the legitimacy of individual national interests is undisputed, unilateral nationalist actions threaten this historical achievement. Exclusively national problem-solving strategies cannot meet the political, humanitarian, ecological and economic challenges of the globalized present. Also, in light of colonial violence committed by Europeans in other parts of the world, it is crucial to acknowledge our shared responsibility for the consequences of our policies in regions outside of Europe.

For humanity and the rule of law, against the slander of migrants
Migration is a historical constant. Despite all the problems it entails, on the whole it has benefited societies – including Germany’s. It is therefore important to work toward proactive, pragmatic policies concerning migration and integration that respect both human and international rights. It is essential that the constitutionally guaranteed right to political asylum and the duty to provide help in humanitarian crisis situations be applied in a way that falls to Germany not only because of its economic power but also for historical reasons.

For critical engagement with the past, against the political misuse of history
The Federal Republic of Germany today is a stable democracy. One of the reasons why is that the German people, after considerable resistance at first, now for the most part deal with the history of National Socialism in a self-critical and reflective way. Our own discipline, too, was slow to embrace this process. In any case, a responsible approach to the past has as its prerequisite the findings of historiography, a field that must also be willing to be self-critical and that in principle is independent of political influence. Its information is based on research into historical sources and is open to critical discussion. Only in this way will it be possible to remain mindful of the historical bases of our democracy and defend them against “alternative facts.”

Visualizing Japanese Fascism (1931-1945)

Asia Policy Point sponsors a lunch discussion on the state sanctioned visual representation of Japanese fascism and militarization during the war years.

Friday, September 7, 2018, Noon-2:00pm

Location
Mansfield Foundation
1156 15th Street, NW, Suite 1105
Washington, DC

Fordham University Professor Asato Ikeda will discuss her new book, The Politics of Painting: Fascism and Japanese Art during the Second World War, University of Hawaii Press, 2018.

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Dr. Ikeda examines Japanese war art produced the 1930s and early 1940s. Like Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan carefully managed the visualization of Empire and the image that the state felt would engender state pride and support of militarism. The arts were restricted within certain themes and mediums.

You can reserve a copy of The Politics of Painting: Fascism and Japanese Art during the Second World War (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2018) for only a $40 donation to APP, a savings of over $20 from the order price.

Asato Ikeda, originally from Tokyo, Japan, received her B.A. from the University of Victoria in 2006, her M.A. from Carlton University in 2008, and her Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in 2012. Her research interests lie in modern Japanese art in particular and Asian art in general, and the topics of imperialism/colonialism, war, fascism, museums, sex, gender, and sexuality. She is an active as a curator, keen to engage with the public about important social and political issues through the visual arts. Ikeda is currently an Assistant Professor of Art History at Fordham University in New York.

Professor Ikeda has also co-edited the first English-language anthology on the topic of Japanese war art, Art and War in Japan and its Empire, 1931-1960 (Brill, 2012) Twenty scholars, including art historians, historians, and museum curators from the United States, Canada, France, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan examine artistic responses to the Fifteen-Year War (1931-1945) within and outside Japan in the wartime and postwar period.

American fascism: Reading the signs of the times

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By IAN BURUMA, AsiaTimes, JULY 13, 2018

Comparing today’s demagogues with Adolf Hitler is almost always unwise. Such alarmism tends to trivialize the actual horrors of the Nazi regime and distracts attention from our own political problems. But if alarmism is counterproductive, the question remains: At what point are democracies truly in danger? What was unimaginable only a few years ago – a US president insulting democratic allies and praising dictators, or calling the free press “enemies of the people,” or locking up refugees and taking away their children – has become almost normal now. When will it be too late to sound the alarm?

Great books have been written about this very question. Giorgio Bassani’s masterpiece, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, describes the lives of bourgeois Italian Jews under fascism. Slowly, step by step, a legal and social noose tightens around these cultivated Italians, who took their lives of comfort and influence for granted. And yet, in different ways, they are in denial. The narrator’s father even joins the Fascist Party, while the wealthier Finzi-Continis withdraw into their ever more isolated family circle. Pride and a lack of imagination blind them to the danger they are in until it is too late and they are deported to the death camps.

The human incapacity to see what is coming also animates Sebastian Haffner’s memoir Defying Hitler, written in 1939, a year after he left his native Germany. Haffner, later a journalist and author, was a law student who witnessed how the Nazi dictatorship became lethal, again incrementally, like the persecution of Jews in Italy. He saw how his fellow law students, none of whom were Nazis, came to accept each step – racial laws, abrogation of the constitution, and so on – precisely because they were couched in legal terms. There never seemed to be a point at which they recognized that an intolerable line had been crossed and only resistance or exile would do. Haffner, who was not Jewish, did recognize it; he left in the year that synagogues were torched and Jews driven from their homes.

Under most circumstances, there are probably more Finzi-Continis than Haffners. It is hard to sleep well in a state of alarm. Life is easier if the world seems normal, even if it is anything but.

There are many ways people stick their heads in the sand, and some parallels between our own time and Europe in the early 1930s can be seen. Quite a number of German businessmen and industrialists, who were conservatives but not Nazis, thought they could live with Hitler, as long as he benefited them financially. He was a vulgar upstart, whose manners might not have been the finest, but surely they would be able to control him.

Historical knowledge can help people to recognize certain patterns of behavior – attacks on an independent judiciary, for example – that have led to tyranny in the past. But historical memory, often blended with myth, can also stop people from reading the signs of what might come. In countries with a democratic history, it is easy to assume that “it could never happen here,” because “our institutions are too strong,” or “our people love freedom too much,” or they are “too civilized” or “too modern” to slide into barbarism.

Donald Trump may not be a reincarnated Hitler, but Republicans’ acquiescence in every step he has taken away from civilized democratic norms is ominous

Leftists can be just as blinkered as conservatives. Communists (instructed by Stalin), but also the non-communist left in 1920s Germany, refused to defend the fragile Weimar Republic when it was under assault from the right. Communists saw social democrats as a greater danger than Nazis, and left-wing intellectuals were distracted by the hypocrisy and corruption of mainstream parties they really should have supported.

Donald Trump may not be a reincarnated Hitler, but Republicans’ acquiescence in every step he has taken away from civilized democratic norms is ominous. And so is talk on the far left that the difference between Trump and Clinton or Obama is one of degree, not kind: he merely displays the iniquities of neoliberalism more blatantly than they did. In both cases, the particular dangers posed by today’s right-wing populism are underrated or ignored.

The much-maligned mainstream press – those “enemies of the people” – is still robust. But its influence is waning. What appears in The New York Times or the Washington Post matters less than presidential tweets that go straight to millions of people and are echoed in partisan radio or TV shows.

In a polarized society, politicians who stir up the mob by exploiting fear and resentment are probably more likely to be successful than less exciting figures who try to appeal to our more rational faculties. Political parties that oppose the anti-liberal trends are in a serious bind. If they respond to youthful anger and idealism and move too far to the left, they could lose essential votes in the center. If they choose centrist candidates, who look for reforms rather than radical change, they might lose the fired-up young.

And yet freedoms must be defended, which is possible only when the threats are seen clearly. The moment people stop believing that the demagogues can be prevented from doing their worst is the moment we can be sure that it is already too late.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2018
www.project-syndicate.org

Why Steve Bannon Admires Japan

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In Japan, populist and extreme right-wing nationalism has found a home within the political establishment.

By Reto Hofmann, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at Waseda University, Tokyo and an expert on the history of transnational fascism, conservatism, and right-wing movements. Author of The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915–1952.

The Diplomat, June 22, 2018

When Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former adviser, spoke at the conference of the Japanese Conservative Union [a brain child of Japanese new religion Happy Science and Trump adviser Matt Schlapp], he praised Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, calling him a “Trump before Trump.” Bannon is not the only Western right-winger to admire Japan. Simone di Stefano, leader of Italy’s neofascist Casa Pound, is dreaming of an alliance between Italy, Russia, and Japan. And for Jan Moldenhauer, an ideologue of the xenophobic Alternative for Germany, when it comes to immigration, “Japan is the alternative.”

Coming from the world’s self-appointed populist leaders, these statements deserve reflection. Right-wing populism is often seen as a threat to democracy because it challenges the political establishment from the margins, using high doses of nationalism and skillful manipulation of the media. This has happened in Europe, most recently in Italy and Slovakia. But this pattern should not make us forget that the political establishment is hardly immune to right-wing agendas.

Happy Science talks to Trump's
conscience

In Japan, populist and extreme right-wing nationalism has found an institutional home within the traditional conservatism of Liberal Democratic Party that aims for an authoritarian transformation of the political system — hence the effusions of the likes of Bannon.

Since 2012, Abe has gradually enforced a hard right-wing agenda from within. He has impeccable nationalistic credentials. He is a special adviser of the Nippon Kaigi, a right-wing organization that strives to reconstruct Japan on a nationalist basis. It is active, for example, in advising the government on education policies, promoting ideas about “morals” as well as revisionist history textbooks.

Nippon Kaigi is influential in the LDP. At some point 18 out of 20 of Abe’s cabinets were members, many of whom with clear ultra-right sympathies. One, Tomomi Inada, then party policy chief, had posed for a photowith Yamada Kazunari, the leader of a neo-Nazi group. Another, Taro Aso, the deputy prime minister, remarked that Hitler was wrong in murdering millions of people, but that “his motives were right.” He is also on the record for saying that the Nazis did a good job at gutting the Weimar Constitution — a remarkable statement for a government that wants to alter its own constitution.

Since 2012, Abe’s governments have been pushing policies that are still only on the agenda of many populists. Take the attacks on the media, for example. When Abe was appointed prime minister in 2012, he posted on Facebook that “my war with the mass media has started. I will fight my way through it together with your support.” Further, his government passed the State Secrecy Laws, one effect of which is to restrict the media’s news gathering capacity. Momii Katsuto, the former head of NHK, the public broadcaster, and a close friend of Abe, caused a stir when he said that NHK “should not deviate from the government’s position in its reporting.”

Abe has a clear “Japan First” outlook, a desire to remake a “beautiful Japan” that is socially harmonious and ethnically homogeneous. Despite the country’s acute labor shortage, Abe does not welcome immigrants. He declared that “before accepting immigrants or refugees, we need to have more activities by women, elderly people and we must raise our birth rate.” In 2017, Japan granted refugee status to 20 people out of an applicant pool of 20,000. Xenophobia is not only an American or European problem. It is rampant also in Japan, where right-wing groups target Korean residents with verbal abuse. In response, the LDP leadership has been reluctant to legislate about hate speech. Abe preferred to “leave this matter to the good conscience of the average Japanese.”

Japan lacks the strident version of populism that has engulfed Europe, but we would be missing the point by not seeing the country as a link in the global chain of right-wing politics. Though refraining from the crassest expressions of xenophobia and authoritarianism, Abe’s deceptively polite right-wing politics may be heading in the same direction.

Monday in Washington, April 16, 2018

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COMEY WEEK IN WASHINGTON

BIG IS BEAUTIFUL: DEBUNKING THE MYTH OF SMALL BUSINESS. 4/16, 9:00-10:30am. Sponsor: Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). Authors: Robert D. Atkinson, President, ITIF; Michael Lind, Visiting Professor, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas. Moderator: Edward Luce, Washington Commentator, Financial Times.

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ALLIED AEROSPACE POWER. 4/16, 9:30-11:00am, Arlington, VA. Sponsor: Mitchell Institute. Speakers: Gen. David Goldfein, U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff; ACM. Stephen Hillier, Royal Air Force Chief of the Air Staff.

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REPUBLIC IN PERIL: AMERICAN EMPIRE AND THE LIBERAL TRADITION. 4/16, 11:00am-12:30pm, Lunch, Washington, DC. Sponsor: Cato. Author: David C. Hendrickson, Professor of Political Science, Colorado College. Speaker: Michael Mandelbaum, Professor Emeritus, SAIS, Johns Hopkins University. Moderator: John Mueller, Senior Fellow, Cato.  

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SOUTH ASIA'S DEVELOPMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF CHINA-INDIA RIVALRY. 4/16, 12:30-2:00pm, Lunch, Washington, DC. Sponsor: Sasakawa USA. Speaker: Keiichiro Nakazawa, Director General, South Asia Department, Japan International Cooperation Agency. Moderator: Amb. James Zumwalt, CEO, Sasakawa USA.

ATAMBAYEV RETURNS: WHAT NEXT FOR KYRGYZSTAN? 4/16, 2:00-3:30pm, Washington, DC. Sponsor: Russia and Eurasia Program, CSIS. Speaker: Venera Djumataeva, Director, Kyrgyz Service, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Moderator: Jeffrey Mankoff, Deputy Director & Senior Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Program, CSIS.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT IN CONVERSATION WITH JEFFREY GOLDBERG. 4/16, 7:00pm, Washington, DC. Sponsors: The Atlantic; Politics and Prose Bookstore; Sixth & I. Speakers: Madeleine Albright, Former US Secretary of State, author Fascism: A Warning; Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief, The Atlantic.

Recognizing Japanese War Crimes Prior to 1945

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Documenting German and Japanese War Crimes prior to 1945: The UN War Crimes Commission

Tuesday, September 12, 2017
9:30 AM — 11:15 AM
Light breakfast

Book presentation with Dr. Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS, University of London and author of Human Rights After Hitler: The Lost History of Prosecuting Axis War Crimes. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017. 272 pages)

Cooperative program between Asia Policy Point and the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS)

Location 

American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS)

 R. G. Livingston Conference Room
1755 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Suite 700
Washington, DC,  20036 United States

REGISTER HERE

Dr Dan Plesch will present his analysis of thousands of newly available indictments of Germans and Japanese many made during the Second World War and supported by the Allies. His presentation will draw on his book “Human Rights After Hitler: The Lost History of Prosecuting Axis War Crimes.” The book is based on the archive of the 1943-1948, 17-nation UN War Crimes Commission. Among the findings are indictments of Nazis for the death camps in 1944, while they were still operating and that these were considered and endorsed by representatives of China and still-Imperial India along with the Western Allies. His research demonstrates: that sexual violence in warfare was recognized during WWII as a war crime; that there was a working definition of a “crime against humanity” during WWII, not after; and that Asian states and Asians were involved in establishing this definition and in identifying war crimes prior to the end of the war. Most interesting, both the German and Japanese governments were aware of the work of the UNWCC and the terms of the indictments.

Dr Plesch directs the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS, University of London and his previous books include “America Hitler and the UN” and the “Beauty Queen's Guide to World Peace.” Dr Plesch read history at Nottingham and obtained professional qualifications in social work and public administration from Bristol in 1979 and 1980, he then worked for non-governmental organizations focused on the abolition of nuclear weapons. In 1986, he founded the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and directed it from Washington, DC until 2001, when he became the Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London. https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff31644.php

His book will be available at the program or through this LINK

Trump is 1930s

Timothy Snyder, Housum Professor of History at Yale, has just published On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. If you missed any of his book lectures, one is above and the one he gave to the Wilson Center in Washington is HERE.

In his New York Times op ed before the election (9/20/16) he describes the Russian fascist philosophy of Ivan Ilyin behind Putin's desire to crush Western democracy. A desire for an ordered world is more important than geo-political power. Snyder's is must reading for our troubling era.

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How a Russian Fascist Is Meddling in America’s Election

By TIMOTHY SNYDER

NEW HAVEN — The president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin, once described the collapse of the Soviet Union as a “geopolitical catastrophe.” But the political thinker who today has the most influence on Mr. Putin’s Russia is not Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Communist system, but rather Ivan Ilyin, a prophet of Russian fascism.

The brilliant political philosopher has been dead for more than 60 years, but his ideas have found new life in post-Soviet Russia. After 1991, his books were republished with long print runs. President Putin began to cite him in his annual speech to the Federal Assembly, the Russian equivalent of the State of the Union address.

To complete the rehabilitation, Mr. Putin saw to it that Ilyin’s corpse was repatriated from Switzerland, and that his archive was returned from Michigan. The Russian president has been seen laying flowers on Ilyin’s Moscow grave. And Mr. Putin is not the only disciple of Ilyin among the Kremlin elite.

Vladislav Y. Surkov, Moscow’s arch-propagandist, also sees Ilyin as an authority. Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev, who served as president between 2008 and 2012, recommends Ilyin to Russian students. Ilyin figures in the speeches of the foreign minister, the head of the constitutional court and the patriarch of the Orthodox Church.

What are the ideas that have inspired such esteem?

Ilyin believed that individuality was evil. For him, the “variety of human beings” demonstrated the failure of God to complete the labor of creation and was therefore essentially satanic. By extension, the middle classes, political parties and civil society were also evil, because they encouraged the development of personalities beyond the single identity of the national community.

According to Ilyin, the purpose of politics is to overcome individuality, and establish a “living totality” of the nation. Writing in the 1920s and ’30s after his expulsion from the Soviet Union, when he became a leading emigré ideologue of the anti-Communist White Russians, Ilyin looked on Mussolini and Hitler as exemplary leaders who were saving Europe by dissolving democracy. His 1927 article “On Russian Fascism” was addressed to “My White brothers, the fascists.” Later, in the 1940s and ’50s, he provided the outlines for a constitution of a fascist Holy Russia governed by a “national dictator” who would be “inspired by the spirit of totality.”

This leader would be responsible for all functions of government in a completely centralized state. Elections would be held, with open voting and signed ballots, purely as a ritual of support of the leader. The reckoning of votes was irrelevant: “We must reject blind faith in the number of votes and its political significance.”

In the light of Ilyin’s rehabilitation as Russia’s leading ideologue, Moscow’s manipulations of elections should be seen not so much as a failure to implement democracy but as a subversion of the very concept of democracy. Neither the parliamentary elections of December 2011 nor the presidential elections of March 2012 produced a majority for Mr. Putin’s party or for Mr. Putin personally. Votes were therefore added to produce a decisive result.

Russians who protested the fixed elections were branded as national enemies. Nongovernmental organizations were forced to register as “foreign agents.” Mr. Putin even claimed that Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, “gave the signal” to the Russian opposition to go on the streets. The notion that defending democracy meant betraying Russia was perfectly consistent with Ilyin’s view.

Since then, Mr. Putin has relied on Ilyin’s authority at every turning point in Russian politics — from his return to power in 2012 to the decision to intervene in Ukraine in 2013 and the annexation of Ukrainian territory in 2014. Last spring, he claimed that the American intelligence services would intervene in the Russian parliamentary elections held this past weekend and in the Russian presidential elections of 2018. The question of whether anyone in the Kremlin actually believes this is beside the point. These claims of constant American interference are intended to show that the democratic process is nothing more than a geopolitical game.

While Russian leaders consciously work to hollow out the idea of democracy in their own country, they also seek to discredit democracy abroad — including, this year, in the United States. Russia’s interventions in our presidential elections are not only the opportunistic support of a preferred candidate, Donald J. Trump, who backs Russian foreign policy. They are also the logical projection of the new ideology: Democracy is not a means of changing leadership at home, but a means of weakening enemies abroad. If we see politics as Ilyin did, Russia’s ritualization of elections becomes a virtue rather than a vice. Degrading democracy around the world would be a service to mankind.

If democracy is merely an invitation to foreign influence, then hacking a foreign political party’s email is the most natural thing in the world. If civil society is nothing but the decadent opening of a rotting society to foreign influence, then constant trolling of media is obviously appropriate. If, as Ilyin wrote, the “arithmetical understanding of politics” is harmful, then digital meddling in foreign elections would be just the thing.

For a decade, Russia has been sponsoring right-wing extremists as “election observers” — most recently, in the farcical referendums in the Crimea and in the Donbas region of Ukraine — in order to discredit both elections and their observation. Since democracy is a sham, as Ilyin believed, then it is right and good to imitate its language and procedures in order to discredit it. It is noteworthy that the Trump campaign has now imitated this very practice, supplying both its own private “observers” and the advance conclusion about the fraud they will find.

The technique of undermining democracy abroad is to generate doubt where there had been certainty. If democratic procedures start to seem shambolic, then democratic ideas will seem questionable as well. And so America would become more like Russia, which is the general idea. If Mr. Trump wins, Russia wins. But if Mr. Trump loses and people doubt the outcome, Russia also wins.

From Moscow’s point of view, it is easier to bring down democracy everywhere than it is to hold free, fair elections at home. Russia will seem stronger if other states follow its course of development toward a cynicism about democracy that allows authoritarianism to thrive. So we might as well get used to the interference, and take sensible precautions. It no longer makes sense to carry out elections and regulate campaign finance as if such matters were of no interest to hostile foreign powers.

Americans have plenty of other reasons to reform the democratic process, but protecting their integrity should take priority. Paper ballots for every voter and public financing of campaigns, to give two examples, would make sense both for citizens and for the electoral system. A simpler democracy would be a more secure one — and a more exemplary one.