Authoritarianism is never the answer

Liberal values are still our best defence against those who don’t believe in freedom.

In an early episode of Game of Thrones, the minstrel Marillion is hauled before King Joffrey for performing a song in a local tavern that satirises the death of the king’s father. He is forced to sing the song at court and, having done so, Joffrey fixes him with one of his chilling glowers and asks: “which do you favour: your fingers or your tongue?” After some stammering, the poor minstrel replies that every man needs hands. “Good!” says Joffrey. “Tongue it is!” The scene ends much as you’d imagine.

Tyrants have often thrived on the illusion of choice. This can take many forms. It could be rigged elections that generate a pretence of democracy. It could be social policy that maintains citizens’ dependence on the state. In virtually all tyrannies, criticism of the government is permitted so long as one is willing to surrender one’s freedom or right to existence. Like Joffrey’s fingers-or-tongue dilemma, it’s not much of a choice at all.

Joffrey’s cruelty makes for exhilarating television only because it strikes us as so outlandish. We forget that in most societies throughout history it would not occur to anyone to question the whims of the monarch, irrespective of how unreasonable they might be. Liberal democracy is not the norm; it is an ideal that can only be attained through decades of turmoil and self-sacrifice from freethinkers who are willing to risk everything for future generations of strangers. Such people are vanishingly rare, guided by principle above all other considerations.

And yet if we’ve learnt nothing else from history, we must surely know by now that authoritarianism has an enduring appeal. Something in the human instinct is drawn to the notion of simply making obstacles disappear – through censorship, suppression, or sometimes more drastic means – which is why we so often see double-standards applied when it comes to free speech. As I have argued many times before, the preservation of our own liberties depends on our support for the liberties of those we despise.

Recently we have seen commentators dismissing the liberal approach as unrealistic. In his book The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism, John Gray argues that a liberal civilisation in which freedom of speech and thought are taken for granted is a thing of the past. He maintains that our belief in progress is naïve, and that when it is tested against the stark truth of human nature it is found wanting. We in the west believe that democracy and freedom is the natural state of humankind, but the recurrence of totalitarianism should give us pause for thought. In particular, the rising threat from China and Russia – two societies in which liberalism has never triumphed – would suggest that if we hold true to our liberal values we will be ill-prepared for any onslaught.