Gerald Knaus: The Rhetoric of Reaction - Pessimism, Complacency and Newspeak in 2014
Gerald Knaus, founding chairman of the European Stability Initiative, delivered a wide-ranging, thoughtful, and passionate address at Central European University (CEU) on September 18th. Hosted by the School of Public Policy at CEU, the lecture inaugurated the Frontiers of Democracy initiative, a series of events that the University will be organizing over the next two years to promote open debate about the nature of constitutional democracy. The purpose is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democracy, and the appeal and dangers of illiberal democracy.
In his speech entitled “The Rhetoric of Reaction - Pessimism, Complacency and Newspeak in 2014,” Knaus spoke about two visions which existed after the end of the Cold War. There were those who predicted that Europe was doomed to a new cycle of conflicts, and the best that could be done was to contain them. And there were others who saw an opportunity for a new European architecture based on integration. In 1996 the dissident, former political prisoner, and later Czech President Vaclav Havel told a German audience in Aachen that "Europe now has a chance unprecedented in its entire previous history: it can build its order on the basis of agreement among all those concerned." Havel warned about the consequences of not building such an integrated Europe, whole and free: "The demons that have so fatally tormented European history – most disastrously of all in the 20th century – are merely biding their time."
After 1997 such warnings were heeded and enlargement was taken seriously. It has since transformed the continent and “made a fundamental difference to countries like Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria,” Knaus noted. It was a bold policy that worked. Recalling the work of Albert O. Hirschman, the author of The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy, Knaus noted that European leaders of that period did not give in to “impossibilism” and fatalism. They seized an opportunity and “proved Hamlet wrong.”
If the enlargement of the EU and NATO turned out to be a success, the same was not true for the Council of Europe, however. Here, after many new members were admitted, complacency set in. “We didn’t pay attention” Knaus said, to the debates in Strasbourg. He described the “sad and seemingly irreversible decline” in the moral authority of the Council of Europe that followed, as its institutions were captured by East European autocratic regimes.
Today the result of this process is sadly obvious. At this moment the chairmanship of what was once a club of democracies is held by Azerbaijan, a dictatorship with a horrible human rights record. The regime uses this position as a cover. This summer has seen an ongoing and unprecedented wave of repression as the regime has jailed almost all human rights defenders. Knaus noted that on the same day that the Azerbaijan foreign minister was making a presentation in Vienna in May at a meeting of the Council of Europe outlining his country’s priorities during its six-month chairmanship, courts were sentencing human rights activists, including CEU alumnus Rashadat Akundov, to lengthy prison terms. Another CEU alumnus and political prisoner, Ilgar Mammadov, has been in jail since early 2013. And yet,” said Knaus, “not one government said a word.” Having been complacent, European democracies have now become fatalistic, indifferent, convinced there is little they can do.
And yet, Knaus said, there are many things that could be done to defend those democratic principles now under threat. The first step is to make people care and build alliances. He called on the audience to also help “take back the good words… We need to define clearly what is not a democracy, what are not free and fair elections, what is a political prisoner, what is a dissident."
Knaus concluded his address by stressing the importance of telling the stories of courage on which the freedom of today’s Central Europe is based. These are very similar to the stories of human rights defenders in countries like Azerbaijan today. Here CEU can make a special contribution. “You have the archive of dissent here at CEU. You guard this legacy. But these are not stories for historians only – as we once hoped. These are stories for today. And this – of all places – is the right place to tell them.”
Watch the full lecture here: