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The sky is not falling and no lights are flashing red, but Americans have nonetheless embraced a highly charged, counterproductive way of thinking about politics as a new Cold War between democracy and totalitarianism. The works of Hannah Arendt and George Orwell have risen on the best-seller charts. Every news story produces fear and trembling.

History raises serious doubts about how helpful this tyrannophobic focus on catastrophe, fake news and totalitarianism really is in dealing with the rise of the populist right, of which this bumbling hothead of a president is a symptom. Excessive focus on liberal fundamentals, like basic freedoms or the rule of law, could prove self-defeating. By postponing serious efforts to give greater priority to social justice, tyrannophobia treats warning signs as a death sentence, while allowing the real disease to fester.

If there is one lesson from the 20th century worth learning, it is that an exclusive focus on the defense of liberal fundamentals against a supposed totalitarian peril often exacerbates the social and international conflicts it seeks to resolve. This approach to politics threatens to widen the already yawning gulf between liberal groups and their opponents, while distracting from the deeply rooted forces that have been fueling right-wing populist politics, notably economic inequalities and status resentments.

The anti-communist politics in the United States of the early 1950s were rooted in assumptions that had much in common with those of anti-Trumpism today. There was, it was claimed, a serious risk to liberal democracy from American subversion within, in alliance with the Russians without, peddling seductive untruths. Other goals like the creation of a more just and equal society had to take second place to the countrys military posture.

Ironically, many who rallied to the anti-tyranny banner were liberals of a vital center who did so out of sincere belief in the need to create an American welfare state. Yet focusing on exaggerated threats to freedom and stigmatizing the communist enemy undermined their progressive goals. National Security Council Report 68 of 1950, for example, argued that the Cold War justified the reduction of nonmilitary expenditure by the deferment of certain desirable programs, including welfare. And while the New Deal was not dismantled, efforts to extend it which still seemed a real possibility in Harry Trumans early years in office were denounced as pink tyranny, boosting state power at the expense of democracy. Casualties included attempts to create a national health care program. The consequences for American politics have been momentous.

The absolute priority given to liberal fundamentals also promoted serious misunderstandings of the rest of the world. Capitalism (though not democracy) had to be defended at all costs, while foreigners were commonly viewed as subject to brainwashing, manipulation and mass irrationality just what we fear today in the United States itself. And while those assumptions led to terrible mistakes and cost millions of lives in American military interventions, the end of the Cold War only reinforced the tyrannophobic worldview in an even purer form now including liberal democracy and even freer markets.

The ease with which the Soviet-bloc regimes collapsed seemed to prove that communism had no foundations other than manipulation and repression. Now that the tyrants had been brought down, equality was unimportant and markets could be left to work their magic. Communism in the Eastern bloc was certainly moribund, but the liberals who urged its replacement with market fundamentalism have lessons to learn, not to teach.

The rude awakening has been a long time coming, and even now has not fully occurred. The 2008 financial crisis failed to dent the political establishments complacency, even though it had become very clear that market-friendly policies were helping to destroy the social mobility and economic opportunity that underpins a well-functioning democracy.

And while the shock of the 2016 election caused unprecedented soul-searching, tyrannophobia is blinding many to the real warnings of the election: A dysfunctional economy, not lurking tyranny, is what needs attention if recent electoral choices are to be explained and voting patterns are to be changed in the future. Yet there is too little recognition of the need for new direction in either party. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York recently declared that the Democrats have merely failed to get their message across. Many Republicans are convinced that the party can correct its Trumpian aberration by reasserting the status quo ante of free markets and social conservatism. Neither side, it would seem, is ready to depart from its prior consensus.

The threat of tyranny can be real enough. But those who act as though democracy is constantly on the precipice are likely to miss the path that leads not simply to fuller justice but to true safety.

Samuel Moyn is a professor of law and history at Yale University. David Priestland is a professor of modern history at Oxford University.

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A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 13, 2017, on Page SR2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Problem Worse Than Tyranny.

Go here to see the original:
Trump Isn't a Threat to Our Democracy. Hysteria Is. - New York Times