Democracy in decline: too late to save it?

A review of Farewell to Democracy? Lessons Past and Present, by Jack Luzkow (Zero Books, UK £9.99 / US $14.95, March 2021)

The first thing that came to mind when I received a copy of this book was: is there really a need for that question mark in the title?

I just wish history professor Jack Luzkow had delayed publication to add a chapter about the effects of the covid-19 catastrophe on his arguments. That question mark, for many readers, is already superfluous.

For, under the draconian response to covid-19 by the medical-political complex, the people of Western democracies have been given a taste of totalitarianism and the one-party state, and it’s impossible to read Farewell to Democracy? outside this context.

It’s a little book (only a hundred pages) but it has a big message: that in the twenty-first century we are facing threats similar to the totalitarianism that emerged in the twentieth century. Luzkow writes from a US standpoint, but his book has relevance worldwide, raising as it does issues and questions of vital importance to every citizen. Positioned on the political left, he naturally sees the threats posed in the…