Journalist Sean Illing: ‘I believe the era of stable democracy as we knew it will never return’
According to the influential American journalist, author, and podcaster Sean Illing, we’d better get used to the idea that liberal democracy is a thing of the past. In this day and age, narrative is more important than facts, and only sheer persuasiveness counts. “Anyone can now make their voice heard to a global audience—and what could be more democratic than that?”
Text: Casper Thomas
Democrats in the United States are spending millions on this: a search for progressive influencers who can be enlisted to boost the party’s image. Donald Trump’s victory, according to the analysis following the previous election defeat, was partly the result of the broad network of podcasters and other digital opinion leaders who promoted the Republican narrative or willingly provided it with a platform. And so the Democrats want to ensure they have their own spokespeople with audiences numbering in the millions. Focus groups have now been assembled, research teams launched, and committees appointed to find suitable figures—all funded by wealthy sponsors.
“They have no idea,” is the scathing conclusion of influential American journalist, author, and podcaster Sean Illing regarding the search for the ideal Democratic influencer. “They think you can just create a progressive counterpart to someone like Joe Rogan by throwing money at it. But that’s not a solution to the Democrats’ real problem: a lack of connection and trust between the party and American voters. It takes years to build something like that.”
Democracy Doesn’t Have to Be Liberal
For Illing, this loss of trust in the Democrats and their liberal-progressive message is representative of the state of liberal democracy worldwide. Everywhere, parties that identify with this political model are falling further and further behind, just like the fabric of principles and institutions they claim to uphold. “Trust in journalism, in the rule of law, in individual rights—all of this has been waning for quite some time,” he says.
But don’t confuse this diagnosis with the all-too-common doomsday rhetoric about “the end of democracy,” Illing emphasizes. According to him, we are simply realizing now that democracy and liberalism are not an inevitable match. “Liberalism is just one of the paths a democracy can take,” he says. “By equating democracy with liberal democracy, we’ve forgotten that very different outcomes are also possible.”
Illing wants to warn against intellectual complacency, precisely because it makes liberal democracy vulnerable to forces seeking to abolish it. Trump, he concludes, was able to gain a foothold in part because he was not taken seriously enough by the establishment. “Trump was a middle finger to the dominant system, and in fact, he still is.”
Relative outsider
Illing knows what he is talking about. He is himself a key figure in the class of opinion makers, conversation starters, and analysts who unravel the great dual movement of the current US: the electoral successes of Donald Trump and the blunders on the other side of the political spectrum. He found this calling relatively late in his career. Illing taught philosophy at university and served in the US Air Force. And unlike many of his colleagues, he does not live in one of the major cities on the American East or West Coast, but in New Orleans.
It is this status as a relative outsider that makes Illing so popular. He hosts thinkers from a wide range of backgrounds on his widely listened-to podcast *The Gray Area*, and he co-authored a incisive book with media scholar Zac Gershberg titled *The Paradox of Democracy*. Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion. On Friday, June 13, he will present his views to a select group of leaders from the Dutch media sector at a conference organized by the Democracy and Media Foundation. His central message: democracy suffers from the very thing that gives it its raison d’être. The freedom to hold one’s own views and to publicize them can just as easily be used to undermine democracy.
“You see the same pattern at every stage in the history of democracy,” says Illing. “Time and again, new ways emerge for people to exchange their ideas and beliefs, and time and again, this leads to instability and disruption. It began with public rhetoric in Ancient Greece, followed by the mass print media, radio, television, the internet, social media, and so on. With every revolution in communication technology, the question has been raised as to whether it poses a threat to democracy.”
“Actually, that’s the one constant,” Illing continues. “A culture of open communication is at the heart of democracy, far more so than things like the rule of law, independent institutions, and the media acting as a watchdog. Those elements belong to a very specific phase in the history of democracy, which began in the middle of the last century and kept democracy stable for a long time. Now that model is coming to an end, and chaos is taking over again.” But, he emphasizes, that is part of a democratic system. “Democracy is not a political system or a specific set of institutions, but a culture of public rhetorical struggle.”
Nonsense and Persuasiveness
The true face of democracy is now once again fully visible, Illing argues, and with it, the great contradiction. “Thanks to technological advances, anyone can now make their voice heard by a global audience—and what could be more democratic than that? At the same time, the door is wide open for conspiracy theorists, provocateurs, and con artists who attack democracy,” he says. And for an embodiment of that paradox, you need look no further than the political figure who undeniably attracts the most attention. “Trump spouts a lot of nonsense, yet at the same time he’s a communicator with tremendous persuasive power,” says Illing.
Trump’s persuasive power goes so far, Illing notes, that it overshadows a classic principle of democracy. “For a long time, the idea was that politicians had to deliver for their constituents, but Trump seems largely immune to this demand.” Illing cites high food prices as an example. “During the election, those were constantly cited as a reason to vote the Democrats out. Trump has been in office for a while now, and the cost of, say, a carton of eggs has only gone up,” he says. “It sometimes seems as if we’ve entered a post-material phase of politics.”
And while Trump and his followers are smoothly capitalizing on the premises of a new era—no one has a monopoly on the truth, the narrative is more important than the facts—the representatives of the old order are left in the dust. This applies to the Democrats and their desperate search for votes to break through the “Trump atmosphere,” but also to the media, which for a long time served as one of the pillars propping up liberal democracy, Illing concludes.
Permanently Destabilized
If the champions of the rule of law and individual freedom are to stand a chance again, they must first and foremost regain the trust they have lost. Illing calls exactly how to do this one of the “most complicated questions of our time.” As far as he’s concerned, the possible answers certainly don’t lie in mourning an era that has been lost. “I don’t think the era of stable liberal democracy as we knew it will ever return,” he says. “The struggle now is over what the world will look like afterward.”
In any case, the foundation of that world is a “permanently destabilized open media environment,” Illing argues, simply because “the internet isn’t going away.” The idea that a message from above—whether from a political party, a newspaper, or an individual—will automatically be heard and followed simply doesn’t fit with that reality. “We need to develop the cultural, rhetorical, and social tools to deal with that reality,” says Illing. That means trying to match someone like Trump in verbal cunning, because “simply pointing out the falsehoods doesn’t work.”
It’s no easy task, Illing admits, but it is one that aligns with what he sees as the very essence of democracy: an open marketplace of ideas where there’s no need to overcome lofty concepts like “the truth” or “reason” prevail, but where it all comes down to one thing: pure persuasion.
The Democracy and Media Foundation is conducting a series of conversations with various thinkers on the topic of shared reality. This was the second interview in the series, conducted in collaboration with *Het Financieele Dagblad*. Other episodes can be found here.
