The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion by Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion by Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing Ray Brescia (bio) The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion By Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022. Pp. 320. In The Paradox of Democracy, authors Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing do yeoman's work in reviewing the history of Western democracies, from the Greek city-states of the time of Socrates to the United States of today, to make the claim that it is democracy's very openness that can lead to its ultimate demise. Demagogues can exploit the ability to communicate freely to garner support from the masses for very illiberal, antidemocratic ends. The authors point out that today's instantaneous, disintermediated media environment only makes the impact of media on culture even more profound. When the "paradox" of democracy—that it contains the seeds of its own destruction—meets the power of new media, the authors argue that a nation can find itself on the road to fascism. The solutions to this problem, the authors posit, are increased media literacy and a return to local journalism. When reading The Paradox of Democracy, it is not clear that the sources of the threats to democracy—and the defenses or solutions to those threats—are as simple as the authors suggest, however. What is more, the examples given by the authors do not always provide clear support for their arguments. One chapter-spanning discussion begins with Alexis de Tocqueville, goes through the Spanish-American War, doubles back to the Franco-Prussian War, fast-forwards to the Dreyfus Affair in France, follows up with the tension between Germany under the Kaiser and Russia under the Czar in the lead-up to World War I, and then discusses the rise of Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany. Do these examples support their analysis regarding the relationship between mass media and democracy when each of these nations had very different political systems, approaches to free speech, and wildly divergent outcomes? What, then, can we learn from these examples? How do they relate to the paradox of democracy? Similarly, the book rarely explores the fact that exogenous forces operating on and the relative strength of institutions within a society can both change a nation just as much, if not more, than mass media operating within it. Yes, the authors mention the American response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, make passing reference to the economic impacts of the Great Depression on politics generally, and discuss the failure of the January 6, 2021, insurrection in the United States, but little effort is made to identify the conditions and forces at work that result in the success or failure of illiberal demagogues in different institutional, economic, and political environments. Sometimes institutions hold, sometimes they do not. Sometimes antidemocratic forces leverage mass media to demolish democracy, sometimes they fail in their attempts to do so. We are given few tools to understand the difference between success and failure in such efforts. [End Page 601] The authors, choosing to see these phenomena through the prism of media analysis almost exclusively, might bring to mind the parable of the blind philosophers standing around an elephant, trying to identify what it is that stands before them. One, holding the trunk, concludes that it is a snake; another, touching its flank, thinks it is a wall; and so on. Here, our authors, media theorists themselves, analyze the impact of media tools on communication, culture, and politics and see what they have chosen to see given the lens through which they view these phenomena, which is well and good, standing on its own. But they also draw broader conclusions about the impact of those tools without recognizing that other factors are equally as important, if not more important, than the tools of communication in determining a society's future. The authors' efforts to help us understand the role that media can play in the potential fate of democracy and democracies are useful and remind us of the dangers present in this fraught political moment. But the limited nature and reach of...