How does living in a “declining democracy” feel?

Claudia Roth, German Minister of State for Culture, at Belinale.
Photo: Andreas Rentz | Geety Images (taken from The Guardian)

I was in an international group discussion a few days ago, where the subject was museums and declining democracies. We heard about the woes of Polish museum directors, widely reported in the international press (examples from 2017 onwards: here, here, here, here, here); we heard about museums in Hungary, expected to “interpret for the people the wills of the government” or getting censored because of a participatory art project depicting the President or, more recently, seeing a director getting sacked for ignoring the law against the “promotion of homosexuality”, which he had voted for when he was a member of parliament. We also heard about the Netherlands, where the extreme right has been attacking museum narratives for some time and is now trying to form a government, after winning the elections in November.

One of the points that came up during the discussion is that recent election results – in the Netherlands, but also in Portugal –, which confirmed the rise of the far right, did not come as a surprise. At the same time, fascist and populist tactics are not a surprise either, they have been studied and they are known for decades. What is rather surprising for me is how we can see things coming, or actually happening, and not doing something about them. Do we feel that this has got something to do with us, both individually and professionally, or rather not? How does it feel to be living in a declining democracy? Do we, actually, perceive it as such or are we rather “lulled”, as a colleague put it, going about our everyday business as usual?

Our discussion became more complex and challenging when a Syrian colleague, living in Germany for the last ten years, questioned us whether Germany is considered a declining democracy. Had we thought about this before? Because what else can we say about a democratic state where people (including artists and cultural professionals) are criticised or censored for talking about the genocide in Gaza or condemning Israeli policies (see pieces of news at the end of this page), when cultural professionals need permission to talk to the media or when Claudia Roth, Minister of State for Culture attending Berlinale, insists that she was only clapping the Israeli, but not the Palestinian half, of a film-making duo that won the prize for best documentary for “No Other Land”.  “I came to Europe looking for freedom”, our colleague told us, “and I see this.”

We should also refer here the banning of books in the USA, another beacon of democracy in decline, pushed by conservative politicians and ultra-conservative groups, such as Moms for Liberty. “Eating away our democracy” was the title used by the Guardian when reporting on this last September.  In the beginning of the month, I read an article about students themselves fighting back this attack on democracy. And it got me thinking once again about a generalised silence in the cultural sector when the launch of the book “No meu bairro” in Lisbon was interrupted by protesters because it opted for inclusive language. As far as I am aware, only two cultural organisations publicly reacted at the time: LU.CA - Teatro Luís de Camões, with a discreet reminder that the book was available in their small library; and Teatro do Bairro Alto, neighbour of the bookshop where the book was launched, with a post expressing solidarity and applauding the use of inclusive language.

In a recent meeting with colleagues, I heard about two cases of school directors unilaterally deciding that students cannot choose to discuss LGBT issues in cultural projects, because “The parents don’t agree with it” or because “We don’t have this kind of problems here”. In one of my trainings, a colleague complained that it is not easy to write a press release anymore, one doesn’t know what words to use. In another training, another colleague shared with us that her son comes home upset because of the complexity of all the social and cultural issues one has to deal with today.

The world is not the simplistic place fascists and populists paint for us – precisely because they know how much many of us long for it, how threatened and tired we feel by anything that requires more time, attention and care than a sensationalist newspaper title. The world is complex, indeed, and this complexity may cause discomfort. Perhaps one of the biggest responsibilities those of us working in Culture have today is to help society embrace this discomfort, discover how diversity can enrich our lives, how much more interesting and exciting our world can be thanks to nuance. Instead of this, many among us express frustration, impatience and irritation because the world – and our work – is not simple, it is not what it used to be. Thus, we let so many small, everyday signs of a declining democracy go unchallenged.

On 11 March, the Monday after the elections in Portugal, I attended a training on cultural mediation. I was curious whether anyone would bring up the election results. We were half-way through the morning, discussing the values of the Lisbon municipal libraries (democratisation of access to culture and knowledge; promotion of creativity, participation and critical thinking; citizenship, diversity, inclusion, artistic sensitivity…), when a young librarian asked to speak. She told us that she works every day for these values and principles, and that society gave her a response that felt like a punch in the stomach. I wondered: how many more cultural professionals felt the same, a punch in the stomach that could make us question why we get up every morning and go to work, why it is that we do what we do. Does our work make any sense if it is not about being better people and knowing how to take care of each other? And how ready and conscious are we about the challenges ahead when, with 50 far right politicians in the Parliament, hate speech and discriminations of all sorts will become “natural” and legitimised?

 

Further reading:

Days after the Portuguese presidential election in 2021, I wrote an article entitled Curating the Discomfort. I guess my questioning persists.  

Fit for democracy: as natural as water?