MUSING ON CULTURE: 2026

Greek columnist Thodoris Georgakopoulos wondered how do we, the citizens, recognise that a line has been crossed, that we have slipped into a place where democracy has ceased to exist. He was referring to a May article in The New York Times, which I had read too, entitled “How will we know when we have lost our democracy?”. Based on that article, Georgakopoulos questions: “Is a country considered a democracy when the people who govern it hunt down their political opponents and put them in prison? When they are indifferent to solving the country's problems and instead are only concerned with maintaining and strengthening the client state? Is a country democratic in which all the media are owned by financial interests that are financially dependent on the government? Or one in which all state wealth is distributed to regime loyalists?”.

The three writers of the NYT article - Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt – propose a simple metric: the cost of opposing the government. They remind us that “In democracies, citizens are not punished for peacefully opposing those in power. They need not worry about publishing critical opinions, supporting opposition candidates or engaging in peaceful protest because they know they will not suffer retribution from the government. In fact, the idea of legitimate opposition - that all citizens have a right to criticize, organize opposition to and seek to remove the government through elections - is a foundational principle of democracy.”

I was left thinking about the early warnings, “canaries in the coalmine”, and how we chose to relativise or ignore them, how we normalise them. Recent and not so recent, public and not so public, episodes in our daily democratic lives came to mind.

Is it normal that a mayor removes an outdoor, which is an artistic installation, because they feel criticised by its message?
Is it normal that the programming of a cultural organisation is scrutinised, in terms of content, by the managing authority?
Is it normal for cultural agents to retouch/censor texts or words, afraid of the reaction of their superiors, managing authorities or funders?
Is it normal for a museum director to ask for approval from the managing authority before they give an interview on the museum’s work?
Is it normal for book authors to be attacked and the perpetrators to be allowed to cancel public events?
Is it normal for a mayor to cancel the presentation of a book?
Is it normal for a municipal councillor to feel that they have the right to dictate the programming of cultural organisations and for the room to remain silent?
Is it normal for a work of art to be censored and the cultural sector to remain silent?
Last but not least, reaching for an example from a different field: is it normal for a renowned journalist to answer concerns regarding the overexposure of a far-right politician in news programmes by saying that it’s not for political reasons, it is because he increases audiences and brings in money…? And that “this is how things work”?

We might have become a bit more sensitive recently to episodes like these. The truth is, though, that they have been always happening, with greater or lesser intensity, and we have normalised them. Then, a time comes, like the one we live in, where the ground becomes more fertile for authoritarianism to grow and one day we realise that democracy is no longer there.

Back in 2015, the artistic director of Belarus Free Theatre, Natalia Kaliada, then having found refuge in the UK, addressed the annual State of the Arts conference No Boundaries. Coming from a country some still call “the last dictatorship in Europe” (is it, though?), the “canary” spoke:

“Censorship from within a democracy is often self-imposed by the individual; the fear of crossing invisible boundary lines comes from within. Creative conformism is blooming in democratic countries and so you have to ask whether the only way to secure funding today is to create safe art?”.

Recent publications from cultural organisations (which you will find in the end) have made evident the dire conditions in what concerns freedom to create and freedom to enjoy culture and the arts in Europe. Among our tactics for self-preservation in such political contexts, I would like to highlight self-censorship. And this is because it is an early sign (a canary) that the costs of opposition are becoming high. At the same time, it is happening silently, it is not easy to register and to acknowledge.

Fear of physical violence, of moral harassment, of losing one’s job is neither unreal nor unjustified. Few are the people, though, that are able to overcome it on their own. This fear brings self-censorship and often isolation. Courage, care and solidarity: the democracy muscles we need to maintain fit.

Sunday, 1 February 2026

Canaries in the coalmine and democracy fitness