Summary of Stephen Holmes & Ivan Krastev's The Light That Failed

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#1 In 1990, John Feffer, a 26-year-old American, spent several months traveling Eastern Europe in hopes of understanding its post-communist future. He was fascinated and puzzled by the contradictions he encountered. The capitalist future had arrived, but its benefits and burdens were unevenly distributed.

#2 After 1989, the global spread of democracy was envisioned as a version of the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, where the Prince of Freedom would only have to slay the Dragon of Tyranny and kiss the princess to awaken a previously dormant liberal majority. But the kiss proved bitter, and the revived majority turned out to be more resentful and less liberal than expected.

#3 The origins of populism are complex, but they are partly rooted in the humiliations of struggling to become, at best, an inferior copy of a superior model. After 1989, there were no alternatives to liberal political and economic models. This led to a contrarian desire to prove that there were alternatives.

#4 The revolutions of 1989 were largely unmarred by the cut-throat methods and human suffering that are usually part of root-and-branch political upheaval. They were instead characterized by their hostility to utopias and political experiments.

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