The Fragility of Democracy: an essay on our times

Photo by Gabe Austin

Part I: The lessons of authoritarianism

Much have I travelled in the realms of authoritarianism. I’m the daughter of a man who was conscripted into the Austrian army at seventeen to fight for Hitler. Mercifully, my father was taken prisoner after a year and spent the rest of the war effectively under the protection of the Allies although even in an American prisoner of war camp…