Summary of the Special Talk “The Totalitarian Temptation”
14 October 2021. On 6 October 2021, Saad Mohseni (Afghan-Australian media entrepreneur and co-founder and chairman of the MOBY Group), Dr Claudia Major (Head of the International Security Department at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs SWP), and Dr Can Dündar (top Turkish journalist and editor-in-chief of Özgurüz) discussed the state and future of democracy at the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium. Moderated by the international TV presenter Ali Aslan, the panel analysed in particular the rise of totalitarian regimes and the mistakes Western governments have made in dealing with Afghanistan, Turkey, the Middle East and also Africa and China in their attempts to export democracy.
In 2002, Saad Mohseni established the Moby Group, the first private, independent media company in post-Taliban Afghanistan, where women also work as journalists and presenters. He thus helped shape the country’s development into a democracy for almost 20 years and has now experienced the erosion of progress by the Taliban at first hand. He was in Afghanistan for the last time at the end of July.
Mohseni, whose station and its 400 staff are still active in Afghanistan, stressed that the last few years had not been in vain in view of the current situation. Unlike in the mid-1990s, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, this time around, women demonstrated in the streets for their rights, civil society actors initiated campaigns for girls’ education and the Taliban had to have discussions with women and civil society on television. This was unthinkable 20 or 30 years ago and of course has something to do with the education system, which has also given girls access to schools and universities.
But an erosion of democracy has not only been seen in Afghanistan, but also in educated Western societies around the world, including in Europe, where illiberal democracies have taken hold, not least in Poland and Hungary.
read more “Democracy cannot be taken for granted, we have to fight for it”
