Keywords

As we have sought to demonstrate throughout this book, the study of communication is an essential prerequisite for a holistic understanding of the contemporary rise of illiberalism and the way it operates. Largely overlooked by existing scholarship, an understanding of the communicative aspects of illiberalism is critical to grasping the mechanisms by which illiberal narratives and attitudes gain popularity among the public, paving the way for the rise of illiberal parties and politicians to positions of power and facilitating democratic erosion. To fill this gap, we introduced an analytical framework centred around the concept of the illiberal public sphere, defined as a communicative space comprising both traditional and new media that promote and amplify illiberal actors, views, and attitudes. Having identified three ideal-typical stages in the evolution of the illiberal public sphere—incipient, ascendant and hegemonic—we have utilized original empirical data from four Eastern European countries to illustrate how the advancement of the illiberal public sphere through these stages relates to particular features and qualities of media systems, as well as to audience news consumption habits, levels of trust, engagement with false information, and attitudes towards polarizing issues. Through that, we aimed to establish how changes in systemic features interact with shifts at the level of media cultures, advancing the transformation of news habits and ultimately fostering changes in attitudes and behaviour that turn illiberalism into a taken for granted feature of political culture and everyday life.

In this final chapter, we reflect on the broader implications of our findings. We start by discussing what the comparison between the four countries tells us about the key constitutive processes and tipping points in the rise of the illiberal public sphere. We then discuss recent developments in Eastern Europe and elsewhere and consider what they mean for the prospects of the illiberal public sphere in the region and beyond. The chapter is concluded by offering some suggestions for journalistic practices and media policies that can help make media systems more resilient and able to deflect and contain the challenges of illiberalism. We are of course aware that drawing general conclusions about the evolution of the illiberal public sphere based on data from only four countries, and utilizing data collected over a relatively short span of time, has its inherent limitations. Nevertheless, we believe that the analysis developed here is sufficiently robust to demonstrate the utility of the conceptual framework we have proposed. We therefore offer these concluding reflections primarily as an invitation for future research, including both the further refinement of the illiberal public sphere concept and empirical research that applies this framework to a wider range of cases, from long-established liberal democracies to many other countries around the world with shorter democratic experiences.

9.1 The Rise of the Illiberal Public Sphere: Constitutive Processes and Tipping Points

As fragmented and incomplete as our findings inevitably are, they nonetheless show several distinct patterns that can help us identify some of the key constitutive processes and tipping points in the evolution of the illiberal public sphere—and the simultaneous decline of its liberal counterpart.

The first constitutive process is what can be described as ‘the spiral of polarization’—that is, the mutually reinforcing processes of polarization at systemic and attitudinal levels. As established in Chap. 3, the advancement of the illiberal public sphere goes hand in hand with the polarization of both the media landscape and audience attitudes. News media in countries with the most developed illiberal public sphere clearly exhibit the deepest cleavages in terms of their political and ideological inclinations, and the same is true for the political attitudes and electoral behaviour of citizens consuming those news brands. Although we are unable to empirically determine the direction of causality between systemic shifts and attitudinal changes, it appears plausible that polarization—as a political strategy employed by illiberal actors, and a business strategy adopted by news media—is both a driver and a consequence of illiberalism, symbiotically operating in its favour and becoming further entrenched as the illiberal public sphere expands. This spiral of polarization appears to be stimulated by selective news exposure. As the illiberal sphere grows in influence, the proportion of audiences exposed to ideologically and politically homogeneous sources grows. This is indicated by our findings from Hungary and especially Serbia, where the illiberal public sphere is most entrenched, and where we saw the largest share of population preferring news from politically and ideologically homogeneous sources. In contrast, audiences in Poland and especially the Czech Republic, where the illiberal public sphere is less advanced, had more heterogeneous news diets.

A key tipping point in the deepening spiral of polarization is the hollowing out of the political and media centre—that is, the disappearance of ideologically and politically neutral media outlets—which typically occurs when the illiberal public sphere reaches the ascendant stage. In countries with a strong public service media provision—such as the four countries included in our sample—this hollowing out of the centre typically involves the state capture of public service channels and their transformation into key vehicles of illiberal narratives and values. As a result, citizens are left with no other choice but resorting to ideologically and politically biased outlets, which further exacerbates polarizing tendencies. As noted in existing research, such hollowing out of the centre has adverse effects on common democratic norms and standards (Somer & McCoy, 2018; Svolik, 2019), which subsequently makes it easier for illiberal actors to further undermine their legitimacy, and ultimately capture institutions which are entrusted with guarding and promoting those standards. As our findings suggest, the emptying of the centre also opens doors for the further growth of the illiberal public sphere. This process arguably leads to an increasingly asymmetric form of polarization—not just in the usual sense ascribed to the term, which involves one end of the political spectrum, typically the right-wing, becoming more extreme than the other (Benkler et al., 2018; Hacker & Pierson, 2015), but rather in the sense that one side grows considerably bigger in scope, and colonizes a larger proportion of the media system. The case in point is, again, the state of news media markets in Hungary and Serbia, which are heavily tilted towards the right-wing conservative, pro-government (i.e. illiberal) side of the political spectrum, promoting illiberal agendas and serving thereby as important instruments for the growth of the illiberal public sphere.

The increasingly asymmetrically polarized media system enables another constitutive process in the rise of the illiberal public sphere—namely, the progressive mainstreaming and eventually normalization of illiberal attitudes. In an asymmetrically polarized media system, characteristic of the hegemonic stage of the illiberal public sphere, outlets sympathetic to the illiberal cause inevitably attract a larger audience share, making it easier for illiberal actors to promote illiberal narratives and values. At the same time, the amount and reach of liberal news outlets shrinks, leading liberal views to become increasingly marginalized and potentially ostracized in the mainstream news discourse, while illiberal opinions settle in as the norm, which arguably eases their public acceptance. The role of asymmetric systemic polarization in aiding the mainstreaming of illiberalism is perhaps most clearly evident in the evolution of attitudes to immigration and LGBTQ+ rights in our four countries, which have been habitually weaponized by illiberal actors to stoke ‘cultural wars’ and to mobilize voters in election campaigns. While data presented in Chap. 5, do not offer direct, causal proof that the mechanism of selective news exposure in an asymmetrically polarized system nurtures illiberal attitudes, they provide circumstantial evidence that supports this explanation. First, we confirmed that being frequently and predominantly exposed to news channels promoting illiberal views coincides with adhering to illiberal views on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. And second, such attitudes were more entrenched in countries with the most asymmetric media systems—to the point that, as shown in Serbia, they continue to be perpetuated even when illiberal actors temporarily shift their position and seek to instrumentalize LGBTQ+ rights or support for immigration as a means of gaining international recognition. As we have seen, instrumental gestures in favour of LGBTQ+ rights among (otherwise staunchly illiberal) leaders in Serbia had little impact on public opinion, which remained overwhelmingly homophobic. Such a complete normalization of illiberal attitudes constitutes another tipping point in the rise of the illiberal public sphere, marking a juncture after which the sphere can sustain itself even without explicit support from illiberal leaders.

Apart from increasingly selective news consumption routines imposed on citizens by an asymmetrically polarized media system, the susceptibility of people to illiberal narratives is also facilitated by the changing nature of media trust, and specifically by a shift in the normative criteria used to judge media trustworthiness. As documented in Chap. 4, once polarization intensifies and news consumption starts following primarily partisan lines, people’s trust in media is no longer principally guided by established professional journalistic standards and values such as independence, impartiality, or objectivity. Even if people routinely refer to such seemingly universal criteria when justifying their news choices, the way they interpret them can vary widely, and can in fact open doors for trusting rather biased and even openly partisan and propagandistic media. This is particularly clear when looking at interpretations of media independence, which is not necessarily assessed in terms of independence from political or commercial interference, but rather with regard to independence from foreign powers, independence from the political mainstream, or independence from editorial control. These results suggest that in a context where the illiberal public sphere assumes a dominant position, the normative foundations of media trust start shifting, ultimately leading citizens to place trust in media not because they offer impartial or accurate coverage of public affairs, but because they provide an account of a reality they personally agree with or—in the extreme case—because their account of reality is aligned with the one promoted by those in power. This tendency is particularly palpable among voters of the ruling illiberal parties and can be best demonstrated through attitudes to public service (now effectively government) media in Hungary and Serbia. In the eyes of some of our interviewees from these two countries, public service media are clearly seen as trustworthy not just despite, but rather because of their blatant lack of independence from the government. This suggests that the advance of the illiberal public sphere is concomitant with not just important shifts in news routines—exemplified in selective exposure to ideologically and politically homogeneous sources—but also with fundamental changes in the normative assumptions and criteria that guide citizens’ engagement with public life. As we have argued, these findings have important implications for how media trust is theorized and judged from a normative perspective and indicate that media trust—contrary to the gist of much writing on the topic among media and communication researchers—is not always unambiguously positive, but rather that its normative implications vary with context.

If the hollowing of the ideological and political centre of the media system—best exemplified in our countries by the state capture of public service media—constitutes a tipping point between the incipient and ascendant stages of the illiberal public sphere, the transition from the ascendant to the hegemonic stage is typically associated with a shift in the role of online media in the illiberal public sphere. As outlined in Chap. 6, digital channels clearly played an important part in the rise of the illiberal public sphere in Eastern Europe during the first half of the 2010, having become an instrument of mobilization in the hands of populist and illiberal actors, who were amongst their early adopters, and also among the first ones to have applied a systematic, professionalized approach towards their use for political communication. However, with the further expansion of the illiberal public sphere, characterized—among other trends—by the capture of public service and other mainstream news media channels by illiberal actors, social media have increasingly started harbouring liberal voices and actors, and becoming places of resistance against illiberalism. This is apparent from our data showing that those who use social media for political activism tend to be significantly more liberal-minded and more likely to prefer democracy over authoritarianism, especially in countries where the illiberal public sphere has become dominant. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the role of digital platforms in advancing illiberalism on a global scale. Rather than focusing exclusively on their potential to act as vehicles of an incipient illiberal public sphere, we should acknowledge that their position vis-à-vis illiberalism likely shifts as the illiberal public sphere progresses. The impact of digital platforms on the quality of democracy should therefore always be evaluated in a context-sensitive manner, taking into account the nature of the political and media system within which they operate, and the relative stage of the illiberal public sphere in a particular context.

The analysis of the impact of mis/disinformation on the rise of the illiberal public sphere, presented in Chap. 7, adds further weight to our call for changing the conventional optics which tends to predominantly equate digital platforms with risks for liberal democracy, and for adopting a more nuanced approach. While social media inevitably play a significant role in the Eastern European countries’ mis/disinformation ecosystems, they are certainly not the only type of communication channels that contribute to the information disorder, and help spreading false and manipulative narratives—including conspiracy theories—which are part and parcel of the illiberal actors’ playbook, both foreign and domestic. As documented in Chap. 7, the dissemination of mis/disinformation is also observed in many mainstream news outlets, and the exposure to such outlet strongly correlates with audience beliefs in government-pushed conspiracies, often used to attack the liberal opposition. In this respect, we argue that the traditional focus on social media as primary vehicles of disinformation, informed largely by research in established democracies, constitutes a blind spot that might prevent fully recognizing—and efficiently tackling—other important means and paths through which information manipulation operates and enables the ascent of illiberalism.

Taken together, the above overview of key constitutive processes and tipping points involved in the rise of the illiberal public sphere hopefully provides a useful addition to our conceptual framework and can serve as inspiration for future work on illiberalism and communication. Like the staged model of the illiberal public sphere, the discussion of constitutive processes and tipping points is rooted in our conceptualization of illiberalism as a dynamic, processual phenomenon. This approach also sets our conceptualization apart from the only other existing attempt to theorize the illiberal public sphere, developed by Bennett and Kneuer (2024), which we became aware of shortly before finalizing our book. In contrast to our approach, Bennett and Kneuer’s analysis is focused primarily on experiences of higher functioning liberal democracies of the West. As such, their outline of the key operating principles of the illiberal public sphere largely corresponds to the characteristics of the incipient stage in our model. While very useful for the analysis of some of the countries affected by illiberalism, this model has limited capacity to aid a wider comparative assessment of illiberal public spheres, including cases where the illiberal public sphere has advanced beyond the incipient stage—as seen not only in the paradigmatic cases of self-proclaimed illiberal democracies, such as Hungary, but also in at least some of the oldest liberal democracies, most notably in the United States. A staged, processual model of the illiberal public sphere therefore has an important analytical advantage: it provides a conceptual tool that can help us assess the relative development of the illiberal public sphere in different countries. Through that, it can help leverage comparative analysis to identify the key processes and tipping points that enable the rise of the illiberal public sphere, as well as isolate structural features and interventions that may help slow down or counter its advance—points we return to in the last part of this chapter.

9.2 The Future of the Illiberal Public Sphere in Eastern Europe—and Beyond

What do the above summarized takeaways reveal about the possible future developments of the illiberal public sphere in the countries under scrutiny, and can any lessons be drawn from them for the other parts of the world where we currently observe a growing popularity of illiberal leaders, policies and values?

Looking at the recent situation in the two countries where the illiberal public sphere has, according to our model, reached the hegemonic stage, it is apparent that prospects for any kind of reversal do not look too optimistic in the near future. The last Hungarian parliamentary election in April 2022 brought the fourth consecutive victory of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, and a fourth consecutive constitutional majority for his government, indicating that Fidesz’s illiberal agenda and values resonate well among the population. At the same time, in light of the changes to the electoral system, which are disadvantaging the opposition (Scheppele, 2022), the clampdown on the independence of the judiciary (Aydin-Cakir, 2023), as well as the government’s capture of a large portion of the media market (Bleyer-Simon et al., 2023), the fairness of the elections has been questioned by observers (Bayer, 2022, April 4), and its results widely interpreted as evidence of further democratic backsliding. In 2022, the European Parliament issued an unprecedented resolution calling Hungary a ‘hybrid regime of electoral autocracy’ (European Parliament, 2022, September 15), in a political gesture symbolically confirming Hungary as a hybrid (i.e. non-democratic) regime, a classification of that has been applied to the country by the Freedom House’s Nations in Transit report since 2020 (Freedom House, 2020).

In Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić secured 60% of votes in the last presidential election (which also took place in April 2022), improving his result from 2017; however, the concurrently organized parliamentary election has weakened the ruling SNS party, which—despite its victory—has had to share power in a government coalition for the first time since 2014 (Burazer et al., 2022). While this has been cautiously welcomed as a sign of a possible political opening (Ilić & Draško, 2022), Vučić’s increasing geopolitical affinity towards both China and Russia, strengthened during the pandemic (Šantić & Antić, 2020) and throughout the war in Ukraine (Radeljić & Özșahin, 2023), as well as the simultaneous cooling of the relationship with the EU (Preussen, 2023, January 19) dampen the hopes for a change in Serbia’s autocratic course in the near future. Given the continuing institutional capture, as well as the progressively worsening state of media freedom—Serbia has been ranked 91st in the latest World Press Freedom Index (RSF, 2023), the lowest in recent history—the channels of the liberal public sphere remain scant and face pressures from the government (Milutinović et al., 2023).In other countries which have for an extended period been ruled by ‘populist strongmen’, such as India under PM Narendra Modi (Sharma, 2022) or Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Tóth et al., 2023, October 4), the illiberal public sphere—underpinned by extensive government control over mainstream media—does not show any signs of weakening. In the Philippines, the succession of Rodrigo Duterte by Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr.—the son of the deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos—following the 2022 Presidential election has been generally perceived as a continuation of the illiberal turn started by Duterte (Garrido, 2022). His electoral victory has been ascribed, among other factors, to his ‘capture of the public sphere’, especially by spreading disinformation (Gutierrez & Breininger, 2022; cf. Ong, 2022). In addition to the above summarized situation in Hungary and Serbia, these developments form a clear pattern which suggests that the closer the illiberal public sphere moves to the hegemonic stage, the harder it is to turn the trajectory around and foster a revival of the liberal public sphere.

The illiberal public sphere has also been recently given a boost in some countries usually categorized as consolidated democracies. This is the case in Slovakia, where the left-wing nationalist party Direction-Social Democracy (Smer-SD), led by the ex-PM Robert Fico, claimed victory in the September 2023 parliamentary election, returning to power after nearly four years in opposition. The new government, which also includes the radical right Slovak National Party (SNS), is widely expected to push an ultra-conservative agenda and implement illiberal policies, especially in areas of immigration and LGBTQ+ rights, while the country’s disinformation ecosystem will likely expand, and conspiracy narratives might become further mainstreamed (Buštíková, 2023, November 8). In Italy, the October 2022 general election gave rise to the right-wing populist government led by Giorgia Meloni (Brothers of Italy, FdI), which has been seen by many as potentially opening doors to the erosion of democracy following the illiberal playbook, particularly in light of the FdI’s conservative and nativist ideological profile (Baldini et al., 2022). The November 2023 election in the Netherlands brought the stunning success of the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders, seen by commentators as a sign of a wider, pan-European trend of far-right actors moving into political mainstream and closer to power (Tharoor, 2023, November 27; Mudde, 2023, November 23).

There has been, however, some more uplifting news, too, offering a reason for moderate optimism regarding the resilience of the liberal public sphere vis-à-vis its illiberal challenger—at least in countries where the latter has not yet assumed a full hegemony. The Czech Republic reversed the illiberal ‘swerve’ (Buštíková & Guasti, 2017) by a twofold electoral defeat of the populist leader Andrej Babiš—first in the October 2021 parliamentary election, won by the centre-right coalition of five parties, and then in the January 2023 presidential election, which he lost to the civic candidate Petr Pavel, supported by the democratic political forces and the civil society (Tait, 2023, January 28). In Slovenia, the social-liberal Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda), led by the businessman Peter Golob, claimed a decisive win in the April 2022 parliamentary election, receiving 34.4% of votes—nearly 10% more than the ruling Slovenian Democratic Party of PM Janez Janša, whose last tenure as the Prime Minister (2020–2022) has been commonly associated with an attempt to emulate the Hungarian path towards illiberalism (cf. Pajnik & Hrženjak, 2022), aided by the strong personal ties between Janša and Viktor Orbán (Krekó & Enyedi, 2018). In Brazil, the closely followed October 2022 presidential election resulted in the fall of the incumbent illiberal President Jair Bolsonaro, dubbed the ‘Tropical Trump’ by the media (Weizenmann, 2019), who was narrowly beaten (49% vs 51%) by the left-wing populist and former President Lula da Silva. Last but certainly not least, at the time of finalizing this book, Poland saw a rather unexpected victory of the allied opposition parties in the October 2023 parliamentary election, marking the end of the eight-year rule of the conservative Law and Justice party, during which the illiberal public sphere expanded to and even beyond the ascendant stage, as documented throughout this study.

Despite these electoral results, it would be premature to declare the defeat of illiberalism in any of these four countries. While the key political actors promoting illiberal values and pursuing corresponding policies might have been forced to retreat into opposition for the present election cycle, the illiberal public sphere has not necessarily retreated with them, and the underlying factors that facilitate its establishment and growth—polarization of political and media landscapes, spreading of misinformation and illiberal narratives, or declining media trust—have certainly not disappeared. Moreover, the rising global instability due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, the energy and living costs crisis, or the Israel-Hamas war, which has been sparking ethnic and religious tensions around the world, creates a fertile ground for political rhetoric exploiting people’s fears and fostering demand for authoritarian solutions. In addition, the looming possibility of Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024 could arguably serve as an encouragement for other illiberal actors around the world, replicating the global effect of the 2016 election. Under such circumstances, it is clear that even if the expansion of illiberalism might have been temporary halted, the liberal public sphere will likely continue to be under significant pressure, and in a need of active support.

9.3 Can the Tide Be Turned?

The brief overview of recent developments in some of the countries where illiberalism has taken hold (albeit to different degrees) indicates that despite worsening conditions for the liberal public sphere around the world, the trajectory towards illiberal hegemony is not completely set in stone. Due to the complexity of factors involved, estimating the odds of avoiding such a destiny is far beyond the powers of this book. Nevertheless, based on our findings, we can at least offer some recommendations in the areas of journalistic practices and media policies—developed in collaboration with a variety of stakeholders from the region and beyond (see Štětka et al., 2021, for further details)—that might help counter some of the constitutive processes that, according to our analysis, stimulate the rise of the illiberal public sphere.

As outlined earlier in this chapter, one of these key processes is what we call a ‘spiral of polarization’, which manifests itself through increasing alignment of the news media with either side of the main political/ideological divide in the country, leading to the diminishing of the ‘neutral’ centre of the spectrum, and to ever more selective patterns of news exposure among audiences. However, our interviews indicate that at least some people view the excessive level of media partisanship rather critically, and would in fact appreciate more fact-based, neutral type of news provision—a qualitative finding which is consistent with quantitative data recently collected worldwide (Newman, 2021, October 19). While for many outlets, partisan bias stems from being captured by politically affiliated actors, others might choose it as a business strategy, exploiting an audience’s attraction to polarizing content. We believe that in the interest of dampening polarization, such business models should be resisted, and that media organizations and professional bodies should develop guidance on how best to handle divisive content without further deepening societal cleavages and alienating more moderate audiences. This includes issues of language and style of reporting, where a particular effort should be devoted to avoiding language that demonizes the ‘other side’—without however falling into the trap of false equivalence, which might prevent journalists from doing what democracy increasingly needs them to do in today’s age of ‘post-truth’, namely calling out deliberate attempts to distort truth and manipulate the public by illiberal actors. At the same time, media should constrain their impulses to provide such actors with the oxygen of publicity for purely commercial reasons, epitomized by the famous claim by former CEO of CBS Les Moonves with respect to Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2016: ‘It might not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS’ (Bond, 2016, February 29).

In brief, in order to counter the spiral of polarization, minimize perceptions of partisan bias, and respond to audience demand for factual reporting, news organizations should strive to uphold professional values of impartiality, fairness and accuracy. Professional image and personal credibility should also be maintained in journalists’ conduct on social media, which can sometimes be seen as unduly partisan or ‘activist’, reducing thereby the chances of being seen as trustworthy, especially by audience members of different political convictions.

As important as adhering to professional journalistic standards undoubtedly is for tempering polarization and maintaining people’s trust across political divides—at least wherever the normative foundations of trust have not yet been completely altered through the expansion of the illiberal public sphere—it would be naïve to expect that media self-regulation alone is enough to resist the illiberal tide. In countries with an established tradition of media regulation, this is clearly also a task for statutory media regulators, who should enforce principles of political impartiality of broadcast media, which—despite the inescapable shift of news consumption towards digital platforms—remain a significant source of political information for a large part of the population. Needless to add, such regulation ought to be carried out within a legislative framework that ensures political independence of regulatory bodies, so the instruments of democratic oversight do not become tools of illiberal capture, as seen in countries such as Hungary. The task of safeguarding impartiality and—crucially—also political independence is arguably even more pressing with regards to public service media (PSM), which our study has identified as critical for the preservation of a politically neutral ‘centre’ of the national news media system, as well as for the cultivation of values indispensable for the persistence of liberal democracy. Knowing that in countries with a well-established PSM provision, these channels tend to be among the first institutions that illiberal governments attempt to capture, ensuring both their independence and continuing public relevance in the contemporary high-choice news environment needs to be among the key priorities for media policy in the coming years.

However, under the quickly deteriorating market conditions for professional journalism, exacerbated by the impact of the pandemic and the economic recession, it is not just public service media that need assistance to avert the illiberal turn. Media policies should therefore aim to foster an economically enabling environment for independent journalistic outlets, including transparent schemes for their economic support. These schemes should also be specifically tailored to the segment of local and regional media, given that—as our findings indicate—they often serve as the primary sources of information for citizens living in rural areas and municipalities in periphery regions, those who tend to be among the core supporters of illiberal parties and movements.

Apart from fostering the endurance of independent, professional journalism in a pluralistic media market, policy initiatives should also seek to increase citizens’ skills and the competencies necessary to safely navigate the complex political information environment they are surrounded by. Such initiatives ought to go beyond the conventional scope of media literacy programmes, by focusing on previously overlooked parts of the population (e.g. the elderly) and on the full range of media types and channels used for spreading false information (not just digital platforms, but also mainstream media, chain emails, interpersonal communication). In addition, they should seek to increase people’s general awareness of the basic principles of digital economies, of the impact of digital platforms on sustainability of news media, and—last but not least—of the importance of independent journalism for democracy. It is, after all, the citizens’ willingness to actively support liberal values, principles and institutions that will determine the survival of the liberal public sphere—just as their active public engagement and opposition to forces of authoritarianism have historically stood at the cradle of its formation.