Book: Absolute democratie · Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer 🇳🇱

Absolute democratie · Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer · Netherlands (2026)

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer spent his career writing novels and poems, then decided the times called for something more urgent. For two years he wrote a weekly column for the Belgian newspaper De Morgen, watching democracy get dismantled in its own name, and this book gathers fifty of those pieces into one sharp, unsettling argument.

His idea is simple and a little chilling: winning an election does not mean you get to do whatever you want. When people forget that, majority rule turns into majority tyranny, and courts, free press and international treaties stop being safeguards and start being obstacles to remove. He traces that pattern across the world, pointing at both rivals and allies of Europe, and warns that people rarely choose authoritarianism out of ignorance. Sometimes they simply want it.

It reads less like a dry political essay and more like a slow building thriller, which is probably why it has sparked so much conversation since it came out, including a public debate between Pfeijffer and former politician Guy Verhofstadt, who published a similar book at almost the same time.