Autocracy, Inc.
The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
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4.2 • 107 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer-prize winning author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Economist, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Times
"A masterful guide to the new age of authoritarianism... clear-sighted and fearless.”—John Simpson, The Guardian
"Especially timely."—The Washington Post
We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents.
But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another, and propagandists share resources and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.
International condemnation and economic sanctions cannot move the autocrats. Even popular opposition movements, from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow, don't stand a chance. The members of Autocracy, Inc, aren't linked by a unifying ideology, like communism, but rather a common desire for power, wealth, and impunity. In this urgent treatise, which evokes George Kennan's essay calling for "containment" of the Soviet Union, Anne Applebaum calls for the democracies to fundamentally reorient their policies to fight a new kind of threat.
Customer Reviews
Important read
Democracy is vulnerable to campaigns of disinformation that autocrats have gained much precision in. The book speaks to truth, but falls short when it covers Trump’s follies. Somehow there is zero mention of other politicians in a book that covers the war in Ukraine in detail. Worthy read, omission aside..
A hopeful warning
Anne Applebaum doesn’t pull any punches about the threats posed by the autocrats and about how deeply they have already enmeshed themselves into Western society. She also points out that these autocrats have made common cause with Western politicians and businessmen in ways which both directly and indirectly undermine our democracies. But she concludes with ideas about how these tendencies can be countered, about how the underminers can themselves be undermined. Hence my view of the book: it is a warning of what we stand to lose, but at the same time it promotes hope that we could succeed.
A grim wake up call
I wish this excellent book was on every student’s reading list, world-wide!