Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

by Anne Applebaum

This is why modern autocrats usually prefer to avoid murder. A martyr can inspire a political movement, while a successful smear campaign can destroy one.

A Russian, Angolan, or Chinese oligarch can own a house in London, an estate on the Mediterranean, a company in Delaware, and a trust in South Dakota without ever having to reveal ownership to tax authorities anywhere.

Our old models never acknowledged the truth that many people desire disinformation. They are attracted by conspiracy theories and will not necessarily seek out reliable news at all.

No democratic government should ever assume that arguments for democracy or for the rule of law are somehow obvious or self-evident. Authoritarian narratives are designed to undermine the innate appeal of those ideas, to characterize dictatorship as stable and democracy as chaotic.

Unlike their twentieth-century predecessors, today’s autocrats cannot impose censorship easily or effectively. Instead, they have focused on winning audiences, building support for their messages by channeling resentment, hatred, and the desire for superiority.

Russia has been using its pipelines not, as the German chancellor Willy Brandt once hoped, to deepen commercial ties and help consolidate a lasting peace in Europe but to wield a weapon of blackmail, to influence European politics in Russia’s favor.

Most Parisians, Madrileños, New Yorkers, and Londoners do not have strong feelings about the political leaders of Russia, China, Iran, and Venezuela. But those rulers pay close attention to what happens in Paris, Madrid, New York, and London.