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

by Anne Applebaum

Anonymously owned shell companies and funds based in offshore tax havens like Jersey and the Cayman Islands hide what could be as much as 10 percent of global GDP. This is money that has been earned from narcotics operations, hidden from tax authorities, or, in the case of Kolomoisky, allegedly stolen from ordinary Ukrainians. In this world, theft is rewarded. Taxes are not paid. Law enforcement is impotent and underfunded. Regulation is something to be dodged.

Sometimes the point isn’t to make people believe a lie; it’s to make people fear the liar.

This tactic, the so-called “fire hose of falsehoods” produces not outrage but nihilism. Given so many explanations, how can you know what actually happened? What if you can never know? If you can’t understand what is going on around you, then you are not going to join a great movement for democracy, or follow a truth-telling leader, or listen when anyone speaks about positive political change. Instead, you will avoid politics altogether. Autocrats have an enormous incentive to spread that hopelessness and cynicism, not only in their own countries, but around the world.