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

by Anne Applebaum

This is the core of the problem: the leaders of Autocracy, Inc., know that the language of transparency, accountability, justice, and democracy will always appeal to some of their own citizens. To stay in power they must undermine those ideas, wherever they are found.

Everyone assumed that in a more open, interconnected world, democracy and liberal ideas would spread to the autocratic states. Nobody imagined that autocracy and illiberalism would spread to the democratic world instead.

Dictators, political parties, and elites who have come to depend upon advanced Chinese technology to control their populations may also begin to feel some obligation to align themselves with China politically, or maybe even the necessity to do so, in order to stay in power.

In Xinjiang, where lockdowns were the longest and harshest in all of China, and where internet controls are the deepest and most complete, people came out in public and sang the Chinese national anthem, emphasizing one line of the lyrics: “Rise up, those who refuse to be slaves!” Clips of their performance circulated widely, because the spyware and filters didn’t identify the national anthem as dissent.

If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those ideas have to be poisoned. That requires not just surveillance, and not merely a political system that defends against liberal ideas. It also requires an offensive plan, a narrative that damages the idea of democracy, wherever it is being used, anywhere in the world.

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.

Don’t Fight the Information War—Undermine It

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. Democratic media, civic organizations, and politicians need to argue back and make the case for transparency, accountability, and liberty—at home and around the world.

We have to learn to compete while preserving and promoting our own values. That means breaking the autocrats’ monopoly on the use of strong emotions, connecting to audiences with the issues that concern them the most, and above all showing how the fight for truth leads to change.

I believe the citizens of the United States, and the citizens of the democracies of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, should begin thinking of themselves as linked to one another and to the people who share their values inside autocracies too. They need one another, now more than ever, because their democracies are not safe. Nobody’s democracy is safe.

But there are liberal societies, open and free countries that offer a better chance for people to live useful lives than closed dictatorships do. They are hardly perfect. Those that exist have deep flaws, profound divisions, and terrible historical scars. But that’s all the more reason to defend and protect them.