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

by Anne Applebaum

Russians hear even less about what happens in their own towns or cities. Instead, they are told constantly about the decline of places they don’t know and have mostly never visited: America, France, Britain, Sweden, Poland, countries apparently filled with degeneracy, hypocrisy, and Russophobia. A study of Russian television from 2014 to 2017 found that negative news about Europe appeared on the three main Russian channels, all state controlled, an average of eighteen times a day. Some of the stories were obviously invented (European governments are stealing children from straight families and giving them to gay couples!), but even true stories were cherry-picked to support the idea that daily life in Europe is frightening and chaotic, that Europeans are weak and immoral, and that the European Union is either dictatorial and interventionist or, alternatively, about to fall apart. The goal is clear: to prevent Russians from identifying with Europe, as Russians once did.