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

by Anne Applebaum

These kinds of regimes can be hard for the inhabitants of democracies to understand, because their primary goal is not to create prosperity or enhance the well-being of citizens. Their primary goal is to stay in power, and to do so, they are willing to destabilize their neighbors, destroy the lives of ordinary people, or—following in the footsteps of their predecessors—even send hundreds of thousands of their citizens to their deaths.

No nation is condemned forever to autocracy, just as no nation is guaranteed democracy.

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.

they simply did not believe anyone could be so idealistic, or perhaps so naive, as to put themselves in danger for “democracy” or for “patriotism.” You will do it just because you love this country? Impossible.

smear campaigns work. When a state apparatus combines the prosecution service, the courts, the police, state-controlled media, and social media in order to frame someone in a particular way—to tell a particular story about their life and their beliefs, to accuse them of treason, fraud, or crime, and sometimes to arrest or torture them as a result of those fake accusations—some fragment of odium always attaches itself to the victim.

A martyr can inspire a political movement, while a successful smear campaign can destroy one.

Even when these charges are false or exaggerated, and even if most people know they are false or exaggerated, they still have an impact. When someone is repeatedly vilified, it is hard even for their closest friends not to think that there must be some kernel of truth.

Corruption accusations against dissidents also deflect attention away from the corruption of the ruling party.

Anyone subjected to a mass, online trolling campaign, especially one backed by the state, becomes toxic, even to family and close friends.

descriptions of online mobs, targeted smear campaigns, and the creation of fake charges and false narratives might also sound familiar. Technologies built in Silicon Valley and public relations tactics invented on Madison Avenue long ago meshed with dictatorial behavior to create coordinated online harassment campaigns that are widely used not just by amateur online activists, and not just in “cancellation” campaigns or online pile-ons, but by democratically elected governments and leaders around the world. Indeed, they are often a flashing signal of democratic decline.