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

by Anne Applebaum

In the months that followed, these kinds of posts did indeed seem to overwhelm some social media sites, as did posts about corruption in Ukraine, including one that infamously claimed, completely falsely, that President Zelensky owns two yachts. Partly because the project was connected, again, to the idea that democracies like the United States or Ukraine are chaotic and corrupt, an idea that appeals to a part of the American Republican Party, the onslaught was successful and some of the false stories stuck. A Republican senator, Thom Tillis, told a television interviewer that during debates over aid for Ukraine, some of his colleagues, who had read the false stories, worried that “people will buy yachts with this money.” Congressman Michael R. Turner, an Ohio Republican and the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told another interviewer that “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages—some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.”