Eric and Eliot welcome back Anne Applebaum, Pultizer and Duff Cooper Prize Winning author of Gulag and Red Famine and currently staff writer with The Atlantic and senior fellow at the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. They discuss Anne's new book Autocracy Inc: The Dictators who Want to Run the World. They examine the threat that autocratic regimes represent to their own citizens at home and to liberal democracy abroad, the West's slowness to recognize the threat that the authoritarians represent, the excessive optimism that (after the end of the Cold War and with the advent of globalization) liberal democratic ideals would triumph without recognizing the danger that authoritarian, illiberal ideas might flow into democracies, whether or not the authoritarians think they are winning and how they measure success, Russia's role in prompting much of the authoritarian offensive and the role of western institutions in facilitating the emergence of Russia as a personalist, authoritarian mafia state, the weaknesses of the authoritarians and how the western democracies might go on the offensive against the political warfare being waged daily by the authoritarians against the democracies, and the effort to obliterate truth and promote hopelessness and cynicism in citizens in democracies and setting them against one another.
Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World: https://a.co/d/ifaCL3E
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
Maybe it's in Anne's book, which I haven't read yet, but I noted when she talked about color revolutions being a threat to autocracies that autocratic forces lately have started to weaponize civic engagement. In Bulgaria, where I work, there are astroturfed NGOs propagandizing Russian energy policy (anti-wind, pro nuclear) and working in symbiosis with nationalist, pro-Russia political parties.
These people only care about money and ipower. I think they look to Bautista. That's what Trump does. He sees Putin and says " I can make a ton more money than him" . Sad but true. We're the good guys. Love you Anne
I started going to Venezula in '88 and the last time I was there was early 2000's during Chavez's coup. So I was a brief witness of the Bolivarian Socialism. It is sad how much Venzuela has tanked all these years. Reading her book sends chills down my spine
Money and power Anyone can amass wealth You need power to protect it
Thank you for this illuminating and validating conversation. Re the financial retooling globally (US created) Watch the movie The Laundromat! A war is already raging. Many many in US do not see it.
Thank you for the recommendation. I will watch the movie.
More proof that the good guys always lose. I won't be able to sleep tonight,