
Autocracy, Inc.
The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
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Narrated by:
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Anne Applebaum
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Written by:
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Anne Applebaum
About this listen
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer-prize winning author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Economist, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Times
"A masterful guide to the new age of authoritarianism... clear-sighted and fearless.”—John Simpson, The Guardian • "Especially timely."—The Washington Post
We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents.
But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another, and propagandists share resources and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.
International condemnation and economic sanctions cannot move the autocrats. Even popular opposition movements, from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow, don't stand a chance. The members of Autocracy, Inc, aren't linked by a unifying ideology, like communism, but rather a common desire for power, wealth, and impunity. In this urgent treatise, which evokes George Kennan's essay calling for "containment" of the Soviet Union, Anne Applebaum calls for the democracies to fundamentally reorient their policies to fight a new kind of threat.
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What the critics say
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
An Economist Best Book of the Year
A Financial Times Best Book of the Year
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year
“[An] excellent book. . . . a call to arms to defend our societies.”—Financial Times
“Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc. provides a trenchant account that indicates that Trump, for all his bluster about America First, is part of a global phenomenon—namely, the rise of an international kleptocracy that often works in tandem.”—Washington Monthly
What listeners say about Autocracy, Inc.
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- Simondes
- 2025-03-10
Must read / listen
Eye opener on the influence of targeted misinformation and the influence of social media and companies on the state of democracy.
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- Andrew Dunn
- 2024-08-09
A good summary, but with one obvious blindspot
I've enjoyed Anne Applebaum's historical work, and I broadly share her liberal-positivist view of the world (the existence of universal human rights, the superiority of democracy as an organizing principle). She reiterates a lot of these here, framing them as being under threat from a growing and organized 'autocracy inc'. However... The events in Gaza (she does mention the Hamas incursion and murders of 7 Oct 2023) aren't really mentioned, because they detract from the idea that liberal, democratic states are the best arbiters of moral action - the US continues to support what the UN has described as a possible genocide. Peter Beinart says it better than I can here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/29/why-do-americas-liberal-hawks-attack-russia-while-giving-israel-a-free-pass.
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