Autocracy, Inc. : the dictators who want to run the world / Anne Applebaum.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Applebaum, Anne, 1964- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dictatorship--Cross-cultural studies.

Dictatorship.

Political corruption--Cross-cultural studies.

Political corruption.

Power (Social sciences)--Cross-cultural studies.

Power (Social sciences).

Democracy--Cross-cultural studies.

Democracy.

Physical Description:

209 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

First Vintage Books edition.

Other Title:

Autocracy, Incorporated

Dictators who want to run the world

Place of Publication:

New York : Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, [2025]

Summary:

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, this is an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them. 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 twenty-first 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 the autocracy 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, the author calls for the democracies to fundamentally reorient their policies to fight a new kind of threat. -- Adapted from publisher's description.

Contents:

Introduction : Autocracy, Inc.

The greed that binds

Kleptocracy metastasizes

Controlling the narrative

Changing the operating system

Smearing the democrats

Epilogue : Democrats united.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [181]-209).

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Miller Fund bookplate.

ISBN:

0593471202

9780593471203

OCLC:

1518498128