Autocracy, Inc: Anne Applebaum and Ruth Ben-Ghiat in Conversation

Introduction [Applause] [Applause] thank you thanks everybody for coming out um I'm so happy to be here to speak about this great book uh with an and uh it's real pleasure to read this book because uh it's a big picture book and it gives us uh a kind of different view of authoritarians um there's lots of studies about individual regimes but this is about the connections the networks that they are in um and it's not only why they develop their systems of disinformation and repression that they use on their own people but how they share those and how there's like a circuit uh of of Shar sharing and technology that they use together they're part so it's a book about Partnerships um and so I feel like we're living through a moment when um these autocrats are in a way becoming more dependent on each other and there's more sharing out of necessity also um think about Russia's Reliance on you know foreign powers for weapons for technology and even enlisting the GOP to try and kind of game the you know the aid with withholding Aid right to Ukraine so can you talk about this moment we're in and why you decided to take this approach in this book um I will and first I want to say thank you to the audience for coming and also thank you to Ruth who is one of the world Authorities on authoritarianism so um and we just were talking in the Green Room about um the the pity of women in the field of authoritarianism or even as authoritarians so um that that makes us unique um so it's a it's a unique for me to to be interviewed by someone like like Ruth too so thank you um the the you know for me this is a subject my I wrote a previous book that developed out of my own life and my own experience this book really developed out of other people's experience so I have had over the years friends and acquaintances who've been part of Democratic opposition movements whether it was in Russia whether it was in the Hong Kong democracy movement whether it was in Venezuela um I have a Zimbabwean friend I have a number of people who I've known sometimes for a very long time um some since the 90s uh who've been who've been democracy activists and I became aware in the last decade and especially in recent years that much of what they had been doing wasn't working anymore yeah and so the there the ideas about how you organize how you communicate how you how you message how you communicate um even even though the ideas they were seeking to to to organize around were still as popular so most people you don't need America to promote democracy or you don't need to translate you know John Lock into farsy although I know somebody who did that um you don't the most of instinctive support for democracy or transparency movements comes from the experience of living in a in a dictatorship so why why do I not know why do we not know how how the economy works why are some people rich and in a completely opaque way that we can't perceive you know why you know why did the police arrest me for something that feels unfair It's usually the experience of Injustice that pushes people in that direction rather than some knowledge of of the history of democracy so these are still popular ideas in fact they may be more popular in Venezuela than they are here but they're they're still popular ideas but the but the system what what they weren't or it wasn't working anymore and I I I began to understood that the as you just said that the autocratic regimes also had understood that these ideas were popular and they had begun to think more deeply about how to push back on them so technologically s sort of in in with propaganda and information and in in other ways and they were becoming more sophisticated in in understanding this um because they perceive themselves although we don't necessarily perceive ourselves this way they perceive themselves as involved in a war of ideas and it's it's a different one than what we're used to so it's not this is not an ideological block they do not share a vision of the world you know the theocrats in Iran and the Communists in China and the bolivarian socialists in Venezuela and the whatever they are in Russia the the kleptocrats in Russia they don't share a common Vision right but they feel a common threat and the threat is from us I mean um from our language from the way we talk not even necessarily from our foreign policy sometimes maybe but but and there's some obviously geopolitical competition certainly between the US and China but but it's really it's really about those ideas um and I be it began to come together uh I think there was a big change in 2013 2014 when Xi Jinping Rose to the top of China and when Putin became was very freaked out by the Ukrainian Revolution um and that began this change which began to solidify in in in recent years and I think it was as I began to understand in a weird way it was almost 2020 which is when the Beller Russian opposition won an election and then had the election stolen and protested and tried to came very close to winning actually and we eventually crushed not just by Putin um I mean sorry not just by their own dictator but by with he had helped from Russia he had helped from China he eventually had helped from Iran he eventually had this you know almost sort of network of dictators around him who helped to keep him in power this is lucenko the Bel Russian dictator and and when I understood that I understood that we're in a you know in absent those those outside forces he would have lost I mean he was he was unpopular he lost an election most of his apparatus probably wanted to change the system the journalists wanted to change the system a lot of the army wanted to change the system but they were they were up against not just him but this you this kind of apparatus of other um Network rather of of of other nations so that was the that was the reason for the book um and the the the timing actually funny enough the book was delayed my Publishers in the audience so she knows this but somewhat delayed by the war in Ukraine because I initially didn't know how the war was going to play in this story or how it would I wanted to write the book earlier um and then of course as the War progressed I understood that Russia is very much relying on the network of autocracies to so the so the so the timing is more appropriate than I had even thought it wash and that uh when you when you read the book which I Belarus hope you all do uh the example of Belarus is it really it was really um it opens your eyes for example you know the Russians sent journalists over to belus to to kind of do the propaganda properly because uh it wasn't being done up to their standard and they were afraid their candidate the belorussian state journalists actually either resigned or started or switch sides and they were replaced literally by Russian journalists yeah yeah so it's so special to talk with an because uh we were saying not too many people are immersed in the heads of these awful uh individuals you know and and it it's a very these are people who are entirely transactional beings and as an makes clear in the book They're not bound by ideals um as was the case in the fascist or the Cold War block they do some of the same things the torture people you know all of that these steel but um it's it's a different thing and it can be difficult to understand just how transactional they are if you think about like you know Putin and erogan they're best friends and they have a a lunch and uh one of their you know whoever's hosting the lunch they print uh they they make these special China plates with their pictures on them and a week later they're not speaking and they're saying they're going to go to war you know it's just this like crazy uh it's this crazy kind of um Mercurial right there these are people who are very impulsive very vengeful and so uh they're very transactional and so you know uh for example closer to home um not everyone just at the beginning of this conversation you you went very fast you know I did well because it's it's really I found it's really hard for people to understand uh individuals who have no ideals Beyond you know money and power and that's part of the ink that I'd like you to talk about but not everyone would pick their vice president candidate somebody who had said they were like Hitler right and yet that doesn't matter in the transactional world the transactional mentality because that person Vance um brings things uh he's backed by a billionaire Peter teal and he brings things that are useful to Trump and so Trump so when we get all outraged that oh you know we can get Vance because he called Trump like hit that's not how the trumpers that's how not how the Trump tribe of leaders thinks they couldn't care less so that's an example of uh transactional uh that I thought you know is useful to know yes I actually had I mean maybe this was wrong of me and I I because I can't prove it but my instinct when I saw it wasn't actually teal so much it was Elon Musk and David Sachs were supporting um Vance and then immediately made a huge mus made a huge donation to the Trump campaign immediately afterward words $45 million a month so it's $180 million um which is a lot um for me anyway maybe not for me not for you guys this is New York um um so my immediate thought was question was what did they want in exchange and I and I maybe that was the you know maybe they are idealists and but I I don't think so no that so one of the things I was trying to explain in the book was that mentality so whether it's the and and and also the extremes of that mentality so actually Venezuela is an interesting example there's actually an election there in a couple of days um the so the venez Venezuelan dictatorship which Venezuela was the richest country in South America now it's the poorest it was a democracy now it's not um it produces by some counts uh certainly a couple of years ago it was It produced more refugees than Ukraine so it's a it was impoverished country um and and and and it fell apart and yet the leaders and and also by and the regime is extremely unpopular and if there is a free election I think it's on Sunday um they'll lose but will it be we don't know how the votes will be counted and so on so um you know but think about the mentality of the leaders of Venezuela so they would rather see their country decline to the point where it's the poorest country in the hemisphere one of them um they would rather people starve they would rather that their country become a basket case you know a u you know an UNS you know a failed State they would rather have that then give up any power that's right and ra you know and that's a and that mentality is one that we find hard to understand I mean it's it's a similar not quite that extreme yet in Russia but Putin would you know when he uh prosecutes the war in Ukraine it's not about he's not and and when he thinks about for policy foreign policy as well as domestic policy he's not thinking about what's best for the Russian people how do I increase their prosperity how do I make people's lives better he's thinking about himself his legacy and his power so he he's used the war as a as a as an excuse for an a means of cracking down on society he's limited freedom of speech and freedom of Association uh he's imposed new strictures and controls in the because it's a national emergency which is by the way long tradition in in Russian history that you do that and his and his interest is not in the well-being of ordinary Russians and I think it took a long time for Western leaders to understand that you know there was this m you know why you know surely we can do a deal surely Putin wants what's best for the Russian Nation we can have an arrangement and um and and a lot of the um pressure on him was or or or diplomacy towards him rather was aimed at that for many years and it was really only recently that I think people finally understood no he doesn't care that's not the point and it's it's disillusioning to think that people don't care to that extent but not only they don't care um they also scorn Corruption and you make this clear in the book the entire intern Democratic Notions of justice of accountability of transparency they fear those things but they scorn them they're just not interested so their ideals their idea of governance is completely different than um what we're used to thinking about it's it's all as as an said it's all about them so one of the greatest things about this book is that it makes corruption and kleptocracy Central that's part of the Inc autocracy Inc and um I've been very frustrated and it's part of it's an extension of what we've been saying I feel like every time Putin's Russia is mentioned in the press it should be called a kleptocracy because that's the fuel of the entire you know State Machinery but I find sometimes when I start talking about this people's eyes glaze over it's like you're at a dinner party oh my God kleptocracy again you know and and so and so they don't have a and I think that people in democracies don't have a sense of when the entire uh State machinery is co is hijacked in a sense like like Putin took gazprom and he and his cronies plundered it and took money out of it and then it's called exfiltration put that money out of the country into offshore Finance right so you so the leader is plundering the state agencies SO gas and then even this the next stage kleptocracy then was that gas prom became effectively an arm of the state so it's a private company which is there was one point I'm not sure if this is still true at one point the heads of gas prom also had kind like second jobs in the presidential Administration yeah so it was a and and and gas prom was used to do Russian foreign policy so it was particularly regarding Germany and the and the pipeline building and so on and there were gas prom sponsored a soccer team in Germany that was in the hometown of um president with the man who's now president steinm who was then the foreign minister and I I had a convers this is years ago I had aers ation with him and he said oh it's so interesting that gas prom has is sponsoring a football team in my town I said yeah that's big surprise but but but that was a that was a gas prom foreign policy and and again was that in Russia's interest or was it in Putin's interest I mean if Putin was making and his people around him were making money off of gas prom then that was the function of the company so it was it had this dual role and I think we find that hard to understand but I also want to say about kleptocracy about we we also have this idea that these are things that sort of money laundering and Grands scale theft you know these are things that happen in other countries you know they happen in some dictatorship in in the global south or they or little you know Caribbean islands or where they have tax Havens and we don't think about the degree to which our financial system in this country and in London you know and in in in in other European countries facilitated M so the enablers of those tax Havens and those money laundering schemes are very often in London or New York orse yeah right and so that and then one of the punchlines is that there are a lot of American states some of this is beginning to change but there were a lot of American states that have laws that make it very easy to set up uh anonymously owned companies or Anonymous trusts um and that and a lot of the a lot of intern money laundering or or just the hiding of money for for different kinds of reasons goes through Anonymous companies and if I I once asked a admittedly it was a guy who was a um kind of transparency campaigner I said so what's the reason why we need Anonymous companies and he said people have reasons and basically none of them amount to very much I mean it's it's it's an unnecessary um and that's I mean that either people are using it to hide from tax from paying taxes or they're using it to uh hide still money or else maybe they're using it to hide money from their ex-wife you know that's the other but it's not but there's there there's very there's some very technical legitimate reasons why you might do it and there are comp you know you know i' even I've been offered by Banks and you know in you can oh you can have an investment fund set up in the Virgin Islands or wherever um and but so so there are legitimate Banks who do it I mean I'm not saying everybody's a crook who has their money and but but there but but really it isn't necessary and we could eliminate it yeah and see so one of the saddest things uh and the book makes clear and makes me angry um I've wrote a little bit about this in strongman is that without all these people who live in democracies and wake up and they have all the rights in the world the wealth managers the accountants the the lobbying firms that Lobby for they whitewash you know autocracies the pr firms and there's a lot of good new books BS about these each of these things but and puts it all together which is why the book is so valuable these people make the Machinery of autocratic kleptocracy run and they're all here uh in democracies maybe not in this room no they're not in this room so um yeah and it was a little depressing because uh I I you know my not enough book came out in 2020 so I was doing the research in 2019 and so I'm reading your book book and it's some a few years later and it's like the some things have been done to against this but not enough and there's too many entrenched interests but without without these people the putins of the world wouldn't be able to to complete their thievery and the scale that they do so um and and has at the end of the book you know a um kind of menu of things that we can do and that's that's on it although they depend on having political leaders who want to do them that's right and we are at risk of not having that yeah um even even you know some of the some of the the change to again the financial system the financial reforms has been very hard to pass even with well-meaning I mean actually the Biden Administration has talked about was one of the first actually presidential administrations to talk about um you know kleptocracy as a national security issue so not just a problem for you know Banks but is a problem for National Security and they did talk about it and there has been some movement in Congress but it's it's very slow and it's never anybody's priority yeah um I would say that and certainly and the the other issue I didn't really go into this at length in the book but the other issue is you know reform of or regulation of social media um making the algorithms transparent allowing people to own their data coming up with Alternative forms of democratic online communication there's a whole realm of ideas people have had about how to fix that I mean none of that goes anywhere um it's either it's too hard for our politicians to understand or they're the pressure from the platforms and they're very wealthy owners is too great but it doesn't move and nobody's taken it um it's it might actually might it could be that the European Union does because well because the European Union is there to regulate and so they think about regulation they wake up in the morning thinking about regulation and and we don't but maybe they and Elon the AUT Musk certainly doesn't that's the that's the aut that's the uh you know autocratic uh fellow traveler and the the goal is to remove all regulation yeah um so um on that note um I want to of course uh talk about the um points of connection of the US where does it enter into this autoc Inc uh with these you know countries that we like to say we like to think of this um kind of almost firewall between autocracy and democracy and of course we know that's not the case it's a Continuum and we also see and an's book makes this clear there's these transnational networks not only among autocracies but what we were just talking about with Finance with illicit Finance all of that is transnational but can you talk about uh the our situation um what's going to happen to us but what what is you know what what Autocracy Inc is the let just take out my crystal ball we we have this weird you know we we're a bipartisan uh you know nation and one of our two giant parties I is an autocratic entity and it's no it's not I I wouldn't say the whole party is I mean there is a it's true there is now a so and this is mostly I mean the finance issue is is one is is is one issue that but there is a part of the well it's the part of the Republican party which and like the far right in most European countries sometimes elements of the far-left to which which now um are very happy with and delighted to work alongside authoritarian narratives so that is a um and that's a shift from a few years we didn't have that 10 years ago and we have it now um and and I I talk a lot in the book about how this works so there is a you know authoritarian countries and the the the members of autocracy Inc which is not every dictatorship but it's a particular group have a um invest a lot of money in information um the Chinese invest tens and probably hundreds of millions of dollars in television newspapers um in in multiple languages their own plus they invest in content sharing arrangements with you know most countries in Africa um shinua which is the Chinese uh the Chinese wire service has is free or very cheap in in in much of the world um and they think a lot about what goes into you know what will be presented um and and actually for a long time the Russian and Chinese and Iranian and other systems were rather separate um more recently they have begun to Bor one another's ideas and even you know the the the Chinese Network for example puts out a lot of Russian propaganda now which was not the case um previously but they have um some of what they do is just to promote whatever Chinese trade and you know and some of it is more ideological um and there is a set of narratives that you can now see repeated AC around the globe um um some of which talk about how um authoritarian you know dictatorships are secure and safe and reliable um democracies are divided and weak and some and degenerate and sometimes by that they mean sexually degenerate um alongside that there's a narrative about traditional families and um uh you know hierarchy social hierarchies sometimes there's a racial element sometimes not depends on where where it is um and and an attempt to portray um this is this is mostly a Russian thing attempt to portray for example Russia and other dictatorships as traditional you know reliable places where um where a normal life can be had whereas in democracies there's degeneracy and chaos and and American Carnage um and so the and that kind of language which you can find as I said around the world and you can also find in I mean you know we had a version of it in 2016 here we s this is actually pretty primitive Now by compared to what happens now with the the use of face fake Facebook pages and so on in in the 2016 election it's now more sophisticated there are um there are you know the number of outlets is is is different a lot of them and and a lot of it is not you know you have we have to stop thinking along the lines of you know the Russians are influencing us or they're paying someone to do it that's not it that we have you know a part of our political spectrum is actively interested in those same ideas and copies them and uses them MH um and and there is a kind of meld of authoritarian narratives that come from the authoritarian world and those that are here and and this is not unique to the United States there's a version of it in in Europe there's a version in France there's a version in Germany um there's a version in Poland where I live part of the time so it's a it's a it's it's an international phenomenon and some of it is you know you also have to think about this it's not like there's a secret cabal of you know bad people who meet in a room like in a James Bond movie you know they simply watch one another and oh this is working you know let's do that I mean there's a the the Spanish farri who I wrote a lot about a few years ago they I read about them in my previous book are are are political party movement this called a group called Vox who learned who create were created by people who were watching how the farri was succeeding in other places and they just copied them and that's you know let's take let's try that theme here and this theme there and you know we see the you know that there was you know gun control is not an issue in Spain except in one particular region or gun gun rights um and so let so let's do messaging around that because nobody else is doing it and they kind of picked up themes immigration again traditional families and so on and anti-feminism and they put together a package and created their political party that way so it was almost like a greatest hits you know we take from you know or the way or the way you create one of the you know producers create teenage bands you know we need one this kind of girl and we need a blonde girl and a brunette girl and another you know and that's how we make it was literally like that it was like make a create a political party that way it works it works on people and the other thing uh you know Russia Today my Russia Today mother was uh during the pandemic um she lives in a small village in England in the northwest of England and during the pandemic during the lockdowns she was radicalized she was like a conservative she loved the queen I have like so many tea towels with the Queen's face on them that's how I grew up um and during the pandemic she became radicalized because she started watching Russia today and she started paring um Kremlin talking points and going on these Rants and she developed a love she never mentioned Putin ever but she kept talking about Putin and then she developed this rabid hatred for Biden and I would say Mom this is Kremlin propaganda and she would say no but the ancers are English and so this is this is an's point where it's not it's too simplistic to say that the Russians are influencing us they're they're enablers they're fellow Travelers there there's a whole apparatus and so it becomes very difficult for people to um it's about the narratives and not about the Providence really um yeah the CH the Chinese have this expression borrowing boats to reach the sea MH um which means means we don't want to use Chinese media to send a message we want to use whatever Zimbabwean media we'd rather have a local journalist tell the story rather than someone who's obviously Chinese um and that that was yeah I don't think Russia Today works so well any Russia Today was originally the idea of it was that it looked completely normal yeah um but but but had little in in in a few little key moments it was it was it was different and then I think after 2014 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine it became much more clearly propaganda than it was but originally it was very successful because it just seemed like a somewhat wackier I mean they had a now I've forgotten what the slogan was you know all the news that other people won't tell or something like that it was a it was a it looked normal but it you know this little attitudinal difference and then it became more obvious yeah yeah um and they banned it Optimism uh it is not banned and that's what my mother kind of came out of it went back to Sky News went back to Murdoch right so so um one thing I wanted to ask you um is you uh after after all this some will be surprised uh the the dedication of your book is for the optimists and I loved this because when you do this work um you it's a funny thing I I can only speak for myself when you do this work you you you're in the heads of these you know awful leaders and their enablers but you also are um chronicling the very very brave people who are opposing them and you you know the value and how difficult and the risks um and and so what what keeps you are you optimistic about when you think about um because there there is you know this we we're in the middle of this um Renaissance of nonviolent protest protest all over the world many many countries are having the largest protests they've ever had for some they've ever can Israel the largest they've ever had and many others the largest they've had in decades and you're in Poland part of the time and that is incredibly inspirational what happened in in Poland and if you look at what they did it has you do you think it could be replicated like are you optimistic well first of all in Poland the lesson is have the mass Street protest before the election yeah don't do it afterwards so then that was a that you know if you want to inspire people or pull them together you know do it now and not after it's too late so that was that that was one of the lessons but I I mean I have a sort of mixed feeling about optimism I'm not naturally optimistic it's kind of you know you don't write long books about Stalin if that's what you know if you're a happy person normal happy person um but also you know came to conclude over the years and maybe this is also partly to do with having children and and teaching I teach a little bit so meeting lots of younger people that it's just very irresponsible to be pessimistic I can't I how do I tell people who are 30 years younger than me you know it's all hopeless you know and so I believe I believe very much that and I I ALS I also say I'm a I I I I don't believe that history has laws so there is no law law that says democracies our democracy will end um there is no law that says you know I don't know I've heard people say this is the dec this is the century for dictatorships I mean why says who you know um almost everything that happens tomorrow or next week you know depends on what people do today so there is always people can always make a positive contribution and and you know and and it's really the actions of of of many people that you know make the make the future different and and like probably like you I do know a lot of people who have been really Brave I mean I start we started out I said something about them at the beginning and um and some of them appear in the book uh there are a lot of very brave people who have dedicated their lives to making their countries better um and I really appreciate them and so I dedicated the book to them that was why no that's that's that's really important and you know one of the things Apocalypse that's making me um you know so uh alarmed is that um when when Trump came on the scene and he started this kind of apocalyptic rhetoric I thought oh my God that's so familiar because that's how musolini used to speak that you kind of create a sense of Crisis and despair and then you become the Savior and so what he's been and he's really souped this up recently um but he always said the American dream is dead and um and even in his you know acceptance speech uh he had this he did it again yeah on Thursday night and so George uh George Bush Jr was there and he said uh excuse my language but it's George Bush's language that was after the inaugural address the inaugural that's what I meant the inaugural and he said that was some weird that was some weird and and this has been this has been Hillary Clinton heard him say that so it's true and and but I thought did this is this is Norm this it was weird it was weird in the context of of a democ of a democracy um but it was not weird in the context of authoritarian rhetoric so what Trump's been so successful at is he's actually so sad as an American I feel so sad at this he's convinced tens of millions of people that America is a failed State um that you know he's used false statistics about crime in the economy and they they think that America is failing and so democracy the point is to say that democracy is failing and so thus he's praising the strongman leader he didn't the other day said that you know Xi Jinping was rules with an Iron Fist and so that's just great you know so what how do you see this no no I I I mean there it was even more specific in 2016 there Trump had would sometimes use language that came directly from Russian propaganda there was a thing about how Hillary had started was going to start world War I this was a F this was a Russian line and Obama invented Isis this was a Russian conspiracy theory and so he he actually used that language was one of the things that originally threw me off I I I I wasn't didn't understand where it had come from um um and yes I I you know I I you know you mentioned his inaugural address me he did this again on Thursday night at the end of the Republican convention it was very rambling speech but it's actually worth re well you can't really read it but you can you can look at pieces of it no it's it's I mean it's a kind of I saw the print out in the the there was people did transcripts of it I think there's one in the New York Times and it's very rambling and strange but there are a lot of Illusions to crisis disaster chaos you know and and and that that has several purposes one is as as you say correctly is to throw light you know kind of um scorn on the whole political system because if the political system is a disaster then we need to clear it out we need a revolution we need to destroy it and we need to bring in something totally different and It prepares people to accept really major changes like that and of course some of the other things that he's done um over the years you know this sort of attacks on the press and attacks on judges all of that is again what happens in either authoritarian regimes or in illiberal regimes that are heading in that direction because those are the those are the guard rails you know who can stop you know a um an even even an elected president the judges you know or the journalists who can expose corruption that's it you know journalists or Ombudsman or I mean there are people in the government in the system um and so if you downgrade them and denigrate them um and in our case it's in the case of our media it's become easy because media is so weak now and so um you know a lot of companies are are very close to bankruptcy um if you downgrade and denigrate them then um you know then then they disappear as a as an obstacle and so that is that is literally the purpose of it so when you I mean again this book is mostly about established autocracies that are already in place but my previous book and some of the writing I've done is about countries that are where the democracy is declining and you know this too nowadays when democracies fail it's usually not because of a coupet so usually there aren't tanks in the street or like a lieutenant colonel shooting up the presidential Palace or what I mean it's usually not like that instead what we see are legitimately elected leaders who slowly undermine their own institutions in order to be able to stay in power longer and that's Russia is more complicated and different but that's kind of what happened there that's certainly what happened in Hungary I saw it happening in po Poland it was it failed but there was a there was a there was a the a political party that was seeking to do that to to create a political system in which they couldn't lose elections um and that's of course the thing I worry about here is that we could have um you know a political party in power that was trying to set up a system in which they could no longer lose yeah um and you know when when you change the rules of the game in such a way that only one party can win yeah um and it you know I I I I maybe it's a lot of people say or believe that in the United States is not possible for our system is very big which is true and there are a lot of you know we have a federal system so I mean and in a funny way um I I spending some time working on this in the last couple months in a lot of the state elections and state level or even local level debates in the US are actually better than our national conversation because they're about real things and I don't know they're about the local school system or the roads or something um whereas at the national level we it's so remote from people's lives it's like this you know celebrity battle that doesn't mean that much to people um uh and that's I think part of also why it became it's it's kind of declined as a as a um it's sort of spectator sport rather than real politics I mean and I one more thing actually about about in reference to Poland you asked before about how they want one of the one of the ways to head off that kind of existential politics where it's my identity versus your identity is is is precisely that it's to return the conversation to real things I mean if you're in a culture war against someone who you know if they W if their team wins your life is destroyed then that's not really Democratic politics anymore I mean you know if you're arguing over what's the tax rate you know or should we fund this thing or that thing or I don't know should we have a bigger army or a smaller I mean you can really disagree with people about that you can be absolutely completely you know I I can't accept your vision of of you know of the of the EPA I mean that's okay you know that's but you're not going to kill them over that whereas you might kill them over if you know what kind of country do we have so it's better not to have a political battle over what kind of country this should be if you can avoid it but that that's ex yeah that's exactly what and then kind of making A nuanced umbrella Democrats into an existential enemy that's what we've got now um so um yeah and by the way just one more sorry I keep interrupting you but no that it's very important that um that both parties be seen as a complicated you know nuanced umbrella and not you know neither neither the Democratic party nor the Republican Party are monolithic so Gatekeeping well that's part of our um you know the the possibilities and limitations of just having these two huge parties and two two parties only in such a large country and so that's that's been uh you know from an anti-authoritarian stance that's been difficult because for example you know you can make these coalitions in other countries to ward off to to kind of um uh do do uh you know gatekeeping this happened in 2019 in Italy when salvini this like thuggish you know far right guy very Pro Putin uh he was looking you know he wanted to be become Prime Minister and all the other parties Even parties that didn't really like his party and and also didn't like each the other parties they all got together and they successfully fended him off well that's what just happened in France exactly the same thing there was a there was a essentially a coalition sprang up in the second between the first and second round of the elections that um that blocked the all right thank you okay um we are shifting to the Q&A part um gosh I haven't seen those little cards in a long time index cards we used to make notes on them and file them in remember little South America boxes so oh here's an interesting one because you talked about uh Venezuela and um and there's a lot of very interesting things in the book about about this and that again that very it's a very uh tragic thing when the leader does not care if his state becomes a failed state so this question is what other South American countries are the greatest risk of falling prey to autocracy Inc um what do other network members stand to gain there and whatever country so so um South America I mean I'm not this is not my era of expertise all stipulate you may know more than than me um so the South American there there there are a lot of um stable states in South America more stable than than in some other parts of the world um but the the economic pressure from Chinese investment and in some cases from Russian investment or Russian influence can be felt almost everywhere um certainly in Brazil um so I had a conversation with a woman who works in Bolivia who told me that she had started speaking a few years ago about the danger posed by so when you have a big Russian investment particularly in a poor country it very often comes along with corruption so the Russians will uh this happened in Hungary it happened in South Africa you they'll build a some big structure a nuclear power plant or something and the and along with the project they'll bring they'll corrupt me local political parties or political leaders um they'll they they'll come in with you know they they their Investments often have a political purpose so again remember they're big they're big companies even if they're technically private companies very often work on behalf of the state and they're part of Russian foreign policy um and so they'll if they're if they're investing in your country in a big way there's usually a political reason as well and she told me that she'd started speaking about this a few years ago and nobody believed her that you know why would you know that's a it was a paranoia and then she was saying that more people have come around to to to see that point of view I mean I would say it's a threat everywhere I mean Mexico um there is an enormous Russian Embassy now in Mexico City um the there was a lot of um um certainly kind of narrative collusion between the Russians and the and amlo and the previous Mexican president over the war in Ukraine um he was he was you know very reluctant to join any Democratic Coalition or just speak positively I have a friend who's a Mexican um she's a journalist and democracy activist and University professor and she went to Ukraine and wrote a lot about Ukraine and she became the subject of really horrible kind of misogynist um attacks on social media you know showing portraying her as a you know Ukrainian prostitute or something like so there was a there there was a there was a concerted effort by the Russian Embassy to promote the the idea of Russian and Russian foreign policy and Russian influence in Mexico so I mean you can you can get it almost anywhere where there's where there either is a political class or a politician who needs it or wants it sometimes it comes along with money sometimes as I said it's just a it's just a kind of narrative boost you know the the Russians will help you win your election or help you stay in power um and you can see you can get it anywhere there's no there's no I I you know there's there's nobody who has clear resistance to it except maybe the Baltic states although even some of them have Russian minorities and that that goes with the uh the death of ideals and the The UN transactional mentality that's I mean there are a lot of people who would say I don't know I mean I'm making this up but you know you a Mex a businessman in Mexico why shouldn't I take this money and it's good for me and it's who cares I mean so there's a anybody who has that mentality is is at risk and that's almost everybody yeah I don't mean all people I mean in all all nationalities I'm not I don't think any anybody's exceptional um here's an interesting one how come the UN is so cozy with these dictatorships and I myself have had the uh question when um because the Russia was already you know had already started its war on Ukraine and then it had its turn being the head of the security Council and I thought this is messed up what kind of secur what is it for if if right no it doesn't function anymore I mean it it it it's began the decline began a while ago but we're really at a point now well so for for Russia for China for Iran for for you know for other states who who are part of this this anti-western or anti anti-western is the wrong word sorry anti-democratic um Network um the the effort to change and undermine and even even alter the language of the UN has been going on for a long time I I write about this a little bit in the book The Chinese have tried to change the way the UN speaks they don't want the UN to talk about human rights which it has had in its in its founding documents from the very beginning um the there's been an effort to undermine un efforts and institutions the same all the while trying to use them to promote different ideas so the Chinese want the UN to talk instead of Human Rights they want the UN to talk about sovereignty um and sovereignty is a great word and it's very good and it means lots of positive things but in the specific um Chinese International context sovereignty means we get to do what we want inside our country and we don't want anyone else to be able to talk about it certainly not in the an international forum and they've made a lot of effort to shut it down yeah and so for them the undermining of the UN and and a whole host of other International institutions has been an important way of protecting their power I mean one of the most effective opposition movements probably in history was the Soviet dissidents in the 70s um the Helsinki movement created a it was all they did was they formed a a a group a movement who began pointing to the international treaties that the Soviet Union had signed which all talked about you know rights and democracy and the hinky treaty but other treaties as well and they embarrassed the Soviet Union by saying you signed up to this why haven't you done it and they formed this committee that was dedicated to making sure the treaties were fulfilled um and that was such an effective form of politics yeah and even International politics that you know the Russians now want to make sure it can never happen again and and if they undermine the significance and power of the UN that's a way to do it yeah that makes sense I mean unfortunately the UN also no longer really Make an example reflects you know balance of power either so no the security Council um okay can you explain how autocracies only need to make an example of very few citizens to terrorize the rest of the populace into silence and compliance yes that's the famous autocratic game of make an example yeah know this is one of my favorite subjects this is this is why to too this is why um so stalinism which I also written about was a system of mass Terror you know thousands of people were arrested for no re reason their huge concentration camps were were were created and um one of the Innovations of putinism very early on actually well before most people thought of him as a as a problem or a you know or or even as a dictator um was to single out individuals and harass them as a way of scaring everybody else and the most two or three famous examples one was the murder of anap poovai who was a journalist um many years ago there was another the the the arrest and 10year sentence of mik hovsky who was a very wealthy oligarch who developed independent ideas and he was also arrested I think the richest person in Russia at the time he was arrested his company was stolen um taken over by people close to Putin um it's now Ros neft uh and and he was you know and that scared everybody else so so modern dictators don't need to do this expensive and bloody mass arrest instead they pinpoint individual people and the other even more recent Innovation is the use of smear campaigns and social media so if you target someone and you target them both with social media harassment so you know endless memes mockery conspiracy theories accus you know and then you couple that you accompany that with State harassment so you investigate there taxes you imply that they're corrupt maybe you invent a sex scandal about them this is a better way or better I mean more effective way of destroying them than just locking them or killing them that's right because then you undermine not only them you undermine their movement the values they stand for and so on and I this is something I've talked to a lot of people about who have experienced it um yeah and um the it's also what Eran does in Insult suits Turkey he's uh big surprise he's uh you know very into these uh insult suits and the scale of these insult suits like tens of thousands of ordinary Turkish people have been it's for a social media post and and you know a lot most dictators Putin included end up having laws against insulting the Dignity of this of the leader in the state but erdogan does these insult suits in in ways that can seem random like some people get away with it others don't and so that's part of the psychology of authoritarianism is that you you don't know there doesn't seem to be any Rhyme or Reason and and that was very true of the the classic dictatorships which we've written about but it's also true to some extent of the new authoritarians and so some people you know you never know if you do a social media post whether you're going to get an insult suit which is a lawsuit that you know psychologically and financially is trying to exhaust you mhm so no no the and the I mean I we had a little bit of this I we my husband and I he's a Polish politician had some of this in Poland towards the end of the previous government they they were beginning to do these Financial investigations of people that were essentially a form of harassment I mean that there was a kind of fake reason for the investigation but you still had to hire a lot of lawyers and you had to spend a lot of time on it and you had to fill out a lot of forms um and it's it's one of the things I it's a it's very exhaust ing to feel like the state is your enemy and there's a you know nobody's listening you know there's the state isn't a sympathetic partner you know but they're looking for to find a way to pin something on you and that's a an ugly and unpleasant feeling and I do hope it doesn't happen Trumps harassment here and well Trump's done this very effectively harassing uh media companies for the same reason and for example he he uh he sued um although he made his campaign made an ad which you probably heard about uh where they talk about making a unified Reich right so however he sued CNN um for $450 million dollars because he said that um several of their journalists were comparing him to Hitler and um there were like JD Vans yes so there was Jake Tapper Chris CH chelita and then one person CNN opinion was publishing thousands and thousands of op-eds um oped by Me was mentioned on page you know one or two of the complaint uh because it was revealing his it talked about his big lie so when you know the reason he was doing this was making an example um and so he's he's been pursuing he chooses carefully you know who and what he targets to uh warn the rest of media companies what could happen to them and so this is a similar thing that he's done and it's been quite effective actually um all right oh we are out of time it's 8 o' it is 8 o'clock well join me in thanking an and thank you [Applause] Ruth and uh she will be signing she will be uh signing uh a book so I encourage all of you to go and uh buy her book and read it and thank you so much for coming and somebody will show me where to go right I I think so [Applause]