Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators who Want to Run the World (London: Allen Lane, 2024)

DICTATORS and dictatorship are hardly new: they provided much of the darkness of the twentieth century, often in extreme forms. Their twenty-first century successors, argues Anne Applebaum, are more numerous, network in informal but effective fashion, and have one ultimate objective: kleptocracy. They have a shameless greed for wealth and power and most live in opulent circumstances. In many cases they operate behind a smokescreen of legitimacy in what are known as illiberal democracies. Another common characteristic is the ideological war they wage on Western values such as human rights, civil liberties and the rule of law. Indeed, they peddle the concept of a new world order uncoupled from the post-World War II international settlement.

Many of these autocracies can be described as mafia states in which corruption is political choice underpinned by a colossal system of money laundering. In these cases, the State becomes a criminal syndicate bolstered by propaganda and, where necessary, violence. Moulding the behaviour and thought of the citizenry is imperative and requires surveillance and political repression. Often the latter is unnecessary because people are encouraged into a mindset of cynicism, passivity and hopelessness; with nationalism injecting a modicum of passion when required.

This patriotism is broadcast as a series of national fictions; what Applebaum describes as a ‘firehose of falsehood’ in an echo chamber of fake news. This serves up an image of strength and resilience while democracy is portrayed as degenerate and chaotic. The disruption comes, however, not from democrats but populists who emphasise difference and deliberately damage institutions.

The new world order seeks to remove the rule of law and human rights language, replacing them with rule by law and the right to development. This is essentially a Thatcherite reductionist view of society in which authority and economic interest are regarded as the main forces of human existence. Those who oppose this vigorously enough to present a danger to power are condemned to civic death; political oblivion rather than murder and martyrdom. Even in exile they are vulnerable to transnational repression. And today autocrats have a weapon unknown to the old dictators: social media. Mob smear campaigns, misinformation, false accusations and threatened violence are dispensed worldwide at the click of a mouse.

This is the antithesis of Václav Havel’s exhortation to ‘live in truth’, which was a hallmark of that brief period of hope at the turn of the century when the twin blights of communism and apartheid appeared to have been defeated. But Applebaum presents the sobering suggestion that people are not just the victims of misinformation, but actually seek it. Ruthless or avaricious moguls like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are only too happy to provide the means of transmission. They argue for free speech while trashing the obligation to tell truth and support justice.

This book was written before the 2024 American presidential election, but clearly factored in the possibility of a return of Donald Trump. The early stages of his second administration suggest that the United States is also now ready to upend the rules-based international order – Trump is said to admire Vladimir Putin and his modus operandi – as well as creating an autocracy at home. The resistance has just begun. And it would be a mistake to discount the fault lines that divide autocrats, often united by no more than shared grievance and greed. But there is a distinct sense that the liberal world order is indeed at an end and that all democracies are now at risk.

Somehow, they will have to find a common cause; and quickly.