Will I love Autocracy, Inc.?

This book really brought home to me the transnational side of rising global authoritarianism.

We know a lot about democratic decline within countries and the changing global order. This book differs as it powerfully documents the transnational links between dictators across the world, working together like never before. 

This is even if they are not particularly close or share ideology. Dictators are simply collaborating to enrich themselves by propagating authoritarianism globally and undermining democracy.

It’s also very engagingly written with some powerful vignettes.

As someone who might be described as a  “social Democrat,” I haven’t always agreed with Anne Appelbaum, a neo-conservative of the old school. Nor do I  agree with every argument in Autocracy, Inc. But, at a time when dozens of books are being written about the rise of authoritarianism and illiberalism at home and abroad, this book takes a different approach, brilliantly describing the rise of a new international autocracy of kleptocrats linked together by greed and the accumulation of political power that will protect their fortunes. 

Originally a fan of globalization, Applebaum has come to believe that this new… show more.

It was a wake-up call to make us see that modern autocracies have evolved and are now far more complicated than ever before. The internet and the wealth that today’s autocrats seek to invest in our countries has also provided them with far more insidious ways of infiltrating and weakening our societies from within than was available to previous generations of dictators. The new generation is more like an agglomeration of companies, bound not by ideology but rather by a ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve their personal wealth and power: "Autocracy, Inc.” The book is a call to arms, to… show more.

I found Anne Applebaum’s book a pleasure to read; it drew me in quickly with its unique, anecdotal style, as her amazing detail shocks and frightens us: it’s an essential, firsthand account of how easy it is for democracy to be threatened, and why we must pay attention to this creeping reality.