Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum says in her new book, "Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World,” that today’s dictators are cooperating in a global fight to dismantle democracy.
She says alliances among the global autocracy center on issues of military influence, kleptocracy and defeating democracy — and she sees a link between former President Trump and these concerns.
"Simply being someone who's interested in using foreign policy to make money for oneself. I mean, that already makes Trump similar to a lot of Central Asian leaders or Africans, not to mention Putin," Applebaum says in an NPR interview.
She says that in invading Ukraine, Russian President Putin wants "to show that NATO is powerless, that it's a paper tiger, and that none of the international institutions can control him because he stands for a new order and a new future. And he has used that language. And his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, specifically said this war is about a new world order.”
"The way we did politics even 10 years ago, which was we argued about real things,” says Applebaum. "Once it's about existential questions and identity, and once it's only culture wars which are easily exaggerated ... then you're in the realm where it's much easier for demagogues and for people who are good at evoking and creating emotion to win arguments. And I think it just took a long time for the opposition forces to understand how this works."
Applebaum says she hopes her book helps re-engage people who may have become cynical about the political process. "What the autocrats — whether they're in American politics or in Russian politics or in Chinese politics — what they want is for you to be disengaged. They want you to drop out," she says. "I want people to be convinced that ideas matter, that we're going to have to defend and protect our political system if we want to keep it.”