I’ve been wanting to read something by Applebaum for a long time – a couple years at least – and I finally came to a point where I just bought a copy (Kindle/Audible) of her latest which was also not too long, and read it.  

Autocracy, Inc: 
The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
by Anne Applebaum
Read by author
Rating:  8.75 / modern history 

It’s good and I recommend it if you have any interest in the subject of foreign relations in today’s world.   I think it could be better with some more careful definitions,  but isn’t that a common complaint from me? (LOL!)  And by the final pages I pretty well knew what Applebaum was talking about.  

I went in knowing, in a general way, what an autocracy is, but not quite how to define it.  Is it a dictatorship? It turns out that yes – an autocracy these days is a dictatorship with some special features like networking with other autocracies, the use of sophisticated surveillance techniques for all occasions, and even some constraints on physical movements. But those techniques are also used in the so-called free world, too.  I suppose they are just part of the routine in autocracies.  And if nobody else complains why should the Chinese leaders or population feel put upon?  

And it’s not just China and Russia, Venezuela and others are also tied into the network. Hugo Chavez and others watch as the pillars of democracy, the courts, the press, the civil service and the election structure were changed and either laws were broken or they weren’t but nobody knew because nobody talked about it.  

And with that I’ll also note that if the autocracy is so stringent with surveillance and confinement the people will rise up in protest as they did in Xinjiang China when Covid and the authorities created harsh regulations. If the people get angry about it, they will rise up as they did there in 2022 when the lyrics in their anthem weren’t recognized as dissent – “Rise up, those who refuse to be slaves.”

Autocracy seems to be more of a “sophisticated network”  of  “kleptocratic financial structures” which work with other like-minded national leaders to expand and enhance their financial control over the regular citizens.  But it happens gradually – usually.  A new official decides he would rather stay in power,  free of close scrutiny, doing as they would slide by and nobody talking – skimming the oil money and depositing in accounts around the world, creating housing developments in excess of what could be sold while the leaders were telling the world how they were pro-Democracy