I reckon Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc. will become required reading for staff and executives of Australia’s august think tanks. And it will probably win an audience with policy wonks, keen to trace the origins of the rise and rise of global autocracy, among all political classes.
What struck me about Applebaum’s tome is it does not discriminate between autocrats of the left or the right. As the author delves into the thinking and machinations of a younger Vladimir Putin, within a few paragraphs I found myself wandering the wastelands of Rust Belt America, ripe for exploitation by Donald J Trump. ‘At least 13 people with proven or alleged links to the Russian mafia have owned or done business in Trump-owned condos.’
This is a global travel guide of autocratic hotspots, aided and abetted by its big brother, kleptocracy, aka state sanctioned theft. Autocracy, Inc. stares through the looking glass into the heart of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism as interpreted by proto-Marxist-fascists-cum-democrats. On every page you can imagine the Usual Suspects rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of a world of ever-expanding artificial intelligence, the block chain miasma of crypto currency, and frightening software such as Pegasus, developed by an Israeli company, and used to track journalists.
While Autocracy, Inc. posits a mostly transatlantic American world view, with barely a mention of our region (other than China), it is a well-researched and informed read, which warns, ‘there is no liberal world order anymore’.
Reviewed by Henry Johnston
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is also a senior fellow at the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where she co-leads a project on 21st-century disinformation. Her books include Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine; Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–1956; and Gulag: A History, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Her most recent books include the New York Times best seller Twilight of Democracy, an essay on democracy and authoritarianism, and Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. She was a Washington Post columnist for 15 years and a member of the editorial board. She has also been the deputy editor of The Spectator and a columnist for several British newspapers. Her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, among many other publications.
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