Anne Applebaum, Inc.
Autocracy, Inc. Book review in the New York Times
Why Is Autocracy Thriving? Anne Applebaum Says: It’s the Economy, Stupid.
In “Autocracy, Inc.,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian takes account of the financial institutions and trade deals that have helped spread tyranny across the world.
By Sam Adler-Bell
Sam Adler-Bell is a co-host of the podcast “Know Your Enemy.”
July 20, 2024Buy Book ▾
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AUTOCRACY, INC.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, by Anne Applebaum
Something new is happening in the world of oppression. Or so says the historian Anne Applebaum. Whereas the twilight struggle of the 20th century was waged between formal “blocs” of ideologically aligned allies, today’s autocrats are more diverse — a mix of self-described Marxists, illiberal demagogues, kleptocratic mafiosi, old-school tyrants and new-school theocrats.
Of course, they do share ideas if not ideologies, among them that liberal internationalism is an alibi for imperialism, the means by which Washington and Brussels impose their interests and decadent cultural mores (especially L.G.B.T.Q. tolerance) on the rest of the world. But today’s autocrats principally cement their bonds, Applebaum argues, “not through ideals but through deals.” Thanks in large part to the opacity of global finance, they enjoy a vibrant trade in surveillance technologies, weapons and precious minerals, laundering one another’s dirty money and colluding to evade American sanctions. This venal compact of convenience she calls “Autocracy, Inc.”
In the past decade or so, Applebaum has followed a not-unfamiliar trajectory from neoconservative Atlanticist to anti-populist Jeremiah. Her previous book, “Twilight of Democracy,” looked at why so many of her former allies on the right — Thatcher and Reaganite activists and journalists in London, Washington, Budapest and Warsaw — had abandoned classical liberalism for some species of reactionary nationalism. Why was John O’Sullivan, a former Margaret Thatcher speechwriter, propagandizing for the Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban? Why was the formerly center-right sociologist Rafael Bardají working for Spain’s far-right Vox party? Applebaum’s demeanor in that volume was befuddled outrage: Why had her friends abandoned the values (“pro-European, pro-rule-of-law, pro-market”) she thought they shared? Perhaps they were always just wounded narcissists and fame-hungry liars, channeling the “authoritarian predispositions” of the masses.
To her credit, Applebaum’s new book risks a more sophisticated, and less flattering, answer: Globalization did work, only not how she and her friends assumed it would. Autocracies became more integrated with one another, while American and European trade dependence on the autocratic world — on Chinese manufacturing and Russian oil, for instance — became a weapon to be used against the West. “Everyone assumed that in a more open, interconnected world, democracy and liberal ideas would spread to the autocratic states,” Applebaum writes. Nobody imagined that autocratic and illiberal ideas “would spread to the democratic world instead.”
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And not only ideas. Before and after the fall of the Soviet Union, cash robbed from the coffers of the Communist East flowed into bank accounts in London and the Caribbean. More recently, shell companies in Delaware have purchased apartments in New York on behalf of oligarchs in Russia and China, while European and American accountants, real estate agents and lawyers have enjoyed hefty fees for secreting the ill-gotten wealth of the world’s kleptocrats. In short, the world system accommodated the needs of autocracy; the autocrats were not required to change.
Applebaum is cleareyed about the difficulties of rectifying this situation: “Powerful people benefit from the existing system, want to keep it in place and have deep connections across the political spectrum.” She’s no anticapitalist, but her recommendations for reforms to the financial system — requiring companies to be registered in the name of their actual owners, for example — are concrete and admirable.
Her foreign policy, however, suffers from a certain fuzzy patriotism. The present showdown may not be as straightforward as the Cold War, Applebaum explains, but the world can still be divided into good guys and bad guys. Modern autocrats and illiberal wannabes, “however varied their ideologies, do have a common enemy,” Applebaum writes. “That enemy is us. To be more precise, that enemy is the democratic world, ‘the West,’ NATO, the European Union, their own, internal democratic opponents and the liberal ideas that inspire all of them.”
Many readers, I imagine, will have no objection to this framing, especially since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which hardened trade and security ties in Russia’s sphere (and between Russia and China), while reviving the vigor and moral confidence of NATO.
Book Review: ‘Autocracy, Inc.,’ by Anne Applebaum – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Book Review: ‘Autocracy, Inc.,’ by Anne Applebaum – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Stealing our Democracy
Stealing Our Democracy: How the Political Assassination of a Governor Threatens Our Nation by Siegelman, Don
Foreword by John Farmer, Jr. former federal prosecutor.
Siegelman was prosecuted under the “theft of honest services” statute. Farmer says he was aware of the “potential breadth of the “theft of honest services” statute, and had worried about its potential for partisan abuse.”
Siegelman spent “…over seven years in federal prison for conduct that is engaged in every day by politicians of both parties and has been throughout our history.”
His appeal was denied by a Supreme Court that acknowledged, in a subsequent case, that “theft of honest services,” could mean anything the prosecutor decides.
… state Attorneys General joined Don in his request for clemency. It was denied by President Obama who, like all presidents, appointed people as ambassadors whose sole qualification was that they had raised millions of dollars to support the president’s campaign. No one has suggested that our presidents be prosecuted or impeached for this practice.
The Governor accepted a $ 250,000 contribution to the campaign committee supporting the lottery raised by Richard Scrushy, a prominent businessman.
Governor Siegelman reappointed Scrushy to an unpaid health care advisory board to which he had been appointed by three prior Governors of both parties.
Neither Governor Siegelman nor any of his family nor his election campaign benefited one penny from the contribution. Scrushy, for his part, who had supported Don’s opponent in the governor’s race, was without question qualified to sit on the board to which he was reappointed.
Stealing Our Democracy tells the story of the politics that destroyed Don’s career and nearly ruined his life.
…it is hard to escape the conclusion, that Governor Siegelman’s true “crime” was winning a statewide election as a liberal Democrat in Alabama.
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