Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from Autocracy, Inc.:
Americans who rarely think about Russia would be stunned to learn how much time Russian state television devotes to America’s culture wars, especially arguments over gender. Putin himself has displayed an alarmingly intimate acquaintance with Twitter debates about transgender rights, mockingly sympathizing with people who he says have been “canceled.” In part this is to demonstrate to Russians that there is nothing to admire about the liberal democratic world. But this is also Putin’s way of building alliances between his domestic audiences and his supporters in Europe and North America, where he has a following on the authoritarian far right, having convinced some naive conservatives that Russia is a “white Christian state.” In reality, Russia has very low church attendance, legal abortion, and a multiethnic population containing millions of Muslim citizens. The autonomous region of Chechnya, which is part of the Russian Federation, is governed in part by elements of sharia law and has arrested and killed gay men in the name of Islamic purity. The Russian state harasses and represses many forms of religion outside the state-sanctioned Russian Orthodox Church, including evangelical Protestants.
The temptation of what is sometimes called realism—the belief that nations are solely motivated by a struggle for power, that they have eternal interests and permanent geopolitical orientations—is as strong as that of isolationism, and can be equally misleading, not least because it appeals to the indifferent. If nations never change, then of course we don’t need to exert the effort to make them change. If nations have permanent orientations, then all we need to do is discover what those are and get used to them. If nothing else, the Ukraine war showed us that nations are not pieces in a game of Risk. Their behavior can be altered by acts of cowardice or bravery, by wise leaders and cruel ones, and above all by good ideas and bad ones. Their interactions are not inevitable; their alliances and enmities are not permanent. There was no coalition to aid Ukraine until February 2022, and then there was. That coalition then made what had appeared to be the inevitable, rapid conquest of Ukraine impossible. By the same token, a different kind of Russian leader, with a different set of ideas, could now end the war quickly.
The more sophisticated autocracies now prepare the legal as well as the propaganda basis for these campaigns in advance, creating traps designed to catch democracy activists even before they gain credibility or popularity. Starting in the first decade of the twenty-first century, autocracies and some illiberal democracies began passing laws, often very similar to one another, designed to monitor and control civic organizations, including apolitical and charitable organizations, often by labeling them terrorist, extremist, or treasonous. So-called anti-extremism legislation in Russia has been used to block anyone who expressed political opposition. Yemen passed a series of laws, starting in 2001, apparently copied from laws passed in Egypt, regulating the activities of foreign nongovernmental organizations; similar laws later appeared in Turkey, Eritrea, and Sudan.
Sometimes the point isn’t to make people believe a lie; it’s to make people fear the liar.
But no one who studies autocratic propaganda believes that fact-checking or even swift reactions are sufficient. By the time the correction is made, the falsehood has already traveled around the world. Our old models never acknowledged the truth that many people desire disinformation. They are attracted by conspiracy theories and will not necessarily seek out reliable news at all.
Like Maduro, Presidents Bashir al-Assad in Syria and Lukashenko in Belarus seem entirely comfortable ruling over collapsed economies and societies.
Everyone assumed that in a more open, interconnected world, democracy and liberal ideas would spread to the autocratic states. Nobody imagined that autocracy and illiberalism would spread to the democratic world instead.
Las acusaciones de corrupción contra los disidentes también desvían la atención de la corrupción del partido gobernante.
Ningún país lidera este bloque, se ve más bien como una aglomeración de empresas cuyos vínculos no están cimentados en ideales, sino en acuerdos
Las autocracias quieren crear un sistema mundial que beneficie a ladrones, delincuentes, dictadores y perpetradores de asesinatos en masa. Podemos detenerlos.
Las autocracias están atentas a las derrotas y victorias del resto del mundo y eligen el momento de sus intervenciones para sembrar el mayor caos
debilitar las democracias y los valores democráticos, en su propio país y en el resto del mundo.
necesitamos redes de abogados y funcionarios que combatan la corrupción dentro de nuestros países y en el resto del mundo, en colaboración
con los activistas democráticos que mejor entienden la cleptocracia.
Los mecanismos de blanqueo de dinero son difíciles de entender y aún más difíciles de controlar.
Los intermediarios estadounidenses y europeos —abogados, banqueros, contables, agentes inmobiliarios y asesores de relaciones públicas y de «gestión de la reputación»— hacen posible esa clase de transacciones. Su trabajo es legal. Nosotros lo hemos hecho así. Podemos ilegalizarlo.
exigir que todas las transacciones inmobiliarias, en cualquier parte de Estados Unidos y Europa, fueran transparentes.
Podríamos exigir que todas las empresas estuvieran registradas a nombre de sus verdaderos propietarios y que todos los fondos de inversión revelaran el nombre de sus beneficiarios.
Podríamos prohibir que nuestros ciudadanos tuvieran dinero en jurisdicciones que favorecen el secretismo
Podríamos crear equipos de control eficaces y ayudarlos a colaborar entre países y continentes. Podríamos hacer todo eso en cooperación con otros socios del mundo entero.
Los poderosos se benefician del sistema actual, quieren conservarlo y tienen lazos profundos en todo el espectro político.
Los individuos que se benefician del secretismo financiero a menudo intentan influir directamente en la política, y eso también hace difícil pararles los pies.
ningún político, partido o país puede reformar este sistema por sí solo. Por
Estados Unidos y sus aliados pueden forjar una alianza internacional contra la corrupción, organizada en torno a la idea de transparencia, rendición de cuentas y justicia, y potenciada por el pensamiento creativo presente tanto en las diásporas de regímenes autocráticos como en las propias democracias.
los autócratas actuales no pueden imponer la censura con facilidad ni eficacia. En cambio, se han centrado en ganarse al público, en conseguir apoyo para sus mensajes explotando emociones como el resentimiento, el odio y el anhelo de superioridad.
La verdad debe entenderse como un camino a la justicia.
Autocracia S.A.que no hay un único líder al frente de las dictaduras, sino unas sofisticadas redes compuestas por estructuras financieras cleptocráticas, dudosos servicios de seguridad y propagandistas profesionales.
and imitate Russia’s anti-Western, anti-LGBT “traditional” messages and who appreciate its lack of critical or investigative reporting. Although the Algerian government has harassed reporters from France 24, the French international channel, RT appears to be welcome now in Algiers. A South African headquarters is under construction. RT Actualidad and RT Arabic seek to reach people in Latin America and the Middle East.
Autocracia, S. A. no
Isolationism is an instinctive and even understandable reaction to the ugliness of the modern interconnected world. For some politicians in democracies, it will continue to offer a successful path to power. The campaign for Brexit succeeded by using the metaphor "take back control," and no wonder: everyone wants more control in a world where events on the other side of the planet can affect jobs and prices in our local towns and villages. But did the removal of Britain from the European Union give the British more power to shape the world? Did it prevent foreign money from shaping U.K. politics? Did it stop refugees from moving from the war zones of the Middle East to Britain? It did not.
