Autocracy, Inc.

The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

By: Anne Applebaum

Narrated by: Anne Applebaum

Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer-prize winning author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them

"A masterful guide to the new age of authoritarianism... clear-sighted and fearless… a masterclass in the marriage of dodgy government to international criminality… (both) deeply disturbing.”—John Simpson, The Guardian • "Especially timely."—The Washington Post

We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents.

But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another, and propagandists share resources and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.

International condemnation and economic sanctions cannot move the autocrats. Even popular opposition movements, from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow, don't stand a chance. The members of Autocracy, Inc, aren't linked by a unifying ideology, like communism, but rather a common desire for power, wealth, and impunity. In this urgent treatise, which evokes George Kennan's essay calling for "containment" of the Soviet Union, Anne Applebaum calls for the democracies to fundamentally reorient their policies to fight a new kind of threat.

©2024 Anne Applebaum (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Autocracy, Inc. is a valuable book for many reasons, but the focus on illicit wealth creation and on those in democracies who enable it is especially timely. So is Applebaum’s recommendation that we wage war on autocratic behaviors wherever they occur.”—The Washington Post

“Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc. provides a trenchant account that indicates that Trump, for all his bluster about America First, is part of a global phenomenon—namely, the rise of an international kleptocracy that often works in tandem.”—Washington Monthly

“Tightly argued, crisply written...The question left unresolved by this engrossing book is whether America will ultimately confront the autocrats—or sidle up to them.”—Air Mail