Welcome And Guest Introduction

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Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Our guest this week is Anne Appelbaum, who is a staff writer at the Atlantic and a Senior Fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at John Hopkins University. She is a historian of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. She also hosts the Atlantic's podcast, Autocracy in America, with Peter Pomerantsev. For the past decade, she's written about the dismantling of liberal democracy and about the people inside democracies who help them.

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Anne started her career in 1988 as an economist's correspondent in Warsaw and covered the collapse of communism. She went on to be a deputy editor at The Spectator and a columnist at the Washington Post. Her book Gulag, a History, won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize and Iron Curtain, Red Famine, and The Twilight of Democracy followed. In 2024, she won the Peace Prize of the German book trade. She's now a Polish citizen and is married to Poland's Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski.

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Her latest book is Autocracy Inc. The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. It argues that today's autocracies don't share an ideology. Communist China, theocratic Iran, nationalist Russia, and a handful of others instead cooperate like the separate companies of one big corporation. They trade drones, weapons, markets, and propaganda, and they hide stolen money in an offshore system that Western bankers, lawyers, and accountants built. Crypto, Nigel Farage, and who is paying whom.

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Ivan Mararira, the flag, and how a smear campaign works.

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Am I sure this is true? Fact checkers and knowing who to trust. Democracy is not water from a tap.

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Let's begin.

What Autocracy Inc Really Means

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Hi, this is Umidashnari.

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And Natasha McElhone. And with us today we have Ann Applebaum.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Hey Ann. Thanks for taking the time.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

You've written a book called Autocracy Inc., and the Inc is actually doing a lot of work in that title. If we talk about why you called it that, I think we will have a good starting point for our listeners to understand what the book is about.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

So the book is about a group of countries which are dedicated autocracies. So I'm not talking about backsliding democracies or mid-regimes. I'm talking about very hard-edged democracies who have begun to work together in various ways, but don't share an ideology. So we're talking about communist China and theocratic Iran and nationalist Russia and a handful of other countries who cooperate and they also share ways of making and stealing and hiding money, which is maybe the ink piece of it. Although the ink piece was also my attempt to describe their relationship. So they're not an alliance. They don't necessarily have a cooperation agreement. They don't necessarily do all the same things at the same time. They work together rather like a big corporation that has lots of separate companies. And each company has its own business model, but they get together in areas where they have intersecting interests. And the best illustration of it right now is the way in which they've worked together during Russia's war in Ukraine. So Russia declared a war in Ukraine. We can talk more about why they did that later if you want. But one of the things that happened after they did it was they began to get help from their allies. So the Iranians helped them with drones. The Russians then began to produce those drones, improved them, sent them back to Iran, where Iran now uses them. The North Koreans sent weapons and soldiers. The Chinese provided markets and spare parts. And the group of autocracies who work together have helped Russia continue the war, which wouldn't be possible otherwise. And you can find other examples around the world where they find areas of mutual cooperation. They disagree about many things. They don't, as I said, necessarily share all their goals. But I should maybe finish the introduction by saying that one of the things they do have is a common suspicion of us. And by us, I mean people who live in liberal democracies and especially people who use the language of liberal democracy. So the language of rights, the rule of law, freedom, transparency, accountability, all those things are really anathema to these regimes, which operate on the basis of secrecy, on the basis of rule by law, meaning that these are countries where the people in power decide what the law is at any given moment, and they manipulate judges and courts to their advantage whenever they want to. And who also operate on the basis that they, the people in power, have rights and possibilities and other people don't. And the suggestion that things could be otherwise is one that they constantly need to push back on, both at home, where their opposition movements sometimes use that language, and increasingly around the world where they're trying to undermine liberal democracy in other places. So it's a again, it's not an alliance, it's not a unit, it's not a unified group. It's just a group of countries who share certain values and who work together.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

It sounds like it's the absence of a value system or an ideology rather than sharing. Is the thing that they have in common that there's no constraint?

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Aaron Powell Yeah, I was I think that's a good way to put it. So these are all people who want to rule without checks and balances, without examination from the public or from media of any kind or from any kind of press. They're people who want to control how the law works and they don't want to have any obstacles. And they see, as I said, the language that we use and the way that we run our societies, or at least theoretically the way we run our societies, as a potential threat to that ability. So yeah, these are people who believe that the only thing that matters is power, um, and they use power to keep power and to make money.

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I I

Trump And The Allure Of Autocracy

SPEAKER_01 6:39

don't want to be facetious, but uh a couple of times I did a a sort of thought experiment whilst I was reading your book, and I substituted the name Putin or one of the other autocratic leaders with the name Trump, and it didn't fall apart quite as soon as I thought it might. And I do understand that you're talking about systems and countries where institutions like elections or or judicial procedures, yes, all those sorts of things, um or or opposition, maybe most importantly, are quashed by those in power. And this probably isn't yet entirely the case for Trump. But what is the difference?

SPEAKER_02 7:20

So I think you're right, and this has been my objection to Trump from the first time he emerged into US politics, is that he's someone who likes and admires the language and practices of autocracy. Um, you will notice in his foreign policy he prefers the company of monarchs or of autocrats to that of other democratically elected leaders. He also is someone who aspires to have no checks and balances. He denigrates and seeks to control the media. Uh, he attacks the court system and the judiciary. Uh, he also is very secretive and would prefer people not to know things about how his administration works or how his finances work. Uh, and he sees power and the and the fact that he has it as a reason why he should earn money. So he's really the first American president that we've ever had. Uh, and there I there's really no previous person who competes who's using American policy, American domestic policy, and notably American foreign policy as a source of income for himself. He seems to be trading policies for cash. I can, you know, we can talk about that more length if you want. Um, so he's certainly someone who aspires to that world and admires it. And we haven't, we've had plenty of presidents who've broken rules before or who've done things that were illegal, or who had very often they have family members who try to use their status to make money. I mean, the that goes back to that goes back more than a century. Ulysses S. Grant, I think, had a brother-in-law who tried to make money from from his from his from his relative being the president. So that's not that's nothing new. But we haven't had someone who aspired to this kind of autocratic behavior before. And that's what makes Trump really exceptional. And it also, you're right, is what puts America into a kind of weird category right now. So inside the United States, we do still have elections. Um, I hope they'll continue to be free elections, and we still have a legitimate opposition party, and we do have a court system that's functioning, and we have a media that's functioning, although badly weakened. But, you know, all those things remain in place. But what we have in the US is a leader who aspires to be part of that group. And he he says it sometimes. He he talks about admiring she. He's so powerful, he can do anything. His admiration for Putin is clear. You know, he's he he genuflex to Putin when he's around him. You can see it in his body language. This is what he admires and aspires to. He is constrained in various ways by the American political system. But um, the the world of the autocrats, the world of secret money, of absolute power, of secrecy, this is something he would like to have.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Yes, that's very concerning. And we're worried about that. But I would like to pull us back to the actual autocrats that your book is focused

Offshore Money And Western Enablers

SPEAKER_00 10:11

on. And there are multiple different ways how these operate. I would like to focus on the first thing that you mentioned, and that is that a lot of, I guess, Western institutions are partaking in the ability for these inks to operate. And it would be really interesting to talk about that, to know how they have created a network of various different lackeys that are essentially participating in this.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Yeah, so what the autocratic world has been able to take advantage of in particular, we could take this question in many directions, but in particular has been the offshore world that we created. So alongside the regular economy where people work and they have companies with their names on them and they pay taxes and they are regulated, there is also a kind of shadow economy. There's another economy where people keep their money in tax havens and they don't pay tax on it. Uh, they move it around the world in ways that are designed to be hidden and secret. Um, they don't submit to regulation, they then use their money. In the US, it sometimes ends up as dark money in US politics or it can be used to create in in in secret investments. Um, you can see it in places like London. You can see the, you know, the literal buildings that have been built by people who are hiding or storing money under anonymous title deeds in London property, for example. Um and, you know, I remember I wrote this book before the US election, and it was at a time when the Biden administration was beginning to crack down on this system. It was beginning to change it. Because this is a system that was invented by Western bankers. It was invented by Americans and Europeans. Um, and it was something that was that existed but was quite small and marginal 20 years ago. And it has since then exploded, with the collaboration, I should say, of you know, bankers, lawyers, accountants, um, all kinds of people, many based in in the UK, um, who facilitate it. And uh the Biden administration was beginning to constrain it, was beginning to look at ways to crack down on it, was beginning at least to require that uh registered companies have a real person's name attached to them somewhere in a legal document so that the money isn't moved around anonymously. And of course, the Trump administration since coming to office has blown that up completely and doesn't require anything anymore, has has made it much easier to transfer and hide money and has made all these secret systems much easier. So, I mean, you as I said, you can almost think of it as an alternative economy. There are some estimates. Uh, the British journalist Oliver Buller wrote a book in which he guessed that something like 10% of the world's wealth is hidden in tax havens and in other secretive jurisdictions. Again, we created this system, we facilitate it, it's made possible by our laws, and uh we could bring it to an end. I mean, it's a it's a system that exists because of laws and and rules that we wrote, uh, and yet we don't because too many people are making money out of it.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Aaron Powell Exactly. And I think the interesting thing about it is that a lot of people are pointing to crypto as like the thing that now is, you know, the cesspit. And that is true, but very likely. But uh ultimately, I think a lot of these illicit money flows probably in much higher volume into these havens than crypto is even making it down.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

Yeah, I mean, cryp crypto is an is uh almost a more sophisticated version of this because what the main point about crypto is that it's secret, um, that it's a way of keeping money and making money secretly. Um and the what's the point of it being secret? The point of it is to evade taxes or to break the law. And that's why crypto is used by criminals, it's why it's used by money launderers, it's why it's used by autocratic leaders who've stolen money from their countries and want to hide it in some way. Um, or it's or it's why Donald Trump uses it. He uses a crypto company that people can invest in anonymously. Um presumably he knows who the investors are, but nobody else knows, and that means that people can, in effect, bribe him by paying, by investing in his company, by paying money into it. So crypto is a is a more elaborate, more sophisticated version of something that's been around for a while.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

But why haven't we got on top of this? Why why is it legal?

SPEAKER_02 14:24

It's it's legal because people are making so much money out of it. It's legal because in the case of both crypto and the clandestine world of finance, because some pieces of it are legitimate, um, and because it it would require an enormous act of political will to shut it down, and it would be difficult to do. And as I said, you saw the beginnings of it happening in the US under Biden, and now you have who we're going really in the opposite direction. Simply people in power making too much money out of it.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

So the fear, I mean, the political argument is that, oh, well, if we come down on that, then we'll lose investment in this country, and these people will leave, and they will no longer uh you know uh that that capitalist argument is it?

Crypto As Secrecy And Influence

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Yeah, I mean, you have an interesting case right now in the UK. Um, you have the leader of a very important political party of Nigel Farage, the leader of reform. As it turns out, he has been taking money in clandestine ways or not untransparent ways from people who come from the crypto industry. Um, and he's also been lobbying for legislation that's good for the crypto industry. And it's a pretty, it's a pretty clear link. You know, it's uh I mean he takes money from people who don't even live in Britain um in order to lobby for legislation that would make that would make it easier for them to continue hiding their money, in essence. I mean, I'm I'm I'm shortening the story to make it to make it easy. Um, but and you know, and he's somebody who, if he won political office, if he became prime minister, uh then he would have an interest in allowing that whole industry to explode. And that is actually is what's happening in the United States right now.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Right. One part of the playbook is de facto these offshore havens as you described them. And also I would say the yeah, lackeys, I called them, that actually facilitated a lot of that. This these are, you know, European banks and American banks and you know, uh law firms and accountants. High-end law firms. Yeah, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

I mean it's it's uh it's a it's a legitimate business. I mean, they're it they're not whether it's not illegal.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

But you seemed in your book optimistic about being able to untangle this and legislate against it and tie up the loopholes. It sounds deeply complicated. Where is the political will gonna come from to do that and how long would it take? I mean, a term the government, you know, it's every four years. How how would you embark upon um that kind of restructuring?

SPEAKER_02 16:54

So again, I was more optimistic before the US election um that it was possible because you had people in the government and you had people in Congress who were talking about it and working on it, and you had beginning the beginnings of legislation that was beginning to work. Um, you know, it's gonna be harder now without American leadership. I there has been in the UK some movements in this direction. Actually, David Lamy was talking a lot about it when he was first named uh foreign secretary. Um I know that Andy Burnham has other things to do, but it may be that in the next couple of years he also begins to look at it. You have you have some shrinking of possibilities. I know that it's harder now to create an anonymous company in Britain than it used to be. And so they're beginning to be more and more rules. But, you know, it would take a concerted effort, I think, of a group of countries. You would need to have a movement of um countries in Europe, countries in Asia who wanted to do this together. And I I don't see it right now. I mean, as I said, with American leadership, I could have imagined it. It's harder right now, though.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

I think the the way I see this is that if people in Western democracies are using those illicit ways to create value for themselves in some shape or form, then they will continue to do that until other illicit forces that are using those same rails and those own pathways are creating some existential threat to them and their system. Maybe. And so that may be actually the straw that breaks the camel's back. We'll see. Uh there's hope for for that, which is terrible, but like that's the hope that we have. Let's talk about the next way these inks are using rails to uh manipulate the world and do their

Propaganda At Scale On The Internet

SPEAKER_00 18:34

deeds. You spoke very eloquently about the airwaves, uh, essentially the media as a path that they use.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

So one of the things that autocratic states also now seek to do is shape not only the conversations inside their own countries, but also to shape the conversation around the world. Um to some extent, this is nothing new, right? I mean, the Soviet Union also had propaganda, and the Chinese have always wanted everyone to know how great China is. I mean, this is this is some of this is is the oldest story in the book. Um, but what we have seen is that the internet gives them new ways to do it and new ways to tell their stories, again in using clandestine methods that weren't available before. Technology has made this possible. And so you have a whole series, for example, of fake websites or websites that seem local, they seem like they're from Brazil or Chile or Argentina, but actually they're run out of Moscow and they're designed to create alternative views of politics in those countries. Um, or you see, you know, the Russians have created particular campaigns. I mean, for example, after uh after October the 7th, they they created a campaign that was on the one hand anti-Semitic and on the other hand, anti-Palestinian. There was a particular exposure of how this was done in France that was designed to create more antagonism among people in France. Um different countries have had different interests, but um very often what the autocracies are seeking to do is to divide and undermine and uh really deepen the conflicts inside Western democracies. Um, to and Russia has a particular interest in deepening conflicts between European countries in order to weaken the European Union and to weaken NATO and to and to push narratives that are both anti-democratic and or anti-liberal, um, or again, anti-unity. Their interest is in breaking up, in undermining the idea of democracy in in any given country, but also in the relationship between countries. And so there are there are multiple tactics that they use. As I said, I've talked about one of them, you know, creating fake websites, um, creating fake campaigns. Many, many of the social media accounts that you will run across on social media platforms like X or like Facebook. Facebook says they don't allow it, but you know, there have been many experiments that show that they do. Um, many of the accounts you come across will look like they come from Country X, like they're British or they're Nigerian, um, whereas in fact they're Russian or they're um, in some cases, Venezuela. And the Venezuelan previous the Venezuelan regime also had had whole groups of bots who they would run, and they would run, you know, they would have them run uh take part in one political campaign, and then when they weren't used anymore, they might take part in another political campaign. In other words, these are these are systems that have been created over many years. I mean, some of what they do is not that different from what Western political parties do or Western advertisers. So they take advantage of the systems that they have. The additional piece of it is the clandestine nature of it. You know, they're hiding where the campaigns are coming from.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

You you're basically saying they're using targeting methods that advertisers would use, but they they they pretend to be uh, you know, people who they aren't. Um

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Yeah, in the in the book I talk about some specific examples. Again, there are specific websites that have been exposed as you know, you know, they look like they're coming from one place and really they basically intelligence services or others were able to trace them to somewhere else. I mean, actually, this has been around for a while. We first started talking about this at scale in the US election campaign of 2016, when there was a, you know, the the Russians participated by um by creating Facebook accounts and other social media accounts that were designed to shape conversations, especially in particular states. I it's always been controversial to talk about because it's not entirely clear. You know, it's not always easy to trace where where accounts were created. And also there isn't really a way to measure what impact they have. You you never really know why someone votes one way or another, or why someone acquires their opinions one way or the other. And to you can't really claim that the Russians did X or Y because, you know, it's not um there's no mathematical formula that can prove it. But that they try to do it and that they can be successful in at least getting their narratives taken up or or adopted or taken seriously, is you know, you can you can see it. I mean, you don't have to need a any any kind of secret access in order to understand that.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Aaron Powell You mentioned a story which is, I guess, the

Smear Campaigns That Crush Hope

SPEAKER_01 23:22

inverse. It was a smear campaign about a, I think it was a youth pastor, a Zimbabwean youth pastor who did the hashtag this flag citizens, was it? That it was a beautiful story that started off when you're in the midst of this kind of political apathy or where you just feel so disenfranchised and so powerless and this person.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

Yeah, so one of the one of the effects of modern authoritarian propaganda, and this is one of the reasons why it's different from the previous Soviet version, if you can if you're old enough to remember any of that, it's not just, I don't know, Putin saying how great he is and how wonderful Russia is. It's also the putting out of multiple different narratives that are designed to make people feel confused and be uncertain what's true and what's not true. It's also something if you if you're on the subject of Trump, it's something that Trump does also. Um and so people hear multiple conflicting stories all day long and they begin to say, right, I don't know what's true and what's not true. I'm just gonna stay home. Um letting the zone. Yeah, I mean, we've heard Steve Bannon describe it. We've heard others describe this as a method of of modern politics, and it works particularly well now because there's so many ways in which you can overwhelm people with messaging, which wasn't the case, you know, 30 years ago. Um one of the ways that some activists in autocratic countries have tried to fight this is through using personal or idealistic messages that can bring people together, uh, you know, around symbols or around ideas. And one of the examples that I write about in the book on social media. On social media. Right, exactly. And one of the examples I wrote in the book was a Zimbabwean youth pastor called Evan Mawariri, who made a video uh, I think out of just personal frustration. He's somebody who had been abroad, he came back to the country, he was frustrated by the level of poverty, by this the this capture of the state by a clique of people in the Zimbabwean government, by the deprivation everybody else felt of not having any influence over the regime, over having uh, over having so little, it's also profoundly corrupt state. Actually, I write a little bit about that as well. Um, and he made a very heartfelt video about the Zimbabwean flag, talking about the colors and what they symbolize. Um, you know, the green is for our beautiful countryside and so on, um, and his frustration with the regime. And this video went viral and became a, you know, everybody saw it and talked about it. And it became, for a while in Zimbabwe, it became a kind of fashion to carry a Zimbabwean flag, you know, to say, you know, we are patriots, we want to reform our country and we want to change it. And Evan became for a while the leader of this movement. Um, and there, there were, it went through some different phases. There was one moment where they were actually having some people in the regime were having public meetings with him, um, and it looked like it felt to a lot of people like maybe he could begin to spark change. Um, what then happened was a version of what we were talking before was a smear campaign that was destroyed, that was designed to destroy and undermine him. So we were talking before about, you know, autocratic countries trying to undermine democratic political arguments or democratic political systems. This is something that took place inside an autocratic country. And the point of it was to make people become disillusioned with him. So imply that he's corrupt, imply that he's cowardly. Um, at one point he was in prison, at another point he left, he was told, he was warned that he would be arrested again, he was told to leave the country. When he did leave the country, which by the way, the the revolutionary leaders of Zimbabwe had also left the country during their revolution some decades before, um, in he was then accused of, oh, you're just running back to the Western world where you're going to make money and so on. And they very effectively undermined the idealism that had briefly surrounded him. Um, and this is now something that is, it's almost a playbook. You can see it being used, and you can see it being used not just in dictatorships, but also in democracies. Somebody rises above the pack, begins to inspire hope and idealism. And then the idea is to destroy them by accusing them of corruption, by mocking them. And you can see it happening right now. For example, there's a um there interestingly also someone who I don't think he's technically a youth pastor, but he sounds like one. There's a candidate running for the Senate in Texas called James Telerico, who's very young. Yeah, we just watched a video of his he's very young. He's he's a Christian, he's using Christian language, he's quite brave. Um, how is he being attacked? He's not being attacked on the basis of his ideas, he's being attacked on the grounds that he's not masculine, you know, and so there's a whole attack on him that he's a trans person or he's gay or he's not masculine or he's low testosterone, something like this. In other words, the the smear campaign is designed to undermine him, to make him seem less credible. There's not a conversation about ideas. It's rather, as I said, it's a smear campaign.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

And this is this is presumably the people that would vote for him um would be rather glad that he doesn't have those attributes. The other two famous Maybe not in Texas, I don't know. Yeah, well, um Aung Sung Suchi and um Navalni were the other and we we don't uh people will be familiar with their stories, but I remember at the time when those headlines come out, you start to think, oh my goodness, this heroic figure that I've been campaigning for. And I've and you feel abashed and embarrassed and you step away. And and it was when you discussed that that I think it was was it his friend who he met up with years later? And no, it wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 29:13

It was a it was a Venezuelan leader.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

It was a the Venezuelan leader. Yes, so sorry. And and he, a friend, was very honest and said, We started to doubt you, we started to be suspicious. There was just so much evidence mounting. And so that was going to be my next question.

Fact Checking In A Post Truth World

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Even throughout your book, I was thinking, well, someone else could read Anne's book and think, oh, this is another conspiracy theory. She's just amassed all of this data and she's found these sources. I mean, that's the world that we're living in where we're just so post-truth, we just don't know what to believe. There is overwhelm for everyone I know, even people who do your job and who are legacy journalists and who really care about truth and really, really care about the sources of where they get their information. We were talking to Alessandra from Reuters the other day, and just how impossible it almost seems to be right now.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

Um No, I mean, all you can all I can do is do my best. I mean, I actually have a kind of formula that I say to myself when I'm written something. You know, am I sure this is true? You know, why do I think this is true? And I go through in my head, I don't always I don't always write it like that, but I think, you know, am I sure that this paragraph is correct? What am I basing it on? And I I try and fact check myself, and I'm also lucky enough to work at a publication that has fact checkers. And I demands it, yeah. Sometimes they're very annoying. You know, they there's a there's a there's a famous story. This wasn't me, this was somebody else who described uh I can't remember now, it was a conversation with an executive as we were speaking, the sun was setting, and the fact checker called up the you know, the company and said, Is the office of this particular executive um west facing or east-facing? You know, couldn't could they have been seeing the sun setting from his window? You know, that kind of stuff can can drive you crazy. But I like having someone go through at least my more serious, more um, you know, my more research articles and asking me, are you sure about every sentence? And, you know, we just do the best we can and everybody makes mistakes. But um, you know, I I I'm very conscious of how many different sources there are and how contradictory they are. And I, you know, I my my other only advantage is that I've been doing this for a long time and I've learned who who I trust and who I don't trust.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Well, also Ameed made a point before we got on air, which was you are part of a vanguard of journalists and writers that people trust. But I guess what I'm fearful of is with my kids' generation, for them, who are the people that they trust, you know, they are getting their news on TikTok. This is another whole conversation which we won't go into, but yeah, I think it's uh it's taking us off topic.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

But my my point was rather that y you have built your reputation, and your reputation is important to you towards your peer group, and your peer group is gonna keep you honest when you have a peer group that doesn't care about honesty and truth as a value system. Well, you'll say anything you want. And unfortunately, comparing the two seemingly on TikTok is not really easy. Um and and you know, there's some people who also don't really want to uh hear the truth. They want to hear what they want to hear, and it's very hard to convince someone that doesn't want to believe what is true, but what they want to hear of anything, and what we only can hope for is to get the five to ten percent in the middle who are still undecided and are still believing in truth.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

Yeah, there you know, although it's also true that sometimes stories break through. Uh yeah, exactly. I mean, actually the Nigel Ferrar story that we've just discussed, I have the feeling that is beginning to break through. Maybe we'll see um whether it whether it reaches whether it reaches people about the the real nature of his project. Um but there's another example.

When Closed Systems Start To Crack

SPEAKER_02 32:58

Recently in Hungary, um we had an election where the the former prime minister of Hungary was a little bit like Donald Trump, was an aspiring authoritarian. Hungary is a democratic system, it's part of the European Union. Um they have elections, they had a legitimate opposition. Um, but over 16 years in power, he had managed to control a huge part of the state. 90% of the media, all the regulatory agencies, quite a lot of the court system, and so on. Um, nevertheless, a few investigative journalists and one um charismatic opposition leader did break through. People began to understand that this closed system is not what it seems. Uh, people understood that it was corrupt. People could see the decline of the Hungarian economy. One of the things that happens when you have a country that becomes more and more authoritarian is it very often goes down economically because the ruling party is controlling more of the business decisions, and um you, you know, the the the people in power have less interest in creating, you know, wealth and prosperity and more interest in creating money for themselves. That happened in Hungary. And it did, you know, so in a in a country where many people got-I was there like three weeks before the election, and many of the people I talked to still couldn't believe that Hungarians were going to vote against Viktor Orbán. They, you know, um, and we were still at the stage of whispering in coffee shops, you know, it was kind of and and then there was the kind of blowout election where, as it turned out, you know, some of the messages had got through. So you never know, you do have moments of sea change when when when people are ready to hear something different.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and we should hope for those.

Ceuta And The Politics Of Viral Panic

SPEAKER_00 34:44

You have written recently about uh what just happened in the Spanish territory in Morocco. Uh it is again one of those situations where the airwaves were potentially used. Um maybe you want to talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02 34:58

It was a very strange story. Um because I actually first saw it. I saw videos from from the this incident before I really understood what they were and where they were coming from. Um this was an incident where um so there's a there's a Spanish city called Ciuta, which is which is on in North Africa. It's a kind of little Spanish enclave in Morocco, although actually it predates Morocco. It was there before there was Morocco. Um but doesn't that's that's a separate thing. Um and what happened was is over the span of a few days, and then particularly over um, it was a couple of days at the end of July, uh huge numbers of people started swimming around a barrier into the enclave from Morocco into Spain. Um, and this definitely did happen. It's a real event. There were real videos. The videos show lots of young people, especially young men, kind of climbing out of the sea and climbing walls and jumping over fences and sort of running through um through police patrols. So it definitely happened. Um, but the way it was portrayed, including by some of uh reform party leaders, by the German far right, by vice president J.D. Vance, um, was as if the Spanish state had broken down, all these people had just entered Europe, and now they were, and he, I think it was Robert Jenrick who tweeted, and now they're on their way to Calais, you know, right? And they're on their way to actually there were several things that happened. First of all, it was an it was it was an orchestrated event in that somebody created a social media campaign that was convincing people to do this. There were, you know, people were being shown information about where to buy goggles and flippers and swimming costumes, um, how to get into Spain, and there was a false information that once you get into Suda, you will be, you will have access to Schengen. Actually, Suda is in that sense not part of Schengen. You have to have a passport and a visa in order to get from Suda to the rest of the mainland Spain. So there was no danger that any of these people were going to get into Spain or into or into Schengen or into or or or to certainly not to the UK. So that was not true. And then the the second part of it was the Spanish, I think, were genuinely surprised by these huge numbers that suddenly appeared on a, you know, on from nowhere on one day. Um, but actually they were able to take control of the situation, and then some 90% of these people had left within 24 hours. Um, so you know, it was an example of a, they were surprised. I mean, I don't think they wanted to shoot people in the water and they didn't want too many people to drown. Actually, more than 70 people did drown. So it is also, in addition to everything else, a horrible tragedy. Um, but they they escorted most of the people back to Morocco. Of the 60, 70,000 who came over the border, there's something like it it looks like between two and four thousand people left, and those are mostly non-Moroccans, and then some children who are harder to send back. And and over the next few days, we'll find out what happens to them. But I mean, the vast majority, tens of thousands of people, just went home.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

Um of course, these facts will be left out.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

And so what people will see, and you know, if if you look at, you know, if you look at the posts that were originally made, they haven't been corrected. So what people will see is thousands of people overwhelmed the Spanish police and now they're heading for the UK. And that hasn't been corrected. And Elon Musk had a um a post, you know, that reached tens of millions of people that also said more or less that you know this is an invasion and it's coming from the Arab world and they're trying to overrun us, and all these people are still here. But you know, even when as those posts are up now, those people are not here anymore. I mean, not not in Souda, which anyway is not part of Schengen.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Um and And, you know, as a Londoner, unfortunately, we have this uh story that's continuously out there that we live in some sort of hellhole run by criminals and like Islamists, and uh there's Shakira law that is being applied here. Yes, Shakira law, I said that. Um so this is essentially, you know, uh uh part of that whole machinery.

SPEAKER_02 38:59

It's part of the machinery. So the the narrative about invasion, about the destruction of Europe, about European decline, all these narratives are very useful to far-right parties who are seeking to delegitimize the liberal democratic states of Europe. And they're useful inside the US as well. Um, I mean, it's it's it's hard for a lot of Europeans to accept, but the the sort of ruling clique in the in the US very much sees European liberal democracy as a kind of enemy because Europe represents a kind of alternate ideal, right? I mean, these are still countries where there are center-right and center-left parties, and there are still certain kinds of freedoms, and um there's still the language of liberal democracy and the rule of law is in use. And it's in the interests of people like J.D. Vance to undermine that. And I mean, in that sense, you know, you again you asked at the beginning about which way Trump was going. This is one of the things that Trump and his clique have in common with the Russians, is that they have a common interest in undermining Europe and undermining the political systems in each country and also in under undermining the connections between them and undermining the EU. They have slightly different motives. And the Russians want to undermine NATO for obvious reasons. Um, Americans are very influenced by the tech companies who mostly dislike Europe because they don't want to be regulated. And Europe has the ability to regulate them, which almost nobody else has. Um so you know, it's it's it's in everybody's interest to do this. Um and you're we're also though now at the point, this was very clear from the Suda story, but it's very clear that um people are afraid of these far-right narratives. So all kinds of political, you know, European political leaders, um, you know, in in in Denmark and in Italy, you know, immediately their first reaction was to say, you know, this is this is terrible. And they their sort of first reaction was criticize Spain. Um and there are other reasons some people don't like the current Spanish government for various reasons, but I think the real reason was, you know, everybody's afraid now of these images because everybody knows these images are very powerful, they scare people, they were used during the Brexit campaign by Brexiteers, they've been used in Germany to support the AFD with the German far right, and everyone's afraid of these images. Um as I said, even though the numbers of illegal immigrants are going down, even though you have some examples, as in Suda, of the of the Border Patrol functioning, um, even though we can see that these incidents are being orchestrated by somebody, um, and so it's not as if they're entirely organic. Um, nevertheless, those those kinds of images are can be used to scare people.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

It's so strange though that post-Brexit there's been so much journalism in Carol Cardwallet. I mean, lots and lots of people have spoken and written about this, I'm sure you have as well. And we've seen that be dismantled. That what was proliferated, what was amplified was just a thread of something that was perhaps baseless anyway and never got taken down, and to to your point earlier earlier. How do we remain so naive when we're so sophisticated? W we all use social media all the time and we post things ourselves and we know what happens. We know what the instrument there's been enough documentaries, enough press about this. I don't know how we're being so easily manipulated still.

SPEAKER_02 42:37

This incident for m for me, this was the thing that was most extraordinary about it was, I mean, we, you know, like you didn't you couldn't see that this was an orchestrated event and that it was being used by the far right, and everybody fell for it anyway. It was very um you're you're right. I I I I I think it's because we we see these things, we know how they work, we understand it, but we don't really have a defense mechanism against it. And um, you know, people don't there isn't a way for political leaders to communicate the truth to to you know to citizens um and or in a way that's believable. And that gets you back to the previous part of our conversation.

SPEAKER_01 43:18

Yeah.

How The Autocracy Network Is Shifting

SPEAKER_01 43:19

So how do you think autocracies have changed since you wrote your book? Because I remember you saying at the beginning that there were certain things that you felt, even though it's an incredibly recent book, were already out of date. Where's the needle gone?

SPEAKER_02 43:34

So, I mean, the main the main change is in the US. Um the US is not the leader of some kind of democratic alliance that can push back against these states. It's now a much more playing a much more ambiguous role. But there are other changes as well. So we have um a very weird power shift in Venezuela. Um a country that was very much part of this autocratic network. In fact, it was, you could argue, as And my men of the Venezuelan opposition did argue that one of the few reasons why the Maduro regime stuck around so long was that it had support from Russia, it had support from China, and even support from Iran, which if you think about it is very strange. Why should Iran and Venezuela have nothing to do with each other culturally or geographically or historically? Why should they be allies? But they were. And you nevertheless had, I think, because of Russia being preoccupied with the war in Ukraine and Iran being you know preoccupied with the struggle, Hamas's struggle really against Israel, they both lost a lot of their ability to control events, and we had this collapse in Venezuela precipitated by the US. I mean, that's now a very odd situation. You have the US kind of in charge of America of Venezuela's oil industry. You have a new, the same regime is there, but with a different leader who's friendly to the United States, but hasn't changed much yet about the political system. But it it's certainly a place that is no longer part of the autocratic network in the same way. Um, you could also, I suppose, argue that the US's war on Iran has weakened Iran in some ways. Iran is also now not as able to play as big a role internationally as it could, you know, three years ago when I when I wrote the book. And and generally speaking, I think Russia's withdrawal, you know, it's Russian Russia having less troops and less weapons to use in Syria or to use in Africa has meant there's a kind of weakening of the network. Um and you have some you have other shifts. Syria, you know, the revolution in Syria was a was another um very unexpected, uh almost kind of miraculous shift. You had a country that felt like it was going to be occupied forever by the Assad family, and I think they were in charge for like 50 years, half a century. Um, and they were very much backed by the Russians and by the Iranians, and yet they they fell to a revolutionary movement, which I th which which won, I mean, it's a little bit like Hungary. I mean, it was the the the regime had was so weakened by its its inability to pay its own workers, and it was so weak economically that finally you had a you had a a change regime, which anyway to something different. So you have you know you have some weakening of the network, and yet in other places you have them we're still working together, as I said at the beginning in the war in Ukraine, and in you know, you can you can see the network beginning to gather around Iran as well.

Coalitions And Local Work That Matter

SPEAKER_00 46:30

Despite it all being quite overwhelming and you talking to us about you know big problems, you are pushing back against uh inevitability. And you were speaking about the progress that the Biden administration was making. Um what does coherent resistance against all this look like? What are the levers that need to be pulled and can be pushed uh to to push back against all this? And again, I think maybe you're less hopeful because the US is kind of flipped to an extent now than you were in that book, but um it would be still good if you can you know give us a rallying cry.

SPEAKER_02 47:06

I'll I'll talk at two levels, right? I mean, because there's a there's a kind of international politics level and then there's an individual level, right? I mean, at the level of international politics, I think there's a lot of room for um, I mean, it's maybe unfortunate origins, but the expression coalitions of the willing. So countries who are willing to work together to solve particular problems are going to be in the future more useful than, I don't know, the UN or other international institutions that were created in the 20th century.

SPEAKER_00 47:34

So maybe Mark Carney's kind of rallying. Yeah, he was right.

SPEAKER_02 47:38

I mean, so may maybe a, you know, a thing with a building in New York or Geneva is not going to solve our problems, but a group of leaders who meet by Zoom and agree to work on something together is. I mean, you can already see that working in the case of Ukraine, where you have this, there is a thing called the Coalition of the Willing. And although technically the US is part of it, it's not really the leader anymore. But it's includes Europe, it includes um South Korea, it includes Australia, it includes a lot of other countries as well, Canada. Um, and you see them working together to keep Ukraine armed and keep the financial situation of the country going. And that's actually, it's working. Um you could imagine a coalition like that being created to push back against kleptocracy if you, if you had, if people were bothered enough by it or against the abuses of the crypto industry. Um you could imagine uh you know a coalition like that, you know, working to aid political prisoners. I mean, you you could you could you could see how that could be used as a different way of thinking about um how democracies, or it doesn't always have to be democracies, democracies are countries that are concerned about the rule of law or want to solve particular problems can do it. You know, rather than sitting back and waiting for the UN Secretary General who's maybe never going to arrive, you know, or the American president who's distracted by his ballroom, you know, maybe maybe it's time for other countries to take the initiative and begin doing things. And you can begin to see that starting to happen. Um, and so that's true. I think at a at a different level, I mean, there is a lot that individuals can do. I know people, you know, I tend to write about geopolitics, which can feel very overwhelming. Um, but you can also, you know, a lot of politics is very local. A lot of it starts with people participating in local events or local organizations. I mean, everybody who lives in a democracy has has a has a local political campaign. I mean, there are council elections and there are as well as you know, parliamentary elections. And people I know that people feel this kind of barrier to getting involved in politics, like you have to be a certain kind of person to do that. But you know, um, or I people often say to me, I wouldn't know what to do. Like what would I mean the answer is you go and you go to the organization and you ask, what can I do? And then once you're inside and once you're beginning to do things, then you'll then you'll know. You'll meet other people who are doing things, and then you're involved in politics. So it's I want people to to to think of politics as something that can belong to them. I think for a long time, essentially our systems worked too well. And we had this sense of politics and democracy was something like it was water coming out of a tap, right? And you just turn on the tap and you have democracy, and you don't really have to think about where does the water come from or how does it get here or is it clean, you know. That somebody else takes care of that. And politics is kind of like that. If I just show up every four years and I vote, that's all I really have to do. Actually, it's not always like that. And if you go to a country like Ukraine or like Hungary, or a country where democracy doesn't work so well, you learn pretty fast that it only changes when people do stuff. And, you know, all of us who are lucky enough to live in liberal democracies now, I'm not talking about people who live in Russia and who'll go to prison for doing stuff, but um, you know, we all have these possibilities. We can be involved, we can give money, we can pay attention, we can join groups, we can, you know, it's not it's not just about demonstrations, it's about doing the actual work of democracy and and campaigns and and figuring out who are the local people who are good and and supporting them. Um and all of us can do that, and it's really only by doing that that you get any kind of political change happening.

SPEAKER_01 51:23

Aaron Powell If autocracy behaves more like a sort of software and it's frictionless, it there aren't sort of borders. I think you you use some analogy in your book about uh that you see to power was a palace. I I can't remember the language that you, but was pl a place, and and now it's no. Yeah, it exactly. And and shell companies, telegram channels, sovereign wealth funds, mercenaries, crypto, w w whatever. It it feels, I think, for people very nebulous and very overwhelming. It's sort of like a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 51:54

Well, this is why I'm this is why I'm saying that you if you if the best way to cope with feeling overwhelmed is to do something yourself. And locally. And locally. And or I should say it depends on who you are. You know, I mean, if you are a lawyer, um, then there will be there will be lots of legal cases you can be involved in pro bono. Um if you are um a school teacher, you can create a unit for your class to teach them about how to know what's true and what's not true on the internet. You know, if you are someone who lives in a in an area where there's an interesting political competition, you can take part in it. Um look at what you have access to, what skills you have, what what interests you have, and you can you can do things. And it's really by doing things that this sense of helplessness, you know, I'm so overwhelmed by mercenaries in Africa, you know, this sense of helplessness can be overcome because it's really through having better people in our system and through having better politics in places like the UK, you know, or the US that we that we that we're eventually able to fight back. I I should also say that one of the things that autocrats take advantage of, and this is also true of Donald Trump, is that national politics and international politics seem very far away to people, right? It's very, you know, and very often, for example, in the US, national politics is often way worse than local politics. So this horrible polarization and this awful language that people use, you know, when you go down to like the election in a particular city or a state, it's often not that bad. You know, the candidates are okay and they're it's not only insults and uh, you know, and so very often the the politics that are less ugly and l and more real can can be local. And it's very important that local politics survives. Um one of the things that the Russians have tried to do is make all news stories are always national and geopolitical, and they never tell you what's happening like in your city. And it's very important that people stay involved in their cities because it's it's be in contact with real life, I think that first of all, that gives you the sense that not everything's hopeless, and also that's where you can make some kind of change.

SPEAKER_00 54:05

Yeah, the digital twin that is portrayed about the world that we're seeing is usually not the a twin. It is indeed a figment that is a useful story to people who want us to believe in it. And I think the problem really is that I feel like those forces have convinced a lot of people to go on the streets, and we're seeing a lot more demonstrations and a lot more movement, political movements and all that than we've ever seen before. But we've also got a lot of people who have become cynical on the other side, right? And I think what I like about what you're saying is it can't just be the people who feel angry that are being, you know, pushed onto the streets, and the people who are not angry and have a good life in some shape or form are sitting at home are cynical. Even those people need to go out and do things and push back.

SPEAKER_02 54:58

Also, I mean, I'm not against demonstrations, and some of them are fun and they have uses and so on, but they're not the only way you get political change. You get political change through the mechanisms of democracy, assuming you are lucky enough to live in one, which the three of us do anyway. Um, and so if you're lucky enough to live in one, then you should, you know, figure out what is the best way you can participate in yours, you know. And you know, demonstrations might not be the only way. That's you know, the the change comes through elections.

SPEAKER_00 55:28

Absolutely.

Final Takeaways And Thanks

SPEAKER_00 55:29

And I'm quite happy that we managed to land in a very productive and constructive place, even though we're talking about something very overwhelming and maybe sometimes uh a bit scary. So I really want to thank you for you doing your work, Anne, by writing such a great book and and showing us uh what's happening out there and also helping us to think about ways how we can push back.

SPEAKER_01 55:50

It was just so helpful and so good to read your book, and it was so forensic, but not alienating. It was so relatable to. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Um it was like looking under the hood or backstage of something that I'm largely blind to and I'm embarrassed by that ignorance, but you brought it into um into focus and into light, and it's something I'll actually look out for now in a way that I just wouldn't have had that tool had I not read your book. So thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 56:16

No, thank you. That's very that's nice to hear. Um I'm I'm an admirer of both of you, so thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 56:22

Thank you, Anne.