Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, by Anne Applebaum

Due to technical difficulties on October 12 when this book was originally scheduled to be discussed, the book discussion will now take place on November 9.

This is a Book Group. Reading the book is useful for participation but not mandatory.

Join us on video chat as we discuss this month's book, details below. Newcomers are always welcome, as are new book suggestions. A Zoom link will be visible to those who RSVP.
PLEASE NOTE that no one will be admitted after the first 30 minutes of the meeting in order to avoid disrupting the discussion.

ABOUT Autocracy Inc, by Anne Applebaum
From the Pulitzer-prize winning, New York Times bestselling author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them. 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.

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.