Quotessence
Home / Books / Autocracy, Inc.

Autocracy, Inc.

Book by Anne Applebaum · 17 quotes · Autocracy, Autocracies, Democracy

Filter quotes by topic

AllAutocracyAutocraciesDemocracyAutocratsDemocraciesDictatorshipDictatorshipsFreedomLiarsLiesLyingPoliticsPowerCynicismFalsehoodsFearInternational RelationsIsolationismPropagandaRule Of Law

Autocracy, Inc. Quotes

“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.”

LyingLiesPropagandaLiarsConspiracy TheoriesAutocracyDisinformationConspiraciesFalsehoodsAutocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image

“The political scientist Lisa Wedeen has observed that the Syrian regime tells lies so ludicrous that no one could possibly believe them, for example that Syria, at the height of the civil war, was an excellent tourist destination. These "national fictions," she concluded, were not meant to persuade anyone, but rather to demonstrate the power of the people who were spinning the stories. Sometimes the point isn't to make people believe a lie; it's to make people fear the liar.”

LyingFearPowerLiesLiarsSyriaAutocracyUntruthsAutocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image

“In Putin's Russia, Assad's Syria, or Maduro's Venezuela, politicians and television personalities often play a different game. They lie constantly, blatantly, obviously. But when they are exposed, they don't bother to offer counterarguments. When Russian-controlled forces shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014, the Russian government reacted not only with a denial but with multiple stories, plausible and implausible: they blamed the Ukrainian army, or the CIA, or a nefarious plot in which 298 dead people were placed on a plane in order to fake a crash and discredit Russia. This tactic, the so-called "fire hose of falsehoods," produces not outrage but nihilism. Given so many explanations, how can you know what actually happened? What if you can never know? If can't understand what is going on around you, then you are not going to join a great movement for democracy, or follow a truth-telling leader, or listen when anyone speaks about positive political change. Instead, you will avoid politics altogether. Autocrats have an enormous incentive to spread that hopelessness and cynicism, not only in their own countries, but around the world.”

LyingLiesLiarsCynicismHopelessnessNihilismAutocracyFalsehoodsAutocratsAutocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image

“These selective, occasional murders don't just eliminate difficult opponents; they are also a form of messaging. The Saudi monarchy, the Cuban security services, the Kremlin, and the Chinese police don't have to kill every journalist in order to make all journalists in their countries afraid. Modern dictators have learned that the mass violence of the twentieth century is no longer necessary: targeted violence is often enough to keep ordinary people away from politics altogether, convincing them that it's a contest they can never win.”

PoliticsFearDangerThreatsAutocracyDictatorsMurdersAutocratsAutocraciesAssassinations
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image

“On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine, the first full-scale kinetic battle in the struggle between Autocracy, Inc., and what might loosely be described as the democratic world. Russia plays a special role in the autocratic network, both as the inventor of the modern marriage of kleptocracy and dictatorship and as the country now most aggressively seeking to upend the status quo. The invasion was planned in that spirit. Putin hoped not only to acquire territory, but also to show the world that the old rules of international behavior no longer hold.”

WarDemocracyRussiaDictatorshipUkraineInternational RelationsAutocracyKleptocracy
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image

“There is no liberal world order anymore, and the aspiration to create one no longer seems real. But there are liberal societies, open and free countries that offer a better chance for people to live useful lives than closed dictatorships do. They are hardly perfect. Those that exist have deep flaws, profound divisions, and terrible historical scars. But that’s all the more reason to defend and protect them. So few of them have existed across human history; so many have existed for a short time and then failed. They can be destroyed from the outside and from the inside, too, by division and demagogues. Or they can be saved. But only if those of us who live in them are willing to make the effort to save them.”

FreedomDemocracySocietyLiberalismDictatorshipDictatorshipsDemocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image

“If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those ideas have to be poisoned. That requires not just surveillance, and not merely a political system that defends against liberal ideas. It also requires an offensive plan, a narrative that damages the idea of democracy, wherever it is being used, anywhere in the world.”

PoliticsFreedomDemocracyHuman RightsSurveillancePolitical SystemsAutocracyAutocrats
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image

“...I believe the citizens of the United States, and the citizens of the democracies of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, should begin thinking of themselves as linked to one another and to the people who share their values inside autocracies too. They need one another, now more than ever, because their democracies are not safe. Nobody's democracy is safe. Americans, with our long history of imagining ourselves to be exceptional, would do well to remember that our domestic politics have always been connected to, and influenced by, a larger struggle for freedom and the rule of law around the world.”

FreedomDemocracyRule Of LawInterdependenceAutocracyExceptionalismAmerican ExceptionalismAutocraciesDemocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image

“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.”

BrexitGlobalismIsolationism
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image

“A few autocracies still portray themselves to their citizens as model states. The North Koreans, famously, hold vast military parades with elaborate gymnastics displays and huge portraits of their leader, very much in the Stalinist style. But many of the propagandists of Autocracy, Inc., have learned from the mistakes of the twentieth century. They don’t offer their fellow citizens a vision of utopia, and they don’t inspire them to build a better world. Instead, they teach people to be cynical and passive, because there is no better world to build. Their goal is to persuade people to mind their own business, stay out of politics, and never hope for a democratic alternative: Our state may be corrupt, but everyone else is corrupt too. You may not like our leader, but the others are worse. You may not like our society, but at least we are strong and the democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided, dying.”

PropagandaCynicismNorth KoreaPassivityAutocracyAutocratsAutocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image

“In recent years various dictatorships--of both internal and external origin--have collapsed or stumbled when confronted by defiant, mobilized people." Those are the opening words of From Dictatorship to Democracy, an iconic pamphlet composed by Gene Sharp, an American academic. Sharp emerged from the world of pacifism, civil rights, and antiwar activism in the 1950s to become, by the 1990s, an advocate of nonviolent revolution. A student of Gandhi, King, and Thoreau, Sharp believed that dictatorships survive not because of the unusual powers or personalities of dictators but because most people who live under their rule are apathetic or afraid. He believed that if they overcame their apathy and fear, and that if they refused to acquiesce to the dictator's demands, then the dictator would no longer be able to rule.”

DemocracyRevolutionNonviolenceDictatorshipAutocracyDictatorshipsAutocraciesGene Sharp
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image

“Democracies should work, again in coalitions, to promote transparency, to create international standards, to ensure that autocracies don't set the rules and shape the products. We are becoming aware of all these things very late. Around the world, democratic activists, from Moscow to Hong Kong to Caracas, have been warning us that our industries, our economic policies, and our research efforts are enabling the economic and even the military aggression of others, and they are right.”

DemocracyStandardsResearchEconomicsCoalitionsAutocracyActivistsIndustriesAutocraciesDemocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image

“No democratic government should ever assume that arguments for democracy or for the rule of law are somehow obvious or self-evident. Authoritarian narratives are designed to undermine the innate appeal of those ideas, to characterize dictatorship as stable and democracy as chaotic. Democratic media, civic organizations, and politicians need to argue back and make the case for transparency, accountability, and liberty--at home and around the world.”

DemocracyChaosAccountabilityStabilityTransparencyRule Of LawAuthoritarianismGovernmentsDictatorshipsDemocratic Governments
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image

“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.”

RealismInternational RelationsIsolationismRusso Ukrainian War
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
Create image