Autocracy For You

 Whether you help come them for you is a different matter.

In the email, I received my book news from The Guardian. This week it included a review of Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum review – the devil you know, A couple of points that opened my weary eyes this morning follow.

But instead of the technology mastering the autocrats, the autocrats have learned to master the technology. In this new age of autocracy, men like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Narendra Modi and Viktor Orbán run entire countries according to their own personal political interest, recharged from time to time by carefully manipulated elections; though last month the voters of India unexpectedly refused to give Modi the majority he needed. Meanwhile the US, whose opinion used to matter just about everywhere on Earth, suddenly seems as intimidating as a scarecrow in a beet field.

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This is more in the nature of an extended essay about the way the world is going than a major study, but it is a masterclass in the marriage of dodgy government to international criminality. Applebaum is particularly good on information-laundering outfits, “typosquatters” which have the appearance of real, dependable outfits (Reuters.cfd instead of Reuters.com, Spiegel.pr not Spiegel.de). These pump out savagely pro-Russian material, which people read on social media and pass on: for instance the fake press release last year which announced that Nato was going to use Ukrainian troops in France to deal with pension protesters. Obviously false, but it still led to smashed windows and broken bones. The Jell-O is firmly stuck to the wall.

Elect Trump and we can add him to the list of dodgy government officials who got tangled up with criminality. He is dodgy enough of a businessman; he was a dodgy president. His interest is in revenge against those who do not think he walks on water, and to make a profit for himself. We will pay the cost. Everyone who votes against him, every person voicing criticism, will find the government coming down on them. Technology will let him enact his retribution. A submissive Congress and federal courts will not stop him from looting the country for his own benefit. Between Moscow and Beijing, there will be a shared joy at Trump hollowing out and betraying whatever was good about this country.

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