Lithouse Podcast

The word «dictator» might make you think of a select few evil men of the past, who sat alone on their thrones and ruled far-flung kingdoms with an iron fist. Today’s reality is something very different: The autocrats of the world are playing on the same team, doing deals in secrecy to maintain power and keep their riches. They share troll farms and other resources across political lines, either they’re communists, nationalists, or Shia radicalists, and hide their wealth in tax havens all over the globe. And Western states play along.This is the current situation, as described by Anne Applebaum in Autocracy, Inc., her new book on the hidden network of autocrats and autocratic regimes that has blossomed since the turn of the century. In the book, Applebaum describes the golden age of dictatorship as she charts the political and economic ties that unite the dictators of the world – often with democratic states as useful idiots or direct facilitators.Anne Applebaum is one of the world’s foremost au