Autocracy, Inc. The Dictators who want to run the World
Anne Applebaum, Allen Lane, £20

THE world is divided into goodies and baddies. Baddies are identified by their nation and their leader, the principal ones being Russia and China with strong supporting roles for Venezuela, Iran, Belarus, Syria, Cuba, Zimbabwe and North Korea. 

They all hang together in a club called Autocracy, Inc, a mixture of shadowy bodies that practice kleptocracy (“government by theft,”) rule with an iron fist, and empower a narrow elite at the top. 

Their primary interests are being evil and acquiring power and money. All the baddies hate democracy. They tell a lot of lies, bedazzling the stupid populations in their own countries and abroad. 

The goodies are “the democratic world, ‘the West’, Nato, the European Union... and the liberal ideas that inspire them.” The quintessential goodie is America which is engaged in a struggle for “freedom and the rule of law around the world.”

It’s easy to tell the difference between goodies and baddies. You can check with any US arm of government or institution. You can read the New York Times, CNN,  BBC or any journal Anne Applebaum has written for. Indeed the book is based on an Applebaum’s 2021 Atlantic article “The Bad Guys are Winning.” 

If you ever wanted to understand the neoliberal mindset this book isn’t going make it make sense. This is a collection of paranoid conspiracy theories and half-truths which are set up head-to-head against alternative, selected, conspiracy theories. A vast number of different news nuggets are served up and either dismissed or confirmed with zero investigation. If any of the baddies did it, it’s bad, if America did it is good. Imagine reading 180 pages of Twitter describing the Marvel Universe as reality. 

There’s no theory behind it, and economics barely gets a mention. US Sanctions are always totally just and in the service of democracy, they just need better enforcement. Western financial systems need reform: the principal players other than the autocrats, are dodgy businessmen, who seem intent on surfing cash through western financial machinery for nefarious ends (when was the last time you heard of a Cuban shell company using a Chinese tax haven?)

There’s no motivation discussed – autocrats are basically just super villains. The masses can play a role as long as they’ve been co-opted into a colour revolution, otherwise they’re just suckers. Applebaum doesn’t mention she’s on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy. 

Applebaum makes brash assertions on recent events which even a cursory read can see are at best questionable, and at worst breathtaking hypocrisy. The existence of nazism in Ukraine is dismissed out of hand. Hamas uses hospitals as shelters. The Uighur genocide is ongoing, despite the fact that we’ve all seen what an actual genocide looks like on our phones. 

The West loves the free press. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden might have something to say on that. The West loves international law. Unless it gets in the way of the US or Israel. The West loves democracy. Indeed, in the West, a dozen times in the last 45 years we’ve been able to choose between neoliberalism or neoliberalism. 

For a sober understanding of history and the challenges of the contemporary world this book is next to worthless. Anything which might turn out to be factual is cherry-picked and counterclaims simply omitted or dismissed. 

This is primarily an ideological work of the ruling class. On the one hand it is quite a ruthless self-exposure: there’s no plan, there’s no theory, there’s no vision. There’s just enemies, and gaps in the evidence can be filled with suspicious imagination. 

On the other hand it should be cause for concern. The book is endorsed as “compulsory reading for every G7 head of government” by former imperial governor Chris Patten and with a call to action by former Labour foreign secretary David Miliband. 

Goodies and baddies is a narrative of implacable enemies that justifies any conflict and only ends in victory or defeat. There’s trouble ahead.