Today’s dictators are united — but not by ideology
Modern autocracies operate “not like a bloc but rather like an agglomeration of companies,” says journalist and historian Anne Applebaum.
The germ of the idea that would eventually turn into Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian Anne Applebaum’s new book, Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, came to her on a 2020 trip to Venezuela, a country long plagued by dictatorship, economic collapse, and mass migration.
“Venezuela was once the wealthiest country in South America,” Applebaum tells Big Think. “Now it’s the poorest, and you can see the destruction of the last 20 years everywhere you look. Given the degree to which the government operates against the interests of the nation, you have to ask, where is all power coming from?” The answer, though unclear to most foreign observers, is common knowledge among Venezuelans: not from President Nicolás Maduro himself, but a global network of autocratic states offering military and financial support.