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informative
medium-paced
informative
fast-paced
informative
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
fast-paced
informative
informative
fast-paced
medium-paced
This book was not great. After the introduction in which we learned how Western liberal democracy is the only way to organize a society, we learned how it is being undermined by autocracies and, shocker, its own companies that trade with them and support them.
As my next read after Crack Up Capitalism, I couldn't help but compare the two and find Autocracy, Inc sorely lacking. For example, when critiquing the Venezuelan government, the author gave the example of luxury apartments sitting empty while the owners waited for their value to increase. In Crack Up Capitalism, Slobodian highlighted the same thing happening in London as wealthy capitalists around the world use London real estate as a high-yield investment account.
I listened closely, but I didn't hear a single mention of capitalism in Autocracy, Inc. The analysis thus fell very short of describing reality or potential solutions. Applebaum correctly identified opaque corporate practices, surveillance technology from mainly US, Chinese, and Israeli companies, and shady financiers as fueling autocracy around the world, but it never got deeper than that.
The final call was for liberal democracies to unite and end those practices through smart policy. This is laudable in theory, but misses the point that capitalism and democracy are incompatible long-term. We can and should increase corporate transparency and limit surveillance, but without a recognition that capital is behind the autocracies, and the reason for democratic trade with them, these solutions fall far short of the mark.
Where the book really went off the rails was that after naming atrocities of autocratic states and denying that liberal democracies did anything comparable (has Applebaum heard of the CIA, Vietnam, Indonesia, Chile, El Salvador, and the list goes on and on?), she then proceeds to defend the mass murder of Palestinians as a necessary response to the Hamas attack by connecting Hamas, Iran, and other autocratic states and viewing the world as a simple binary, us vs. them. This kind of overly simplistic world view is what leads to and is currently causing atrocities. To add that in near the end of the book completely undermined all prior arguments about the superiority of liberal democracies.
As my next read after Crack Up Capitalism, I couldn't help but compare the two and find Autocracy, Inc sorely lacking. For example, when critiquing the Venezuelan government, the author gave the example of luxury apartments sitting empty while the owners waited for their value to increase. In Crack Up Capitalism, Slobodian highlighted the same thing happening in London as wealthy capitalists around the world use London real estate as a high-yield investment account.
I listened closely, but I didn't hear a single mention of capitalism in Autocracy, Inc. The analysis thus fell very short of describing reality or potential solutions. Applebaum correctly identified opaque corporate practices, surveillance technology from mainly US, Chinese, and Israeli companies, and shady financiers as fueling autocracy around the world, but it never got deeper than that.
The final call was for liberal democracies to unite and end those practices through smart policy. This is laudable in theory, but misses the point that capitalism and democracy are incompatible long-term. We can and should increase corporate transparency and limit surveillance, but without a recognition that capital is behind the autocracies, and the reason for democratic trade with them, these solutions fall far short of the mark.
Where the book really went off the rails was that after naming atrocities of autocratic states and denying that liberal democracies did anything comparable (has Applebaum heard of the CIA, Vietnam, Indonesia, Chile, El Salvador, and the list goes on and on?), she then proceeds to defend the mass murder of Palestinians as a necessary response to the Hamas attack by connecting Hamas, Iran, and other autocratic states and viewing the world as a simple binary, us vs. them. This kind of overly simplistic world view is what leads to and is currently causing atrocities. To add that in near the end of the book completely undermined all prior arguments about the superiority of liberal democracies.
informative
sad
fast-paced
dark
informative
tense
medium-paced
This ended up a major disappointment. While the author rightly describes concern for the propagandist, kleptocratic nature of states like Russia and China, she glosses over the media propaganda of capitalist democracies (I don't think there was a single mention of Fox News). While giving ample time to Russian disinformation peddling about the war in Ukraine, she amplifies the lies put out by Israel that obscure that state's atrocities. Her conclusion that grassroots activists and some Western democracies (whose leaders also benefit from misinformation) must change the laws and international framework for media and money laundering comes across as naive.
challenging
informative
fast-paced