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I had the chance to speak with Anne Applebaum, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian and journalist who is an expert on authoritarianism. (Sign up for her substack here and let her know News Not Noise sent you!).
If you’re feeling confused, Applebaum’s words are clarifying. She has seen actions like Trump’s before and provides historical parallels.
Applebaum describes what Musk/Trump/Vance are doing as a form of rapid, bloodless regime change. She argues that there are similarities to the “assault” on the political systems launched by Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Vladimir Putin in Russia. They all took over the institutions of the state and made them “work for them,” creating “an uneven playing field” where people loyal to the leader “have access to state resources.”
She explains what this could lead to, including the creation of American oligarchs. She also provides cause for hope and insight into the best ways to defend democracy and to keep apathy at bay.
For some reason the video starts while I’m already asking the first question (we did it live on Substack) but the content is clear.
Applebaum’s voice is vital these days. She is a staff writer at The Atlantic, author of many books including Twilight of Democracy: the Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism; Autocracy Inc: the Dictators Who Want to Run the World. Also Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine; Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, and the Pulitzer Prize winning Gulag: A History.
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