The Dictatorship Club .. Tyrants Who Want to Rule the World

In this urgent and essential book, Anne Applebaum calls on the world’s democracies to radically change their strategy in combating an entirely new kind of threat.

“The Dictator’s Club” is a chilling portrait of how authoritarian regimes collaborate to undermine the democratic world, and a penetrating reflection on how we can organize ourselves to fight them.

We think we know what an authoritarian state looks like: a tyrannical leader at the top, controlling the police, who threaten the people with violence. There are nefarious collaborators, and perhaps some courageous dissidents. But in the 21st century, this is nothing like reality. Today, authoritarian regimes don’t support a single dictator, but rather sophisticated networks of corrupt financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional operatives working across multiple systems, from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. Police forces in one country might arm and train police in another, while propagandists exchange resources and ideas, repeating the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.

International condemnations and economic sanctions have failed to destabilize autocratic rulers. Even popular opposition movements—from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow—are powerless against them. The members of dictatorships and their partners are not united by a single ideology like communism; rather, they are bound by a thirst for power, wealth, and impunity.