A powerful account of how authoritarian leaders make cruelty, exclusion, and oppression seem morally justifiable.
In both democracies and autocracies, a growing form of authoritarian control uses moral slogans and nationalistic rhetoric to suppress dissent. Leaders increasingly justify repression under the pretext of moral defense of families, children, values, or the nation itself.In The Autocrat's Handbook, Paris Kylie Messina presents The Moral Trap, a new framework that reveals how authoritarian regimes around the world use morality to create fear, stigmatize activists, criminalize dissent, and ultimately isolate people from one another.Drawing on historical and contemporary cases ranging from Nazi Germany, Maoist China, apartheid South Africa, Putin's Russia, and the United States under Trump and beyond, Messina shows how autocrats consolidate power and manufacture obedience by reshaping what people believe is right, natural, and worthy. Timely and controversial, The Tyrant's Handbook offers a bold new way of understanding how social and political oppression works and how it persists.Collective resistance.
