Having recently read Anne Applebaum’s newest book, Autocracy, Inc., I have one of those mandates we therapists must legally abide by: a duty to warn. If in confidence someone told me they wanted to personally murder you, I would violate that client’s personal confidence in order to warn you.
And if that same someone told me another person wanted you dead or otherwise silenced, I would still warn you for your own safety-sake.
This blogpost, likewise, comes as a personal warning to you because if you strongly, actively support democracy and the free and fair election of diverse political candidates, there are those who want you silenced one way or another. “Those” political authorities are commonly referenced as “autocrats.” Autocrats do not play nice with democrats. Quite the opposite. They view you as a threat to their own personal freedom.
As a History and Political Science major in undergrad, I recall an elective course titled “Totalitarian Regimes” that covered in some detail the history of dictators, right and left. At that time in history, the 1960’s, they opposed each other. Conservative fascists on the right hated Liberal communists on the left. Of course, the most notable example was the fascist Hitler opposing the communist Stalin. So notable was the hatred of these two autocrats toward each other that Stalin, you likely recall, fought with the democratic west in helping to defeat Hitler.
We Americans worked both sides of that street, you may recall, having supported Stalin against Hitler in WW II but later any number of different fascists (of less notoriety than Hitler but equally violent) against any communist dictator. Example close to home: fascist Batista against communist Castro in Cuba. Our democracy readily survived by turning dictator against dictator, conservative autocrats against liberal autocrats.
Okay, so what? Why bring this up now? How does this threaten any of our lives now upon standing for democracy? What’s this warning even about?
One of the assigned books from that undergrad class was the classic by an Italian renaissance author named Niccolo Machiavelli, titled The Prince. This work of political theory was the common denominator underpinning policy and practice for all dictators, whether liberal or conservative. Forget Marx. The real Lord of the totalitarian regimes of every stripe, left and right, was Machiavelli. He made Marx look like a choirboy.
Some interesting quotes taken from The Prince include:
“I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.”
“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
“The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”
“There is nothing more important than appearing to be religious.”
“People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.”
“Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”
“…he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.”
“How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.”
And this, perhaps Machiavelli’s most notable and oft’ remembered line from that book, “Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”
Again, you may ask, so what? How does this threaten me if I happen to support democracy as being superior to dictatorship?
For the correct answer, I’ll appeal to this well-researched and documented body of work contained in Anne Applebaum’s latest book. Today’s autocrats operate not on the basis of “ideals” that once separated them, conservatives vs. liberals; rather, on the basis of “deals” that provide their personal job security. Their common aim: join together in deals that supply resources such as energy, arms, technology, propaganda, equipment, workers, soldiers, healthcare, and whatever else may be necessary to fight off the greatest threat to their job security: democracy. Autocrats around the world, for instance, are now coming to Putin’s rescue in his war against western democracy in Ukraine.
What unites these Autocrats, Inc. as they look out for one another’s needs? Politics, to be sure. Their common desire for self-preservation as threatened by free and fair elections. Yet, it runs even deeper than mere job-security and being rid of one’s political opponents. It involves economics (and what Applebaum labels “kleptocracy”). Autocratic leadership is highly profitable. Keeping one’s own job means keeping one’s own fortune. So making deals with other autocrats, whether that means fascist deals with communists, or perhaps theocrats in Iran dealing with atheists in China, protects personal jobs and fortunes in fighting against their common enemy of democracy. Such “deals” triumph over the “ideals” that used to separate dictators like Hitler and Stalin in the last century. One way they have learned to effectively fight against their common enemy of democracy is by dealing disinformation to news outlets in the west that emphasize entertainment over journalism. Cyber crimes are another. Killing democracy assures all autocrats of their own highly lucrative job security.
Okay. I get it.
I’m sounding over-the-top cynical. My warning for you sounds perhaps too extreme for reality. Sorry to say, it is today’s extreme reality and those who favor democracy, free press, transparency, the rule of law over the rule of the jungle, truth instead of deception, people over profits, have to think in similarly extreme terms if our own values are to survive into our grandchildrens’ generation.
How?
Applebaum, in her book, prescribes the kind of medicine for democracy that we hate the taste of, not to mention its potential side effects. She writes of her attendance at “the first-ever meeting of the World Liberty Congress, a gathering of people who have fought autocracies all around the world. Politicians and activists from Russia, Zimbabwe, Iran, South Sudan, North Korea, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Cuba, and China met in rooms with long tables and bad lighting, encountering colleagues from Venezuela, Syria, Cambodia, Belarus, and Uganda.” She contrasts this cross-section of democratic idealists hiding from their autocratic enemies with meetings of the Autocrats, Inc. where the likes of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping gather in “drawing rooms with gilded chandeliers and marble fireplaces.” Their goal? To lay aside whatever differences and long-standing grievances that may have separated them and now find unity against autocracy, even as their common opponents have now coalesced against democracy.
Building broad coalitions for democracy against today’s unprecedented unity of authoritarians means laying aside various “ideals” for the sake of necessary “deals.” Think of Liz Cheney working alongside Liz Warren. Think of European democratic capitalists working alongside their own democratic socialists. Think of Dick Cheney and Bernie Sanders holding hands against Donald Trump in America. Free elections, free press, free religion, and free enterprise means supporting love over fear, truth over deception, transparency over secrecy, accountability over invincibility. All for the sake of democracy over autocracy.
If fascists like Putin, communists like Xi Jinping and Jung-il, and nationalists like Orban, Erdogan, Maduro and Trump can all unite against democracy by use of the same Machiavellian principles that have kept a diversity of dictators in power across several centuries, surely we can find common ground for democracy. Our lives and those of our next generation may depend on it.
You may depend on it.
And you matter……a lot! Hence, the warning.
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