Dictatorship Club... Tyrants who want to rule the world

In this urgent and necessary book, Anne Appelbaum 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 terrifying depiction of how authoritarian regimes collaborate to undermine the democratic world, and an insightful meditation on how we can organize ourselves to fight them. We think we know what an authoritarian state looks like: an authoritarian leader at the top, who controls the police, who threatens the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and perhaps some brave opponents. But in the twenty-first century, this has nothing to do with reality. Today, authoritarian regimes are supported not by a single dictator, but by sophisticated networks of corrupt financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists working across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country trade with corrupt companies in another country. Police forces in one country may arm and train police in another, while preachers exchange resources and ideas, repeating the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America. International condemnations and economic sanctions did not succeed in destabilizing autocratic rulers. Even popular opposition movements - from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow - stand helpless before them. The members and associates of the dictatorship do not share a unified ideology such as communism; Rather, what they have in common is a yearning for power, wealth, and impunity. Anne Applebaum is an award-winning American journalist and writer.