The Autocrats of the World Keep Tabs on Each Other | Michael's Quick Take

you you note in in the book um as well um a very interesting uh feature of all of this you you write the autocracies keep track of one another's defeats and victories timing their own moves to create maximum chaos for example in the Autumn of 20123 both the European Union and the US Congress found themselves unable to send Aid to Ukraine because minorities with deep Russia T Russian ties LED respectively by Victor Orban and Hungary and by a handful of republicans in Congress many acting under the instruction of Donald Trump blocked the majority and delayed the aid a narrative promoting Ukraine fatigue spread across the internet pushed by Russian proxies and Chinese media in multiple languages so almost as a reinforcing point to your earlier point about how um how these narratives are elevated and pushed out in controlled you then also begin to see the effects of that on on important public policy particularly with respect to uh the the Global Order of Things um the stability within NATO the efforts to undermine by Trump and others uh the NATO alliance um and and sort of locking in the course chosen by the Victor Orban and the Vladimir putins Etc talk a little bit about how these autocracies kind of play off of each other um mimic each other to some extent make a chest move and the other's like okay I'll make a counter move not so much against that move but to distract and and and create another another area of angina for the West yeah no so so certainly they they do something which is relatively new which is they as as you were just saying they coordinate narratives so they didn't use to be the case that the Chinese the China by the way has a massive International media Network TV radio websites content sharing agreements with lots of newspapers um you know and and and other media organizations around the world they didn't use to share narratives as explicitly as they do now so now they the I give an example in the book of a story at the very beginning of the Russian Ukrainian War the Russian invasion the Russians put out this weird story about how the US was building biolabs or biological weapons Laboratories in Ukraine and that was somehow responsible for the war completely fake story not true at all nevertheless it was repeated um you know by the Chinese media by the Russian media by the Venezuelan media by the Iranian media and also by a part of the American far right who also Tucker Carlson picked it up and a few you know random people on the internet began pushing it as well so you know so they have this it's and it's I should say coordinated doesn't mean that there's like a guy in a room who gives orders you know they simply copy you know they they imitate one another and they they look at what one another is doing and then they follow the same thing I I don't necessarily think you know it's all about you know maybe there's some money exchange in some cases I'm sure there is but a lot of times it's not it's just a it's just imitation um and they also support one another in various ways so orbon is a very weird case I mean he's a he's a he is a a democratically elected leader he was absolutely very popular at the beginning of his um at the beginning of his second term the second time he was elected uh and he but as a democratically elected leader he began to take apart the institutions of the state so he began to take apart the media he not by censorship but by using you know the threats you know business people who who advertise an independent media might have had trouble dealing with the state it was a slow process of Judges media intermediaries taking over the Civil Service you know step by- step putting his political party in charge of pretty much everything culture universities um and so on um and once he' done that he began to have friction with other European countries and with NATO and with the United States um and so then he began looking for other allies and Russia was delighted to step in and to be his Ally and Russians were delighted to step in and do these opaque investments in Hungary where money is invested into nuclear power plants and on with with the contracts all kept secret and when nobody really knows where the money went or who got it um and that's one you know those kinds of Arrangements see that kind of secrecy that lack of transparency that corrupt relationships are part of what can help keep orbon propped up um even as he as I said began to come into conflict with his former allies and he's you know he's he sort of sought to create a sort of alternative um you know alternative Network he's he's he's he's one of these figures who's partly in the autocracy Inc Network and partly in the Democratic World there are a few other examples like that so that begs it begs an important question so when Victor Orban gets to his second term popularly elected um uh democratically elected does it occur to him a I want to keep this power or B was that his objective all along you know I don't have a I I I've known him at different times and he did make he did change I can't tell you what was the moment when he changed but you know even people around him some of his original allies melted away or you know be you know turned against him and so on so he he made a transition from being a kind of liberal leader you know to being a center Right leader to being a farri leader which he's now he's now a far-right autocratic populist um who seeks to control every form of Communication in his country um and who also controls the economy of the country via a group of oligarchs who are close to him in some cases they're members of his family um and at what moment he decided to create that system I can't tell you but but it was a it's a pattern that we've seen elsewhere and by the way it doesn't have to be a right-wing leader who does this I mean that's Venezuela the Hugo Chavez who was that was the leader of Venezuela before he died and was replaced by the current leader Nicholas Maduro he did the same thing you know he was using a different language he was talking about you know this you know kind of Latin American socialism U but it was the same effect was to take over institutions of the state and make sure that he would never lose um and when you see people beginning to do that you know this is when alarm Bells should go off and of course this is why this weird um Affinity between Trump and some of the people around Trump and orbon you know is so peculiar and so dangerous because orbon is someone who consciously and knowingly tried to take apart his democracy and has then Allied himself with the autocratic world with the foreign dictators in order to help him keep that that corrupt you know onep party state in power and if that's the model that um you know that the you know that the that the the Heritage Foundation or or project 2025 or others around Trump want for the United States then if Trump wins we would be dealing with a disaster of a kind that I don't think we've ever dealt with before um so for this part of the conversation folks you may need to get a bourbon I'm just saying straight up you know I got recovered so just settle in because it's about to get get real exciting and uh it's just it's always I when I watch you on various programs and certainly when you're on our AA the MSNBC um what I preach about appreciate about this moment now is that we've had a chance to sort of expand and sort of really kind of get a a firmer understanding of what this sort of global um elevation of authoritarian power is like what it looks like how it how it comes about um and we see it now here at home with uh Donald Trump running for president uh claiming straight up hey make me a dictator I'm ready to do this you know we'll do it for one day you know tongue firmly planted in cheek um talk a little bit about how what you see what elements and aspects of what we what we've just talked about globally with the Victor orbons and the putins and others who are clearly models for Trump in so many ways how do we see some of that playing out here in the US it's not just in the manifesto of project 2025 5 which is the blueprint for the deconstruction of our administrative State our government um you know transfixing it and and and putting in place their sick offense and acolytes to Donald Trump um but it's a little bit more than that talk a little bit about if you can how Maga and what we see Happening Here in the US fits within autocracy Inc so you're you're right that a you know that a there there are people around Trump and I one has to be careful because there are a lot of people around Trump and they want a lot of things it's very it's very hard to know who would actually be in charge and what would happen so here we're you know we're we're we're talking about um you know we're talking about one particular aspect of it you know there there clearly people around Trump who admire what Orban did and in that sense admire what Putin did um and and admire the ways in which he you know he took over the Hungarian state with his political party and his people and by the way I Liv through a very similar phenomenon in in Poland which is actually where I am now we had for eight years we had a a ruling party which tried to do the same thing they did it less successfully and they ultimately lost an election um but it was very similar you know they it was it was a it was pressure on the media from different sides um Financial pressure of different kinds it was pressure on the court s they tried to change the court system and the way that it works um and you know in the US you can see there are all kinds of Institutions that operate um you know not So Much by it's not even that not even according to laws but according to Norms you know I mean if you look at the military you know and of course I mean everybody who's in the military now will disagree with me saying this but um you know uh you know if Trump decided to or or someone else or president Vance you know or some other um some some future president wanted to transform the military by getting rid of a top layer of generals and putting in different kind of generals who were loyal not to the Constitution but to him personally or to his party personally and we willing to for example participate in domestic crises or we're willing to act on the president you know to act more as an internal security Force which you know the US Army absolutely it's verboden now I mean it's very rare occasional moments when you know but you know in our history but it's it's not it's not at all normal um but but you but there but some of that is you know there's you know the guard rails against the corruption of the army are norms and education and feelings rather than legal systems I mean you if you were really determined to change the way the Army works and you put put a different kind of leaders in charge you would begin to get a very different kind of institution and you can imagine that a lot of Institutions and I mean the Army is a particularly um you know it's it would be a particularly controversial but I don't know the FDA you know the Food and Drug Administration um you know instead of having it run by scientists who are testing drugs to see whether they cure you of cancer or not you could put people in charge of it who want to make sure that um all any forms of you know medicated abortion are illegal you know you could you could you know you could you could change the nature of what some of these State institutions do and then you could begin to eventually have a very different kind of state or for example you know there's a lot of federal funding that goes to universities for for research right for big scientific projects or you know if you wanted to use that money and say okay we're only going to give you this money if you agree to change the way you teach in a particular way or we're outlawing I don't know women's studies programs or we're Chang black history programs we've already begun to see that yeah right and so and you can see some of that at the state level you can see it in in Florida for example and you can begin to see the state beginning to use you know we're used to thinking of universities of being independent of the state having their own governing systems you know tenure is supposed to predict academic freedom but there are ways if you were you know if you were vindictive and if you were if you thought about it that you could use um you know not it's not necessarily um you know it's not about legal changes it would be about using money using influence um to change the way Education Works or you know in in the country and so on um and that is you know those are very real threats I mean there are people around Trump who talk about it and they they they have speculated about it out loud and they talk about it on podcasts and and they and they wrote it up some of it is in this famous Heritage Foundation Foundation report and some of it we've seen already at the state level or at the local level these fights about school boards and so on and so all of that is and and and these the ideas of of doing that aren't coming from nowhere they're borrowed from the the autocratic world or the illiberal world you know the world of uh you leaders like Orban or like erdogan in Turkey or even like Chavez in Venezuela who who took who were democratically elected and then proceeded to take apart their political systems and you know it's of course it's imaginable in the United States I mean here you know it's true that in the US we have a federal system you know it's a lot bigger country than Hungary right you know there would be all kinds of resistance I mean I'm not saying it would succeed necessarily but you know even if it didn't succeed you could do a lot of damage by trying