The Misplaced Optimism of the 1990s: Democracy and Authoritarianism

Sam Harris and Anne Applebaum discuss the nature of modern autocracies and how democracies fail. They discuss the power of ideas, why autocracies seek to undermine democracies, cooperation among dictators, how Western financial experts and investors have enabled autocracies, how Putin came to power, the failure of engagement and investment to create political change, what’s at stake in the war in Ukraine, Trump’s charisma, the current symptoms of American democratic decline, the ideologues around Trump, the hollowing out of institutions, how things might unravel in America, anti-liberal tendencies in American politics, the role of social media, the different pathologies on the Left and Right, analogies to Vichy France, the weakness of the Democrats, the political effects of the assassination attempt on former President Trump, and other topics.

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