Lifestyle
Expert on dictators warns: Don't lose hope — that's what they want
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands during a meeting in Beijing on Oct. 18, 2023.
Sergei Guneyev/AFP via Getty Images
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Sergei Guneyev/AFP via Getty Images
When we think of dictators, often the image that comes to mind is of a lone strongman, whose main concern is holding power within his own borders. But Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum says today’s dictators are actually working together in a global fight to dismantle democracy.
In her new book, Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, Applebaum describes a “network of convenience” that exists among various autocratic states, including Russia, China, North Korea, Turkey, Hungary and Venezuela among others.
“There isn’t a secret room like in a James Bond movie where all the leaders meet; it’s not like that,” she says. “It’s like a big corporation that has different companies, and each company does its own thing, but they have loose ties, and they cooperate when it’s convenient.”
Applebaum says alliances among the global autocracy center on issues of military influence, kleptocracy and defeating democracy — and she sees a link between former President Donald Trump these concerns.
“Simply being someone who’s interested in using foreign policy to make money for oneself. I mean, that already makes Trump similar to a lot of Central Asian leaders or Africans, not to mention Putin,” she says.
Looking forward, Applebaum says she hopes her book helps re-engage people who may have become cynical by the political process. “What the autocrats — whether they’re in American politics or in Russian politics or in Chinese politics — what they want is for you to be disengaged. They want you to drop out,” she says. “I want people to be convinced that ideas matter, that we’re going to have to defend and protect our political system if we want to keep it.”
Autocracy, Inc.
Penguin Random House/Penguin Random House
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Penguin Random House/Penguin Random House
Interview highlights
On how the Russian war in Ukraine is a war between autocracy and democratic world
In the last few years, [Putin] had begun talking about the end of the democratic world or the end of Democratic dominance. … The war was an attempt to show that he doesn’t care anymore about the world that was created in 1945. He doesn’t care about the UN charter. He doesn’t care about UN documents and organizations that use the language of human rights. He doesn’t care about the so-called unspoken rule or unwritten rule that we don’t change borders in Europe by force. … He’s going to show that NATO is powerless, that it’s a paper tiger, and that none of the international institutions can control him because he stands for a new order and a new future. And he has used that language. And his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, specifically said this war is about a new world order.
On how Putin set the example for leaders to use money to gain power
In my view, the rise of these new forms of autocracy were made possible by the nature of modern financial transactions. If you look closely at the rise of Putin … he began essentially by stealing money. He stole money from the city of St. Petersburg. He took it out of the country. He laundered it through Western institutions, brought it back in, and he and others, mostly in the former KGB who were doing this, eventually enrich themselves. And they enrich themselves using Western partners, Western companies, connections to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
They were enabled in this process by Western financial institutions — German, European, American. And, first of all, that gave them a certain cynicism about the Western world. So, “OK, you guys talk about democracy and transparency, but you’re perfectly willing to help us steal.” … You can see modern dictators also beginning to learn this, also beginning to understand they can use tax havens or they can filter their money through Western banks so that there are different ways of stealing and hiding money. And it’s become something that people imitate really around the world.
On what she calls “information laundering”
I should start by saying that the autocratic world takes ideas very seriously and takes information seriously, and thinks a lot about how to get their message not just to us, but to Africa, to Latin America, to other countries around the world. They invest in it heavily. The Chinese have invested in a huge network of television and radio and website and newspaper and other forms of broadcasting in Africa, in Latin America, in Asia and elsewhere. They have content-sharing agreements with different newspapers around the world. Their wire service, Xinhua, is very cheap and easy to get hold of, very often cheaper than AP or Reuters. And they also think about how they can get information to people, in a way that they accept.
They have an idea that you want information to seem native, that it will seem local. And so they would rather have an African newspaper write something positive about China or write something negative about America, rather than it coming from a Chinese source. And the Russians in particular, have enthusiastically run with that idea. And they have also begun pretty systematically to create websites, newspapers and other forms of media that look like they are Ecuadorian or Peruvian or they’re in Arabic, or they’re in French. … And they look native. They’re using local languages, but they rely on, as I said, on Russian narratives and especially on these authoritarian narratives about how about the degeneracy and decline of America in the West, about the superiority of autocratic states.
On an autocratic strategy that relies on lies to control the political narrative
Trump began his presidency with a lie about how many people had appeared on the National Mall for his inauguration. … It was a very stupid lie. I mean, who cares how many people were in the National Mall? But he wanted the U.S. Park Service to lie about it, and he wanted his press spokesman to lie about it. And again, that was partly to show who’s in control here? I’m in control, and I get to decide what the truth is. And it’s also to confuse people and alienate them from politics. I mean, during the Trump administration, we spent a lot of time arguing about what was true and what wasn’t. …
Constant lies also create this kind of cynicism and apathy. It’s a way of keeping people out of politics and preventing civic engagement. I mean, a lot of these authoritarian states know that … [the] biggest threat to their power is their own people. And so their goal is to prevent people from ever organizing, from ever being engaged, from ever caring at all. And one of the ways they do that is through this constant stream of lies that make people feel like they’re simply unable to know anymore what’s true and what’s not.
On how political arguments went from policy to culture wars
The way we did politics even 10 years ago, which was we argued about real things. Right? We argued about health care. We argued about infrastructure investment. … So that was the stuff that politics was supposed to be about once. Politics isn’t about that anymore. Once it’s about existential questions and identity, and once it’s only culture wars which are easily exaggerated …. then you’re in the realm where it’s much easier for demagogues and for people who are good at evoking and creating emotion to win arguments. And I think it just took a long time for the opposition forces to understand how this works.
Sam Briger and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz and Molly Seavy-Nesper adapted it for the web.
Neve Campbell in Scream 7.
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Paramount Pictures
The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.
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Abriana Vicioso is the host of the Flower Hour, which takes place monthly.
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
Each flower carries a personal history. For Abriana Vicioso, the calla lily was her parents’ wedding flower — a symbol of her mother’s beauty. “She had this big, beautiful white calla lily in her hair,” Vicioso says. “I love my parents. They’re the reason I’m here. I’ll never forget where I came from.”
The Flower Hour begins with Vicioso announcing, with a warm smile: “Today is about touching grass.” The florist-by-trade gestures behind her to hundreds of flowers contained in buckets — blue thistles, ivory anemones and calla lilies painted silver — all twisted and unfurling into the air. “Tonight is going to be so sweet and intimate,” Vicioso says, eyeing the beautiful chaos at her feet. A grin buds across her face.
Moments before the workshop, participants sit at candlelit tables exchanging horoscopes and comparing their favorite flowers. A mention of the illustrious bird-of-paradise flower elicits coos and awe from the women. Izamar Vazquez, who is from Jalisco, Mexico, reveals her fondness for roses, which make her feel connected to her Mexican roots.
Vicioso hosts her flower-themed wellness workshop near the iconic Original Los Angeles Flower Market in downtown L.A. In January, the first Flower Hour event sold out, prompting her to make it a monthly series. Vicioso describes the event as a “three-part journey” where participants are invited to drink herbal tea, smoke rose-petal-rolled cannabis joints and create a floral arrangement. “The guide is to connect with the medicine of flowers,” Vicioso says.
Rose petal joints, tea and flower arranging are all part of The Flower Hour event’s offerings.
The event is hosted at the Art Club, a membership-based co-working space. “The Flower Hour is really beautiful. Everyone gets to explore their creativity while meeting new people,” says Lindsay Williams, the co-owner of the Art Club.
The idea for Flower Hour came to Vicioso during a conversation with her mother. “We joke all the time that flowers were destined to make their way into my life,” she says. She works as a florist and models on the side, even appearing in the pages of Vogue. Vicioso grew up in a Caribbean household, where flowers and offerings were part of daily life. “In my culture and religion, a lot of my family practices — an Afro-Caribbean religion — we build altars.”
Like many cultures, flowers carry sentimental value in her religion. “I’m Caribbean, so a lot of my family practices a Yoruba religion, which comes from Africa. In the Caribbean, it’s well known as Santería.”
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After a difficult year and a breakup, Vicioso wanted to marry her love of flowers with community building. Because Vicioso uses cannabis medicinally, the workshop naturally includes a smoking component. “My family has smoked cannabis for a lot of reasons for a long time. It’s a really healing plant,” she explains.
In the workshop, even the cannabis gets the floral treatment. Vicioso presents her rose-petal-wrapped joints on a silver platter at each table. She rolled each by hand. “If you’ve never smoked a rose-petal-rolled joint, the difference with this is it’s going to have roses that have a slight tobacco effect,” she announces.
During the workshop, Vicioso stresses the importance of buying cannabis from local vendors. The cannabis provided was purchased from a Northern Californian vendor. The wellness workshop aims to reclaim the healing ritual of smoking cannabis. “This is a plant that has been commercialized,” Vicioso says. “There’s a lot of Black and Brown people who are in jail for this plant.”
The resulting workshop is what Vicioso describes as “an immersive wellness experience that is the intersection of wellness, creativity, community and an appreciation of flowers.” The workshop serves as a reminder to enjoy Earth’s innate beauty in the form of flowers — including cannabis. “It’s this gift that the universe gave us for free and that I have this deep connection with,” Vicioso says.
Conversation cards to generate discussion among participants (top, letf). The workshop serves as a “third space” for Angelenos to engage in tactile creativity and community building outside of traditional nightlife settings.
After enjoying lavender chamomile tea and smoking a joint, Vicioso introduces the flowers to the group before inviting them to pick their own. She emphasizes each flower’s personality traits, describing green dianthus as a “Dr. Seuss” plant. Then, there are calla lilies with their “main character moment.” It gets personal. “Start thinking of a flower in your life that you can discover,” she says. “If you’re feeling like you need inspiration, you can always remember that these flowers have stories.”
Vicioso infuses wisdom into her instruction on floral arrangements: There are no mistakes. Let the flowers tell you where they want to go, she urges. Intuition will be your guide — the wilder, the better.
“Hecho in Mexico” reads a sticker on a bunch of green stems. “Like me,” says Vazquez with a laugh. “They’re all doing their own thing. Like a family,” she says later, arranging stems.
The Flower Hour participants and Vicioso, center, chat as they build their own floral arrangements at the sold-out event.
Two participants — Vazquez and Rebeca Alvarado — are friends who run a floral design company together called Izza Rose. Like Vicioso, the friends have a connection to flowers through their Latin American culture. They met Vicioso in the floral industry and were overjoyed to discover her workshop.
“This is a great way to connect with other people,” says Vazquez.
Alvarado agrees, adding: “You’re getting to know people outside of going to bars. You can connect in different ways when there’s an activity.”
Vazquez uses flowers to stay connected to her Mexican heritage, adding that she prefers to support Mexican vendors. In recent months, the downtown L.A. flower market has struggled to recover from ongoing ICE raids. “Some are scared to come back,” says Vazquez.
Hand-rolled cannabis joints wrapped in rose petals are presented on a silver platter at The ArtClub (top, right). The Flower Hour aims to reclaim the healing rituals of cannabis and flowers.
Another participant, Barbara Rios, was attracted to the workshop for stress relief. “You can hang out with your friends, but it’s nice to do things with your hands,” she says. “I work a stressful job, and it’s nice to have that third space that we’re all craving.”
On this February night, the participants were predominantly women, save for one man. In the future, Vicioso hopes that more men learn to engage with flowers. “There’s a statistic about men receiving flowers for the first time at their funerals, and I think we have changed that,” she says.
To conclude the workshop, Vicioso encourages participants to build lasting friendships and incorporate flower arranging into their daily practice — even if it’s just with a small, inexpensive bouquet.
“Get some flowers together, go to the park, hang out with each other and hang out with me,” she says. Participants leave with flower arrangements in hand. In the darkness of the night air, it briefly looks as though the women carry silver calla lilies that are blooming from their palms.
An underwater view shows US’ Lilly King competing in a heat of the women’s 200m breaststroke swimming event during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Paris La Defense Arena in Nanterre, west of Paris, on July 31, 2024. (Photo by François-Xavier MARIT / AFP) (Photo by FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARIT/AFP via Getty Images)
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This week’s show was recorded in Bloomington, Indiana with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Bill Kurtis, Not My Job guest Lilly King and panelists Alonzo Bodden, Josh Gondelman, and Faith Salie. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.
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