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.

The bed in Nancy Gerrish’s bright Los Feliz home appears perfectly normal — carved wooden headboard, fuzzy brown blanket, cream-colored bed skirt. The sheets are a tasteful leopard print. A few brocade throw pillows lie atop the spread to complete the earth-tone look.

But beneath that plush exterior, Gerrish’s bed hides a jiggling secret.

Sit on the mattress’ edge and it wobbles and undulates. Lie down and it rocks gently, as if you’re floating above a temperate pool of water.

And indeed, you are.

In L.A., water rules everything around us. Drink up, cool off and dive into our stories about hydrating and recreating in the city.

“I tell people I have a waterbed, and everyone laughs,” says Gerrish, 78, a financial planner with white curly hair and manicured lavender nails. “But it’s a very comfortable bed to sleep in, and I personally don’t know why the world doesn’t have this.”

If you thought waterbeds had gone the way of 1970s trends like Troll dolls and polyester pantsuits, you are mostly correct. The wavy vinyl mattresses that became a symbol of the era’s sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle may no longer be part of the collective consciousness except as the butt of a joke in a period film or as a forbidden item on a boilerplate apartment lease. But they can still be found gently rippling in a handful of Southern California bedrooms.

Waterbeds account for less than 2% of all mattress sales today, according to the Specialty Sleep Assn., but the few remaining retailers receive daily calls from stubborn holdouts like Gerrish — mostly older folks who bought a fluid-filled mattress decades ago, fell in love with its wavy motion and won’t sleep on anything else. Now, these waterbed enthusiasts scour the internet for replacement mattresses, heaters and water treatment systems, determined to resist sleeping on standard mattresses — what they call “dead beds” — for as long as they can.

“I worry,” said Donna Martin, 77, of Glendale, who has been sleeping in a waterbed for 50 years. “I think to myself if I ever have to go into a home, they won’t give me no waterbed.”

Forty-seven students from UCLA pile on top of a water bed , March 10, 1976, to establish a new record for a human pyramid on a water bed in Los Angeles. They broke the old record of 16, according to the press agent, in a stunt to publicize a then-current Hollywood production.

(Wally Fong / Associated Press)

The ‘Pleasure Pit’ boom

The modern waterbed was invented in 1968 by Charles Hall, a graduate student at San Francisco State, as part of his master’s thesis in design. Hall, then 24, had originally set out to create the world’s most comfortable chair, filling a plastic sack with gelatin and then cornstarch with disappointing results. Eventually, he landed on a winning formula — an 8-foot water-filled square vinyl mattress. He called it the “Pleasure Pit” and imagined it as a bed-chair hybrid — the only piece of furniture one would need.

His prototype was featured in a show called “Happy Happenings” at the San Francisco Cannery art gallery that summer and articles about a new-fangled waterbed soon were appearing in newspapers and magazines across the country. A modern sleep trend was born.

“It was new, it was exciting, it was different, it was sexy, it was fun,” said Denny Boyd, former president of the Waterbed Manufacturers Assn., who once owned 35 waterbed stores throughout Texas, Missouri and Louisiana. “It was our generation’s bed.”

Waterbed sales skyrocketed from an estimated $13 million in 1971 to $1.9 billion in 1986, according to the New York Times. The mattresses were fairly cheap, but sales of the heavy wood frames that kept the mattresses from flopping around, plus water heaters and conditioners, brought in big bucks. By 1991, roughly 1 in every 5 mattresses sold in America was fluid-filled, according to the Washington Post. Hall received a patent for his invention in 1971 but rarely enforced it, and young entrepreneurs quickly turned the waterbed business into a lucrative industry.

“There were a whole lot of people who were millionaires by the time they were 25,” Boyd said.

It was a wild, sex-soaked business. One early ad declared, “Two things are better on a waterbed. One of them is sleeping.” Boyd remembers hosting pajama party sales events at his stores where customers would show up in outrageous sleepwear — see-through nighties and G-strings. The store served wine and cheese and stayed open until 3 or 4 a.m.

“It was more than R-rated,” Boyd said.

Competition among the mostly male sales force was fierce. “People used to throw rocks at each other’s stores and look in dustbins to see client lists,” Boyd said. “At the trade shows, you had to hire a security guard to watch your space so people wouldn’t sneak back in and poke holes in your mattress.”

By the mid-1990s, however, the party was over. After a precipitous rise, the waterbed market dried up. Boyd says the decline was due to a handful of factors, one of which was the advent of the “softside” waterbed mattress, which looked and felt more like a traditional bed and didn’t require pricy bed frames or special sheets — accessories that generated the bulk of the revenue for waterbed stores. At the same time, several new alternative mattress technologies hit the market, including airbeds, the Sleep Number, Tempur-Pedic and memory foam.

“These were more conventional beds, easier to sell and less complicated,” Boyd said. “They also had lots of advertising behind them.”

In 1995, the Waterbed Manufacturers Assn. rebranded itself as the Specialty Sleep Assn.

Donna Martin, 77, rests on her waterbed in her apartment in Glendale. Martin has used waterbeds for the past 50 years.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Dedicated ‘water heads’ remain

For some, the waterbed was never a passing trend. It‘s a lifelong devotion.

Gerrish, the financial planner from Los Feliz, bought her first water-filled mattress in 1996 after sleeping on a friend’s waterbed. “I couldn’t believe how comfortable it was,” she said. “It’s very soft on all your joints, and if you like to cuddle, your arm sinks into the bed so there’s no pressure on it.”

She moved her waterbed to Los Angeles from New York 21 years ago. When she eventually sells her Los Feliz home, she hopes to take it with her wherever she moves next. (She was relieved to learn that it is illegal for landlords to forbid waterbeds in California in rental units built after 1973, though they can require tenants to have insurance for damage caused by the bed.)

“I feel so cozy. It’s hard to get out of it,” she said. “And anyone visiting me loves it. I think the [traditional] mattress companies don’t want this information getting out.”

Gerrish has been sleeping on a water-filled mattress for 28 years, but several L.A. waterbed lovers have had an even longer relationship with Hall’s 1968 invention.

Martin, the 77-year-old in Glendale, has been sleeping on a waterbed since she got her first one as a hand-me-down from a friend.

“I’ve had five mattresses since the first time I set one up. I love it,” she said.

Recently, she slept on her sister’s Swedish memory foam mattress while taking care of her pets for the weekend. The verdict? No, thank you. Martin has a squashed disk in her spine and finds the waterbed is easier on her hips.

“At first it was OK, but then the same thing happened, too much pressure,” she said. “I would rather not sleep in something else.”

A closeup of a waterbed at the Afloat factory in Corona.

(Chris Carlson / Associated Press)

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City Furniture CEO Keith Koenig shows the new waterbed on display as he speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in Tamarac, Fla., in 2018. Koenig and inventor Charles Hall, pioneers of the waterbed industry in the United States, are hoping to generate a new wave of popularity for the old furniture concept by using a wholesome new pitch.

(Brynn Anderson / Associated Press)

Steve Hertzmann, 62, of San Pedro, gets it. He’s been a waterbed devotee for 40 years and is surprised that the wavy mattresses have never made a comeback.

“The best part is in the wintertime when you’re freezing cold,” he said. “The waterbed has a heater, and you hop in and you’re all warm.”

Marty Pojar, who has a store called the Waterbed Doctor in Westminster, would love to see a renaissance, but he thinks the technology needs a rebrand.

“The word ‘waterbed’ creates a stigma,” he said. “When people hear it, they are thinking of the big, old wood-frame waterbeds with lots of wave action.”

In fact, waterbeds have evolved over the years. Consumers can now pick among mattresses that offer old-school full-motion waves and others that are semi-waveless or have almost no waves at all. Many beds also have two separate water mattresses, one on each side, so if two people are sleeping together and one person gets out of bed, the other doesn’t experience any rocking.

With enough advertising dollars behind it, Pojar thinks renaming waterbeds “flotation sleep systems with temperature control” could bring in new customers.

“Reeducating the public is a big challenge, but there is a big opportunity there, I believe,” Pojar said.

For now, longtime devotees are keeping his business alive. Change can be difficult for a lifelong waterbed fan, as Larry Johnson of Mar Vista has learned firsthand.

The accountant slept on a waterbed for 50 years, until May, when his wife convinced him that a standard mattress would make it easier to get out of bed as they age.

A few days in, Johnson was on the fence. The “dead bed” was not as soft as his waterbed. He missed the rocking motion.

“It’s going to take some getting used to,” he said.