Anne Applebaum On Autocrats And Trump

The historian returns to the pod with modest but crucial proposals.

Anne is a journalist and historian. She’s currently a staff writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Agora Institute. She’s written many books, including Red Famine, Gulag: A History, and Twilight of Democracy, and her new one is Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. Also check her substack, “Open Letters.”

You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on whether Trump is a kleptocrat, and whether Kamala can connect with the public — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: the ways dictatorships no longer act alone; surveillance and social media; the appeal of Western freedoms via the internet; the Great Firewall; the Uyghurs and squelching dissent before it happens — with algorithms; Iranian theocracy; how autocrats have anonymity but their subjects don’t; the ease of stealing and hiding money; shell corporations; the unipolar hegemon of the US; the influence-peddling of the Trumps and the Bidens; what frightens Anne most about Trump; how his China policy could disappoint hawks; why he admires dictators; J.D. Vance and isolationism; Putin invading Ukraine to test the West; the failure of sanctions to cripple Russia; its economic alliance with China; Dubya’s foreign adventures; a dictator’s appeal to order and tradition; the profound brutality of Stalin; the Cold War; the war in Syria stoked by Russia; the fall of Venezuela as a rich democracy; Western democracies in crisis today; mass migration and Biden’s failure; the turnover of Tory PMs and Starmer’s “stability”; the West’s goal of transparency and accountability; autocrats leaning into social conservatism; scapegoating gays; the myth of Russia as a white Christian nation; misinformation and free speech; Trump’s endurance; the assassination attempt; and Anne’s husband becoming the foreign minister of Poland.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Jeffrey Toobin on the Supreme Court, Eric Kaufmann on reversing woke extremism, and Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal cruelty. (Van Jones’ PR team canceled his planned appearance.) Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

On last week’s episode with Lionel Shriver, a fan writes, “She’s a riot, and I’ll get around to reading one of her books.” Another:

I absolutely loved Shriver. I’ve ordered one of her books — as I often do after each of your podcasts — and I totally agree with her view of your work.

I love listening to your discussions with old favorites like George Will, David Brooks, Nate Silver, Stephen Fry, et al, but I really get excited when you introduce me to people like John Gray and others who were not on my radar … or “make” me listen to people like Erick Erickson, who I knew of but assumed I would not find interesting.

Another dissents:

Sully, I’m a huge fan of yours, but I was disappointed by your talk with Lionel Shriver. You’re at your best when you challenge your guests, not agreeing with them the entire time. In that respect, your episode with Shriver was a 90-minute fluffing session that I think was a huge missed opportunity. To give just three examples:

1. Shriver claimed that the gay community succeeded and so had to invent a new minority group to campaign for, yet you know full well that transgender people have existed for millennia. Why not point that out?
2. Shriver claimed that feminism has won and that she’s now more concerned about men, yet Roe v. Wade was overturned just two years ago, rolling back abortion rights across the country. Why not raise the point?
3. You and Shriver both complained that people these days can’t accept their fate, such as being born too short, yet just a few minutes earlier, you talked about taking Ozempic to lose weight!

I wish you challenged Shriver on these points not because I wanted to have her silenced or put down in any way, but because I would have been interested to hear her responses!

My apologies. On 1., of course trans people have always existed. But they are very different from gay people; and gay rights organizations needed some kind of rationale to stay in business (and it is a business). Since Bostock gave trans people full civil rights under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, these movements have had to move toward defending medical experiments on gay, autistic and trans kids, and pushing queer theory ideas into kindergarten. On 2., I don’t consider Roe to be about abortion as such, but about who should decide on abortion laws: courts or legislators. Now that it’s out of the courts, it’s a major, winning issue for the Dems. And 3., yeah, I’m busted. But a few extra pounds was not my fate as such. Just indiscipline.

Another listener just caught the episode with Elizabeth Corey:

I so needed to hear your episode on Oakeshott’s philosophy. It’s already changed my life. But when you and Lionel Shriver joined forces to celebrate indulgence, I winced. Can we at least give stoicism and self-discipline its due, as our main defense against the growing powers that want to hijack our impulses, steal our attention, and rob us of agency? The difference between self-indulgence and social indulgence seems critical.

From a listener in the UK:

I appreciate that you show another point of view — for balance — by running that reader’s email, but you concluded by responding, “I haven’t vilified it, though Stephen has.” This comment is beneath you. It infers that in your podcast, Stephen Fry vilified Brexit and its supporters, which in fact he took pains not to. His worst criticism? That they were sold a pup. Which is evidentially true.

Your reader demonstrates — if ever one needed reminding — so much ignorance about the EU among Brexiteers that still persists. Under Maastricht, the UK did not lose its sovereignty. The members of the EU parliament are democratically elected by the citizens of Member States and have the authority that confers. We always had the “opportunity” of opening to the rest of the world; indeed, before Brexit we traded with the ROW more than with Europe.

Your reader goes on to quote Norway, Switzerland and Iceland, all of which have (different) arrangements with the EU, and which offer commercial advantages we have denied ourselves, but without having a (major) say how regulatory changes are agreed. Instead, we have erected huge trade barriers, increased red tape, and added many inconveniences to our relationship with Europe. I am red-hot livid that Brexiteers have taken these advantages away from the 48 percent of us who voted in the referendum to stay (and obviously a larger proportion who didn’t) without any understanding of the consequences.

While no fan of the EU — having worked with its institutions for 4+ years — this country is now beginning to recognise that it’s far better to be inside the tent pissing out than the other way round — a position which has and continues to impoverish us in comparison to what went before. At least Starmer has begun to repair the terrible relationship with Europe promoted by Johnson, Frost and the Tories in general. We may not rejoin immediately under Starmer, but it is highly likely that a return via a series of intermediate measures will render it a future possibility. Sadly, with Stage 4 prostate cancer, I may not live long enough to see it, but hope my four children and their families will.

The loss of your mother and now your friend is truly grievous. I send commiserations and best wishes.

Stephen has been very brutal and unsparing in his criticism of Brexit. I did not say he had berated it supporters, and in the podcast, he went out of his way not to do that. On another episode:

I’d never heard of Erick Erickson, but I thought he was pretty good on your podcast. On climate change, I thought you took a remarkably un-nuanced and herdish view. I think climate change is real. I think it’s at least partly manmade. But I don’t know that the present moves to stop it make much sense.

I listened to John Gray’s podcast from UnHerd a second time this week and it’s delightfully provocative:

Gray not only believes in manmade climate change; he thinks it may be worse than we think and progressing more quickly than we think. (He apparently got that from James Lovelock.) However, he thinks the approach that’s being taken to curbing or solving climate change is a joke and a rather bad one. He suggests that we are in the process of spending huge amounts of money, raising costs on all kinds of things, to accomplish next to nothing. (This is not like the ozone-layer problem, where we had a clear handle on the problem and knew what to do). He says we should be going nuclear and focusing on mitigation measures.

I’m not saying he’s right, but he’s definitely on to something. Crashing the modern economy to solve climate change won’t solve anything, including climate change. The worst thing I see here is the insane push for electric cars. The energy infrastructure isn’t there for that, and won’t be for some time.

I’ve long campaigned for more nuclear power as a way to prevent carbon-fueled climate change. But solar and wind are becoming more and more affordable, and I don’t think more options is worse than fewer.

Another has a topic idea:

I love my dog dearly, and I’m curious if you have ever written on, or considered, the theological question of whether dogs (and animals generally) go to heaven? This would combine three themes of the Dishcast: (1) questions of religious faith, (2) love of pets, and (3) animal rights. I would be genuinely curious in your thoughts on this matter.

Good idea. I’m recording a pod next week on the history of our treatment of animals, so I’ll raise it there. A guest rec:

I wonder if this book is known to you: Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past by David Reich, a professor of genetics at Harvard and “one of the world’s leading pioneers in analyzing ancient DNA.” He helped make the computational discovery of intermixing between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. I thought Chapter 11, “The Genomics of Race and Identity” — that so-sensitive and controversial topic that you have been willing to talk about open-mindedly — would be of special interest to you. And I think a discussion with Reich about this and the other topics in his book would be most interesting.

Yes, indeed. Reich is measured, sane and empirical. Great idea.

Turning to presidential politics, a reader writes:

Last week’s column, “Regime Change in America?”, was some of the finest sense-making of the world you’ve provided in years! To call me a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat would be an understatement. (My parents told me at a young age that I would always have a place under their roof if I became an addict, if I were gay, or even if I’d killed someone … but NEVER if I turned Republican.)

However, there is an odd type of tranquility coming over me relative to this latest Trump arc.

I think, in part, it’s because he and his movement are gaining more and more resemblance to the rest of our history: a president with grossly licentious personal history (a la Bill Clinton or JFK); a president who came into the crosshairs of an assassin’s rifle; a populist able to pull everyday Americans away from old prejudices into a new coalition of cultural (prejudicial) interests. More centrally, though, L’Affaire d’Biden has cemented for me the sad reality that the Democratic Party is evincing all the symptoms of addiction to power: Orwellian mandates, policymaking as fashion, appalling defenses, and the basic denial of their own human limitations. This party needs to be broken and put back together again.

In 2016, when I realized Trump was going to win, I fell into almost acute physical distress. Now, with him on the cusp of a new victory, it feels somehow … okay?

I pray you are right, and that these latest twists and turns represent the holding of America’s nearly absurd Providential luck. In any event, kudos and thanks to you for not letting reflex and momentum master your thinking. I’m excited to see you reflect upon and interpret whatever comes next.

Cheers. We’re all in the relative dark. I’m trying to peer forward. Another reader:

I, too, have deep reservations about Trump. I have never voted for him, and I don’t believe I could vote for him this November, for all the reasons you’ve consistently cited. But I also agree with your observation that something is different now. And I think you’re correct to identify the growth of a new infrastructure of ideas in the vacuum that Trump has created — one that shares communitarian, dovish, localist impulses — as a key piece of that difference.

In his first term, Trump largely hired Republican insiders who did not share this (almost) Old Right approach. The “deep state” that so frustrated him may have largely been an invention of GOP careerists who failed to further a Trumpier agenda. Now, with access to a more aligned talent pool, I think there could be less indirection (and sabotage) in a second Trump term. And I don’t necessarily agree with those who believe it would be more dangerous.

I think it is worth noting that Trump has not been merely a nihilistic disrupter, although he has often seemed that way. In spite of himself, he has consistently had a handful of good, sometimes even decent instincts. These have been especially pronounced in the areas of trade, migration, foreign affairs, and wokery, where he has deployed his curmudgeonly crassness on behalf of workers, makers, service members, or Americans with “problematic” ideas. His instinct has been grounded in something that was at home on the labor Left: a centering of ordinary people, and how policies impact them, and a disregard for propriety when it becomes an obstacle to a more fundamental issue.

Of course, any of Trump’s good instincts have often been negated by his negative traits. And it has not helped his cause that the media (and other guardians of social justice) have invested nearly a decade in not seeing, or sharing, anything positive that he has done or facilitated.

In his first administration, Trump had some real successes. I recently read Robert Lighthizer’s account (No Trade is Free) of his time as Trump’s trade representative. I’m not a trade expert, so I would not presume to debate the merits of differing philosophies. That said, Lighthizer provides a persuasive history that dovetails with common-sense observations about the effects of trade deals since the 1990s (e.g., lost jobs, hollowed-out communities). He describes a landscape of very uneven deals that the American establishment had tolerated — from Clinton to Bush to Obama — largely out of deference to the WTO. In their decidedly bilateral approach, Trump and Lighthizer used their leverage with countries that refused to reciprocate open markets, or that undercut US products through lax environmental standards, or abusive or hazardous labor practices.

The approach met with mixed success, but the point is not that it would (or should) always be immediately effective. Rather, it’s that our leaders began advocating for American companies and workers, and establishing a new norm that limited our most generous trading terms, including unfettered access to American markets, to partners who were willing to reciprocate.

The reinvigorated approach from Trump and Lighthizer was a substantive change to trade policy that was supported by nearly all Democrats. The Biden administration has largely kept it intact. But it evidently took Trump’s election to give impetus to the change; to shake up the complacent, Washington status quo. This disruption, at least, had a purpose — and it succeeded. How often is this acknowledged in the mainstream press?

By the way, I think you may owe a small apology to Patrick Deneen. In your podcast with him, you were inclined to scoff at his argument for the sort of philosophical “regime change” that — per your latest column, “Regime Change In America?” — you now see on the horizon 🙂

Deneen and I are using “regime” differently, I think. I think there’s a possible revival of conservatism within the liberal order. He wants the liberal order to disappear. One other point: I don’t think Biden has reverted to pre-Trump positions on trade, and has largely followed in Trump’s footsteps in this area.

Another reader looks to the new running mate:

One of the first things that caught me about your writing many years ago was your ability to see through Republican bullshit. Now you posit that Vance has “walked the walk” on a different type of conservatism — one that maybe, finally, actually cares about working people. Some causes for doubt:

• Vance’s intellectual influences include “Mencius Moldbug” aka Curtis Yarvin, a “neo-reactionary” and self-described monarchist whose impulses mesh well with Trump’s “dictator on day one” inclinations.
• Vance just blurbed a book from the head of Project 2025, which notably calls for huge tax cuts on the rich, paid for by tax hikes on the rest of us.
• Vance abandoned a bipartisan childbirth bill after he was tapped for VP.
• There is no other policy meat on the bones of Republican populism. The only — yes, the only! — policy proposal to emerge from the Republican convention was the idea of ending taxes on tips. Cruz has already turned it into a bill … that amounts to a huge giveaway to wealthy, white-collar workers instead. Whoops!
• It gets worse the farther you look back. Remember, Trump enacted an expansion of the Child Tax Credit for a single year during the pandemic. It sharply slashed child poverty, but Republicans viewed it, unfortunately, as a one-time thing meant to end with the pandemic. Democrats fought desperately to restore the expansion when it lapsed, only to be foiled first by Senator Manchin, and then Republicans. Where was Vance? Where was Hawley? Nowhere to be found.
• And lest we forget, a few years ago Vance called Harris a “childless cat lady” whose political views don’t matter since she doesn’t have kids — not exactly a unifying or uplifting political message.

I’ve had the football pulled from me one too many times to fall for this one. I hope you retain similar skepticism.

I am retaining it. Vance is turning out to have a lot of baggage after appealing to the MAGA right so fervently. The “cat ladies” thing is awful. On the other hand, he has called me “a truly conservative thinker,” with apparent leftist inclinations.

One more reader this week:

One would think that with Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the assassination attempt, and the GOP convention, Trump would be having a sizable uptick in his polling, but it’s not there. Regardless of how Trump is framing himself, people have had eight years to make up their mind about him. Those who weren’t already voting for him aren’t suddenly being convinced to vote for him. In fact, it seems that recent events had no tangible effect.

Had Biden in January 2023 announced he wouldn’t seek reelection, I have no doubt that whoever made it through the Dem nomination process would be way ahead in the polls, because the average American hates Donald Trump. He is not some likable figure. He’s exceedingly vulnerable, and though I fully expect you to denigrate Harris in the weeks ahead, the RNC actually looks quite scared to run against her.

She wouldn’t be my first choice, but I do believe non-red-pilled women will rally behind her — enthusiastically! Those upset with Biden’s stance on Israel/Palestine will have their concerns neutered. Black voters will take a second look. Harris will come out of the DNC with a ton of momentum — a lot more than Trump had coming out of his. I worry about Harris’ political instincts, and I pray she’s learned over the past four years, but there is a giant opportunity for the Dems, because people just do not like Trump.

I cannot imagine a better convention than the one the GOP just held, given it started with a failed assassination attempt that has moved Trump’s favorable ratings to a near high for him. Harris’ current approval rating is 37.8 percent; Trump’s approval rate even after January 6 was 38.6 — revealing just how deeply unpopular Harris is. She’s still got lower approval ratings than Biden!

Thanks as always for the dissent and other emails, and you can always send yours to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

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