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Jun 10, 2022 28 tweets 11 min read Read on X
A great & timely read: 'Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century', by Sergei Guriev & Daniel Treisman.

How a new breed of dictators hold power by manipulating information & faking democracy.

Does Britain have a #SpinDictator?

press.princeton.edu/books/hardcove…
#THREAD

Over the past 40 years or so, the face of dictatorship has changed a great deal. Could Britain's increasingly antidemocratic & authoritarian Government mean Britain could be joining the likes of Hungary, Turkey & Rwanda in becoming an autocracy?

ft.com/content/ff7574…
The most notorious tyrants of the 20th century, including Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong & Idi Amin, ruled by means of mass violence, cults of personality, rigid ideological conformity, all-encompassing censorship & the exclusion of unwelcome foreign influences from their countries.
Many of today’s strongmen are different. They use violence sparingly. Full censorship & international isolation is common. Instead they work hard at faking democracy, packing the judiciary with supporters, controlling regulatory bodies & manipulating the media & public opinion.
They are, in short, what Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman call “spin dictators”.

In their perceptive, well-researched and entertaining book, Guriev & Treisman, write: “The essence of spin dictatorship is to conceal autocracy within formally democratic institutions.”
The authors are careful to point out that not every contemporary autocrat conforms to their model of “dictatorship lite”. They mention, for example, Syria's Bashar al-Assad & North Korea's Kim Jong Un.

The book was completed before Putin invaded Ukraine, but he features in it.
Putin’s turn to hard-edged repression can be traced back to the pro-democracy demonstrations that erupted in Russian cities in 2011-12 in protest at rigged elections. Before that, the clothes of a spin dictator fitted the ex-KGB officer quite comfortably.
Guriev and Treisman quote Sergei Markov, a former Putin adviser: “Those problems that can be solved democratically are solved democratically. Those problems that cannot . . . are resolved by other means.”
'Spin Dictators' develops themes outlined in excellent recent studies such as Archie Brown’s 'The Myth of the Strong Leader', Paul Hollander’s 'From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chávez: Intellectuals & a Century of Political Hero Worship', & Frank Dikötter’s 'How to Be a Dictator'.
Guriev & Treisman pay close attention to Chávez, but their wide-ranging survey extends to Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s late leader (in their view, the original spin dictator) as well as to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, & to Putin.
Kazakhstan's human rights situation under Nazarbayev is uniformly described as poor by independent observers. Human Rights Watch says that "Kazakhstan heavily restricts freedom of assembly, speech, and religion."
In 2014, the Kazakhstan authorities closed newspapers, jailed or fined dozens of people after peaceful but unsanctioned protests, & fined or detained worshippers for practicing religion outside state controls.
In 2014, Kazakhstan adopted new criminal & administrative codes, & a new law on trade unions, which contain articles restricting fundamental freedoms & are incompatible with international standards. Kazakhstan is ranked 161 out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index,
Boris Johnson's "friend" Viktor Orbán, rules Hungary, which suffers endemic corruption, repression of sexual minorities, de facto state control of media, constitutional manipulation & an electoral system designed to give supermajorities whether the votes are there or not.
Hungary is a showcase for how a reactionary movement in an ostensibly free society seizes control of the state to reshape society in its own image. The goal is the suppression of ALL progressive ideas - what the Right calls 'wokeness'.

Similarly, the British Government's new favourite country - #Rwanda - was in 2020 ranked by the independent Sweden-based 'Varieties of Democracy Institute', 150th out of 179 countries on its Index of Liberal Democracy - it's clearly #authoritarian.
To manage their image abroad, authoritarian states like #Rwanda try to advance a favourable narrative about themselves.

They do things like hire PR firms to produce positive content, disseminate #propaganda, & cultivate friendly foreigners who can speak on their behalf. 😬
This article by Alexander Dukalskis, an expert on authoritarian states & international human rights, is about the multiple ways that authoritarian states – countries where the leadership maintains power by non-democratic means – manage their image abroad.
theconversation.com/how-authoritar…
What can be done about spin dictators?

“Western Governments & businesses have too often enabled spin dictators to flourish. “Without the help of armies of western lawyers, bankers, lobbyists & other elite fixers, autocrats would have a harder time exploiting the west.”
Beyond that, what matters is “the active resistance of the informed” — people living in autocracies who have higher education, good communication skills & international connections - but which the vast majority of the UK & western press & news media only very rarely mention.
They can document abuses, organise protest movements and alert world opinion. “Without the actions of such people, a well-written constitution cannot help much.”

Of course, the more a spin dictator resorts to overt repression, the more dangerous such resistance becomes.
Guriev & Treisman make the case that in autocracies with relatively advanced economies & educated societies, there is reason to hope democratic change will come one day.

Oddly, Guriev & Treisman’s book makes no mention of Modi's India & only briefly mentions Erdoğan's Turkey.
Like Putin, Johnson's friend & trading partner Erdoğan may no longer qualify as a mere spin dictator, for his methods & style of rule have acquired ever more authoritarian features, including a militarised foreign policy, the longer he has stayed in power.
gov.uk/government/new…
This became especially obvious after the attempted coup of July 2016, which Bechev calls “a true life-or-death moment” when Erdoğan seized to punish many thousands of critics, real or imagined, & “achieve a quasi-monarchical status”. Yet familiar warning signs were already there.
One key moment came in a 2008 constitutional court ruling that came close to shutting down Erdoğan’s Justice & Development Party for violating the Turkish state’s secular principles. The AKP exploited this episode to launch a wholesale attack on the independence of the judiciary.
Crucially, Turkish leftists & liberals raised few objections because they sympathised with Erdoğan’s then relatively progressive policies on seeking EU membership, addressing Kurdish minority rights & standing up to the Kemalist establishment that had held sway since the 1920s.
Over time, the appeal of Spin Dictators like Turkey's Erdoğan, Hungary's Orban, Brazil's Bolsanaro, Rwanda's Paul Kagame, Trump & increasingly Boris Johnson - who all foreground nationalism - may fade as people grow weary of restrictions on civil liberties in the name of freedom.
Add a #CostOfLivingCrisis, food shortages, spiralling inflation, loss of confidence in the political system & you have a potentially very dangerous conjuncture, which really could go either way: either more democracy & accountability; or more repression.

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More from @docrussjackson

Nov 4
#THREAD

Tory & Reform UK MPs, #TuftonSt lobbyists, & Media Barons Rupert Murdoch, Jonathan Harmsworth & Paul Marshall despise two of Britain’s most loved institutions: our @BBC & our #NHS.

They use their power to undermine them.

Why?

And who is the new @BBC Chair, Samir Shah?
For these individuals & organisations, our @BBC & #NHS are a constant reminder that free-market capitalism is a profoundly flawed ideology fuelling greed & climate change, & that not every large organisation should either be a charity or be owned by shareholders & run for profit.
This thread focuses on how @BBCNews & @BBCPolitics output has, since 2000, become increasingly skewed to the right & a vehicle for defending free-market capitalism.

I'd need to write a 100K word thesis to cover everything I want to say about the @BBC, but I'll convey the basics.
Read 17 tweets
Nov 2
#THREAD

English neo-Nazi who stabbed asylum seeker was a serial stalker.

Terrorist Callum Parslow was previously jailed for sending 10 women sexually explicit and misogynistic messages, and even targeted a black former GB "News" presenter.

theguardian.com/politics/2024/…
A neo-Nazi terrorist who was found guilty last month of the attempted murder of an asylum seeker is a prolific online stalker who had previously been jailed and referred to the #Prevent counter-terrorism scheme.

Parslow was convicted on 25 October of attempted murder after stabbing an asylum seeker at a hotel in April. He was jailed in 2018 for targeting 10 women and girls with messages describing sexually motivated murder, torture and rape, and then changed his name after his release.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 16
🧵ASYLUM QUIZ

We hear A LOT about Small Boats & Migrant Hotels, but basic facts are often misrepresented.

Q1 When compared to EU countries plus Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein & Norway, where did the UK rank in 2023 by per capita asylum applications? (1st=most)

DON'T CHEAT
ANSWER to Q1:

When adjusted by population size, the UK received the 20th highest number of applications: 12.5 per 10,000 residents.

Q2 Where did the UK rank in 2023 in ACCEPTING/APPROVING per capita asylum applications?

(1st=most, 31st=last).
ANSWER TO Q2

Adjusted for population size, the UK ranks 10th: in 2023 we granted protection to 9 asylum seekers per 10,000 of our resident population.

Germany had 351,000 asylum applicants (compared to our 80,000), granting protection to 135,000 people (compared to our 62,000). Image
Read 31 tweets
Oct 14
#THREAD

'Divide and Rule'.

What if the 1% are deliberately manufacturing deeply polarised societies?

What if the differences between, for example, the "woke and anti-woke", Leavers and Remainers, migrants and non-migrants are deliberately exaggerated, or entirely manufactured? Image
What if the 1% remain powerful because they invest in the strategy of Divide & Rule?

For many reasons, including ignorance, desperation, trauma, stupidity & selfishness, millions of people respect & even vote for shameless, divisive, dangerously irresponsible sociopathic liars. Image
One way to account for this is to look at the gradual & shameless normalisation of lies & inflammatory speech. Another (related) way is to look at the role of ourselves and our media.

Professsor Ruth Wodak has spent decades examined the former.

Read 25 tweets
Oct 3
#THREAD

A January amendment to the Online Safety Act 2023 allows for the prosecution of those who convey information they know to be false & “if the person intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience”. Image
The #Southport stabbing was on 29th July. At 4.44pm on 30th July, Tommy Robinson posted a tweet to his more than 1 million followers on @X, referring to Muslims and saying "people need to rise up", and "our daughters are being butchered in dance classes".

theguardian.com/uk-news/articl…Image
Bernadette Spofforth, alleged to have been the first to tweet Southport disinformation on @X, was arrested on 8th August, but on 18th September police said that following an investigation... “no further action will be taken due to insufficient evidence.”

Read 29 tweets
Sep 30
#THREAD

'The Left' can be defined on the basis of its 'egalitarian drive': its credo is to remove—also through state intervention—barriers that make people unequal, advocating equal rights & opportunities for all.

So how might we define 'the far-right'?

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
The following 🧵quotes extensively from the 2022 article 'Far right: The significance of an umbrella concept', by Andrea Pirro, published in Nations and Nationalism, a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers research on nationalism and related issues.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/146981…
The Right is described as non-egalitarian, precisely because its models of political and social order are rooted in the necessity and legitimacy of institutionalised inequality.

Broadly, the right seeks to maintain a status quo whereby differences between people are entrenched.
Read 87 tweets

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