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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

Sep 15
🧵

Tommy Robinson claimed his protest drew “three million patriots”. The Met Police reported 110,000.

Prof Milad Haghani, an actual world-leading expert on estimating crowd sizes, estimates “about 56,000... However I run the numbers, it’s very difficult to make it to 100,000.” Image
Unlike shameless liar and multiply-convicted violent far-right coke-snorting thug Tommeh, Prof Haghani is a world-leading expert on estimating crowd sizes. He leads geospatial transport planning initiatives, and is an expert in crowd dynamics.

Tommeh is a world-leading grifter. Image
Compulsive shameless liar Tommy Robinson made the laughable claim that his 'Unite (Divide) The Kingdom' rally was “officially the biggest protest in British history.” 🤥

In reality, as only about 56,000 people attended, it struggled to scrape the top TWENTY. 😂 Image
Read 7 tweets
Sep 13
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OK, I'll bite.

The word Fascism isn't 'meaningless'.

To spell out why, we need to unpack both the underlying implication of Andrew Doyle's argument and the reasons why it fails to adequately account for contemporary political dangers. Image
Andrew Doyle asserts that the term "fascism" is misused to the point of recklessness, echoing George Orwell’s 1944 observation that the word had been rendered meaningless. Doyle’s concern is not uncommon—but imho, it’s ultimately misplaced, especially in today’s context.
While it’s true that “fascism” is sometimes deployed rhetorically or hyperbolically (eg by Trump), Doyle’s framing dangerously downplays the genuine resurgence of fascist-adjacent movements across the Western world and undermines the analytical clarity necessary to confront them. Image
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Boris Johnson appears to have had a secret meeting with billionaire Peter Thiel - perhaps the most fanatical of the libertarian Oligarchs and co-founder of the controversial US data firm Palantir, the year before it was given a role at the heart of the UK’s pandemic response. Image
A month after entering No 10, Johnson and his senior adviser Dominic Cummings had a meeting with Thiel, leaked files suggest.

Johnson is now likely to face questions about whether the non-disclosure amounts to a breach of the ministerial code.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/s…
The hour-long afternoon meeting on 28 August 2019 was marked “private” in a log of Johnson’s activities that day and was not subsequently disclosed on the government’s public log of meetings.

Read 12 tweets
Aug 31
🧵

Elon Musk has been amplifying far-right accounts again, including Tommy Robinson, Rupert Lowe, and numerous anonynmous known #disinformation superspreader accounts like 'End Wokeness'.

Let's examine the context for yesterday's march in Richard Tice's constituency, #Skegness. Image
After decades of neglect, Skegness (pop 20K), stands out on key socio-economic markers on national averages: residents are older; whiter; lower full-time employment; higher rates of few/no qualifications; and concentrated deprivation - it's far-more deprived than most of England. Image
History repeatedly teaches us that burdening already struggling communities is a recipe for disaster.

These communities have been crying out for help for DECADES, but successive UK Govts have largely ignored their pleas, and continued to increase inequality, which harms us all. Image
Read 60 tweets
Aug 28
🧵 @Rylan Asylum seekers coming here aren’t technically "illegal." International law (the 1951 Refugee Convention) allows people to seek asylum in any country regardless of how they arrive or how many countries they pass through, as long as they're fleeing persecution or danger.
Allow me to explain why asylum seekers aren’t “illegal”, and how misinformation and nasty demonising and scapegoating rhetoric by certain politicians and media, including news media, has made some British people less welcoming of asylum seeekers.

@Rylan
People fleeing war, torture, or persecution have the legal right to seek asylum.

The 1951 Refugee Convention, which the UK helped write, says anyone escaping danger can apply for asylum in another country no matter how they arrive: claiming asylum isn't a crime.

@Rylan
Read 23 tweets
Aug 27
Farage's illiberal, immoral, & unworkable authoritarian plan involves ripping up human rights laws forged after WWII, which protect British people, & wasting £billions of UK taxpayers' money, giving some of it to corrupt misogynistic totalitarian regimes.
theguardian.com/politics/2025/…Image
Image
Leaving the #ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act and disapplying international conventions

The UK would be an outlier among European democracies, in the company of only Russia and Belarus, if it were to leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Opting out of treaties such as the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the UN Convention against torture and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention would also be likely to do serious harm to the UK’s international reputation.

It could also undermine current return deals, including with France, and other cooperation agreements on people-smuggling with European nations such as Germany.

The Society of Labour Lawyers said the plan would “in all likelihood preclude further cooperation and law enforcement in dealing with small boats coming from the continent and so increase, rather than reduce, the numbers reaching our shores”. 

Farage said he would legislate to remove the “Hardial Singh” safeguards – a reference to a legal precedent that sets limits on the Home Office’s immigration detention powers – to allow indefinite detention for immigration purposes. This would be highly vulnerable to legal challenge.

Many of the rights protected by the ECHR and the Human Rights Act are rooted in British case law, so judges would still be able to prevent deportations, even without international conventions.

x.com/docrussjackson…
Reform UK’s grotesque far-right mass deportation plan is not just economically and socially illiterate (Britain an ageing population and low birth rate) rely on striking “returns agreements” with countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea and Sudan, offering financial incentives to secure these deals, alongside visa restrictions and potential sanctions on countries that refuse.

These are countries where the Home Office’s risk reports warn of widespread torture and persecution.

It would risk the scenario of making payments to countries such as Iran, whose regime the UK government has accused of plotting terror attacks on British soil.

The Liberal Democrats called the payments “a Taliban tax”, saying the plan would entail sending billions “to an oppressive regime that British soldiers fought and died to defeat”. They said: “Not a penny of taxpayers’ money should go to a group so closely linked to terrorist organisations proscribed by the UK.”
Read 13 tweets

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