All In the Family. This is classic authoritarian corruption. From my #Strongmen, 2020: "Strongmen are family men, in their own fashion. The leader’s children may run the official family business, as with Berlusconi and Trump..." 1/

https://twitter.com/markfollman/status/1664254489967341570

"...or the unofficial family business of drug and arms smuggling or money laundering, as with Gaddafi’s offspring, and Mobutu’s son Kongulu. Sons-in-law have a prominent role in strongman governance. Mussolini made his son-in-law Ciano Foreign Minister..." 2/

Erdogan=another case study of how #Strongmen respond to crises. The priority is always self-preservation. "To deflect attention from his cronyism and incompetence, Erdogan has engaged in favorite autocratic activities: censoring people and locking them up. #TurkeyQuake 1/ The government's Twitter ban in the days following the quake, intended to silence criticism of his regime, made it more difficult for the public to find their loved ones and get advice from disaster management professionals. #turkeyearthquake2023 2/

My latest Lucid essay: Instead of a Red Wave, Historic Firsts. I don't shy away from blunt language in warning Americans what can happen when freedoms are lost. And yet one of my mantras is: Never Underestimate the American People. Another is: Never Give Up Hope. 1/ As I wrote in a May Lucid essay, "Hope is an essential part of anti-authoritarian strategy. It is the antidote to a deadly fatalism." 2/
lucid.substack.com/p/hope-the-sec…

I'm writing a series of essays for Lucid on myths & falsehoods about Fascism. This one is about far-right attempts to remove associations with Jewish genocide and salvage the rest of the Fascist legacy. 1/ lucid.substack.com/p/to-make-fasc…
Sign up for Lucid: lucid.substack.com/subscribe? The whitewashing takes many forms, from the Big Lie of Holocaust denial to "memory laws" passed by countries like Poland with far-right governments that need to dissociate themselves from collaboration with genocide. 2/

My latest Lucid essay is on Trump's Hitler fantasies and how Gen. Milley and other U.S. commanders who refused to collaborate with his coup were well aware of the devastation that comes to militaries that serve autocrats. 1/ lucid.substack.com/p/trumps-hitle… Armed forces that serve autocrats often end up demoralized, forced to deeply compromise or abandon their codes of ethics and conduct. An estimated 10-20% of German generals and admirals killed themselves in 1945 (Hitler's suicide was his last middle finger salute to them) 2/

Want to have the most urgent issues regarding democracy protection on your radar months before they feature in the media? Subscribe to Lucid! Subscribing's free (but paying is much appreciated). lucid.substack.com/about?utm_sour…
A 🧵 with 4 examples... 1/ When Exiles Become Targets. Lucid May 2021 & NYT Aug 2021. 2/

I'm thinking about cults this week at Lucid, my newsletter about threats to democracy. A 🧵
Cults propagate alternate knowledge bases and flourish when media and political systems are in flux. Weimar Germany and 2016 America both had dynamic media and advertising landscapes. 1/ Authoritarians with such cults often modernize political messaging, using state of the art comms technologies (newsreels, television, Twitter) to cultivate followers who seek new forms of connection as well as new models of leadership. 2/

Lies kill. Propaganda enables violence. It's good news that 175 civil society organizations around the world are now working on disinformation. How can we counter it? 1/ My preferred strategy is to "expose the device": rather than refute the lie, talk about the reason the lie exists. Expose the manipulation process, rather than fight the specific manipulation. 2/

Thread on how authoritarians use the power of threat. A few testimonies, from my 2020 book #Strongmen: wwnorton.com/books/97813240…
A culture of threat fosters silence & self-policing. Non-action from political opponents & critics gives appearance of consent for illegal action. Franco’s Spain: the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset reflected on how “the threat in my mind of an eventual violence, coercion, or sanction that other people are going to exercise against me” bred conformity. 2/

Some Personal News: Today I'm launching Lucid, a newsletter about abuses of power and how to counter them. It provides clear analysis about the consequences of democratic erosion, and the costs of disinformation and corruption in government, boardrooms, and institutions. 1/ Lucid also covers the global resistance to tyranny. Today's activism manifests in Black Lives Matter marches around the world, in the global youth climate movement, and in the attention to civic and religious faith in struggles against oppression. 2/