Autocracy in America

Podcast produced by TheAtlantic.com:
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2024/08/introducing-autocracy-in-america/679474/
    "Renée DiResta: ’Cause I thought, Surely we’re not that far gone
[laughs]. Um, and then, yeah, and then I realized maybe we are,
actually.
[music]
Anne Applebaum: There’s a common perception that democracy ends with a
battle—soldiers in the streets, a coup d’état, the fall of a government.
    Amanda Carpenter: Modern-day authoritarians do not come into power
by brute force.
Peter Pomerantsev: No, democracy’s lost one little step at a time.
    Carpenter: Modern-day authoritarians come to power by winning by
democratic elections, but then once they get into power, tilting all the
levers of power in their favor.
Pomerantsev: We know this because we have studied how autocracies take
hold.
[music]
    Jefferson Cowie: My nightmare is that fascism comes to America, but
it’s marching under the banner of freedom.
Applebaum: We have reported from places where freedoms are curtailed and
corruption flourishes.
    Mikhail Zygar: If you are accused of something, you’re going to be
proven guilty. And there are no exceptions.
Applebaum: We have seen with our own eyes what happens when democracy
gives way to authoritarianism.
Pomerantsev: When we look at America today—right now—we see a place
where the slide to autocracy has already begun.
Applebaum: It’s not some distant future. It’s the present. The evidence
can be found in the tightening grip of conspiracy theories.
    Stephen Richer: Never in a million years would I have thought that
somebody would have accused me of shredding ballots from the 2020
election, feeding them to chickens, and then burning the chickens to
cover the evidence.
Pomerantsev: It can be seen in the misuse of investigations and the
fragility of the courts.
    DiResta: I just kept saying, like, When do we get to the part where
the facts come out?
Applebaum: There are signs of autocracy in the growth of dark money and
the lack of transparency in politics.
    Sheldon Whitehouse: This is a beast that is stalking America’s
political landscape."