The war in Ukraine has made Vladimir Putin one of the most hated figures in the world. But any attempt to remove him from office could unleash more violence inside Russia, says Moisés Naím, author of The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century.
When backed into a corner, “three-P dictators”—according to Naím, rulers who encourage populism, polarization, and post-truth populations—will become even more brutal and repressive, he tells Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal.
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“As we have seen in Venezuela, they just repress the protesters. And it becomes very risky and very dangerous to be an opponent of the regime,” he adds.
“They’ll kill more people? What does that look like, more oppression?” asks Molly.
“It looks like what we have seen in some of the footage from Russia, thousands of people being detained that had been in streets protesting the war. We have seen it in Iran,” Naím says, “They used their oppressive capacity of the state to detain very often to torture, and sometimes to kill [the opposition].”
Changing gears, Molly asks how countries like the United States can protect their democracy from autocratic populist leaders like Trump, especially with right-wing disinformation running rampant on social media.
Naím’s answer: regulation of the platforms that spread misinformation and propaganda.
“We have had in the United States for many years government agencies that protect consumers from toxic medicines, bad food products. What we need now is consumer protection for the digital consumer,” he says.
Also on the pod! Molly and co-host Andy Levy listen to a clip of Trump trying to “teach” Joe Biden about nuclear weapons, and they break down Sean Hannity’s “hard-on” for Ronald Reagan.
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