Sandra Selects

This book is slim, barely 200 pages including notes, but is packed with so many astonishing facts and ideas, even for those of us who are “news junkies" or can’t stop searching the political landscape for meaning and understanding. We know about money laundering, but we learn much more about information laundering, whose purpose is to question democracy itself, to create chaos and make us fear. Autocracies cultivate cynicism in their populations— think of that the next time you say, ”Everyone does it” or "Everyone is corrupt.” Not everyone is corrupt. For example: in the fall of 2022, at the Vilnius summit, a group of exiled leaders and politicians from many different countries met to plan the meeting. They wanted to change the shape of the debate, seeing themselves not as an opposition to authoritarian regimes but an option. The group includes Timothy Cho, who escaped from North Korea; Gary Kasparov, the chess champion; Masih Alinejad, the Iranian journalist and activist who persuaded Iranian women to discard their veils; and others. Applebaum shines a huge spotlight on western financial institutions who enable the transfer and concealment of Autocracy, Inc. billions, with shell companies to hide from taxes and store wealth. This is an impressive book.