Wanna Read ASAP: Spin Dictators by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman
I found out about the existence of this book by accident, and just like many things in my life, accidental discoveries are later to reveal themselves worthy of my attention. I bet this one won’t be different.
Dictatorship is like a plague outbreak. It infuses our world with injustice and suffering. The modern dictators like Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Viktor Orban use democracy as a screen behind which they exploit their power to control their citizens by distorting information, faking freedom, and pretending to be great leaders who care about their people and their countries.
We tend to turn a blind eye to dictators like them, because unlike Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad, this bunch looks decent and civilized. But in 2022, Vladimir Putin showed the whole world the cost of it.
Such names as Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s leader, and Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s leader, and their methods of less violent monopolization of power are also being traced in Spin Dictators, and I must admit, I know nothing about these two, which makes me even more excited about this book. And let’s not forget about Xi Jinping, who isn’t just distorting information inside his country, but fully controls it—the Internet, statistics, and media in general.
They spread lies and it’s poisoning our world. But how they do it? What threat they pose? And how democracies should respond? In Spin Dictators we can hope to find answers to these questions.
Offering incisive portraits of today’s authoritarian leaders, Spin Dictators explains some of the great political puzzles of our time—from how dictators can survive in an age of growing modernity to the disturbing convergence and mutual sympathy between dictators and populists like Donald Trump.
—an excerpt from Spin Dictator's blurb
I haven’t yet read this book but I already highly recommend it. This is the book I Wanna Read ASAP and maybe, some of you will find it interesting too.