important book for understanding our world

This book looks at how many of us, including the author, once an advisor for President Obama felt that we are living in a bubble or a goldfish bowl and unable to see beyond this to wonder what has happened to democracy, government, and the world we live in. By travelling to other countries helped the author understand his own country better. We are currently in a world that full of division with many countries starting to become the victims of authoritarian governments trying to command total control of the people from Russia, China, Turkey and many others. The author has gone to these countries to try and explain and understand his own country and how the world experiences the changes that we are currently undergoing.
HOW TO TURN AND DESTROY DEMOCRACY TO MAKE A COUNTRY BECOME AUTHORITARIAN - HUNGARY: From the book:
“I asked him to walk me through how his country’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, had transformed Hungary from an open democracy to a largely authoritarian system in the span of a decade. It took him only a few minutes. WIN ELECTIONS THROUGH RIGHT-WING POPULISM THAT TAPS INTO PEOPLE’S OUTRAGE OVER THE CORRUPTION AND INEQUITIES WROUGHT BY UNBRIDLED GLOBALIZATION. ENRICH CORRUPT OLIGARCHS WHO IN TURN FUND YOUR POLITICS. CREATE A VAST PARTISAN PROPAGANDA MACHINE. REDRAW PARLIAMENTARY DISTRICTS TO ENTRENCH YOUR PARTY IN POWER. PACK THE COURTS WITH RIGHT-WING JUDGES AND ERODE THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE RULE OF LAW. KEEP BIG BUSINESS ON YOUR SIDE WITH LOW TAXES AND FAVORABLE TREATMENT. DEMONIZE YOUR POLITICAL OPPONENTS THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA DISINFORMATION. ATTACK CIVIL SOCIETY AS A TOOL OF GEORGE SOROS. CAST YOURSELF AS THE SOLE LEGITIMATE DEFENDER OF NATIONAL SECURITY. WRAP THE WHOLE PROJECT IN A CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST MESSAGE THAT TAPS INTO THE LONGING FOR A GREAT PAST. OFFER A SENSE OF BELONGING FOR THE DISAFFECTED MASSES. RELENTLESSLY ATTACK THE OTHER: IMMIGRANTS, MUSLIMS, LIBERAL ELITES. IT STRUCK ME THAT SANDOR COULD HAVE BEEN DESCRIBING AMERICA INSTEAD OF HUNGARY.” This pretty much explains so much of how democracy is being dismantled. This could be equally applied to UK and USA and many of there as well as Russia, etc.
- An interesting example cited in this book is how Trump has been an experiment in fascism in America. Praising its own country and destroying its own citizens in the process.
- The book takes a long detailed look at Orban, President of Hungary and how he turned from being a liberal to an authoritarian ruler once he swept to power, suddenly creating legislation and thousands of new laws in his first year, not to help the people but to seek and make more power and control for himself, making judges that would create the rules he wanted and fill all the high profile jobs from law to media with his cronies who shared his same ideologies even though he had radically changed from who he was when younger, more liberal and to attack the state of terror caused by the control of communism. And yet he has become similar – because he helps to keep power.
- Another form of control is to put your cronies into the media so you control the narrative and create a press that is right-wing in its ideology and will help shape and mould citizens into a false sense of security of belief that what they are being told will help them make their country great through rage which is such a powerful, manipulative tool used by politicians to control the narrative and to make what they're doing is right and to make the opposition the enemy.
- The book shifts to how America has taken on some of the same steps as Hungary's leader by shifting the narrative to no longer seeking what is best for us but to look at the enemy and to really focus much more on the enemy rather than actually forming a good government and an equal society.
- Another tool used by these people is to create algorithms whereby everything you hit on about a person with some form of integrity is taken down a notch and made out to be untrustworthy or corrupt. And another approach is to create villains and bogie men such as George Soros or Bill Gates as the enemy and to put so much rubbish into what they are trying to press onto the population whether it be through social media sites to form a powerful trolling narrative that people believe, even when they are divorced from truth. WHEN YOU PRESENT PEOPLE WITH FAIRY TALES THEN PEOPLE SEEM TO PREFER FAIRY TALES TO ANY TRUE FORM OF REALITY.
- An interesting note is the people who are in power through government might not always be there as those who are in power because of wealth and money. People who are born into wealth and power (and there is plenty of research on this matter) often feel full of entitlement and superiority, even when wealth is through inheritance – these people feel that they deserve the wealth and superiority through their own narratives.
- Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. —ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN
- Orban and his government moved from democracy to a right wing dictatorship: transformed Hungary from an open democracy to a largely authoritarian system in the span of a decade.
- RUSSIA: The book then looks at the the rise of Putin in Russia. It's interesting how everybody uses their own narratives such as freedom of the right to vote or democracy and then Twitter in regard to how other people and countries and their governments view these things. Think of the narrative that Russia tells its own people about how bad America is and the same narrative is true in how America judges the rest of the world or Russia, but the important thing is that these narratives are then done and sent to others as a form of warfare in forming chaos and carnage amongst the societies that they wish to recognise.
- The way you destroy democracy authoritarian rule is by a 1000 cuts
- CHINA: The book then focuses on China and starts with the following a Mao Ze Dung quote: “Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive.” The methods of control and the totalitarianism that China has managed over its people in the 20 century is remarkable and terrifying. Most young people have never heard of the Great Leap Forward, the Red Army or the Cultural Revolution and its control and terror on others. China reframes the Great Leap Forward as the Difficult Years where Mao caused the deaths of an estimated 45 million people – in 3 years, through famine. Russia is just a junior partner compared to China and what they are doing to the world. With their underground Trojan like horse approaches to every citizen being a property of China and will work on their behalf and their ever-growing influence on making sure they are aware of what is going on in the world through adherence and control.
- China has had a pretty chaotic 20th century is it great leap forward killing millions through starvation and then the great cultural revolution but modern China has realised that the way to control its citizens and itself was to no longer embrace Marxism but embrace capitalism were money rules but also to shape its identity and what it stands for. Sadly, the government purged the shelves of its history and rewrote it and then gave itself its own identity where citizens would have to follow and embrace totalitarian rule now run by Preston Xi of China.
- China also rewrote the history of Titanium Square and replaced it with a new narrative. As the Chinese government changed, it also started looking into its history, praising Confucius at the Olympic Games and telling its own narrative of how the past was. But as it changed much of the ideology of communism the one thing I did keep as a fact and truth was that the Communist Party must be the only party and always be the party that is in power. This narrative is what creates total control of its citizens that will bend to the will of the Chinese government and its one leader president Xi and his party of cronies.
- The thing that makes China different to say Russia or Hungary is it not only does it use Internet as a tool for control and surveillance but it also tries to change the social pattern of thought in people’s minds so that they are so happy with what is going on around them and China has taken people out of poverty, increased and offered much more wealth in the society but it was a low bar to start with and that it changes how people think that they no longer require democracy because all their needs and wants are being given to the people. All whilst being controlled and manipulated by a Chinese government that tries to impose the view that if you are happy you will no longer need to care about who is in control and who is ruling your life.
- As George Orwell once said “freedom is slavery” and their use of technology to control and manipulate how people think and feel is central to the ideology to control the people. One of the things that the Chinese government has learnt is that people don't really care too much; they become desensitised to suffering when it is far away. The same can be true of what Trump has said. By using these tools, you can work out what is important and what is not important to people and you can start to control and manipulate how the rest of the world works as long as it works in your worldview and doesn't really care about the suffering that it inflicts. The Chinese initiative of utter control can be seen from the treatment of Muslims in concentration camps in China, itself the control and suppression of free movement such as what has happened in Tibet and now Hong Kong, so that they have utter control. They don't do this through warfare, although they don't really care how people feel about what they do they do. This is done through bribes, money and corruption and just as the British did when they ruled the waves of the last century when they went into countries and took to becoming rulers and stripped resources as did the Americans later on and now the Chinese are doing the same all over the world. Through their ‘Belts and Braces’ policies, they give loans to countries and then make those governments and countries become indebted to them.
- China has also brought large swathes of its population out of poverty in an incredibly short time and other governments that might have had a look in the past to America are now looking at an authoritarian way of creating control and getting people out of poverty. Is this a bad thing or is this something other governments around the world will try to emulate with the influence of China, creating costs and money to pay for these ways of managing their own society is also having supporting complete control by the government. I read recently that 61% of people in this country (the UK) view authoritarian rule positively and that is a very scary fact of the cost of what you will be taken.
- Everywhere around us we are controlled or reliant on Chinese goods or phones and computers but at the same time they're also moving into other areas like entertainment. An example of this is that there is seldom a Hollywood movie that has anything critical to say about the Chinese government even if it can be quite critical about American involvement in any issue. Anything critical of Chinese issues will lose revenue so nowadays you tend to have a Chinese figure to save the world working with Americans. This is the story and model of how China wants to present itself to the world. It all seems all good and nothing bad but this is probably definitely not the truth.
- What China is doing now is reprogramming minds to change and rewrite history and to see the Communist party in its own light and with it own narrative while handing out surveillance and control all the people.
- The change of view in the west of liberalism and democracy took a significant blow and started to change with the 2008 financial crash which was evidence to others that democracy perhaps wasn't working and the carnage it caused allowed people to say “look this democracy approach to government isn't working”. The same thing happened in China and that was China looking at the mess that had been created in the West’s 2008 financial crash that people all around the world started thinking perhaps I should adopt the Chinese model of rule rather than democracy..
- In many ways people are more interested in fashion or pop groups and don’t really question what is going on. However if you want to get on in China, and you want doors open and good business, the only stipulation is that you do not question government ideology. By doing this, you are free, so long as you are the slave.
- By rewriting the past and telling you how to behave and being under surveillance, then in theory as long as you don’t question, you will get along. This is really a world I don’t want to live in, but others probably do
- The other thing to think about in this book is how China is turning into a George Orwellian story of ‘animal farm’ but also particularly ‘1984’ and is the future going to include increased surveillance control of citizens and not just in China but in other countries. even in the USA. It came dangerously close with Donald Trump and I'm sure many people in business would like to have the same control over the citizens so that their cronies can make money and stuff the consequences of human beings and the society people
- There is also a description of things that we can do to fight against Chinese oppression but the most important one is being less apathetic to it and people are. THEY DON'T KNOW THEY DON'T CARE WHAT'S GOING ON AND THAT ALLOWS GOVERNMENTS WITH OBSCENE HUMAN RIGHTS AND CONTROLLING OPPRESSION OF PEOPLE TO GET AWAY WITH WHATEVER IT WANTS BECAUSE MORE PEOPLE WILL BE MORE FOCUSED ON THE DESIGN OF CLOTHES THEY ARE GOING TO WEAR OR THEIR LATEST HIT BY THEIR FAVOURITE POP BAND. APATHY IS DANGEROUS.
- Another interesting thing about the movement to fight against oppression is governments and people all over the world are becoming focused on identity politics that the individual itself to more important than the collective and that’s just the thing that China and Russia can tap into to make control because we’re too busy looking for and fighting for the rights of the minority group or individuals which China and Russia can exploit. .
- What to do about China. “When I asked Wilson what America should do about this development, he had a familiar list. Set a better democratic example. Impose sanctions on Chinese officials engaged in repression. Offer asylum to those threatened with arrest in Hong Kong. Work with allies to raise awareness and impose pressure on Beijing. Perhaps most important, Wilson argued that people in the United States should care more about these issues, and the actions of the U.S. government should reflect these concerns. He offered an example: “What we see from the UK, Australia, Canada—they issue these really cookie-cutter statements. I’m sure you could have done it in one minute.” He laughed. “Basically, just take the previous one and change the name of the country. Call for both sides to show restraint. Everyone should de-escalate. Dialogue. Which China just ignores. It’s a signal to them that you’re not going to do anything.”
- AMERICA: The fourth part of the book looks at America and how we have created the technologies that have allowed other nations and governments to control and know what its citizens are thinking. America and around the world that ideology has now been replaced more by identity politics where the individual who is deemed important, but this is driving more and more apathy as we focus on identity politics rather than what is going on in the rest of the world and the apathy that we feel about government law controlling in their nationalism and suppressing people's freedoms. More people are killed in America by white people or its own citizens than Muslim’s or terrorists from overseas but with the narratives that are played out in the media, REALITY HAS BECOME AN ILLUSION. And yet America has brought and been creating problems all around the world.
- Just as America formed the war on terror which promoted its nationalism and created all sorts of issues and conflicts around the world, China adopted the same model and they use the same blueprint to do their own war on terror and that started with imprisoning thousands of Muslims in concentration camps but China took somebody's ideas from the model that America has been using. As have Hungary and Russia.
- What is been really interesting in many of the changes that have occurred in governments around the world is it when a revolution starts, the new guard that comes in is way worse than the old guard and their rule becomes extensive control and surveillance over many as a few people make a lot of money out of this kind of chaos.
- However for all the problems that America has caused in its global war it also has to be recognised as trying to do something for the good and this is what some people both in America and Europe are trying to do. But you are also confronted with the enemy within which right-wing media commentators will often say it's all down to wokism or if only they've been able to do something and then the threat of imaginary foes within its own country, as exemplified by Fox News and similar organisations that have just left the whole world weaker.
- And when we consider how many people lured by low tax in a stronger economy went for someone who created carnage and really soiled the American reputation of standing in the world, people wanted it for it on the promise of a fairytale and also making money for themselves.
- America is now so down the rabbit hole in its conspiracy theories and its acceptance american’s voted for a president like Trump with its QAnon conspiracy theories, and the rest of the world looks and sees how people need to follow lies and falsehoods. Many Americans who were probably decent, choose to follow this narrative which has created the same sort of state that you would find in many other countries and the rest of the world no longer looks at America in the same kind of pride that they had looked at in the past.
- And yet despite all these governments in India, America, Russia, China, Hungry there are still many many citizens of all of these countries who strive for a better world, a world that can be united and not divided and share many common values whether you are right wing or left wing and that is the world we can hope we can create if we are aware of the lies and misinformation. As Marcos Arelious once said “it's not the things that happened to us that matter, it's how we respond to the things that happen to us that matter to us”.

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Superb Analysis

A talented writer and insightful approach to complex ideas. I definitely learnt a lot from him

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Brilliant

A big fan of the Pod and absolutely loved it. Really insightful with a blend of human experience to make it more accessible.

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Power Corrupts

I will be honest and say I never understood how a creative writer major gets to be called a national security adviser. The sense one gets is a speech writer in the room when others are making strategic decisions. I wish he could have clarified what he added to the national security beyond nice words for Obama to say. That aside, this is a good read/listen. It is however bleak but naggingly pertinent. A warning to take our democracy seriously and not fall for fools like Trump and Boris. this is a time for serious politicians and maybe one for realising we made a huge mistake outsourcing everything to China. We are going to have to pay more for things, manufacture them in democratic nations and raise barriers to trade based on the rule of law and human rights. Only then can we tackle the thugocracies. There remains the distinct possibility it may all be too late.

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Excellent

An enlightening read which paints a worrying picture of the joined up approach taken by authoritarian leaders. Thanks for your work Ben Rhodes

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Read it!

Really liked this book.

Lots to reflect on (I'd recommend taking time during it to do so). Great motivation to take action, to think about how you can leave your mark on the world.

I think if you aren't American you need to have some patience and tolerance to not react to the sometimes overly patriotic rhetoric and self-importance, and if you do you'll see it is a careful balance of self criticism and pride, which is refreshing.

Only comment from me is that the use of the male pronoun as default happened a few times, and there were a couple of remarks I would label as culturally insensitive, but I trust the author did their best to avoid this in a book that touched many sensitive issues.

Overall definitely 5 stars and would 100% recommend!

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An amazing book

I heard of Ben Rhodes through his podcast and therefore knew him as an informed, intelligent, articulate and thoughtful commentator. This book abundantly illustrates these qualities as well as many others (like courage and integrity). I’ve learnt a lot about recent global events & America’s role on the world stage. He has given me a lot to think about and I heartily recommend it.

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