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."

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)