YouSaid · the spoken record

Gideon Rachman

lines on the record: 51
first: 2022-04-18
most recent: 2022-04-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Man leader Lukashenko lost an election. A lot of people took to the streets and they were killed, arrested, driven into exile. He did what was necessary in his own view to keep himself in power. And I think Putin would do the same. I mean, brave people go on demonstrations in Moscow. I was there in 2019 when there were people taken to the streets, but it wasn't like, you know, a protest in Britain, people were having their legs broken, literally on the streets. So you've got to be quite brave and you won't even necessarily succeed. So I think If sanctions work and a political scientist apparently look at transitions in authoritarian regimes and forms of authoritarian regimes and apparently a palace coup tends to be much more likely than a street revolt. So you've got to hope that it's a group of people around the leadership who get together and say, you know what, time to get rid of the old guy and manage to organize themselves. And even that is very, very difficult because although I'm sure there's discontent in the Russians.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think Probably not. I think that the sanctions in themselves, well, you know, there are various models of how that might work. I think the one where the Russian people are reduced to penury and decide that this guy is really bad news and take to the streets and overthrow him, sort of 1917 in 2022 or three. I think there's a couple of obstacles to that. One is that he controls the media. So as you say, he can say, you know, it's the West that's doing this to you and it just proves what I said all along, which is there are enemy and bring along the sort of memories of privation in the 1940s and we pull together then and we've got to do it now. And some people will buy it. And for the ones who don't, you know, actually having a street revolution in Russia is not as easy as you might fondly hope. We had a dry run in Belarus next door, which is a very similar, strong.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think Modi's still popular, actually. He's just won a big victory in Uttar Pradesh. But Bolsonaro, I think, might lose and Erdogan might lose. Question is, will they respect the results? Bolsonaro is already using Trump-style rhetoric about the ballot's going to be rigged and all of that. I think another thing that Netanyahu and Israel is an interesting example because he was a kind of strongman leader. And in the end, the Israeli system was just able to evict him after four elections where eventually they formed a coalition, everybody who wanted Netanyahu out, which was so broad that it included the sort of secular social It's still possible if you're in a system where that can be done.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because he's getting old. I mean, Erdogan, Putin, and Shia are all in their late 60s. None of them in the best of health. They will get old, or who begins to believe their own publicity and make horrible mistakes. But actually getting them out is difficult. There are some of these places where there are still elections. People hoped Orban might lose. He didn't. Erdogan faces an election next year. And if it's a clean election, he might well lose because things are going really badly in Turkey. There's rampant inflation. The economy is in really terrible shape. But then the next question is, if he did lose, and it's a question incidentally with Bolsonaro and Brazil, who faces a presidential election in October, I think, or November, in both these cases.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Might give us some hope. I think so. I mean, I do think it's a flawed model, and I think almost invariably ends up in disaster, actually. And as I said, arguably we're beginning to see that happen even in China with the zero COVID stuff, the sort of trap that they're in there. The difficulty is that how do you get out of it? Because you can recognize that it's going badly. But part of the thing is that these guys have abolished checks and balances, have often abolished elections, or only hold phony elections, so that the thing that democracies do have with all their flaws is they have a way of handling succession. And incidentally, I think that's why strong men often move towards dynastic politics, because it's a sort of monarchical model where you handle the problem of succession by handing on to your child. But if you don't have that, what do you do with a leader who's losing his grip?”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“White privileges is entrenched, needs to be taken on, etc. That we need to push hard back in the other direction. That's an interesting argument. And I think that it's one that we've only just begun to grapple with, partly because actually the liberal left is under its own form of pressures and is having its own civil wars on these issues. So that, for example, I think another one is actually trans rights, where I think if you get sort of your average Democrat or Labour Party politician of my age, they would say, look, this is the last issue we want to be arguing on. We can see it's a loser for us at the ballot box. You know, maybe we kind of make some concessions on this one, but they have a very powerful lobby which feels very passionately about this. And if they move in that direction, they get whacked from their own side. So those are the kinds of dilemmas that liberals are facing, I think.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Race, because I think that's a really important driver of a lot of this. It's important for Orban. I think the backlash against open borders is crucial to Brexit. Trump's slogan, after all, is build a wall. These groups, these leaders tend to be majoritarians who are not interested in minority rights and who are often either openly racist or sort of flirting with racism. And as a liberal, What do you do with that? Interesting one, you know, do you say, well, maybe we have had gone too far in the way of open borders, that we do restrict immigration, that we try and take this emotion and channel it into something acceptable? Or do we say, you know what, it's already so closely associated with racism that at any rate it's so contrary to the kind of society that we want to promote, which is actually saying, you know, that in some cases that, you know,”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“White men, uneducated white men in America, it was actually falling in the last 20 years in the same way that it was falling in the Soviet Union in the 1990s. It was a kind of sign of what the economists, Angus Eaton called deaths of despair. And that this was a sign that something really badly wrong was going on. So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised if it produces an extreme political reaction. And I think that that is a very large part of the answer for liberals is that maybe we became too besotted with what became called neoliberalism, which was in turn associated with rampant inequality. It sort of said, you know, trickle down, rising tide will lift all boats, et cetera. Let's just get growth going. And we didn't worry too much about the distributional effects. And we were probably wrong about that. I think the other bit that is harder for liberals is migration, immigration.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I mean, I think that my book might be a bit too fatalistic in retrospect because I don't really answer that question. I sort of end up saying, look, these guys will fail because it's a very flawed model of government. And in a sense, you've almost got to wait them out. That's probably, I think that's probably true, but it's not enough of a plan of action. I think that liberals have a dilemma, which they've got to think about very hard, which is that it's easy. I've done the easy part to say these guys are thugs, they're liars, et cetera, et cetera. That's all true. But you've got to answer the question, why are they so popular, at least in democracies? I think the economic bit of it, we can deal with relatively easily. I mean, not in terms of finding the golden bullet that will fix the economy, but at least recognizing the grievance and saying, yeah, you know, bits of America were devastated. You know, if you look at the life expectancy of”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think that they're likely to be in quite this way. And I think Marine Le Pen is an interesting test case because she might be the first female strongman, if you like, if she wins. A couple of things to say about her. Obviously, she is where she is partly because she's part of a dynasty, which was started by a man, by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. And I think that actually strongman politics is strongly dynastic if you look at the Trump family or Duterte's daughters about to become vice president of the Philippines and so on. It doesn't have to be, but it often has that element. But I think that if you look at Le Pen's pitch in other respects, it is classic strongman stuff. We used to be great. We can be great again. There's anti-globalism. In fact, she's explicitly said, you know, politics is now a battle between nationalists and globalists. She has on occasions.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think that certainly the whole writing of book about the whole strongman politics did make me think to use another kind of slightly modish word, that there is something about sort of toxic masculinity, a certain form of it that is represented by these leaders. Part of this sometimes is a kind of male backlash thing. Often the figures that the strong man choose to deride are women. Hillary Clinton becomes a hate figure for the Trump camp. And Salvini, who is the would-be strongman of Italy, I remember meeting an Italian female politician who said that Salvini had waved around an inflated sex doll on the stage with her name written on it. You know, that's unbelievably crude masculine chauvinism. The question is, I don't think that women, however, incapable of being bad or brutal readers.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so look, I don't think there's much you can do, but I don't want to preach passivity. I think be reasonably vigilant. I don't think don't believe it can't happen here. You know, that's what a lot of American liberals thought about the United States. And I think it's to some extent what we say in Britain, I think precisely often it's countries that are overconfident in their own institutions that maybe see the danger signs too late and believe in institutions. I think that the antidote to strongman personalized politics is a politics of rules and of law and of institutions and that a belief that healthy societies are not about a genius individual. They're about a system, a system that keeps everybody in control and that nobody is irreplaceable. It's the system that you protect. Not the individual.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Watch the German elections and you say, Thank God for the Germans, which is not something anybody said much in the 20th century, but now you look at this place where you have a civilized debate, where nobody is making these sort of crazy appeals, where people take lying very seriously. They're called out. Now, Germany has its lunatic fringe, which is why one shouldn't be too complacent. The AFD, the far left, and things could go wrong in that country. It's not immune, but it's like it's had its third booster shot, if you like. What was the second question? Oh, yeah, what should we do? Yeah, I do remember. What should we do if we don't like strongman rule?”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, Germany, well, great question, but I think it's because of Hitler, to be honest, that the Germans take this very, very seriously and are, I hope, immune to it, although one shouldn't be complacent about anybody. But I remember a German friend of mine saying that she was watching Trump's 2016 speech to the Republican Convention. And she said she began to cry watching it because it reminded her so much of the Hitler speeches that she had been made to watch as a child to inoculate herself against this style of leadership. And I thought, oh, come on, you're being a bit hysterical, you know, whatever. But A, I think she may have had more of a point than I realized, but also that I think for a lot of Germans, they're not really up for another Fura for understandable reasons. And I hope that persists. And it sort of created this paradox that we're, you know, if you're a liberal, you're saying.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Isolate Russia. They've made that absolutely clear, and you can see it in votes at the UN. I think at the moment they're not going to go full force in behind Russia. They're going to wait and see how things pan out before they decide. But incidentally, and we'll talk about this maybe later, they have their own big problems with, you know, COVID is out of control now in Shanghai. Shanghai is locked down. And you could argue it's a bit of a stretch maybe, but it's Xi Shinping's Ukraine in the sense that this is a policy, zero COVID, that he is closely identified with, that he has made a symbol of his rule and it's going wrong. And if you're in a strongman system, the strongman's not allowed to make mistakes because the whole idea is infallibility. You can't replace him because he alone is wise and knows the way to do things. So you can't reverse out of a mistaken policy because that admits you've made a mistake. And so you kind of dig into these.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think they were watching and waiting. I think that they certainly, I think a quick victory for Russia would really have suited them. I mean, there's a school of thought that said, oh, no, China doesn't like shifting of tax on sovereignty. I mean, I think that's not the case. I think that their main concern is American global power. So something that looked like Afghanistan too, you know, that you'd have Americans sort of humiliated in Afghanistan and then in Ukraine, great, because that then sets the stage and maybe gets the Chinese courage up to really have a go at invading Taiwan, which they've been threatening to do for a long time. I think what's happened now must make them think a bit about, well, you know, could we invade Taiwan? Is the West a bit more organized and resilient than we thought? And how deeply do we go in with the Russians on this? And so I think that although they clearly are not going to join in a Western campaign to”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so that's, I think, where the bond is. Now, clearly, there are also big underlying potential tensions between China and Russia. So I'll finish up in a second. Such a huge subject. But I think the Chinese have a big dilemma now. Do they back their PALs in Moscow or do they say, you know what, you've made a mistake, guys? We're not going to go full force behind you. And you can argue it either way from their point of view. They could say, you know, of course we have to back the Russians. There are only friends. And if we join in Western sanctions, we're actually destroying our friend so that the West can then turn on us. I've heard the Chinese make that argument. Alternatively, they could say this guy has made a hideous error. Why should we pile in behind and poison our own relations with the West? So they've got a very difficult dilemma.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“America is sponsoring color revolutions. And so I think that shared ideological interest underpinned by a common bond between these two guys who are both strongman leaders, who are both centralizing power around themselves as a Russian analyst, a friend of mine put it. Putin's the czar and she's the emperor. They're taking their...”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is not just some innocuous kind of annoying effort to protect a dissident in China or to speak out for memorial in Moscow, that actually there's a much more sinister agenda as they see it behind them. And that is to remove them from power. And by saying essentially your rule is illegitimate. And in Putin's fully developed view, funding the opposition. And the moment where I think he tips into paranoia about this is really quite early on with the first revolution in Ukraine and then the other color revolutions, 2004-5. And the point is that he shares this paranoia with the Chinese. So if you look at the joint statement that Russia and China issue on February 4th this year after the Putin Xi meeting that really sets up the Ukraine war, there's a long denunciation of American power, but it includes this argument that a specific reference to color revolutions, this argument that”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kind of traditional great power politics. They both want a sphere of influence. Russia has said, you know, NATO has just got too close. We're pushing back. China similarly says this area around us should be our sphere of influence. We don't like the fact that America dominates the Pacific Ocean as it does has since 1945. We're going to claim the whole of the South China Sea. We claim the right to invade Taiwan, you know, to push back against the Japanese, et cetera, et cetera. So that's kind of classic national interest territorial stuff. But then alongside it, there's a paranoia about what they see as sort of democratic expansionism. I refer to this concern that the West is out to get them. And they believe that this human rights language that Hillary Clinton or whoever, most American leaders,”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I don't think so, but I think it's pretty close at the moment. And I think it is actually an alliance kind of based around strongman politics and shared paranoia so that these are two big powers that have jointly decided they don't like the US-led world order. Partly that's to do with...”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or his other one is ban all Muslims from entering the country. But they all have a simplest, often a rather brutal in some contexts solution. So in Duterte's case, it's shoot the drug dealers, essentially, have a war on drugs. And he kills thousands of people. Let's not bother with this law and order stuff. Let's just have vigilantes out there. Unleash the police. And in Putin's case, it's, well, you know, I'm fed up with all this trouble with Ukraine. Just use the army. And that's what he does. So there are people who say the world isn't complicated. That's a liberal lie. The world's simple, but you need somebody like me who has the guts to call it like it is and to do what's necessary. And I think that's their basic appeal.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I think it's very important in the sense that it's part of the whole liberal style, which is to say, well, I kind of see your point, you know, on the one hand, on the other, I wouldn't call it dogmatism, I would call it simplism, by which I mean that these are people who say, you know, the liberals out there are saying it's all very complicated, like Brexit, for example. It's complicated that if you do this, there are trade-offs, et cetera, et cetera. You know what? It's not complicated. That's a dogmatic statement. It's also a simplest statement. It's saying you just had to cut through all the bullshit they're giving you and do this thing, this one big thing, and it'll be all right. So in our case, in the UK, it was Brexit, get Brexit done, you know, whatever. In Trump's, it's often a three-word slogan. It's build the wall. Illegal immigration is a problem. Just build a massive wall, you know, and that'll be fine.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There. And Trump had this brilliant way of promoting conspiracy theories. Sometimes he would directly endorse them, but more often he would say, you know, a lot of people are saying. And so he would validate these crazy ideas. Trump's campaign starts with a lie, which is the thing that brings him to prominence is the birth of thing that Obama's not born in America. And he offers and therefore is not shouldn't be president. And that's a classic because it's something people wanted to believe because they hated the idea that Obama was president. So maybe you could prove that he wasn't even entitled to be president. He's not even an American because after all he's black. And so that kind of thing, he's not an American. If you want to believe it, here's me saying this stuff that you want to believe. And that's been very true for Bolsonaro, for all of these guys, that social media and fake news, real fake news, not the kind of data.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very important, and you're the social media person, so I'd be interested to know what your views on this is. But I do think that social media. Referred to by some people who study Facebook, I think possibly even within Facebook as patient zero, because it was the first time that they saw how Facebook could be weaponized by a sort of strongman authoritarian to get often fictitious fake news out there and to create a whole alternative narrative that supports these people. And interestingly, I say that they always accuse you of doing what they're doing. So the term fake news, as far as I know, was originally used by Hillary Clinton about this kind of thing. And then Trump adopts it. And anything he dislikes is labeled as fake news. And essentially what he is saying to his followers is believe what you like. Literally believe what you like. If you want to believe that Hillary Clinton is running a paedophile parlor from beneath a pizza restaurant, which bizarrely a lot of people did believe to the point that somebody actually attacked the pizza parlor, then fine. I'll put that out.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On various things the Russians were doing more or less, but you guys do it as well. And I think Putin does sincerely believe this. In his speech just before the Ukraine war, he basically calls the West the Empire of Lies because he doesn't, he says, I'm not buying it, guys. You know, you talk the language of human rights, but you invaded Iraq. You know, you lie all the time. So why shouldn't I lie is the sort of, you know, you're no better than me. But I think, you know, personally, I would say there's a complete different quality to their kinds of lies. I don't actually think all the horrors of some American inventions around the world that they would ever have leveled a city like Mariopol and then said it didn't happen. That doesn't actually happen in the West because we have a press that can hold people to account. But then, yes, this becomes creation of an alternative reality becomes...”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there was something which I didn't put in the book, which I really should have. I put it in the article because I was reminded by a family member, actually, that when I first met Pescov, his spokesman in 2007 or 8, sitting in his office in the Kremlin, and his screensaver on his computer was revolving quotations from 1984. I mean, he was trolling us before trolling was a thing. I mean, it was literally war is peace, you know, freedom is slavery were revolving on his computer. So he was kind of laughing at us, but he was making the point that I know what I'm doing. And yeah, I am twisting the truth. I am creating a different way of looking at things. And yes, I think that that was very, as I said, deep cynicism. I think if they were called upon to justify it, indeed Peskov did when he didn't explicitly say I'm lying. But what he said when I said, you know, tried to call him out.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trump is still talking this language. He calls Putin a strategic genius. So there is this sort of yearning for a leader who doesn't play by the rules, who's got a bit of swagger and a bit of devil about him. And that's where Putin becomes this kind of archetype. And I think for their own reasons, a lot of leaders around the world, whether or not they're consciously imitating Putin, take on this new model of strongman leadership as an alternative to the rather wearying rules-bound, law-bound, globalization-bound other model that's being pushed by kind of the liberals.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who becomes the face of the country? And these advisors said, you know, he's fascinated by Putin. He really admires him. He likes what he's doing. And in the West, you have now famously Marine Le Pen playing kind of ideological footsie with the people around Putin, even taking money from the Russians and having to kind of rip the photo of Putin with Putin out of her campaign brochure right now. And others like Rudy Giuliani saying, you know, look around the world, what Putin did in Syria. That's what you call leadership. Giuliani is Trump's lawyer. Nigel Farage asked, you know, who is the politician you most admire around the world? This is a GQ interview, I think, in 2015 said, Putin. He said, I don't like his politics, mind. But, you know, what he did in Syria, that was brilliant, you know. And this carries right up to the invasion of Ukraine, like two days before the invasion of Ukraine.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of leader for somebody who is more like Putin, and he's the archetype. And other leaders, that you could just say, well, that's the Russians talking their own book. But there are other leaders who begin to say this classically Duterte in the Philippines, who is a real strongman's probably too polite. It's a bit of a thug. But when he's asked in a debate in the Philippines, you know, who is your political hero? And he says, my hero is Putin. Now, it's said with a smirk because it's a deliberately intended to shock, but there's something in it as well. I talk to some political advisors to Mohammed bin Salman, and the Saudi crown prince, who in his own way also has introduced a strongman politics to Saudi Arabia. And you might say, well, you know, it's never democracy. No, it wasn't. But it was a collective leadership. It was a kind of collective royal family that never had a single kind of figure like MBS.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Seems right. And then Putin begins to change things by becoming more overtly anti-Western, by becoming more openly authoritarian, locking up his enemies at home, waging mini-wars, a very brutal war actually internally in Chechnya, and then attacking Georgia and so on. And he creates a different model of leadership, which people initially miss, as I say. And then it begins to establish a fan club. There are people, other leaders around the world who say, you know what, that's kind of cool. I'd quite like to be like that. This guy who's not playing the American game, who is a nationalist, who is doing things differently. And Peskov, his spokesman, says in 2008, I think it is, you know, there's a people are looking around the world for a different style.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, the sort of personality question, which maybe we can deal with later, because I don't really go into it much in the book, but I'm asked about it a lot. And I think it is an interesting question. Are there certain personality types who come forward? But I mean, something I do deal with in the book is why does the atmosphere shift? And the best I can do is I think that there are global political fashions and things that appear permissible and then impermissible. And I think that when Putin, for example, comes to power, it really is the heyday of American power. It's pre-9-11, and of liberal democracies' confidence. It's less than a decade since Fukuyama's published the end of history. There doesn't seem to be another coherent ideology in town. It does feel like what the Americans are saying, that, you know,”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In 1989 in Budapest about the need to overthrow the Soviet yoke and turn Hungary into a democracy, he's kind of the face of dynamic young liberal Hungary. And now look at him. He is the face of populist nationalism. So these people change as well. It's not simply that we misread them. And I think actually I'll finish with Orban on this particular answer because it's an interesting example. He comes in, he does talk the language of democracy. He is the kind of hero of the urban intelligentsia. Then he loses an election. And he thinks, you know, maybe I better come up with a new kind of political platform. And the new second Orban is much more nationalistic, much more populist, much more appealing to Hungary outside Budapest. And that is the Orban that we see today.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stuff was a decade ago. Look at his record since then. He's basically an economic reformer. He's very dynamic. He's what the country needs. And I wrote a piece saying, you know, he's a risk, but maybe it's time to take a chance on this guy because India needs a jolt. And, you know, I regret having written that. But actually, I wasn't alone. Obama contributed an article about Modi to Time magazine in 2015, which was extremely laudatory. And it's only now, really, that we're looking at what he's doing and India's been reclassified as partly free by Freedom House, which, because of the extent to which he is rolling back democracy in India. A couple of other examples. Viktor Orban, when he first emerges, he's the hero of the kind of liberal democratic left in Europe. He gives a big speech.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Clearly, an authoritarian leader has locked up all sorts of people, has moved into a vast presidential palace, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But others, I mean, Xi Shinping, again, if you look what was written at the time by Western commentators about him, people were saying, well, he's clearly going to be an economic reformer. That's the key to him. And maybe he'll do a bit of political reform as well. That's clearly going to happen. Then Modi in 2014, I got wrong. I mean, that was an interesting one because he already had this very dark record in Gujarat. And he had been banned from entering the United States. And there were politics first people, liberals, who said he's too dangerous. I guess my mistake was that, you know, at the FT, we mixed with a lot of business people. And India was in the doldrums at the time. And a lot of Indian businessmen were saying to me and to others, you know what? The Gujarats.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In his language and in his reception. He comes to power in 2003, just after 911 with the Iraq war looming. And the West is very much, very preoccupied by the Muslim world and very much looking for somebody who can sort of crack the problem of political organization as we see it in the Muslim world. And Erdogan is seized upon as, you know, okay, he's religious, but he's also a Democrat and he will show that Islam and democracy in the West, it's all compatible. And he is hugely courted by the West. Obama makes his first speech overseas in Turkey. It's said that he speaks to Erdogan in his first two years more than any other foreign leader. And if you read, say, editorials in the New York Times at the time, it's all about this guy, is this key figure who's going to show Islam and democracy are compatible. Again, big misreading. By 2012, Erdogan is...”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think so. Doing the research of the book, it was very striking if you looked at the early verdicts of a lot of these leaders, how wrong they seem in retrospect. And we were making the same mistake again and again. I think it was partly a very globalization-driven view of the world because there was this sense that the key to being a successful leader was to open your markets, to encourage foreign investment, that if a leader did that, then the rest would probably follow because if you were going to have a rules-based system at home to encourage investment, well, then you'd have to have independent courts and you'd have to have a democracy. So if people sort of made the right noise as economically, we often thought, oh, well, the political bit will follow. But to be fair, they often spoke the language of democracy. So I mentioned that Putin's early statements, he talks about, you know, we are going to become a democratic nation. Then Erdogan is, again, a very interesting case, both because of the change.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who is asked about Putin's plans for the recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk and is clearly uncomfortable and sort of gets Flubs' line slightly. And Putin does this thing again of deliberately humiliating somebody in front of an audience, which I'd seen him do back, you know, a decade before. So, yeah, he is somebody who enjoys radiating power, who enjoys radiating menace. And that is unusual in a world leader normally they try to at least initially to be a bit seductive or to be impressive not to come across like a thug, whereas I don't think Putin minds doing that.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Extraordinary ring you're wearing on your finger. And so we all kind of turn around, and indeed this guy has a big ring on his finger. And then Putin says, oh, surely you don't mind me asking about that because you wouldn't be wearing something like that unless you were deliberately trying to draw attention to yourself. And, you know, at which point everyone in sort of laughs along with the bully and the question is forgotten, the guy squirming a bit. And it was almost like you felt this guy's learnt this technique somewhere. You know, it was a kind of creepy intelligence operative slash bully thing to do. And I'd almost forgotten about it. And then I saw him do it again just before the war in Ukraine, where if you remember, he has this famous meeting, which is televised we all see with his national security council. And there is this ostensibly scary secureocrat, Narishkin, who runs the intelligence services.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was a long time ago, it was 2009. And, you know, perhaps tellingly, you know, it's a bit of a cliche for journalists to be at Davos, but it was interesting that Putin was at Davos because at that point, and this is even a year after the attack on Georgia, two years after the Munich speech, he's still a member of the club, literally. He's invited, he gives speeches, he's courting investment bankers, Russian oligarchs are throwing the best parties at Davos and so on. So for all he's done, he sees a point in sitting down with a group of largely Western journalists. There are probably like 20 of us. And he was initially polite, but a bit bored. You know, he was kind of going through the motions. And then I can't even remember what it was that provoked him. Either was a question he didn't like or just he was deciding to have some fun with somebody. But somebody, an American guy asked him a question he didn't like. And he said, well, that's a very interesting question. But before I answer it, could I just ask you about that?”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Men or produced strong men are based outside the big cities and typically their constituency is less well educated. Trump says at some point we love the poorly educated because they're sort of flocking to his banner. And I think in France right now it's been calculated that there's actually a kind of numerical connection you can show between distance from a train station and support for what used to be the Front National for Le Pen. So it's the sort of cut off the people who are doing badly economically who are very susceptible to this argument that you know what things were better before all this globalization before we were getting all our goods from China and the jobs went. And of course it's not a ridiculous argument. I think that there have been big winners from globalization, but also losers.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Buy into, we're separate civilizations. The Chinese, the Russians, the Turks, the Indians actually to a degree start talking the language of civilization, separate civilizations, which should be left alone to get on with things their own way. So that is the sort of pushback against a liberal world order. Liberalism may be appropriate for you, but it's not appropriate for us. Then there's the economic aspect, which is the globalization aspect. which tends to be more latched on actually in the West, where there is a bigger constituency of people who feel that their lives have been going backwards and that the economic system is rigged against them for whom that makes sense and obviously Trump appeals to that group. I think in the West it's very, very noticeable that the populist kind of insurgents who tend to vote for strong”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, although from different starting points so that, again, China's terribly important, but it is a slight outrider because it has its own grievances and its own very distinct political culture. But so I think that the Chinese are probably among globalizations or were among globalization's last defenders because it was so unarguably beneficial to China. That's what has transformed the country, international trade, foreign investment and so on. So they didn't really buy into the trumpian anti-globalization rhetoric, but they are other aspects of the world order that they don't like, which is above all it's American domination as they see it. They believe that America or the West is trying to impose liberal values on them. So they were among the first to start arguing alongside the Russians that, you know what, there isn't a set of universal values as preached by the West that we all need to.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think so. They are actually often conspiracy theorists and often I think come to believe their own conspiracy theories.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is the argument that these globalist elites are imposing sort of crazy alien values? And so one of the reasons that I think Trump, sorry, Putin finds an audience in the West is he catches on to disquiet about feminism, disquiet about trans rights, and becomes the champion of people, say, in the United States, who say, well, at last, here's a leader who's saying it like it is, who isn't captive to what Orban calls crazed gender ideology. And that kind of stuff really matters. It's a traditionalist appeal. It's a very macho appeal, and it has an undercurrent of violence in it as well.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“27, 28 member club in the EU, we can strike out alone. We can be Great Britain again. And so there's that sort of nostalgic nationalism. And then I think along with that comes, when you combine the idea of a crisis and the personalism, there's a willingness to break the rules. There's an argument that the system is rigged against you, the little guy, by this globalist elite, which isn't loyal to the nation. And to get things done, you need to break the crockery. You need to do things such like Trump said, you know, build a wall, ban all Muslims from entering the United States, really dramatic stuff, even if it's illegal, because we're in such danger that we can't afford to play by these kind of globalist rules. And, you know, finally, another thing I think to look at is deep sort of social conservatism. Because part of this illiberalism”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Political pictures, they tend to be people who say the country is facing a catastrophe, which is why you need a strong man. So Trump speaks about American carnage and make America great again is his pitch. And that's, I think, the second aspect which justifies the strongman style, is a kind of nostalgic nationalism, so that, you know, if Trump's program is Make America Great Again, well, Xi Jinping talks about the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people. Putin's justification for what he's doing right now is that Russia was in danger of losing its great power status, had to do something dramatic to pull things around. Modi sort of harkens back to an era of Hindu greatness before the British Empire, but even before the Mughal Empire. And it's a sort of make India great again, make Hindus great again. And even in his own way, Boris Johnson's global Britain is sort of saying, look, we don't just have to be a member of.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that one of the things that was interesting for me in the book was to see that these different traits were playing out in very different political systems. Because I think a valid question to ask about a book like this is, can you really compare Xi Shinping with a leader like Orban in Hungary or even Boris Johnson makes it into the book? Because I think he has elements of this, although he's at the far sort of end of it. But yes, I think you can. And so I think, first of all, you've got to start with the personality driven politics. I think the best summation of it was when Trump said to the 2016 Republican Convention, I alone can do it. And that's sort of the claim of all of these leaders, that you need me specifically. This isn't a program or it's about a strong man figure who is capable of taking the tough decisions because, again, in terms of their...”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He does what a lot of these people do, which is create a cult of personality. He actually gets his thought incorporated into the Chinese constitution. He also abolishes term limits on his presidency, which is something both Putin and Erdogan does. And then you have Modi in India in 2014, and then 2016, the big year when Trump wins in the US. And suddenly we find that this style of leadership, which we had thought sort of alien to the West, actually is in the world's largest democracy. And then you get a raft of Trump imitators, most obviously Bolsonaro in Brazil, who wins in 2018. And there are a few others who I could name. But that's basically the chronology of it and this emerging style, which now perhaps reaches a culmination with the invasion of Ukraine.”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Angela Merkel says this is a guy from the 19th century struggling to exist in the 21st century. He seems like a kind of an anachronism. It's only really then becomes apparent, I think, over the next 10 years, that actually there's a whole lot of people rather like Putin who are emerging, who are these strongman figures, highly personalized authoritarian, illiberal, nationalistic, traditionalist, often with an undercurrent of violence now made explicit in Ukraine. So just to run you through the roster, you know, in 2003, Erdogan had come to power in Turkey, but he too was initially seen as a liberal democratic reformer. That becomes apparent that's not the case. He's also still there after 20 years. Xi Jinping in 2012 in China, crucial figure because, again, the West gets it wrong. They say this is guys, he's going to be a liberalizer, he's going to be a Democrat, not at all. He centralizes power. And crucially,”
2022-04-18 · Intelligence Squared · Putin and The Age of The Strongman, with Gideon Rachman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT