Journalist Anne Applebaum has chronicled the rise of populist and autocratic regimes worldwide

After a series of books on the rise of communism in Russia, journalist Anne Applebaum is chronicling the rise of populism and how even democratically elected governments are turning authoritarian worldwide. In her recent works, Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends; her introduction to Hannah Arendt’s seminal work, The Origins of Totalitarianism; and last year’s Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, Applebaum has tried to draw common threads between regimes, trace the rise of kleptocracies, technological controls, and the cooperation networks between countries. Applebaum, who lives in Poland and is married to Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, has often been accused of a pro-Western bias. She focuses her critiques on countries aligned with Russia and China rather than on the U.S. and Europe. A trenchant critic of U.S. President Donald Trump in her regular column at The Atlantic, Applebaum says in this interview on Zoom that she studies authoritarian behaviours rather than seeking to classify countries.