Episode 66 – The Autocrat’s Playbook: A Global Checklist
In this episode, we break down the ⚠️ ten steps toward autocracy — not in theory, but with real-world examples from Belarus to Myanmar, Germany to Chile. Each step shows how democracies die, not in one dramatic collapse, but in a slow erosion, often enforced at the end of a police baton.
We look at how regimes:
• Delegitimize elections (Belarus, Zimbabwe)
• Expand executive power through “emergencies” (Hitler, Erdogan)
• Crush courts and watchdogs (Poland, Turkey)
• Silence the press (Russia, Hungary)
• Scapegoat minorities (Nazi Germany, Myanmar)
• Militarize the police into a domestic army (Hong Kong, Chile)
• Suppress civil society (Russia, Egypt)
• Control the flow of information (China, Iran)
• Rig elections outright (Cambodia, Russia)
• And finally, normalize violence as politics (Pinochet’s Chile, Myanmar’s junta).
🚨 The core pattern is clear: autocracy grows when police stop protecting people and start protecting power.
And yes, we even take a turn back home to Buffalo — to reflect on what happens when communities forget that democracy, like industry, can disappear if we don’t defend it.