One of the biggest traps of autocracy is the sense that "one great leader must save us" and then turning into villifying all the other leaders, or a hatred of "politicians." Usually politicians are the main victims of dictatorships, and leadership must be shared among many when leadership has checks and balances and is focused on institutions not individuals, then it is more stable in a transition. When instead of silencing other leaders or having arupt turnaround cycles, various opposition leaders denounce the propaganda against others it would be a major force against autocracy. Autocrats also enjoy provoking their oppositions to unrealistic cycles of holding one opposition leader up as "the hero" and then people turning against this person and their family with senseless hate when results aren't immediate (they never are this makes propaganda very easy, and accusing the innocents. This also makes a stable civic space very hard to build unless the cycle breaks (and it must break for democracy to come) If the leader of opposition faction A sees a disinformation campaigns against leader of faction b mounting, and abuses such as property seizure, imprisonment, and torture. Then leader A should support leader B to create a healthy civic culture.

I also want to poll people on twitter to see if a scene I'm working on is too dramatic but then I forgot I have a professional twitter and am followed by many embassies.

You know you are a fiction writer if you come up with some really dramatic scenes that could jolt authoritarian propaganda but then are like "wait this is how it could be manipulated"

To better understand the current geopolitical space, study the 18th and 19th centuries. In a world where autocrats seize property (and pets) of opposition leaders Propaganda seeks not to convince but to cause apathy Rulers are united not for communism or nationalism but for absolute power and mercantalism is all in vogue. We are more like Les Miserables than 1984. Check out my latest piece

To Understand Geopolitics Read Les Miserables

The current geopolitical scene has more in common with the exhausted world that the students in Les Miserables faced than to contemporary dystopias...

Fiction often tries to make dictatorships look like they are calculated and strategic. This is never the reality- dictatorships are psychological and manipulate emotions. Venezuela and Iran found ways to manipulate emptions to direct anger at the opposition instead of the regime They target homes and personal items, their disinformation is not an argument but a clutter of emotional charged noise designed to break people down. Les Miserables depicts dictatorship in a clearer way than modern literature, dictators want to make every citizen Grantaire

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A governing authority who destroys the homes of opposition leaders, kidnaps their dogs, and illegally strips their birth citizenship is not interested in stability or a transition. Delcy is actively and systemically trying everything in her power to prevent Leopoldo Lopez from returning home with his family, but he must return home for a true transition to begin. Firmly agree with @Leopoldo López 👍 on real democratization is needed for stability, otherwise the same problem will continue.

The Dissident Passport, or a Passport for Urgent Humanitarian Reasons. Purpose? To protect dissidents faced with statelessness. Enforcing body? A mutual agreement between the United States, European Union, and other democratic countries. Autocrats try to strip national identities of dissidents by removing their citizenship, paperwork, and right to exist. This new passport proposal will allow the dissident to keep the identity and citizenship they were born with as it is their right by birth to their own citizenship. This will give them a special protected status as a highly profile political figure, and special interest case under international law (without having them adopt a new citizenship) It will also be equipped with special biometrics and urgent training in case of transnational repression and numbers and special contacts to call. Any thoughts?