Pulitzer Prize Historian: You Won't Notice Until It’s Too Late - Anne Applebaum

The gist

1. Modern democratic collapse rarely involves tanks; it happens slowly through institutions being captured, often over years or decades.
2. Autocrats replace merit-based civil servants with loyalists, undermining independent experts who regulate pollution, markets, and monetary policy.
3. Information control works through friendly business people quietly buying media properties, not through crude censorship.
4. A key warning sign is when a legitimately elected party explicitly works to make itself permanent in power.