Living Myth

This episode of focuses on the dehumanizing aspects of autocratic movements. The increasing uncertainties about the future create vacuums that would be dictators and autocrats seek to fill with big lies and fraudulent claims that are presented with a false sense of certainty. The autocratic playbook that they all inevitably follow requires that they enforce forms of economic and informational isolation and instill a siege mentality that depicts the outside world as being hostile, unfair and dangerous.   Authoritarian leaders deliberately seek to polarize people and radicalize what would otherwise be civil societies. They intentionally promote divisiveness and force people to take sides, while also demanding undivided loyalty to themselves. Autocrats cannot succeed unless others in power or seeking power assist them in creating an alternative reality. Eventually, those who enable and help justify the authoritarian regime lose their own ability to resist the inevitable descent into brutality, nihilism and vi