https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
原标题 Autocracy is Winning / The bad guys are winning
If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.
如果20世纪的叙事，是自由民主缓慢而曲折地战胜其他意识形态——共产主义、法西斯主义、激烈的民族主义的过程，那么21世纪的叙事，至少到目前为止，是反过来的。
By Anne Applebaum
NOVEMBER 15, 2021 / 2021年11月15日
翻译 thphd
The future of democracy may well be decided in a drab office building on the outskirts of Vilnius, alongside a highway crammed with impatient drivers heading out of town.
民主的未来，很可能就藏在维尔纽斯(Vilnius，立陶宛首都)郊区一栋单调的办公楼里。楼旁边的一条高速公路上，出城车辆的鸣笛声此起彼伏。
I met Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya there this spring, in a room that held a conference table, a whiteboard, and not much else. Her team—more than a dozen young journalists, bloggers, vloggers, and activists—was in the process of changing offices. But that wasn’t the only reason the space felt stale and perfunctory. None of them, especially not Tsikhanouskaya, really wanted to be in this ugly building, or in the Lithuanian capital at all. She is there because she probably won the 2020 presidential election in Belarus, and because the Belarusian dictator she probably defeated, Alexander Lukashenko, forced her out of the country immediately afterward. Lithuania offered her asylum. Her husband, Siarhei Tsikhanouski, remains imprisoned in Belarus.
今年春天，我在那栋楼的一个只有一张会议桌和一块白板，没有其他东西的房间里，见到了斯维亚特拉娜-齐哈努斯卡娅(Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya)。她的团队--十几位年轻的记者、博主、视频博主和活动家--正在搬迁办公室。但这并不是这块空间令人感到陈旧和敷衍的唯一原因——他们中没有人，尤其是斯卡娅，是自愿进入这栋丑陋的建筑物，或者立陶宛的首都的。她之所以待在那里，是因为她很可能赢得了2020年白俄罗斯总统选举，而被她击败的白俄罗斯独裁者亚历山大-卢卡申科，在选举结束后立刻强迫她离开白俄罗斯。立陶宛为她提供了政治庇护，但她的丈夫Siarhei Tsikhanouski，目前仍然被关押在白俄罗斯。
Here is the first thing she said to me: “My story is a little bit different from other people.” This is what she tells everyone—that hers was not the typical life of a dissident or budding politician. Before the spring of 2020, she didn’t have much time for television or newspapers. She has two children, one of whom was born deaf. On an ordinary day, she would take them to kindergarten, to the doctor, to the park.
她见到我说的第一句话是，"我的故事跟其他人有一点不同"。她跟每个人都这么说，因为她不是一个典型的异议人士或者政治新秀。在2020年春天之前，她基本不看电视或报纸。她有两个孩子，其中一个天生聋哑；她生活中普通的一天，就是带孩子们去幼儿园，去看医生，去公园玩。
Then her husband bought a house and ran into the concrete wall of Belarusian bureaucracy and corruption. Exasperated, he started making videos about his experiences, and those of others. These videos yielded a YouTube channel; the channel attracted thousands of followers. He went around the country, recording the frustrations of his fellow citizens, driving a car with the phrase “Real News” plastered on the side. Siarhei Tsikhanouski held up a mirror to his society. People saw themselves in that mirror and responded with the kind of enthusiasm that opposition politicians had found hard to create in Belarus.
然后她老公买了一栋房子，撞上了白俄罗斯官僚主义和腐败的水泥墙。气愤之余，他开始做视频发上网，讲述自己和他人的经历。这些视频汇成了一个YouTube频道，吸引了成千上万的关注者。他开着一辆侧面贴有"Real News"字样的汽车，走遍白俄，用视频记录同胞遭受的磨难、挫折。西亚尔海-齐哈努斯基(Siarhei Tsikhanouski)为他所处的社会举起了一面镜子。白俄人民在这面镜子中看到了自己，并作出了热情的回应，这种热情是白俄各路反对派政治家们难以企及的。
“At the beginning it was really difficult because people were afraid,” Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told me. “But step-by-step, slowly, they realized that Siarhei isn’t afraid.” He wasn’t afraid to speak the truth as he saw it; his absence of fear inspired others. He decided to run for president. The regime, recognizing the power of Siarhei’s mirror, would not allow him to register his candidacy, just as it had not allowed him to register the ownership of his house. It ended his campaign and arrested him.
"一开始真的很困难，因为人们有恐惧，"斯维亚特拉娜-齐哈努斯卡娅告诉我。"但逐渐地，慢慢地，他们意识到我老公西亚尔海什么都不怕。" 他并不怕说出他看到的真相；他的无畏激励了其他人。他决定竞选总统。当局深知西亚尔海这面镜子的力量，不给他登记参选，正如当初不给他登记房产一样。当局终止了他的竞选活动并将他逮捕入狱。
Tsikhanouskaya ran in his place, with no motive other than “to show my love for him.” The police and bureaucrats let her. Because what harm could she do, this simple housewife, this woman with no political experience? And so, in July 2020, she registered as a candidate. Unlike her husband, she was afraid. She woke up “so scared” every morning, she told me, and sometimes she stayed scared all day long. But she kept going. Which was, though she doesn’t say so, incredibly brave. “You feel this responsibility, you wake up with this pain for those people who are in jail, you go to bed with the same feeling.”
Tsikhanouskaya只好代替她老公参选，理由仅仅是"显示我对他的爱"。警察和官僚们没有为难她。一个单纯的家庭主妇，一个没有政治经验的女人，能搞出什么名堂？于是，在2020年7月，她登记成为一名候选人。与她老公不同的是，她非常恐惧。她告诉我，每天早上醒来时都"非常害怕"，有时一整天都在害怕。但她还是坚持继续——虽然她没提，但我知道这需要令人难以置信的勇气。"你感觉到这种责任，带着亲人坐牢的痛苦醒来，再伴着同样的感觉入睡。"
Unexpectedly, Tsikhanouskaya was a success—not despite her inexperience, but because of it. Her campaign became a campaign about ordinary people standing up to the regime. Two other prominent opposition politicians endorsed her after their own campaigns were blocked, and when the wife of one of them and the female campaign manager of the other were photographed alongside Tsikhanouskaya, her campaign became something more: a campaign about ordinary women—women who had been neglected, women who had no voice, even just women who loved their husbands. In return, the regime targeted all three of these women. Tsikhanouskaya received an anonymous threat: Her children would be “sent to an orphanage.” She dispatched them with her mother abroad, to Vilnius, and kept campaigning.
出乎意料的是，Tsikhanouskaya大获成功--并非尽管她缺乏经验，而恰恰是因为她缺乏经验。她的竞选活动，成为了一场让普通人站起来抵抗当局的运动。另外两位著名的反对派政治家，在自己的竞选活动受阻后表态支持她。当其中一位政治家的妻子，和另一位政治家的女性竞选经理，在照片中与齐哈努斯卡娅一起出现时，她的竞选活动被赋予了更深一层的含义：一场关于普通妇女的竞选活动——那些曾被忽视的、没有发言权的，甚至只是深爱着自己的丈夫的妇女。作为回礼，白俄当局对这三位女士展开了打击报复。Tsikhanouskaya收到一个匿名恐吓，说要把她的孩子"送进孤儿院"。于是她把小孩和外婆一起送到了国外，也就是立陶宛首都维尔纽斯，然后继续竞选。
On August 9, election officials announced that Lukashenko had won 80 percent of the vote, a number nobody believed. The internet was cut off, and Tsikhanouskaya was detained by police and then forced out of the country. Mass demonstrations unfolded across Belarus. These were both a spontaneous outburst of feeling—a popular response to the stolen election—and a carefully coordinated project run by young people, some based in Warsaw, who had been experimenting with social media and new forms of communication for several years. For a brief, tantalizing moment, it looked like this democratic uprising might prevail. Belarusians shared a sense of national unity they had never felt before. The regime immediately pushed back, with real brutality. Yet the mood at the protests was generally happy, optimistic; people literally danced in the streets. In a country of fewer than 10 million, up to 1.5 million people would come out in a single day, among them pensioners, villagers, factory workers, and even, in a few places, members of the police and the security services, some of whom removed insignia from their uniforms or threw them in the garbage.
8月9日，选举工作人员宣布，卢卡申科赢得了80%的选票——远低于习近平的100%，但整个白俄没人相信。互联网被切断，Tsikhanouskaya被警察拘留并被驱逐出境。大规模的示威活动在白俄罗斯各地展开，这既是一种自发的情绪爆发——民众对选举造假的不满，也是一个由部分位于华沙的年轻人主导的、精心协调的项目，他们几年来一直在测试各种社交媒体和新的通信形式。有那么一个短暂而诱人的时刻，这场民主运动似乎即将取得最终胜利。白俄罗斯人体验到了一种他们从未体验过的，民族团结的感觉。当局立刻采取极为残酷的手段反击。然而，抗议活动的气氛普遍是快乐的、乐观的；人们真的在街上跳起了舞。在一个不到1000万人口的国家，一天之内多达150万人走上街头，其中有老人、村民、工厂工人，甚至在一些地方还有警察和安全部门的成员，他们中的一些人把制服上的徽章撕下来，或者扔进垃圾桶。
Tsikhanouskaya says she and many others naively believed that under this pressure, the dictator would just give up. “We thought he would understand that we are against him,” she told me. “That people don’t want to live under his dictatorship, that he lost the elections.” They had no other plan.
Tsikhanouskaya说，她和其他许多人曾天真地认为，在这样巨大的压力下，独裁者会缴械投降。"我们以为他能理解我们不支持他，"她告诉我，"人们不想生活在他的独裁统治之下，他在选举中落败了。" 他们没有备用计划。
At first, Lukashenko seemed to have no plan either. But his neighbors did. On August 18, a plane belonging to the FSB, the Russian security services, flew from Moscow to Minsk. Soon after that, Lukashenko’s tactics underwent a dramatic change. Stephen Biegun, who was the U.S. deputy secretary of state at the time, describes the change as a shift to “more sophisticated, more controlled ways to repress the population.” Belarus became a textbook example of what the journalist William J. Dobson has called “the dictator’s learning curve”: Techniques that had been used successfully in the past to repress crowds in Russia were seamlessly transferred to Belarus, along with personnel who understood how to deploy them. Russian television journalists arrived to replace the Belarusian journalists who had gone on strike, and immediately stepped up the campaign to portray the demonstrations as the work of Americans and other foreign “enemies.” Russian police appear to have supplemented their Belarusian colleagues, or at least given them advice, and a policy of selective arrests began. As Vladimir Putin figured out a long time ago, mass arrests are unnecessary if you can jail, torture, or possibly murder just a few key people. The rest will be frightened into staying home. Eventually they will become apathetic, because they believe nothing can change.
起初，卢卡申科似乎也没有计划，但他的好邻居有：8月18日，一架属于俄罗斯安全局（FSB）的飞机从莫斯科飞往明斯克，随即卢卡申科的策略发生了巨大变化。当时担任美国副国务卿的斯蒂芬-比贡（Stephen Biegun）将这一变化描述为转向 "以更复杂、更可控的方式镇压民众"。白俄罗斯成了记者威廉-J-多布森（William J. Dobson）所说的 "独裁者的学习曲线"的一个教科书式的例子。过去在俄罗斯成功用于镇压群众的技术，以及了解如何部署这些技术的人员，都被无缝迁移到了白俄罗斯。俄罗斯电视记者来到白俄罗斯取代罢工的白俄罗斯记者，并立即展开宣传，将民主示威活动说成美国以及其他“西方敌对势力”的攻击。据称俄罗斯警察取代了他们的白俄罗斯同事，或者至少给他们提供了建议，并开始实施选择性的抓捕。正如弗拉基米尔-普京很久以前就知道的那样，如果你能监禁、拷打，甚至谋杀几个关键人物，就无需进行大规模的逮捕。其余的人将被吓得呆在家里（译者注：1v100）。最终，人们会变得冷漠，因为他们觉得什么也改变不了。
The Lukashenko rescue package, reminiscent of the one Putin had designed for Bashar al-Assad in Syria six years earlier, contained economic elements too. Russian companies offered markets for Belarusian products that had been banned by the democratic West—for example, smuggling Belarusian cigarettes into the European Union. Some of this was possible because the two countries share a language. (Though roughly a third to half of the country speaks Belarusian, most public business in Belarus is conducted in Russian.) But this close cooperation was also possible because Lukashenko and Putin, though they famously dislike each other, share a common way of seeing the world. Both believe that their personal survival is more important than the well-being of their people. Both believe that a change of regime would result in their death, imprisonment, or exile.
送给卢卡申科的这个急救包，令人想起六年前普京为叙利亚的巴沙尔-阿萨德设计的急救包，两者都包含经济因素。俄罗斯的公司，为被西方民主国家制裁的的白俄罗斯产品提供了市场，例如将白俄罗斯香烟走私到欧盟。能够进行这样密切的合作，一部分是因为这两个国家有共同的语言（虽然全国大约有三分之一到一半的人讲白俄罗斯语，但白俄罗斯的大部分公共事务是用俄语进行的），一部分是因为卢卡申科和普京这两个人，尽管他们经常互相不爽，但他们看待世界的方式是一致的：两人都认为，他们的个人生存比其人民的福祉更重要。两人都认为，政权的改变会导致他们的死亡、监禁或流放。
Both also learned lessons from the Arab Spring, as well as from the more distant memory of 1989, when Communist dictatorships fell like dominoes: Democratic revolutions are contagious. If you can stamp them out in one country, you might prevent them from starting in others. The anti-corruption, prodemocracy demonstrations of 2014 in Ukraine, which resulted in the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych’s government, reinforced this fear of democratic contagion. Putin was enraged by those protests, not least because of the precedent they set. After all, if Ukrainians could get rid of their corrupt dictator, why wouldn’t Russians want to do the same?
两人也都从 "阿拉伯之春"，以及更遥远的1989年的记忆中吸取了教训，当时共产主义独裁政权像多米诺骨牌一样倒下。民主革命是会传染的；如果你能将它在一个国家消灭，你也许就能阻止它在其他国家滋生。2014年乌克兰的反腐、支持民主的示威活动导致维克多-亚努科维奇总统的政府被推翻，加深了他们对“民主传染病”的恐惧。普京为这些抗议活动感到愤怒，因为它们开了先河：既然乌克兰人民敢踢走他们的腐败独裁者，凭什么俄罗斯人民就不敢呢？
Lukashenko gladly accepted Russian help, turned against his people, and transformed himself from an autocratic, patriarchal grandfather—a kind of national collective-farm boss—into a tyrant who revels in cruelty. Reassured by Putin’s support, he began breaking new ground. Not just selective arrests—a year later, human-rights activists say that more than 800 political prisoners remain in jail—but torture. Not just torture but rape. Not just torture and rape but kidnapping and, quite possibly, murder.
卢卡申科欣然接受了俄罗斯的帮助，背叛了祖国和人民，将自己从一个专制、世袭的祖父——白俄这个集体农庄的老板——变成了一个陶醉于残忍的暴君。有了普京撑腰，他开始探索新的领域，从选择性的抓捕（一年后，人权活动家说有800多名政治犯仍在监狱中），进步到了酷刑。从酷刑，进步到了强奸——从酷刑和强奸，进步到了绑架甚至谋杀。
Lukashenko’s sneering defiance of the rule of law—he issues stony-faced denials of the existence of political repression in his country—and of anything resembling decency spread beyond his borders. In May 2021, Belarusian air traffic control forced an Irish-owned Ryanair passenger plane to land in Minsk so that one of the passengers, Roman Protasevich, a young dissident living in exile, could be arrested; he later made public confessions on television that appeared to be coerced. In August, another young dissident living in exile, Vitaly Shishov, was found hanged in a Kyiv park. At about the same time, Lukashenko’s regime set out to destabilize its EU neighbors by forcing streams of refugees across their borders: Belarus lured Afghan and Iraqi refugees to Minsk with a proffer of tourist visas, then escorted them to the borders of Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland and forced them at gunpoint to cross, illegally.
卢卡申科展现了他对法治的冷漠蔑视，他面无表情地否认他的国家存在政治压迫，同时拒绝任何能够代表良心的事物在他的国境内传播。2021年5月，白俄罗斯空中交通管制部门强迫一架爱尔兰籍的瑞安航空(Ryanair)客机在明斯克降落，以便逮捕其中一名乘客，年轻的政治流亡者、异议人士罗曼-普罗塔塞维奇，他后来被白俄当局强迫“电视认罪”。8月，另一位流亡的年轻持不同政见者维塔利-希肖夫（Vitaly Shishov）被发现在基辅的一个公园里被吊死。大约在同一时间，卢卡申科政权开始通过强迫难民流跨越欧盟邻国的边界来破坏其稳定。白俄罗斯以旅游签证为诱饵，将阿富汗和伊拉克难民吸引到明斯克，然后将他们押送到立陶宛、拉脱维亚和波兰的边境，用枪指着，逼他们非法越境。
Lukashenko began to act, in other words, as if he were untouchable, both at home and abroad. He began breaking not only the laws and customs of his own country, but also the laws and customs of other countries, and of the international community—laws regarding air traffic control, homicide, borders. Exiles flowed out of the country; Tsikhanouskaya’s team scrambled to book hotel rooms or Airbnbs in Vilnius, to find means of support, to learn new languages. Tsikhanouskaya herself had to make another, even more difficult transition—from people’s-choice candidate to sophisticated diplomat. This time her inexperience initially worked against her. At first, she thought that if she could just speak with Angela Merkel or Emmanuel Macron, one of them could fix the problem. “I was sure they are so powerful that they can call Lukashenko and say, ‘Stop! How dare you?’ ” she told me. But they could not.
换言之，卢卡申科开始表现得，仿佛他在国内和国外都是“不可触碰”（不受限制、免于责罚）的。他不仅开始违反自己国家的法律和习俗，同时也违反其他国家和国际社会的法律和习俗--关于空中交通管制、凶杀、边境的法律。流亡者纷纷离开这个国家；齐哈努斯卡娅的团队在维尔纽斯（立陶宛首都）争抢着预订酒店房间或Airbnb，寻找收入来源，学习新的语言。茨哈努斯卡娅本人则不得不做出另一个更加困难的转变——从人民爱戴的总统候选人，成为成熟的外交家。这一次，她的经验不足成为了初期的不利因素。起初她以为，只要她能跟安格拉-默克尔，或埃马纽埃尔-马克龙说上话，总有一个能解决她的问题。"我一直觉得，他们这么厉害，只要给卢卡申科打个电话说'停！你过分了！ '就能解决问题"，她告诉我。但他们无法做到。
So she tried to talk as foreign leaders did, to speak in sophisticated political language. That didn’t work either. The experience was demoralizing: “It’s very difficult sometimes to talk about your people, about their sufferings, and see the emptiness in the eyes of those you are talking to.” She began using the plain English that she had learned in school, in order to convey plain things. “I started to tell stories that would touch their hearts. I tried to make them feel just a little of the pain that Belarusians feel.” Now she tells anyone who will listen exactly what she told me: I am an ordinary person, a housewife, a mother of two children, and I am in politics because other ordinary people are being beaten naked in prison cells. What she wants is sanctions, democratic unity, pressure on the regime—anything that will raise the cost for Lukashenko to stay in power, for Russia to keep him in power. Anything that might induce the business and security elites in Belarus to abandon him. Anything that might persuade China and Iran to keep out.
所以她试图像外国领导人那样说话，用复杂的政治语言说话。效果也不太好。这种经历令人灰心丧气："在谈论我的人民，以及他们经历的苦难的时候，看到那些与我交谈的人目光的空虚，真的让我觉得非常难受。" 她开始使用她在学校学到的平实（日常）的英语，以传达平实（日常）的东西。"我开始讲那些能够触动他们心灵的故事。我试图让他们稍微感受到一点白俄罗斯人的痛苦"。现在，她对所有人说，都跟刚才对我说的一样：我是一个普通人，一个家庭主妇，两个孩子的母亲，我参与政治是因为其他普通人正在牢房里一丝不挂地忍受酷刑。她想要的是经济制裁、民主（国家的）团结、对白俄当局施加压力——任何能够提高卢卡申科继续执政以及俄罗斯助他继续执政的成本的措施；任何能够促使白俄的商业精英和安全精英们放弃卢卡申科的措施；任何能够劝说中国和伊朗不要插手的措施。
To her surprise, Tsikhanouskaya became, for the second time, a runaway success. She charmed Merkel and Macron, and the diplomats of multiple countries. In July, she met President Joe Biden, who subsequently broadened American sanctions on Belarus to include major companies in several industries (tobacco, potash, construction) and their executives. The EU had already banned a range of people, companies, and technologies from Belarus; after the Ryanair kidnapping, the EU and the U.K. banned the Belarusian national airline as well. What was once a booming trade between Belarus and Europe has been reduced to a trickle. Tsikhanouskaya inspires people to make sacrifices of their own. The Lithuanian foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, told me that his country was proud to host her, even if it meant trouble on the border. “If we’re not free to invite other free people into our country because it’s somehow not safe, then the question is, can we consider ourselves free?”
出乎她意料的是，齐哈努斯卡娅第二次获得了巨大的成功。她打动了默克尔和马克龙，以及多个国家的外交官。7月，她会见了美国总统乔-拜登，拜登随后扩大了美国对白俄罗斯的制裁，包括几个行业（烟草、钾肥、建筑）的主要公司及其高管。欧盟已经禁止了一系列来自白俄罗斯的人员、公司和技术；在瑞安航空绑架案发生后，欧盟和英国也禁止了白俄罗斯国家航空公司。白俄罗斯和欧洲之间曾经蓬勃发展的贸易已经减少到了涓涓细流。Tsikhanouskaya激励人们做出自己的牺牲。立陶宛外交部长Gabrielius Landsbergis告诉我，他的国家为能接待她而感到自豪，即使这意味着给自己的边境带来麻烦。"如果我们因为担心安全，而无法自由地邀请其他自由人进入我们的国家，那我们还能否说自己是自由的呢？"
Tsikhanouskaya has acquired many other supporters and admirers. She has not only the talented young activists in Vilnius, but colleagues in Poland and Ukraine as well. She promotes values that unite millions of her compatriots, including pensioners like Nina Bahinskaya, a great-grandmother who has been filmed shouting at the police, and ordinary working people like Siarhei Hardziyevich, a 50-year-old journalist from a provincial town, Drahichyn, who was convicted of “insulting the president.” On her side she also has the friends and relatives of the hundreds of political prisoners who, like her own husband, are paying a high price just because they want to live in a country with free elections.
Tsikhanouskaya也得到了许多其他人的支持、崇拜。除了维尔纽斯那些有才华的年轻活动家，她还有来自波兰和乌克兰的同事。她提倡的价值观团结了数百万同胞，包括像尼娜-巴因斯卡娅这样的长者，一位曾被拍到向警察大喊大叫的曾祖母；以及像西亚雷-哈季耶维奇这样的普通劳动者，他是一位来自省会德拉希钦的50岁记者，因 "侮辱总统 "被定罪。在她身边还有数百名政治犯的朋友和亲属，这些政治犯和她的丈夫一样，仅仅为了生活在一个拥有自由选举的国家，付出了高昂的代价。
Most of all, though, Tsikhanouskaya has on her side the combined narrative power of what we used to call the free world. She has the language of human rights, democracy, and justice. She has the NGOs and human-rights organizations that work inside the United Nations and other international institutions to put pressure on autocratic regimes. She has the support of people around the world who still fervently believe that politics can be made more civilized, more rational, more humane, who can see in her an authentic representative of that cause.
当然，最重要的还是，整个所谓的“自由世界”的叙事力量，全部站在了在齐哈努斯卡娅一边。她拥有了人权、民主和正义这几种语言。她让在联合国和其他国际机构内工作的非政府组织和人权组织，对专制政权施加压力。她得到了世界各地仍然热切地相信政治可以变得更文明、更理性、更人道的人们的支持，这些人把她视作这项事业的一名忠诚的代表。
But will that be enough? A lot depends on the answer.
做到这样够不够？这个问题的答案，将会影响很多事情。
All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of what an autocratic state looks like. There is a bad man at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents.
在我们所有人的脑海中，都有一个描述专制国家的卡通图像：有一个坏人在顶层，他控制着警察，警察用暴力威胁人民。有狼狈为奸的合作者，也许还有一些勇敢的持不同政见者。
But in the 21st century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services (military, police, paramilitary groups, surveillance), and professional propagandists. The members of these networks are connected not only within a given country, but among many countries. The corrupt, state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with corrupt, state-controlled companies in another. The police in one country can arm, equip, and train the police in another. The propagandists share resources—the troll farms that promote one dictator’s propaganda can also be used to promote the propaganda of another—and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.
但在21世纪的今天，这样的卡通图像与现实大相径庭。如今，专制国家不是由一个坏人来管理，而是由腐败的金融结构、安全部门（军队、警察、准军事团体[译者注：保安公司]、监视）和专业宣传人员组成的复杂网络。这些网络的成员不仅在某一国家内有联系，而且在许多国家之间也有联系。一个独裁国家的腐败国企，与另一个国家的腐败国企进行交易。一个国家的警察可以武装、装备和训练另一个国家的警察。宣传人员共享资源：帮助一个独裁者进行宣传的水军队伍，也可以用来帮助另一个独裁者进行宣传；以及主题：对不同国家的民众用同样的信息洗脑，如民主的弱点、美国的邪恶等等。
This is not to say that there is some supersecret room where bad guys meet, as in a James Bond movie. Nor does the new autocratic alliance have a unifying ideology. Among modern autocrats are people who call themselves communists, nationalists, and theocrats. No one country leads this group. Washington likes to talk about Chinese influence, but what really bonds the members of this club is a common desire to preserve and enhance their personal power and wealth. Unlike military or political alliances from other times and places, the members of this group don’t operate like a bloc, but rather like an agglomeration of companies—call it Autocracy Inc. Their links are cemented not by ideals but by deals—deals designed to take the edge off Western economic boycotts, or to make them personally rich—which is why they can operate across geographical and historical lines.
当然这并不是说有一批坏人像007电影一样在非常隐秘的场所里开会。这种新的专制主义联盟也没有一个统一的意识形态。在现代专制者中，有自称为共产主义者、民族主义者和神权主义者的人。没有一个国家领导这个群体。华盛顿喜欢谈论中国（对这些专制国家）的影响，但真正把这个俱乐部的成员联系在一起的，是维护和提高他们个人权力和财富的共同愿望。与其他时间和地点的军事或政治联盟不同，这个集团的成员并不像一个集团那样运作，而是像一个公司的集合体--可以称之为“专制主义有限公司”（Autocracy Inc.）。他们之间的关系不是通过理想，而是通过交易--旨在【消除西方经济抵制的影响，或使他们个人发财】的交易--来巩固的，这就是为什么他们可以跨越地理和历史界限进行运作。
Thus in theory, Belarus is an international pariah—Belarusian planes cannot land in Europe, many Belarusian goods cannot be sold in the U.S., Belarus’s shocking brutality has been criticized by many international institutions. But in practice, the country remains a respected member of Autocracy Inc. Despite Lukashenko’s flagrant flouting of international norms, despite his reaching across borders to break laws, Belarus remains the site of one of China’s largest overseas development projects. Iran has expanded its relationship with Belarus over the past year. Cuban officials have expressed their solidarity with Lukashenko at the UN, calling for an end to “foreign interference” in the country’s affairs.
因此在理论上，白俄罗斯是一个国际弃儿--白俄罗斯的飞机不能在欧洲降落，许多白俄罗斯的商品不能在美国销售，白俄罗斯令人震惊的残暴行为被许多国际机构批评。但实际上，这个国家仍然是专制主义公司的一个受人尊敬的成员。尽管卢卡申科公然藐视国际准则，尽管他跨越国界触犯法律，白俄罗斯仍然是中国最大的海外发展项目之一。在过去的一年里，伊朗扩大了与白俄罗斯的关系。古巴官员在联合国表达了对卢卡申科的声援，呼吁结束对该国事务的 "外国干涉"。
In theory, Venezuela, too, is an international pariah. Since 2008, the U.S. has repeatedly added more Venezuelans to personal-sanctions lists; since 2019, U.S. citizens and companies have been forbidden to do any business there. Canada, the EU, and many of Venezuela’s South American neighbors maintain sanctions on the country. And yet Nicolás Maduro’s regime receives loans as well as oil investment from Russia and China. Turkey facilitates the illicit Venezuelan gold trade. Cuba has long provided security advisers, as well as security technology, to the country’s rulers. The international narcotics trade keeps individual members of the regime well supplied with designer shoes and handbags. Leopoldo López, a onetime star of the opposition now living in exile in Spain, has observed that although Maduro’s opponents have received some foreign assistance, it’s “nothing comparable with what Maduro has received.”
从理论上讲，委内瑞拉也是一个国际弃儿。自2008年以来，美国一再将更多的委内瑞拉人列入个人制裁名单；自2019年以来，美国公民和公司被禁止在那里做任何生意。加拿大、欧盟和委内瑞拉的许多南美邻国都保持着对该国的制裁。而尼古拉斯-马杜罗政权却从俄罗斯和中国获得贷款以及石油投资。土耳其为委内瑞拉的非法黄金贸易提供便利。古巴长期以来一直向该国统治者提供安全顾问以及安全技术。国际毒品贸易使该政权的个别成员获得了充足的名牌鞋和手袋。曾经的反对派明星、现在流亡西班牙的莱奥波尔多-洛佩斯（Leopoldo López）指出，尽管马杜罗的反对者得到了一些外国援助，但 "与马杜罗所得到的援助相比，根本无法相提并论。"
Like the Belarusian opposition, the Venezuelan opposition has charismatic leaders and dedicated grassroots activists who have persuaded millions of people to go out into the streets and protest. If their only enemy was the corrupt, bankrupt Venezuelan regime, they might win. But Lopez and his fellow dissidents are in fact fighting multiple autocrats, in multiple countries. Like so many other ordinary people propelled into politics by the experience of injustice—like Sviatlana and Siarhei Tsikhanouski in Belarus, like the leaders of the extraordinary Hong Kong protest movement, like the Cubans and the Iranians and the Burmese pushing for democracy in their countries—they are fighting against people who control state companies and can make investment decisions worth billions of dollars for purely political reasons. They are fighting against people who can buy sophisticated surveillance technology from China or bots from St. Petersburg. Above all, they are fighting against people who have inured themselves to the feelings and opinions of their countrymen, as well as the feelings and opinions of everybody else. Because Autocracy Inc. grants its members not only money and security, but also something less tangible and yet just as important: impunity.
与白俄罗斯的反对派一样，委内瑞拉的反对派也有富有魅力的领导人和敬业的基层活动家，他们说服了数百万人走上街头进行抗议。如果他们唯一的敌人是腐败的、破产的委内瑞拉政权，他们可能会赢。但洛佩兹和他的持不同政见者实际上是在与多个国家的多个专制者作战。就像其他许多被不公正的经历所推动的普通人一样--就像白俄罗斯的斯维亚特拉纳和西亚里-齐哈努斯基，就像世界闻名的香港抗议运动的领导人，就像古巴人、伊朗人和缅甸人在他们的国家推动民主一样--他们正在与那些控制国有企业、可以纯粹出于政治原因做出价值数十亿美元的投资决定的人作战。他们正在与那些可以从中国购买先进的监控技术或从圣彼得堡购买机器人的人作斗争。最重要的是，他们正在与那些使自己适应其国民的感受和意见，以及其他人的感受和意见的人进行斗争。因为专制主义有限公司除了向其成员提供金钱和安全，还会提供一些不那么具体但同等重要的东西：免于责罚的权力/免死金牌。（译者注：这就是为什么那些翻墙爱国的人不怕被抓。）
（未完。余下全文：https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
