However, they wanted to know one more thing: Does revenge keep rewarding? The Long-Term Effects of Revenge Another account says that, in times of violent social change, the most militant of factions tend to triumph, and then the leader of the faction becomes the dictator of the land. Something like this happened twice during the French Revolution, first with the rise of the Jacobins and then with Napoleon’s coup d’état; the same pattern occurred with the Communist revolutions in Russia and in China. Though it most often makes a left turn, the process can turn right, as with Franco, in Spain. In either case, a period of turbulence is followed by a period of terror.

Ece Temelkuran, author of Together: 10 Choices for a Better Now, has pointed out that the west has been used to thinking they’re more advanced than the rest of the world. But the recent slide towards populism shows that we’re actually behind countries like her native Turkey, and are being offered a glimpse of our near-future. In Together, she shows how resisting this rise of polarisation and hatred means adopting a new mindset – reacquainting ourselves with community, finding better strategies than anger, and learning to have faith rather than easily undermined hope. Temelkuran’s work cuts through easy reactions like cynicism and rage, and shows us how to engage again. This poacher inspired me to level-up our posts. Instead of posting basic steps and bullets, I pushed our team to come up with creative graphics, film and edit cool videos and not post articles until we had really good real life examples. But there’s a more subtle argument in here – why do 3P autocrats even bother with all the manoeuvring, rather than just seizing power like a Pinochet or Mobutu in the last century? Naim argues that post-Cold War, those cruder tactics would not work in most places ‘In a world where people, goods and ideas are constantly on the move, and the old instinct to defer to higher-ups or to tradition is on the wane, any attempt to claim absolute authority is swimming against the historical tide…. In the 21 st Century, new autocratic regimes typically emerge not by toppling democracies via force, but by passing themselves off as democracies.’Brian Lehrer: Moisés Naím, author now of The Revenge of Power: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the 21st Century. Thank you so much for joining us today. The Revenge of Power reminds me of why I consider Moises Naim one of the world’s most exciting and original political thinkers. This absorbing book explores the often contradictory trends that are reshaping political power, and explains that our future depends on how they get resolved. Essential reading." -- Madeleine Albright, Former Secretary of State

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some phone calls for Moisés Naím author of The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century. At 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. He's also a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former editor of Foreign Policy magazine. He was Venezuela's Minister of Trade, and he was executive director of the World Bank in the 1990s. Let's take a phone call. Steve in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Steve. One of the most underwritten parts of history is the colonisation of Asia, and its legacy. Lust, Caution, the 1979 novella by Eileen Chang, about a group of Chinese students who plot to assassinate a wartime collaborator of the invading Japanese during the second world war, shows us this moment in history, and the terrible grey areas that emerge in these times. Understanding this history is important – it’s the only way we learn how not to repeat it. But the book is also a masterclass in writing the duality of human beings. To me, changing the world starts with knowing the world. Lust, Caution taught me a little bit more about the world, and about people. Prue Leith is a judge on The Great British Bake Off. Her one-woman show, Nothing in Moderation, is on tour now.Naím delivers a cogent and accessible overview of the new authoritarianism. Readers will agree that the matter is of urgent concern.” —Publishers Weekly