The scary truth that Anne Applebaum’s Gulag is telling me about our own political shift.

What I am very fascinated by — and scared at the same time — is that the book, in its painstaking description of what happened from the 1910s onward in the Soviet Union with the Gulag system, and how it shaped the country both internally and externally, reveals striking similarities with today’s world and politics. Especially when you look at countries that shared Soviet and communist ideals. But the extremes of the spectrum are very much linked too.

https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/magas-conummist-propaganda-a-photo :On left, U.S. artist Jon McNaughton depicts a flag-waving patriotic American on a horse. On right, a late Soviet propaganda poster.

There was a paragraph that, among many others really, struck me and made me think about this writing. It’s on page 279, at the end of chapter 13.

It read this way:

“In the end, nobody forced guards to rescue the young and murder the old. Nobody forced camp commanders to kill off the sick. Nobody forced the Gulag bosses in Moscow to ignore the implications of inspectors’ report. Yet such decisions were made openly, every day, by guards and administrators apparently convinced they have the right to make them.”

Basically, the people in power justified themselves with a higher purpose that was: make the Soviet Union great.

Just as the Gulag relied on the silent complicity of ordinary citizens, modern regimes rely on ours — our distraction, our disbelief, our willingness to accept convenient narratives over inconvenient truths.

Most striking, however, are the words — the language — that the Gulag guards, the NKVD commanders, and ultimately the government used, and instructed others to use, when dealing with political prisoners. They are the same words, the same framing, the same psychological mechanisms we still hear today, same revolutionary rhetoric that divides society into “the people” vs “traitors”,moral absolutism and political purges, justifying cruelty through ideology.

Stalinist-style propaganda, “capitalist communist” China (system where political loyalty and access to power often determine who gets rich), and far-right movements in Europe and the USA — with MAGA sitting right at the top of the pile.

Vermin. Enemy of the people. Snake-like. Dogs, or slavish dogs.

The German Jews who ran out of Germany to escape the Nazis and went to the Soviets were actually arrested and called “German fascists” and “Germans disguised as a Jew”.

Like it is written in the book, the name-calling was not just a pointless juvenile exercise. By describing their prisoners as “enemies” or as “sub-humans”, guards reassured themselves of the legitimacy of their own actions.

In fact, the rhetoric of “enemies” was only one part of the ideology of the Gulag cadres. The other part — call it the rhetoric of State Slavery — constantly hammered home the importance of work, and of the ever-increasing production figures which were necessary for the continued existence of the Soviet Union.

To put it bluntly: anything could be justified if it brought more gold out of the ground.

The whole premise of the concentration camps known as the Gulag — definitely different from the Nazi ones (The Gulag and Nazi camps were different systems — but they share something terrifying: the industrial normalization of human disposability… ah the irony) — was to force people to work for free in order to make the economy grow for everyone else.

What was the excuse — the main excuse — they used to keep running such an authoritarian, horrible, and deeply deplorable regime?

The fear of war.

In the book, this is explained very clearly by Aleksei Loginov, a director and prison-camp boss in Norilsk. Paraphrasing his point: they believed the outside world would never leave the Soviet Union alone. So they had to build a strong army and needed huge amounts of resources. Because, in their minds, they would inevitably be at war with the outside world one day.

They needed men — lots of men.

So they needed to change the laws (to make it look legitimate) in order to arrest more and more people, throw them into the camps, and make them work for free.

In his words:

“You know how many people had been arrested. And we needed tens of thousands up there …”

https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/magas-conummist-propaganda-a-photo: Deification of the flag — which can symbolize both a leader and an ideology and sometimes both — reaches religious levels under both MAGA and Communist strongman propaganda. In Jon McNaughton’s “Respect for the Flag,” Trump, ironically a man who prides himself on holding nothing sacred, clutches the flag reverentially in a way that recalls North Korean propaganda posters.

The whole system used the excuse of a possible war in the near future — with made-up enemies somewhere in the West and across the world — to actually solidify a repressive government and arrest tens of thousands of innocent people, just to create a pool of free workers to keep a broken economy running.

Authoritarianism rarely announces itself; it arrives gradually, through normalization: repetition of fear-inducing rhetoric, systematic attacks on critics, and the dehumanization of “enemies.”

From Gulags to Today: Authoritarianism in Plain Sight

If Gulag taught me anything, it is that authoritarianism doesn’t vanish with history — it evolves, adapts, and finds new forms. The same psychological mechanisms, the same dehumanizing language, the same propaganda strategies that sustained the Soviet system are alive in modern politics, often in plain sight. And yet, somehow, we fail to notice them until it’s almost too late.

Take the language first. Just as Gulag guards called prisoners “vermin,” “enemies of the people,” or “dogs,” today’s leaders and movements dehumanize opponents in ways that are strikingly similar:

Donald Trump and MAGA media routinely call journalists, Democratic politicians, or election officials “enemies of the people,” “corrupt,” or “traitors,” framing them not as fellow citizens but as existential threats.

Viktor Orbán in Hungary labels opposition parties and independent media as “foreign-influenced” or part of a global conspiracy, painting dissent as a danger to the nation.

Giorgia Meloni and the Italian far-right frame political opponents and critics as threats to national identity or sovereignty, using repeated language to cast dissent as disloyalty.

Vladimir Putin and Russian state media label journalists, opposition figures, and even ordinary critics as “foreign agents” or “enemies of the state,” often accusing them of espionage or betrayal. He is using the same, old soviet era rhetoric with Ukraine today, with Georgia years ago.

Xi Jinping and Chinese state media systematically attack dissidents, human rights lawyers, and critics as destabilizers, often linking them to foreign influence, subversion, or capitalism’s “corrupting” forces (or separatists, like in the Taiwan case or how he called the umbrella movement in HK, or Xinjian for that matter).

https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/magas-conummist-propaganda-a-photo : In one famous Mao Zedong image, he stands at the edge of a boat in a bathrobe, prepared to teach Chinese children how to swim. In this portrait he bestows some wisdom about rice. Wisely, McNaughton always plays down Trump’s outrageous copper bouffant, rendering it a classic Everyman hairdo in the socialist-realist style. He won’t divest Trump of his suit, but here he depicts Trump as ready to teach the Common Man about fishing.

Propaganda is just as central today as it was in the Gulag era. Where Soviet posters, newspapers, and radio broadcasts glorified the state and normalized repression, modern tools — social media, partisan news networks, state-run outlets — allow leaders to shape entire narratives, spin facts, and silence dissent on a massive scale. Russia’s RT and Sputnik craft stories to delegitimize critics; Trump’s rallies and social media amplify the idea of a “rigged system” to justify attacks on institutions; China’s CCTV and state-controlled online platforms create a curated version of reality that aligns with Xi’s narrative of stability and national greatness.

Fear remains the engine of control.

In the Gulag, fear of foreign invasion justified repression. Today, fear of cultural decline, immigration, terrorism, economic instability, or foreign interference functions the same way. Leaders exploit these fears to justify extraordinary powers, silence critics, and rally supporters under the banner of national survival.

What Applebaum’s work makes terrifyingly clear is how ordinary people — guards, administrators, citizens — normalize cruelty when framed as necessary for survival or greatness.

The same logic operates today.

In the U.S., Europe, Russia, China, or Italy, citizens can slowly become desensitized to authoritarian rhetoric, policies, and attacks on opponents — especially when they are wrapped in nationalist or moralistic language.

And yet, the danger is often invisible.

Authoritarianism rarely announces itself; it arrives gradually, through normalization: repetition of fear-inducing rhetoric, systematic attacks on critics, and the dehumanization of “enemies.”

Just as the Gulag relied on the silent complicity of ordinary citizens, modern regimes rely on ours — our distraction, our disbelief, our willingness to accept convenient narratives over inconvenient truths.

The lesson is urgent: history is not just a mirror — it is a warning. Words, rhetoric, and propaganda shape thought, justify cruelty, and pave the way for repression long before anyone notices. The mechanisms are the same; the stakes are just as high.

Applebaum’s Gulag is not just a chronicle of Soviet horrors — it is a guide for recognizing the early signs of authoritarianism. And the question we must ask ourselves today is stark: will we see it coming, or will we only wake up after the machinery of fear and propaganda is already in motion?

P.S.: I am just at the 310th page. There is so much I am learning from this book. Thanks to Eve Fairbanks article in the Unpopulist. Freaking awesome!