Enablers of authoritarianism

A recurring problem in this book is that most of the clercs refuse to talk to Ms Applebaum, leaving her dependent on the public record and the wisdom of mutual acquaintances

Even before the coronavirus began to test our social order, the world was experiencing another plague, a pandemic of authoritarianism. Over the past decade it has infected democracies around the globe, including our own.

Anne Applebaum’s contribution to this discussion, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism,  is concerned less with the aspiring autocrats and their compliant mobs than with the mentality of the courtiers who make a tyrant possible: “the writers, intellectuals, pamphleteers, bloggers, spin doctors, producers of television programs and creators of memes who can sell his image to the public.”

Are these enablers true believers or