Tyrants On Twitter

A look inside the weaponization of social media, and an innovative proposal for protecting Western democracies from information warfare. When Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram were first introduced to the public, their mission was simple: they were designed to help people become more connected to each other. Social media became a thriving digital space by giving its users the freedom to share whatever they wanted with their friends and followers. Unfortunately, these same digital tools are also easy to manipulate. As exemplified by Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, authoritarian states can exploit social media to interfere with democratic governance in open societies. Tyrants on Twitter is the first detailed analysis of how Chinese and Russian agents weaponize Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to subvert the liberal international order. In addition to examining the 2016 U.S. election, David L. Sloss explores Russia's use of foreign influence operations to threaten democracies in Europe, as well as China's use of social media and other digital tools to meddle in Western democracies and buttress autocratic rulers around the world. Sloss calls for cooperation among democratic governments to create a new transnational system for regulating social media to protect Western democracies from information warfare. Drawing on his professional experience as an arms control negotiator, he outlines a novel system of transnational governance that Western democracies can enforce by harmonizing their domestic regulations. And drawing on his academic expertise in constitutional law, he explains why that system—if implemented by legislation in the United States—would be constitutionally defensible, despite likely First Amendment objections. With its critical examination of information warfare and its proposal for practical legislative solutions to fight back, this book is essential reading in a time when disinformation campaigns threaten to undermine democracy.

"Brilliant, beautifully organized, exceedingly readable."—Philip Roth World-renowned Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt explores the playwright’s insight into bad (and often mad) rulers. Examining the psyche—and psychoses—of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, and Coriolanus, Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the disasters visited upon the societies over which these characters rule. Tyrant shows that Shakespeare’s work remains vitally relevant today, not least in its probing of the unquenchable, narcissistic appetites of demagogues and the self-destructive willingness of collaborators who indulge them.

A history of tyranny from Achilles to today's jihadists, this volume shows why tyrannical temptation is a permanent danger.

You Are What You Tweet is a cheerfully optimistic book filled with humor and strategies that will help you become Twitter-savvy. This inspiring book serves as far more than a guide to finding your niche on Twitter. It also gives you the tools you need to master this remarkable communication tool and connect with intriguing people around the world. This inspiring, encouraging book will teach you how adapting a new mindset and using positivity can propel you to becoming influential on social media and greatly enhance your own life. You Are What You Tweet teaches you how to engage your audience with quality content, making it nearly a prerequisite for you to be in the right state of mind. After reading this book, you'll learn how, surprisingly, Twitter can help you to find yourself and feel supported to be who you are.

They are driven without respect for the lives they are changing… “Boy Kings,” or Big Tech Tyrants, are considered the most powerful individuals in the world. They’re the autocratic aristocrats who run the tech giants in Silicon Valley, and if the labels are accurate, they suggest these social platform operators have gained a non-elected (or, should we say, a self-elected) authoritarian power. They wield it with more effectiveness and precision than any sitting government or military strategist. Big Tech Tyrants boast riches beyond emperors of old but act like juveniles who don’t want to grow up. They are modern-day robber barons. Big Tech Tyrants don’t know the meaning of privacy, when it comes to you. They try to make you believe they will give their products away for free as a service to society, when really, they are vacuuming your personal data. They use this data to discover your deepest secrets. Are you or your partner trying to get pregnant? Are you underwater financially? Are you having an extramarital affair? Do you have a tidy nest egg? Are you a Trump supporter? Are you a Bernie Sanders follower? Are you a Scientologist, Mormon, Christian, or Buddhist? Your personal data is extremely valuable to them—and they use it—and abuse. These tyrants knowingly addict users to make more money. Not only that, they also consider themselves the most enlightened the world has ever seen—so they know what’s best for you to see—from the news and information you read to the political candidates they think you should vote for. They censor news and only let you see what they want you to see. This is an eye-opening must read for anyone living in the twenty-first century!

As conventional understanding would have it, the sometimes brutal business of governing can only be carried out at the price of distance from art, while poetic beauty best fl ourishes at a distance from actions executed at the pole of power. Dramatically contradicting this idea is the fact that violent rulers are often the greatest friends of art, and indeed draw attention to themselves as artists. Why do tyrants of all people often have a particularly poetic vein? Where do terror and fi ction meet? The cultural history of totalitarian regimes is unwrapped in ten case studies, in a comparative perspective. The book focuses on the phenomenon that many of the great despots in history were themselves writers. By studying the artistic ambitions of Nero, Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Saparmurat Nyyazow and Radovan Karadzic, the studies explore the complicated relationship between poetry and political violence, and open our eyes for the aesthetic dimensions of total power. The essays make an important contribution to a number of fields: the study of totalitarian regimes, cultural studies, biographies of 20th century leaders. They underscore the frequent correlation between tyrannical governance and an excessive passion for language, and prove that the merging of artistic and political charisma tends to justify the claim to absolute power.

Both reason and religion have been acknowledged by scholars to have had a profound impact on the foundation and formation of the American regime. But the significance, pervasiveness, and depth of that impact have also been disputed. While many have approached the American founding period with an interest in the influence of Enlightenment reason or Biblical religion, they have often assumed such influences to be exclusive, irreconcilable, or contradictory. Few scholarly works have sought to study the mutual influence of reason and religion as intertwined strands shaping the American historical and political experience at its founding. The purpose of the chapters in this volume, authored by a distinguished group of scholars in political science, intellectual history, literature, and philosophy, is to examine how this mutual influence was made manifest in the American Founding—especially in the writings, speeches, and thought of critical figures (Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Charles Carroll), and in later works by key interpreters of the American Founding (Alexis de Tocqueville and Abraham Lincoln). Taken as a whole, then, this volume does not attempt to explain away the potential opposition between religion and reason in the American mind of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth- centuries, but instead argues that there is a uniquely American perspective and political thought that emerges from this tension. The chapters gathered here, individually and collectively, seek to illuminate the animating affect of this tension on the political rhetoric, thought, and history of the early American period. By taking seriously and exploring the mutual influence of these two themes in creative tension, rather than seeing them as diametrically opposed or as mutually exclusive, this volume thus reveals how the pervasiveness and resonance of Biblical narratives and religion supported and infused Enlightened political discourse and action at the Founding, thereby articulating the complementarity of reason and religion during this critical period.

The Battle of Marathon changed the course of history in ancient Greece. To many, the impossible seemed to have been achieved - the mighty Persian Empire halted in its advance. What happened that day, why was the battle fought, and how did people make sense of it? This bold new history of the battle examines how the conflict unfolded and the ideas attached to it in antiquity and beyond. Many thought the battle offered lessons in how people should behave, with heroism to be emulated and faults to be avoided. While the battle itself was fought in one day, the battle for the idea of Marathon has lasted ever since. After immersing you in the battle, this work will help you to explore how the ancient Athenians used the battle in their relations between themselves and others, and how the battle continued to be used to express ideas about gods, empire, and morality in the age of Alexander and his successors, at Rome and in Greece under the Roman Empire, and in the ages after antiquity, even in our own era, in which Marathon plays a remarkable role in sport, film, and children's literature with each retelling a re-imagining of the battle and its meaning. A clash of weapons, gods, and principles, this is Marathon as you've never seen it before!