Martin Wolf

It was transformed by the internet.

I think this is probably more important than all of these put together, but I'm not sure.

But my instinct is, I'm a great fan of Frank Herbert, the Dune books, particularly Dune itself, and his idea that at some point in the past, there was something called the Butlerian Jihad, at the end of which

machines that think were banned, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if 100 years from now, people, if there are people still around, will say, we should have done that.

Yeah, I suspect you're right.

As a great science fiction writer, Asimov is another of my fans, my hero, sorry.

He wrote wonderfully, The Laws of Robotics, and nobody seemed to be thinking about those either.

Well, it's certainly not what I expected.

Thank you so much.

It's quite complicated.

And I have to admit, I'm not an expert on all of it.

But the key point is he's subverted the judicial system by essentially packing the constitutional court.

and making loyalist judges.

So essentially, he can pretty well guarantee the courts will find in his favor.

He and his government have completely taken over the state media, which are always very important and are obliged in some sense to be independent, politically neutral, but they're not.

They very, very much speak for the government, the government alone.

He has, and I think this is one of the crucial elements, is he's created a whole system of crony capitalism.

So favored business people, friends, relatives, people he knows who support him have been allowed or encouraged to purchase media outlets.

companies, create media companies, and with the backing of the government, to create businesses.

And this interlinking of the business sector with the economy and the government is a sort of modern version of the sort of corporate capitalism that Mussolini was promoting in the 1920s and 30s.