How to Stand Up to a Dictator

The Fight for Our Future

By: Maria Ressa

Narrated by: Maria Ressa, Rebecca Mozo

From the recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize comes an impassioned and inspiring memoir that chronicles her career fighting fascism, filled with insights and advice for standing against authoritarian bullies and confronting disinformation and lies. It includes a foreword by Amal Clooney.

Maria Ressa is one of the most renowned international journalists of our time. For decades, she challenged corruption and malfeasance in her native country, the Philippines, on its rocky path from an authoritarian state to a democracy. As a reporter from CNN, she transformed news coverage in her region, which led her in 2012 to create a new and innovative online news organization, Rappler. Harnessing the emerging power of social media, Rappler crowdsourced breaking news, found pivotal sources and tips, harnessed collective action for climate change, and helped increase voter knowledge and participation in elections.

But by their fifth year of existence, Rappler had gone from being lauded for its ideas to being targeted by the new Philippine government, and made Ressa an enemy of her country’s most powerful man: President Duterte. Still, she did not let up, tracking government seeded disinformation networks which spread lies to its own citizens laced with anger and hate. Hounded by the state and its allies using the legal system to silence her, accused of numerous crimes, and charged with cyberlibel for which she was found guilty, Ressa faces years in prison and thousands in fines.

There is another adversary Ressa is battling. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is also the story of how the creep toward authoritarianism, in the Phillipines and around the world, has been aided and abetted by the social media companies. Ressa exposes how they have allowed their platforms to spread a virus of lies that infect each of us, pitting us against one another, igniting, even creating, our fears, anger, and hate, and how this has accelerated the rise of authoritarians and dictators around the world. She maps a network of disinformation—a heinous web of cause and effect—that has netted the globe: from Duterte’s drug wars to America's Capitol Hill; Britain’s Brexit to Russian and Chinese cyber-warfare; Facebook and Silicon Valley to our own clicks and votes.

Democracy is fragile. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is an urgent cry for Western readers to recognize and understand the dangers to our freedoms before it is too late. It is a book for anyone who might take democracy for granted, written by someone who never would. And in telling her dramatic and turbulent and courageous story, Ressa forces readers to ask themselves the same question she and her colleagues ask every day: What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth?

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Must read for all concerned about our democracy

For anyone who is concerned about the state of democracy in the United States and how long it can survive, this is a must read. This book was excellent.

Necessary read for anyone committed to Justice

Maria Ressa outlines in great detail the playbook for combatting tyranny and hatred. Journalists like her are the he unsung heroines and heroes in the fight for truth, Justice, and democracy. This book highlights just how deserving her Nobel Peace Prize was and inspires readers to hold the line. Maraming Salamat Maria Ressa!

Great road trip book!

Great book kept me listening all day while I drove! An amazing story about a strong woman.

Inspiring

People like Ms. Ressa instill some faith that there’s hope for a better world. Thanks to her for this wonderful book.

Maria Ressa’s Story Is An Historical Accounting To Our Children’s Future

Ressa’s story explains how social media continues to shape our future in a negative way without regulations.