Demagogues and Despots

Description

We live in troubled times, marked by a sinister trend gaining the upper hand everywhere: a new despotism for the twenty-first century.

John Keane’s latest book rings out boldly with a powerful warning: the keyword for understanding the new threats to democracy is despotism. This peril arises not only from regimes as different as Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, but also from popularly elected demagogues opposed to power- sharing, from Orbán’s Hungary and Sheinbaum’s Mexico to Netanyahu’s Israel and Trump’s America.

Keane shows why this new despotism defies the laws of political gravity. More than fear or raw force, it pursues a strange, pseudo-democratic type of government, led by rulers skilled in winning public loyalty through election-rigging, legal trickery, weaponised lying and talk of enemies. What’s more, alarmingly, these leaders hunt in packs.

But what’s so good about democracy? In prose humming with energy, Keane shows that it’s much more than popular self-government based on free and fair elections. Democracy is a collective insistence that unaccountable power is always dangerous— and it’s the best way to stop demagogues and despots from ruining life on our planet.

Author(s)

John Keane, Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney, is renowned globally for his creative thinking about politics, history, media and democracy. His books include The Shortest History of Democracy; The Life and Death of Democracy; the bestselling Tom Paine: A Political Life; and the acclaimed biography Václav Havel. Photo © Angel Sanchez