The Future of Strongmen: A Conversation with Gideon Rachman

It’s the age of the strongman. And it’s not just Donald Trump – there is now a long list of leaders who have or want authoritarian powers. Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, China’s Xi Jinping, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, India’s Narendra Modi and the and the Philippino Rodrigo Duterte. Financial Times journalist Gideon Rachman has studied these men and some others for his book The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy Around the World (Other Press, 2022). And as well as describing the men he has analysed the writers they rely such as the Nazi writer, Carl Schmidt.

Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.

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