Not your grandma’s authoritarians Today’s authoritarian rulers realize that civil society has the potential to support democracy and pry loose their grip on power.
—
Christopher Justin Einolf,
The Conversation,
26 Sep. 2025
Almost overnight, countries that had long outsourced their energy security to autocrats found their supplies cut, and their economies shaken.
—
Jennifer Granholm,
semafor.com,
30 Apr. 2026
Even as long-reigning autocrats such as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are removed from power, the outlook for the global state of democracy remains highly uncertain.
—
Yana Gorokhovskaia,
Washington Post,
19 Mar. 2026
Biden put this sentiment into action by working with Netanyahu despite serious moral and political failures in Gaza, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on NATO expansion, and with Gulf potentates on the region’s security architecture.
This president, who called his treasonous supporters to arms, wants our tax dollars to compensate these tyrants.
—
Sun Sentinel Editorial Board,
Sun Sentinel,
27 May 2026
Because, after all, as in all of Haber’s novels, the point is not really what is happening in the world but what is happening in the mind—in this case the mind of the pettiest of tyrants.
But would-be and actual dictators do tend to follow a common set of strategies to consolidate power.
—
Christopher Justin Einolf,
The Conversation,
22 May 2026
The opportunity to interview these people would never have been turned down by other organizations, but there was also a sense that these dictators and terrorists and authoritarians were realizing that CNN were giving them this unfiltered platform to speak to the American people.
The Boys – Season 5 (Prime Video) Things have gone from bad to worse in the final season of The Boys, Prime Video’s irreverent superhero satire about America succumbing to charismatic despots and fascistic opportunists.
—
Erik Kain,
Forbes.com,
15 May 2026
Underlying such obvious acts of aggression lies an insidious tendency for transnational repression to flow from despots into democracies, oppressing lawyers of all nationalities in the process.
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