Are murderous dictators really so bad? The generation turning to tyranny

American Twitch streamer Hasan Piker has amassed a millions-strong following with a potent combination of handsome good looks, provocative bombast and an ability to make Marxist politics accessible to a chronically online Millennial and Gen-Z audience. Last month, Piker went viral for talking up Chairman Mao as “one of the great leaders of this world”. When questioned about the tens of millions killed as a direct result of Mao’s policies, he brushed this aside as “a lot of f---ing excesses” that were seemingly necessary because “the People’s Republic of China would not exist without Mao Zedong”. Presumably he doesn’t think that would be a good thing.

Far-right media personalities have become similarly enamoured with authoritarian despots. The war in Ukraine saw an explosion of pro-Russia punditry on the MAGA-right, whitewashing atrocities and revising history to present brutal and corrupt leaders like Vladimir Putin as brave defenders of Christianity and Western civilisation. The most prominent include influential commentators like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, who routinely regurgitate Kremlin talking points like accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of being a dictator and blaming NATO for Russia’s invasion.

Increasingly, it feels like not a day goes by without some mega-influencer or another proclaiming their admiration for a mass-murdering despot. Such people have always existed. Where they used to occupy the extreme fringes on both left and right, the popularity of figures like Piker, Carlson and Owens shows that authoritarian revisionism risks seeping into the mainstream. While some of this may be a genuine response to the very real failures of the current system, it is certainly more insidious than that. If we care about the health of our democracy we should be paying attention.

Right now, the democratic world resembles a much-cherished yet increasingly dilapidated family home. Painstakingly built brick-by-brick by generations past, its current inhabitants live comfortably inside with all the windows and doors wide open – no locks, no grates, no shutters. While this may invite the occasional insect, bird or stray marsupial to scamper in, we’ve long resisted putting up barriers of any kind. To do so would stifle the sweet breeze of freedom that wafts throughout. But what to do when squatters loiter outside, graffitiing walls, dumping garbage and threatening to carry off the furniture?

It’s no secret that Western democracies are facing a crisis of legitimacy. Young people in particular are checking out of democratic politics or are shifting their votes to radical populist parties promising to drain the swamp or burn it all down. What we should replace the current system with is rarely articulated.

While these frustrations are legitimate, humanity is yet to come up with a better system of government than parliamentary democracy. Every alternative involves some form of freedom-crushing authoritarianism. It says a lot about our current zeitgeist that to some, the case needs to be made that authoritarianism is bad.

Examples abound.