Aug 26, 2026 · 1 hr · 10 segments
Acclaimed political thinker John Keane will be in conversation with Andrew Leigh about John's new book, Demagogues and Despots: Democracies on the Brink. Democracy and despotism live closer together…
John KeaneGuest
Andrew LeighHost
Frank BongiornoGuest
So John just give us a few examples of demagogues and despots who people would be familiar with
Well, let's go to Washington and There you have a man who talks in non sequiturs, weaponizes nonsense, talks constantly about the people.
What's interesting about these demagogues is that they want to make, they claim that they're making people, will make people's lives better.
They feed upon ressentiment, And when they get their hands on power, as he has done now, we'll see whether he leaves office peacefully, he, the demagogue, actually does this restructuring that I've already spoken about, a kind of simplification of power and a concentration of a monopoly of power.
In the book, I describe demagoguery or the demagogue as an autoimmune disease of democracy.
And it actually overpowers that body politic and turns it into something that it was not.
But as I say, it's a very old problem going back to ancient Greece, where there was great concern in, for example, Athenian democracy about the rise of demagogues like Cleon, who would shout his way through public addresses to the people.
And demagogues persisted all through the electoral democracy period up till the 1930s.
It's a word better than populism, it seems to me, because its focus, it's much older, more precise, but it's also, it puts its finger on what demagogues do when they get their hands on power.
And as far as despots and despotism is concerned, you know, we like to call, journalists like to call Russia, for instance, an autocracy, Putin.
What is Putinism? It's three packets of cheap cigarettes a day and a liter of vodka.
It's a regime in which more than 50% of the population depends upon state spending.
So John just give us a few examples of demagogues and despots who people would be familiar with
Well, let's go to Washington and There you have a man who talks in non sequiturs, weaponizes nonsense, talks constantly about the people.
What's interesting about these demagogues is that they want to make, they claim that they're making people, will make people's lives better.
They feed upon ressentiment, And when they get their hands on power, as he has done now, we'll see whether he leaves office peacefully, he, the demagogue, actually does this restructuring that I've already spoken about, a kind of simplification of power and a concentration of a monopoly of power.
In the book, I describe demagoguery or the demagogue as an autoimmune disease of democracy.
And it actually overpowers that body politic and turns it into something that it was not.
But as I say, it's a very old problem going back to ancient Greece, where there was great concern in, for example, Athenian democracy about the rise of demagogues like Cleon, who would shout his way through public addresses to the people.
And demagogues persisted all through the electoral democracy period up till the 1930s.
It's a word better than populism, it seems to me, because its focus, it's much older, more precise, but it's also, it puts its finger on what demagogues do when they get their hands on power.
And as far as despots and despotism is concerned, you know, we like to call, journalists like to call Russia, for instance, an autocracy, Putin.
What is Putinism? It's three packets of cheap cigarettes a day and a liter of vodka.
It's a regime in which more than 50% of the population depends upon state spending.
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