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

August 26, 2026 — 5:00am

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

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........

© The Sydney Morning Herald