Two studies offer fascinating portraits of the increasingly sophisticated and networked world of autocracy, dictatorship and tyranny. Applebaum focuses on the growing links between hardline autocratic regimes, led by China, Russia and Iran and connected to Venezuela, North Korea, Belarus, Sudan and others. These illiberal states vary greatly in their ideologies but build a larger web of financial, military, technological and diplomatic ties in their joint efforts to avoid Western sanctions and stay in power. Applebaum argues that what distinguishes these autocratic states from softer illiberal and authoritarian regimes, such as those in Hungary, India and Turkey, is the ruthlessness and scope of their dictatorial power and their deep hostility to the Western-led democratic world. Russia is the linchpin of this emerging counter-hegemonic system, pioneering the modern model of kleptocracy and dictatorship, organized for the self-enrichment of its leaders, and turning its invasion of Ukraine into a broader ideological and geopolitical assault on the liberal international order. Applebaum argues that Western democracies must reckon with their complicity in the spread of kleptocratic autocracy through offshore banking, money laundering, business deals and ideological support from far-right fellow travelers.

The authors of The world of the right vividly map the intellectual and political ties of the increasingly globally connected radical right. Focusing primarily on nationalist and populist movements in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Latin America, the authors argue that these seemingly disparate groups have evolved into a global phenomenon. What they share is a common enemy: liberal elites, who, from entrenched positions in the leading institutions of society and the administrative state, conspire to undermine sovereignty and traditional values. Such cosmopolitan liberals and technocratic experts threaten, as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban put it, “the whole of Western civilization.” Through a vast network of conferences, think tanks and political party organizations, the extreme right has increasingly configured itself as a loosely organized transnational radical movement. Its emphasis on civilizational identity and antipathy to liberal internationalism creates opportunities for entanglements with illiberal states, such as China and Russia, which share the goal of ousting Western liberalism and the US-led international order.

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