Why the Right Loves Foreign Dictators (w/ Jacob Heilbrunn)

Know Your Enemy

The right's romance with odious foreign dictators didn't start with Putin or Viktor Orbán, and their profound contempt for democracy long predates January 6. In his new book, America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators, Jacob Heilbrunn traces this tradition on the right—in many ways their most deeply rooted and enduring tradition in foreign affairs—back over a century to the embrace of Kaiser Wilhelm during World War I and envy of Mussolini to the present. In this discussion, Matt and Sam ask Heilbrunn about the connection between race science and fear of democracy in the early 20th century, what the right saw in Italian fascism, the machinations of the right's pivot from Nazi revisionism to the onset of the Cold War, Jeane Kirkpatrick and the supposed distinction between authoritarianism and "totalitarianism," the profound consequences of the failure of neoconservatism, the coming disaster of a second Trump term, and more.

Sources:

Jacob Heilbrunn, America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators (2024)

The Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (2008)

RJB Bosworth, Mussolini (2010)

J. Valerio Borghese, Sea Devils: Suicide Squad (Regnery, 1954)

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, "Dictatorships & Double Standards," Commentary, Nov 1979.

Listen:

Know Your Enemy, "The American Right’s Hungary Hearts, (w/ Lauren Stokes and John Ganz)"

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