Along with a drop in temperatures, May brings plenty of new streaming options, whether you’re after some classic American political drama, or some local family TV you can enjoy with the kids.

We’ve also got Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated film Marty Supreme coming to Stan, as well as a new series from Richard Gadd (of Baby Reindeer fame) on HBO Max. Sit back, grab a blanket, and enjoy.

All The President’s Men

Prime Video and Apple TV

All the President’s Men, which has just turned 50, was based on the 1974 book by journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who investigated the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post.

A masterpiece of political cinema, All The President’s Men remains one of the finest films about investigative journalism ever made. Steeped in a fog of paranoia and distrust – an atmosphere shaped in no small part by cinematographer Gordon Willis’ matchless treatment of light and shade – it is as relevant now as it was on first release.

Redford was the driving force behind the film. Convinced that the story demanded a restrained, quasi-documentary approach, he initially envisioned a black-and-white film shot in a pared-back style, with an emphasis on process rather than star power.

Warner Bros, with whom he had a production deal, thought otherwise. Having already agreed to finance the film, the studio insisted that Redford take a leading role – and marketed the as yet-unmade project as “the most devastating detective story” of the century.

The result is an endlessly watchable and quotable (“Follow the money”) film that generates narrative and dramatic tension through the sheer difficultly of knowing anything at all.

In age beset by disinformation, brazen political deceit, strategic obfuscation and collapsing trust in public institutions, that lesson feels less historically distant than it does disturbingly prescient.

– Alexander Howard

Read more: All The President’s Men at 50: one of the finest films about investigative journalism ever made

Caper Crew

ABC iView

The ABC’s new series Caper Crew follows 12-year-old Amelia Delaney (Isabella Zhang) and her 9-year-old brother Kai (Luka Sero), who live in Woodspring, “the most boring town on Earth”. That is, apart from one incident 27 years ago when the infamous Kangaroo Gang stole the town’s priceless golden meteorite. “The Nug” was never found, despite a $100,000 reward.

When their mysterious con-artist grandmother, Queenie, appears out of the blue and starts teaching them the art of the grift, Amelia and Kai can’t help but wonder: was Queenie part of the Kangaroo Gang? Does she know where The Nug is? The siblings join forces with their friends Penelope (Caitlin Niemotko) and Ophelbert (Tevita Hu) on a mission to find the lost object.

The young cast members are very endearing. The adults don’t disappoint, either; Tina Bursill is magnetic as Queenie, while Annie Maynard and ABC-favourite Michael Theo captivate as Mayor Katinkatonk and drama teacher Jojo Encore, respectively.

For parents and carers watching with kids, Caper Crew combines a Wes Anderson-esque visual quality with a nostalgic ode to millennial classics such as Matilda and Harriet the Spy. It may charm younger viewers into taking up magic, or planning their own heists. It also reminds us just how good Australian family TV can be, with a bit of resourcing.

– Alexa Scarlata

Read more: ABC’s Caper Crew delivers heists and heart – a bright spot in a struggling kids’ TV sector

Riot Women

SBS On Demand

“And you thought The Clash were angry!” retorts Beth (Joanna Scanlan), describing her newly-formed punk band of women largely 50 years and over.

Riot Women, a hilarious five-part BBC drama series, champions strong female characters whose dilemmas authentically reflect the female experience. The band’s tracks Hot Flush, I’m Not Done Yet, and Invisible No More counter society’s assumption that menopausal women have a use-by date.

Punk is used as a metaphor for female rampage, rather than the show’s subject – and despite some dark storylines (including suicide and violence against women), the show is a raucous celebration of women on their own terms. These women find joy and energy in mid-life, emerging as formidable because they no longer give a damn.

Riot Women is written by Sally Wainwright and co-directed by Wainwright and the late Amanda Brotchie, an enormously talented Australian director.

The outstanding ensemble cast is drawn from the crème de la crème of British talent, with Joanna Scanlan as Beth, Rosalie Craig as Kitty, Lorraine Ashbourne as Jess, Tamsin Greig as Holly, and Amelia Bullmore as Yvonne.

It’s an original, emotionally resonant and high-quality drama that, like much of Wainwright’s work, doesn’t disappoint.

– Lisa French

Marty Supreme

Stan, from May 15

Marty Supreme is a frenetic tale inspired by Marty Reisman, the charismatic American table tennis champion of the 1950s.

Charged by Timothée Chalamet’s electric lead performance – alongside a stellar supporting cast (including Gwyneth Paltrow), and director Josh Safdie’s signature, anxiety-inducing aesthetic – the film captures a young man’s all-or-nothing quest for greatness.

Marty Mauser is a morally ambiguous protagonist engaged in a sociopathic, self-obsessed pursuit of glory. But Safdie invites the audience to champion his quest. In this, Marty emerges as a particularly compelling entry into Hollywood’s longstanding tradition of unlikable heroes.

How does Safdie succeed in creating a protagonist who – despite lying that his mother died during childbirth and neglecting his pregnant girlfriend – nonetheless wins the audience’s support?

Marty’s championing is undoubtedly in part due to Chalamet’s star image and onscreen charisma. And his quest for greatness depicts the triumphant tale of a figure who, against all odds, continues to pursue his dreams with obsessive belief.

While his extreme measures may be unsympathetic – and perhaps unforgivable – Marty’s fundamental desire to transcend his circumstances remains relatable. His unrelenting commitment to his dream catalyses his moral failing. But he is nonetheless a figure capable of tenderness.

While Marty Supreme dramatises the egotistical pursuit of its flawed protagonist, it ultimately explores the universal ambition to dream big – and questions what is worth sacrificing in order to achieve success.

–Oscar Bloomfield

Read more: Antihero Marty Supreme is sociopathic in his pursuit of glory. Why do we want him to win?

Lizard

Mubi

Lizard (2020) is a Sundance-winning short film by British-Nigerian filmmaker and writer, Akinola Davies Jr. Currently streaming on Mubi, alongside Davies’ BAFTA-winning debut feature My Father’s Shadow (2025), it’s a magical and gritty portrait of religion, hypocrisy and violence.

Co-written with his brother, Wale Davies, Lizard is based on Davies Jr’s own childhood experiences. The thematically nuanced 18-minute narrative follows the inquisitive eight-year-old Juwon who, following some misbehaviour and removal from her Sunday school service, confronts the criminal underbelly of her Lagos church.

The fluidity between the real and surreal is central to Davies Jr’s cinematic imagination. Juwon is gifted with the ability to sense danger. Her mystic-like intuition materialises in the presence of the eponymous agama lizard: a figure who leads the young girl through her milieu.

The film masterfully blends elements of the fantastical with realist stylisation. It’s a portrayal of sociopolitical corruption and exploitation, but also extends beyond this. Through Juwon’s child-like imagination, it confronts the processes of understanding trauma and memory – with the film’s sensibilities questioning reality’s supposed superiority over fantasy.

Davies Jr is cementing himself as an exciting, distinctive voice in international cinema. I’m looking forward to watching My Father’s Shadow.

– Oscar Bloomfield

Half Man

HBO Max

Richard Gadd is perhaps best known for his hugely successful series, Baby Reindeer. Part of the unsettling thrill of that Emmy-award winning series was watching a dramatisation of Gadd’s own experience of being stalked. We saw a vulnerable protagonist, played by Gadd, drawn into considerably uncomfortable situations.

Now Gadd has returned to our screens with a new series called Half Man. A similar viewing experience to Baby Reindeer is established in the opening episode, where we witness a vulnerable, isolated young man get drawn into a toxic relationship. Gadd is a master at building tension and discomfort.

Niall (Jamie Bell) is visited by his estranged step-brother Ruben (Gadd) on his wedding day. After a violent confrontation, we jump back 30 years to when they were two schoolboys. Ruben has just gotten out of youth detention and, since his mother is dating and living with Niall’s mother, he has no choice but to move in and share Niall’s room.

As boys, a young Ruben (Stuart Campbell) is prone to violent outbursts at any moment, and young Niall (Mitchell Robinson) is shy and bullied by his classmates for being perceived as gay. The early dynamics between the two boys make for incredibly unsettling viewing. But knowing how good the emotional pay-off of Baby Reindeer was, I can’t wait to see where the series goes.

– Stuart Richards

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Let’s begin with a troubling truth: in many countries, hundreds of millions of people nowadays feel that when it comes to the biggest decisions affecting their lives, despite all the talk of “democracy” and “the people”, they have no control over those who decide things in their name. Their shared experience of organised powerlessness is amplified by fears that our small blue planet is spinning out of control.

People are not just annoyed and angry. They’ve grown convinced that elected governments have become so blind and corrupt that they no longer notice or even care that we earthlings are hurtling towards a future bruised and battered by more than a few perilous forces. Naked big power rivalries. Nasty genocidal wars. Hatred of immigrants. Border closures. Trade and tariff disputes. Extreme weather events. Pandemics. Corporate greed.

Polls show that millions of people are equally bothered by another unpromising political trend: the mounting anxiety that demagogues, despots and a strange new kind of Russian-style despotism with thoroughly 21st-century characteristics are gaining traction and everywhere getting the upper hand.

To speak of despotism is immediately to invite frowns and risk heated arguments. It’s an old word with a complicated and chequered history. Long out of fashion these days – “autocracy”, “fascism” and “authoritarianism” are the fashionable political buzzwords – despotism has often been dismissed as an emotionally charged and fuzzy term laden with Orientalist prejudices against non-Europeans.

But when suitably revised and carefully deployed, despotism is an indispensable keyword for making sense of the new global threats to democracy in polities as different as Russia, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Vietnam, but also by the parallel and overlapping attacks on power-sharing democracy led by demagogues and their admirers in countries such as Türkiye, Israel and Donald Trump’s America.

This worldwide growth of a strange alliance between demagogues and despots is no coincidence. It ought to puzzle and worry every thinking person, and it needs to be understood.

Considered as a type of rule practised by both demagogues and despots, despotism is a way of handling power that defies the laws of political gravity. It’s a peculiarly fake type of democracy led by rulers skilled in the arts of manipulating and meddling with people’s lives, marshalling their support and winning their obedience.

Despotism feeds upon the voluntary servitude of its subjects. Those who think despotism is a synonym for repression, fear and raw force are profoundly mistaken. Despotic power can’t properly be understood through similes of hammers and nails; it requires thinking in terms of the attraction of metal filings to magnets.

In practice, despots are masters of seduction, deception and control. They calibrate their use of violence and manage, using a combination of slick means, including rigged election victories, to win the submission and loyalty of the ruled. Oiled by government largesse, rampant patronage, bags of money, job creation programs, legal trickery and endless talk of defending “the people” against its foes, despotism nurtures the docile subservience of its subjects, including important sections of the middle classes, skilled and unskilled workers, and the poor.

The result: the triumph of top-down pyramids of power that manage to win millions of supporters at home and acolytes and friends well beyond the borders of the states they rule.

What’s especially worrying is that the spirit of despotism is contagious. Despots and demagogues hunt in packs. Their promiscuity and wilful cooperation know no limits. Demagogues are despots in the making. Despots are what demagogues would like to be.

Consider the moment, in July 2024, when in a gilded ceremony in Moscow’s Grand Central Palace, Russian president Vladimir Putin, who faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, conferred upon his “dear friend”, Indian president Narendra Modi, Russia’s highest civilian honour, the Order of St Andrew the Apostle.

Now consider the grand showtime moment when an aspiring despot was greeted with open arms and lavish gifts by his more seasoned counterparts: Trump’s whirlwind May 2025 tour of west Asia.

In Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, the all-American demagogue was showered with the honour and recognition he had long craved. Lavish F-15 fighter jet escorts. Lavender and red carpets, mounted camels and women’s hair-flipping welcome ceremonies. Riders on white horses and Tesla cybertrucks sporting stars and stripes. Grand marbled halls, dazzling crystal chandeliers, the highest civil decorations, including a pure gold necklace.

Then there was the world’s tallest building, more than half a mile high, lit up with an image of the American flag. A campaign-style rally at the region’s largest US military base in Qatar.

And the material deliverables: trillion-dollar business and defence contracts, signed by cupidity in the presence of greed and fame. Plans (with Saudi Arabia) to establish a joint nuclear energy program. A preliminary agreement (with UAE) to import the most advanced AI chips. A lavish gift (from Qatar) of a luxury jet Trump intends to keep whenever he leaves office – all in confirmation of the point that, in these times of turbulence, demagogues and despots must fly together in safety and solidarity.

Dystopias

There’s growing awareness among journalists, intellectuals and citizens that such displays of despotic pomp and bromance power are undermining the freedoms and egalitarian promises of democracy. A sense of foreboding about these trends is spreading. Pessimism is fashionable.

As I write these lines, a South African colleague is in touch to say how grim are our times. She remarks that our world feels as if it’s passing through an era of “augmented brutality” (also the name of a popular video game). With seemingly ever fewer brakes upon what established despotic regimes and demagogues can get away with, my colleague tells me, our ethical conscience, moral qualms and public outrage against abuses of power are withering away.

When I ask other colleagues where our diseased democracies are heading, they predict several conflicting but equally gloomy dystopian futures. Some argue that reality is fast catching up with a prettified version of the future sketched in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Other colleagues warn of “backsliding” towards “autocracy”, “tyranny” or “authoritarianism”, exemplified by strongmen – Vladimir Putin, Javier Milei, Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Alexander Lukashenko – who wield words and wave swords over the heads of their cowed subjects.

They speak of autocracy as a political system in the hands of a sole ruler with absolute power. Tyranny is, for them, as it was for Socrates, a dangerously unjust type of rule by a strong man consumed by lawless desires bent on robbing through “fraud and force” the property, livelihoods and freedoms of their frightened subjects.

Still other colleagues dread the return of what they call “fascism”, or “neo-fascism”. They liken present-day trends to past European and Asian totalitarian regimes that mobilised whole societies and exercised complete control over every citizen’s private life.

According to these colleagues, the democratic world is everywhere confronted with the possible repeat on a higher level of the totalitarian regimes of yesteryear. Just as Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and Mao’s China condemned their subjects to perpetual enthusiasm, so the new fascists call on “the people” to care about their future, they say.

The self-appointed philosopher of Italian fascism, Giovanni Gentile, captured the old spirit that’s now said to be back in vogue. “Among the major merits of fascism,” he wrote, was that it “obliged little by little all those who once stood at the window to come down into the streets, to practise fascism even against fascism.”

Similarly, the democratic world is returning to the time when millions of people were captivated by skilfully orchestrated newspaper, radio and film performances led by showbiz demagogues dressed in formal attire, military uniforms and riding gear, or stripped to the waist helping sweating labourers gather the harvest (Mussolini’s specialty).

Public rallies organised by groups and parties with names like Alternative for Germany (AfD), Proud Boys and Sweden’s neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) are back in fashion.

Citizens are again celebrating in unity, marching in step across the stage fabricated from the glorification of bully demagogues, emboldened by nostalgia, national pride and hatred of foreigners, urged on by electrifying social media postings and public speeches by beguilingly sly leaders who leave no place to hide from the fascist voice.

Phantom democracies

One shortcoming of this dog-eared lexicon – autocracy, tyranny, authoritarianism, fascism, totalitarianism – is that these words blind us from seeing that what is happening today is not merely a repetition of the past. Our times are not just different. Their strangeness prevents us from understanding that democracies are drifting into a new age of despotism of a kind never seen before in world history.

An especially striking fact is that the commonplace distinctions between “democracy” and “autocracy”, “tyranny” and “authoritarianism” have in practice become deeply problematic and unhelpful in making sense of this new age of despotism.

For a start, consider how supposedly antagonistic regimes find themselves converging, bound together by state ceremonies, diplomatic cooperation, cross-border trade and investments, weapons deals, and the profit-seeking opportunism of Western banks and management consultants, who have, for many years, brazenly serviced large state-owned and state-guided corporations in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, China and Russia.

Equally striking is the way the wealth inequalities, revolving doors, dark money corruption, manipulated elections, fake news, state censorship, surveillance and heavy-handed policing – evident in regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and Uzbekistan – are making strong appearances within the borders of existing democracies, most obviously in the country that reelected Donald Trump.

But that’s not all, we should note. What is becoming plain to see is how aspiring and established power-sharing constitutional democracies can easily and quickly be transformed into despotic regimes.

This anti-democratic degeneration has been the rule, not the exception, in the so-called transitions to democracy throughout central Asia, and in Russia and Belarus following the collapse of the Soviet Union during the years 1989–91. Elsewhere, despotism has prevailed in countries, such as Laos and Cambodia, following the restoration of monarchy after the genocide of the 1970s, and in Iran after the dramatic upheavals of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Thanks to the election of power-hungry demagogues, the spirit and substance of despotism has also taken root in what political scientists once called consolidated democracies, initially in geopolitically less significant bellwether countries, such as Serbia, and nowadays in important states such as Brazil and Poland, and in the heartlands of the American empire.

Least obvious, and more than a little paradoxical, is the manner in which the established despotic regimes of our era mimic the methods of their so-called “democratic” rivals. Today’s so-called tyrannies and autocracies – I call them despotisms because their rulers are masters of the arts of seductive power – are parasitical upon the corrupted ideals and failures of power-sharing democracy.

But more than that, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other established despotisms exemplify a strange new type of pseudo-democratic government led by rulers skilled in manipulating their subjects into conformity to their designs.

Considered as a form of rule, these despotisms are something new under the sun. They are more stable, more attractive and better at managing political earthquakes and governing people than many observers suppose.

Despite their vulnerability to internal dysfunctions, external shocks, wars and chronic public resistance, these despotic governments learn the arts of ruling under duress. Trial-and-error improvement and perfection of the techniques of exercising power are their specialty, and a key explanation of their tightening political grip in world affairs, as is their whip-smart seductiveness.

It’s worth remembering that the original Greek term despótēs – from dómos (house) and pósis (husband, spouse) – referred to a benevolent and all-powerful master of a household, held in reverence and respect by its women, children and slaves. It later referred, in Christian circles, to God and to the bishops and patriarchs of the Byzantine Empire, whose power was blessed with authority by their subjects, who were duty bound to submit in all matters because they benefited from their masters’ kindness and good works.

Today’s despots aspire to stand in their shoes. They specialise in convincing their subjects to obey necessity and call it freedom. They want “the people” to suppose things are getting better and bigger, and that there is no viable alternative to the present order. They seduce rather than merely repress.

In this sense, the despotisms of our age are state-of-the-art forms of tutelary power, a type of media-saturated political rule that achieves something many previous observers thought impossible: they dominate their subjects by winning their calculated support and affection by means of top-down, people-friendly techniques of government, elections, happiness forums, online Q&A portals, public opinion sampling and anti-corruption agencies.

These regimes run by despots are more perfect and mature forms of the despotism yearned for by demagogues in so-named democracies. They are phantom democracies.

Two adventurers

That there are heat-seeking attractions and slow-motion convergences taking place between established despotic regimes, the United States and other so-named democracies, might surprise, shock and puzzle us. It shouldn’t. The breakdown of the semantic division between “democracy” and “autocracy” and the global drift towards phantom democracy are trends that have older and deeper roots.

To understand the strange new power dynamics fuelling the worldwide growth of despotism, we must turn to history to examine the thinkers and writers for whom the coming of global despotism would have been unsurprising.

Let’s therefore turn back the clock a hundred years, to the crucial moment when the struggle for election-centred democracy and “votes for all” came of age. Many observers predicted it would become the only political game on Earth. An American president, Woodrow Wilson, called for a world “made safe for democracy”, a form of “just government” that rested upon “the consent of the governed”.

In the catastrophic aftermath of the first world war, with empires everywhere collapsing, the flames of revolution licking the backsides of the rich and powerful, and demands for the right of “the people” to vote prevailing on several continents, two writers in particular stand out from the crowd. A Venezuelan named Laureano Vallenilla Lanz (1870–1936) and a German, Max Weber (1864–1920), made predictions that have an uncanny relevance for understanding today’s troubling times.

These writers weren’t timeless political geniuses. They were thoughtful explorers, curious and concerned about democracy’s fate, adventurers mapping out the likely consequences of the new age of people power in a period racked by enormous geopolitical and socio-economic upheavals.

Lanz was sure that parliamentary democracy was an unworkable ideal. He instead championed a new form of despotic government whose authority was based on “the people”. He threw down the gauntlet to grammarians suspicious of oxymorons by calling it “democratic Caesarism”: a political system whose rulers would use periodic elections and various forms of “soft” and “hard” power to rule absolutely over their compliant subjects.

In contrast, Weber feared that the advent of free and fair elections and parliamentary democracy, which he supported, would spawn the rise of demagogues: strongmen impatient with checks and balances, who in the name of “the people” would do everything they could to transform parliamentary democracy into what he called “plebiscitarian leader democracy”.

Democratic Caesarism

Lanz was a polymath scholar, senator, diplomat, national archives director and, for many years, editor of the leading Caracas newspaper El Nuevo Diario, the Venezuelan government’s unofficial mouthpiece. His book Cesarismo democrático, published in 1919, is unfortunately still not translated into English.

That’s a pity, considering that during the 27-year caudillo dictatorship (1908–35) of General Juan Vicente Gómez, for whom he served as in-house intellectual, Lanz foresaw that the ideals of democracy, loosely understood as popular self-government based on the periodic election of representatives to a parliament, could readily be harnessed by demagogues everywhere to perfect a new type of rule unknown in previous human history.

Strong-armed government with democratic trimmings and trappings was possible, necessary and desirable, he reasoned. Smart rulers had no reason to fear the advent of the universal franchise, periodic elections and the other paraphernalia of what was called “democracy”.

On the contrary, if rulers played their hands well, the mechanisms of self-government, in the name of “the people”, could be used to recruit them into an army of supporters loyal to a strong ruler, who would periodically win their votes and thus confirm their faithful subordination.

Lanz was no democrat in any straightforward sense. He detested the “spontaneous anarchy” within the human condition. The masses weren’t to be trusted. Fickle, excited by their passions, plagued by ignorance and arrogance, their outbursts regularly bring great social disorders and episodes of violence into the field of government.

Lanz was convinced that the old Thomas Hobbes principle of homo homini lupus (man is a wolf to other men) was correct. But he believed mandatory heavy-handed rule could win the people’s affection and support. Political leadership had to be exercised by a popular strongman – a “necessary gendarme”, he termed it – who would channel the energies of the masses towards a genuinely democratic order of effective government based on stable social relations.

In a remarkably creative if bizarre turn of thinking, Lanz reasoned that the history of turbulent disorder in postcolonial Venezuela and other countries proved that without a strongman leader the people couldn’t become their true selves. He urged a new form of political ventriloquism. Like Moses, who divined water from a rock, the leader would relieve the people of injustice and show them the way to a promised land of popular self-fulfilment.

With the advent of electoral democracy, the “ignorance and fanaticism of the popular masses” could be both tamed and refined by means of strong-armed leadership that galvanised people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, elevating men and women to the concomitant dignity that comes with the enjoyment of equality with others.

Lanz urged, and predicted, that this new form of “democratic Caesarism” would unleash the power of the masses, satisfy their “unconscious yearnings”, cure their hurt pride, make them feel wanted and important in determining the fate of the world.

Acting as the representative and regulator of popular sovereignty, the great leader, “democracy personified”, would be a genuine expression rather than a denial of truly representative democracy. The people could be persuaded to give themselves voluntarily to a new form of servitude, embrace with open arms rulers who would redeem and guarantee their wellbeing.

The novel result would be of historic significance. The new political system of “democratic Caesarism” would combine, into a higher form of political harmony, opposites that were once thought to be irreconcilable antagonisms: democracy and despotism; top-down leadership and equality; individual greatness and collective self-discipline; the power of the people and rule by despots who claimed to be their sole representative.

Führerdemokratie

It is of great interest, and highly relevant to the problem of despotism, that in the same period in which Lanz trumpeted the need for a newly “democratic” form of despotism, Weber launched an anguished defence of elections and parliamentary government.

A hard-working scholar, widely considered to be the greatest German social scientist of his generation, Weber predicted that in the aftermath of war, revolution and the triumphant entry of “the people” onto the stage of history, the transition to parliamentary democracy, with votes for all, would be an unhappy affair. The coming of the universal franchise and representative government would unleash electoral battles among demagogue leaders, who would use every campaign-trail trick to hoodwink and spellbind their audiences, win the votes of “the people” and, with cunning, luck and force, rule in their name.

Rather inelegantly, Weber called this scenario “plebiscitarian leader democracy” (plebiszitäre Führerdemokratie). The wonderfully German compound phrase was later to cause some embarrassment. A democracy with a Führer, people would ask? But his reasoning was marked by crystalline clarity and conviction.

The advent of periodic elections with universal suffrage, combined with a free press and civil liberties, Weber predicted, would propel the growth of fiercely competitive, mass membership, all-powerful party machines. Their leaders, lusting after power, hallucinating on fame, convinced they had the political support of “the people”, would behave like “dictators on the battlefield of elections”.

Following a visit to the United States, Weber thought that it was there, amid the razzamatazz of party machine politics, conventions and presidential election spectacles, that the “leader democracy” trend was most fully developed. It confirmed the new meaning of democracy as a political system, in which “the people elect a leader in whom they have trust” then say: “Now shut up and obey.”

Looking towards the future, Weber hoped that the coming of parliamentary democracy would produce level-headed leaders willing to put their shoulders to the wheel of history – politicians like William Gladstone, a Conservative MP who later became the leader of the Liberal Party and four-times prime minister of the United Kingdom.

In the case of post-World War I Germany, Weber proposed the direct election of a president, who would play the role of “steward of the masses”, respect the constitution, and accept that if they made mistakes “the gallows and the rope” would be their fate.

Weber’s personal wish was that cool-headed leaders, capable of skilfully winning elections by persuading millions of people of the importance of parliamentary elections, would prevail in opposition to forces such as demagoguery and the cramping and suffocating effects of what some nowadays call the “deep state” bureaucracy, whose spread he despised.

A self-described “class conscious bourgeois” liberal, Weber was sure Führerdemokratie was the only practicable form of democracy. Talk of “the will of the people” and “the true will of the people” were mere fictions, he told a colleague.

Weber died in June 1920, a victim of the Spanish flu pandemic, aged only 56. He did not live to see the rise of fascist demagogues, such as Mussolini and Hitler, who craftily rose to power on the back of the electoral democracy they later helped to destroy. A man who championed prudent reason, he worried that in the age of parliamentary democracy leaders might easily be seduced by the charms of vanity. He was equally aware that high-level politics in the new parliamentary democracies of Germany and other countries already involved the exploitation of “mass emotionality”.

Hence his abiding worry that they might degenerate into a new form of what he variously called “Caesarism” and “sultanism”, the kind of demagogic rule exercised by Napoleon III and the bossy chancellorship of Otto von Bismarck after the founding, in 1871, of the German Empire.

Weber understandably feared demagogues intoxicated with power and their own messianic certainties. In a burst of wildly creative forecasting, he predicted that in the name of democracy their hubris and lust for concentrated power might well disfigure and destroy power-sharing democracy.

If that happened – as has happened in recent decades in Russia, and is now occurring in the United States – parliamentary government would be transformed into a thoroughly modern form of despotic rule that combined “one person, one vote” elections with disdain for parliaments, intolerance of countervailing powers, and an overbearing executive playing the role of a “great statesman at the helm”, drunk on the liquor of permanent emergency rule.

This is an edited extract from Demagogues and Despots: Democracies on the Brink.

John Keane will be appearing at the launch of Reclaiming Democracy Together, Melbourne Town Hall, May 9, 2026.

John Keane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer and scholar, is the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, comprising the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Her job is to report to the UN on the human rights situation in these territories.

Since its inception in 1993, the role of rapporteur has been controversial and at times adversarial. Previous appointees were regularly castigated by Israeli governments and pro-Israel lobby groups for their perceived biases against Israel.

The same is true for Albanese. Since she assumed her position in May 2022, she has been an outspoken and persistent critic of Israel’s occupation and especially its war on Gaza. She has argued that Israel’s actions amount to genocide.

As punishment for her efforts to expose persistent Israeli breaches of international humanitarian law, the US Department of Treasury has classified Albanese as a “specially designated national”. This prevents any US citizen and corporation from engaging with her. All of her US assets have been frozen.

Albanese is the first UN official to be sanctioned by the US Treasury – a fate she shares with Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the recently deposed president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.

Review: When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine – Francesca Albanese (Hardie Grant)

It is from this perspective that Albanese writes her latest book, When the World Sleeps. She seeks to give a voice and character to Palestinians and their struggle for justice and dignity in the face of Israel’s nearly 60-year occupation, which, even before Hamas’ devastating attack in October 2023, had been criticised as a form of apartheid.

When the World Sleeps presents ten stories that aim to “grapple with the past and present of Palestine”. For readers unfamiliar with the exigencies of the Israel-Palestine conflict, these stories will make for uncomfortable and confronting reading.

According to Albanese, they are accounts from either “the ground-zero of genocide” or from those “forced to watch the atrocities unfold from afar.” Her assessment of what is happening to Palestinians, not just post-2023, but since 1948, will be viewed by some readers and commentators as controversial, even heretical.

It challenges the dominant perception of the conflict, continually perpetuated by western governments. The perception of the balance of power between Israelis and Palestinians, she writes, has been distorted to a point where the rights of Israelis to live in peace and security significantly outweigh any similar rights for Palestinians.

Key themes

When the World Sleeps presents invaluable eyewitness accounts of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. It has three key themes.

The first is that Palestinians are human beings who should be accorded dignity and equality, and whose suffering at the hands of Israeli occupation should not be seen as the unavoidable byproduct of combating terrorism.

The second is that Israeli leaders should be held accountable for any breaches of international humanitarian law.

Finally, Albanese argues that justice for the victims and accountability for perpetrators of these crimes should be pursued with impartiality.

She begins her exposé of Palestinian life by telling the story of the death of six-year-old Hind Rajab, whose family was killed in Gaza by Israeli artillery fire in January 2024. She uses the vignette as a window into life as a Palestinian child under Israeli occupation.

Albanese highlights Palestinian children’s humanity and “the authentic miracle” of their life, vitality, and tenderness, in a setting where “energy and hope seemed to persist despite adversity”. She juxtaposes the experiences of her own children with that of Palestinian children, highlighting their starkly different lives.

Palestinians, she observes, live in a “state of permanent war, being separated from all the other Palestinians in the world, not being able to travel, or even dream about the simplest things in life”.

Jerusalem and the West Bank

The next two chapters reflect on Palestinian life in Jerusalem, seen first through the eyes of Abu Hassan, a tour guide in Jerusalem, then through the eyes of a bookstore owner named George.

Jerusalem is central to the lives of both Palestinians and Israelis. It is the third-holiest city in Islam, home to the al-Aqsa mosque, and the holiest city in Judaism, with its remains of the Second Temple.

The city was divided by the first Arab-Israeli War (1948-49), with Israel controlling West Jerusalem and Jordan controlling East Jerusalem. It was unified in 1967, when Israel captured East Jerusalem during the Six Day War.

For Palestinians, East Jerusalem is a central part of any Palestinian state, so much so that there cannot be a Palestine without East Jerusalem. Jerusalem is once again a divided city, because of Israel’s separation wall, which aims to cleanse space in Jerusalem of any non-Jewish presence.

Albanese and her husband’s interactions with Abu Hassan and George also serve as windows to explain and explore what life is like for Palestinians in Jerusalem. More importantly, their interactions provide an insight into a vibrant Palestinian culture, giving Palestinians a voice and a character that challenges persistent Western perceptions.

The dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israel’s occupational structures, including the wall, is most visible in Jerusalem. In the chapter on George, Albanese juxtaposes Palestinian life in East Jerusalem, framed by occupation and dispossession, with West Jerusalem, mainly populated by Israelis, where life exists within an almost false sense of normality. Albanese recounts how Palestinian children are forced to navigate sewers to go to school to avoid Israeli check points and roadblocks.

These chapters explore the interactions between Palestinians and Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Since Israel occupied these territories, successive governments have pursued a settlement policy aimed at expropriating Palestinian land. In 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that these settlements were illegal under international law because they contravened Article III of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

To date, there are over 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including 250,000 in settlements surrounding East Jerusalem. This reality frames the interactions between Palestinians and the Israeli military, which enforces Israel’s occupation.

Albanese describes a trip she makes with Abu Hassan to the southern city of Hebron, where Israel’s military has boarded up the front doors of Palestinian homes. She also describes a visit to the northern city of Nablus, where similar stories exist of the daily violence meted out by Israeli occupation forces.

There are stories of the sentencing of children to two or three years in prison for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. “After such a nightmare,” Albanese writes, “how can anyone be surprised that after being in jail, Palestinian children return home traumatised?”

The limits of international law

In a chapter titled Ingrid, Albanese deals with the controversial subject of whether Israel’s occupation can be classified as “apartheid”. Ingrid is Dutch, a long-time Palestinian researcher, and co-founder of the Boycott, Diversify, and Sanction (BDS) movement.

Through this window, Albanese explores various international legal opinions from the International Court of Justice and human rights organisations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. These have provided research and legal arguments that Israel’s occupation is apartheid and therefore a crime against humanity.

“It is not just a question of discrimination,” Albanese argues,

but of the denial of fundamental rights, of the separation of people on racial and territorial grounds, and of the use of coercive measures to keep the oppressed group isolated and subordinate.

The chapter brings to life how Israel’s occupation exposes the limits of international law when there is no diplomatic appetite to bring perpetrators to justice.

As well as exploring the permissive diplomatic environment that allows Israel’s occupation to continue unimpeded, Albanese touches on the more controversial topic of resistance in the form of boycotts and sanctions, but also more violent forms. Perhaps most important is Albanese’s hypothetical question: “What would I do if I was a Palestinian living under occupation?”

Albanese’s exploration of Palestinian life in While the World Sleeps is her way of expressing a form of resistance to the Israeli occupation. She does this by juxtaposing the occupation’s inhumanity with Palestinians’ humanity. As she notes in her conclusion, “if you want to achieve change, first of all you have to be change, and that you cannot change anything if you do not change yourself.”

While the World Sleeps is, in part, Albanese’s attempt to be at peace with her increasingly complex life as a highly visible, vocal, and thus controversial advocate for Palestinian humanity and an equitable peace.

What comes through in her storytelling is not just the dignity of the Palestinians, but their samud – their determination to persevere in the face of adversity. The stories humanise them by bringing their experiences to life, and express Albanese’s fear that when the world sleeps the genocide of Palestinians will continue.

Martin Kear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

There was a time when Elon Musk and Sam Altman were friends. But the two tech billionaires are now embroiled in a bitter legal battle in the United States that could reshape not just OpenAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) firm behind ChatGPT they cofounded in 2015, but also the future of the technology more broadly.

Launched by Musk in 2024, the lawsuit is the culmination of a years-long feud that centres on the evolution of OpenAI from a non-profit to a for-profit enterprise.

The trial, which kicked off this week in California, is expected to last roughly three weeks. But its ripple effects could be felt for many years to come.

The case and the cast

The lawsuit pits Musk against Altman, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, OpenAI itself, and Microsoft, the AI firm’s largest backer.

Musk cofounded and helped fund OpenAI to the tune of about US$44 million. By his own account from the witness stand this week, he “came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything I know, provided all of the initial funding”.

Brockman served as technical cofounder; Altman became chief executive in 2019. Their alliance with Musk fractured as the organisation grew. Musk departed the board in 2018. He says he was pushed out.

However, OpenAI says he walked when denied majority control. Musk subsequently launched his own rival AI venture, xAI, which is now part of SpaceX.

What Musk is alleging

As part of the lawsuit, Musk is alleging breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, false advertising and unfair business practices.

His core claim is that Altman and Brockman induced him to donate on the understanding that any artificial general intelligence – or AGI – built at OpenAI would stay “open” and shared with humanity.

Instead, Musk argues, the founders turned the charity into a “wealth machine”. They did this in two stages. First, via a 2019 capped-profit subsidiary. Here, OpenAI’s for-profit unit limited the returns, with the excess handed back to the nonprofit. Second, through a full restructure into a public benefit corporation, which is now valued at roughly US$852 billion.

Musk’s lawyers told jurors Altman and Brockman “stole a charity, full stop”. Outside court, Musk has been throwing insults at his opponents, prompting the judge to threaten a gag order.

OpenAI flatly rejects Musk’s narrative. As its lead counsel, William Savitt, told jurors:

We are here because Mr Musk didn’t get his way with OpenAI.

The company alleges, as described in two pre-trial blog posts, that Musk himself proposed merging OpenAI with Tesla in 2017 and walked away when denied majority control.

The lawsuit, OpenAI says, is “motivated by jealousy” and designed to damage a competitor.

A company under pressure

The trial arrives at a precarious moment for OpenAI.

The New Yorker magazine recently published an investigation describing Altman as a “pathological liar”. The investigation drew on an internal dossier compiled by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever which alleged a “consistent pattern of lying” to the company’s board.

Altman called the piece “incendiary” but acknowledged “a bunch of mistakes”. Musk has been amplifying the article to his X followers throughout the trial.

Financially, OpenAI is bleeding.

Internal projections point to roughly US$14 billion in losses for 2026 alone, with cumulative losses expected to top US$44 billion before any profit materialises.

Shortly before the trial began, OpenAI quietly shut down Sora, its flagship video-generation model.

Before closing, it burned around US$1 million a day in computing costs. The closure took down a US$1 billion Disney partnership with it.

Even a fresh US$122 billion fundraise from Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank has not eased the pressure.

What Musk wants

Musk wants the jury to unwind OpenAI’s for-profit conversion, remove Altman from the nonprofit board, and strip both Altman and Brockman of their roles in the for-profit entity.

He is also demanding US$130 billion in damages from OpenAI – for what his team calls “ill-gotten gains”.

He has accused Microsoft of “aiding and abetting” and argues it is liable for a share.

His legal team argues OpenAI’s existing models already constitute AGI, because they have surpassed human intelligence in many tasks. Under the founding agreement, AGI could not be commercially licensed. This would include the licence currently used by Microsoft for CoPilot.

What’s at stake

If Musk wins, the consequences would be significant.

OpenAI’s planned initial public offering would almost certainly be derailed. This is expected in late 2026 at a US$1 trillion valuation. Investors in the recent funding round could face clawbacks.

Altman, the public face of the AI boom, could be removed from the company he has led since 2019. The broader question of whether AI labs founded as charities can lawfully pivot into commercial enterprises would be settled, at least in California. This has potential implications for Anthropic and other mission-driven peers.

Even a defeat for Musk would not end the controversy.

The trial has already pried open Silicon Valley’s normally sealed boardrooms, surfacing diaries, Slack threads and HR memos that paint an unflattering portrait of OpenAI’s governance.

The case crystallises a wider public anxiety: an incredibly powerful technology is being built and controlled by a tiny number of feuding tech bros. And it’s the rest of us who have to live with the consequences.

Rob Nicholls is a part of the University of Sydney Centre for AI, Trust, and Governance and receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Australia’s inflation rate surged 1.1% in March, driven by a record jump in fuel prices, making an interest rate hike next Tuesday more likely.

The consumer price index (CPI), released today, rose to 4.6% in the year to March, the first major economic indicator to show the impact of the war in the Middle East.

A measure of underlying inflation – the annual “trimmed mean” – came in at 3.3%. This measure is closely watched by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and is also above its 2–3% target band.

For the RBA, which meets next week to decide on interest rates, the message is clear: inflation is moving in the wrong direction again, and quickly.

This is not a normal inflation shock. It is being driven by a sharp rise in global energy prices following the war in the Middle East.

Higher interest rates will not bring down global oil prices. But they can help prevent a fuel shock from becoming a broader and more persistent inflation problem.

Fuel prices are just the beginning

The immediate driver of the March inflation surge is fuel.

Global oil prices have risen sharply, pushing up petrol and diesel prices at the pump.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said fuel prices jumped 32.8% in March – “the largest monthly increase since the series began in 2017”.

This feeds directly into CPI, making it one of the fastest channels through which global shocks affect domestic inflation.

But fuel is only the first-round effect. The bigger concern is what comes next. Higher fuel costs raise transport costs across the economy. Businesses then face a choice: absorb the increase, or pass it on to consumers.

Some will try to absorb it at first, especially if consumers are already cutting back. But margins cannot be squeezed indefinitely. Over time, more of these costs are likely to be passed on in the form of fuel surcharges and show up in final prices.

This is how a temporary shock can turn into persistent inflation.

Higher costs for businesses

The March CPI largely captures the initial impact of the oil shock. The second-round effects – where higher costs spread more broadly – take time.

These effects are already beginning to appear. Businesses are facing higher operating costs, not just from fuel but also from supply disruptions and rising input prices. As these pressures build, price rises can spread beyond petrol and transport.

Even if oil prices stabilise, the earlier jump in fuel costs will continue to flow through the economy. Transport costs affect food, retail, construction and many services. Airlines, delivery firms, supermarkets and builders all face higher costs when fuel prices rise.

That means inflation could remain elevated for some time, even if the initial shock fades.

A broader view of inflation

While the monthly CPI attracts attention, the RBA still places weight on the quarterly CPI.

The March quarter figures give the RBA a broader read on inflation than the monthly data. Annual inflation in the March quarter was 4.1%, while annual trimmed mean inflation was 3.5%.

The quarterly figures show inflation has been building even before the February 28 start of the war in Iran. It points to broader price pressures, making the case for a rate rise stronger.

The economy also takes a hit

The fuel shock is not only an inflation problem. It is also a growth problem.

Higher petrol prices reduce household purchasing power, leaving less money for discretionary spending. That weighs on retailers, restaurants, travel businesses and other parts of the economy that depend on consumer spending.

For businesses, higher fuel and transport costs raise production costs. Some may delay hiring or investment. Others may lift prices and risk losing customers.

This is the difficult part for the RBA. A fuel shock pushes inflation up while also weighing on economic activity. This creates a risk of stagflation, when inflation stays high even as growth slows. That makes the RBA’s policy decision much harder.

But if business and consumer expectations about future inflation start to rise, the damage could last well beyond the current shock.

If businesses expect costs to keep rising, they are more likely to raise prices. If workers expect inflation to stay high, they are more likely to seek larger wage increases. This can turn a one-off shock into a more persistent problem.

The RBA will want to avoid that. That is why the bank is likely to act at its May 4-5 meeting.

Why a rate rise now?

The case for a third rate rise (following three cuts last year) is not that the RBA can reverse the fuel shock. It cannot.

The case is that inflation was already too high before the latest shock, and today’s CPI figures suggest the return to its 2–3% target will take longer than expected.

Market pricing already points in the same direction. The ASX RBA Rate Tracker shows that, as of April 28, markets were pricing a 76% chance of a rate rise to 4.35% next week.

Today’s CPI figures make that pricing look more justified. A rate rise would signal that the RBA remains committed to bringing inflation back to target.

We’re at a turning point

The March CPI release marks a turning point.

It shows how quickly global shocks can feed into domestic inflation, and how difficult they are to contain once they begin to spread.

Fuel prices have lit the spark. The risk now is that the fire spreads through the broader economy. That is why the RBA is likely to raise interest rates next week.

Stella Huangfu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.