Tyranny: a twenty-first century threat to freedom?

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The concept of tyranny has been around since ancient Greece, but in the twenty-first century, it is near ubiquitous – deployed to describe all manner of ills from populist strongmen to autocratic despots, Islamist regimes to the ‘woke tyranny’ ostensibly coercing Western institutions. According to the headlines, the spectre of tyranny haunts the West in the form of a return for the US president-elect, Donald Trump. The cry of ‘just like Hitler’ is now a regular means to delegitimise populist revolts. Others identify tyranny in a variety of recent menaces to free societies, including Covid lockdowns, Big Tech, Net Zero or the two-tier rule of overbearing technocracies.

In an era where liberal principles are under widespread attack, is the use of ‘tyranny’ and other extreme concepts justified? We have rulers who break their own rules. Corporations are manipulating new technologies. Surveillance states are intruding into the everyday lives of citizens, such as police investigating social-media posts. These seem to be the types of actions unconstrained by laws or customs and deployed to benefit powerful elites – which seems to fit with established ideas on tyranny.

But others say that the label doesn’t fit. For example, populists are democratically elected rather than imposed. When ‘tyranny’ is used promiscuously, they argue, it loses its meaning. Despite legitimate concerns about freedom, the language of tyranny fails to help us understand our modern predicaments. As the true horror of the Assad regime in Syria becomes clear, can’t we distinguish between illiberalism and genuine tyranny?

What should we understand by tyranny, who are the modern-day tyrants and when is the language of tyranny warranted? Can populists, autocrats or modern technocracies usefully be described through the idea of tyranny? Is the term useful in addressing modern political problems, or do we run the risk of watering down the term and missing the real tyrants across the world? Are ancient ideas about tyranny outdated or can they be useful for understanding the present?

SPEAKERS
Dr Edmund Stewart
associate professor in Ancient Greek History; director, Tyrannica: The Interdisciplinary Network for the Study of Tyrannies, Personalist Dictatorships and Authoritarian Regimes

Alastair Donald
convenor, Living Freedom

CHAIR
Felice Basbøll
project assistant, Ideas Matter

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