Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths: From Alexander to Hitler to the Corporation

Right wing populists increasingly draw attention around the globe, but the attention is misdirected. The real problem is not the authoritarian, but the authoritarian personalities who follow him. If people do not blindly follow and obey the despot, he is irrelevant.

Why do we attach ourselves to demagogues and mountebanks? Why do we defend even their most obvious hypocrisies and lies?

As author Jon Ronson has suggested: "I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it wasn't? . . . What if it was built on insanity?"