CBC Ideas Week: How to Defeat Authoritarianism

How do authoritarian leaders use threats, illusions and force to seize and maintain power? And what does it take for truth and justice to prevail? Guided by host Nahlah Ayed, Ideas explores the rise and fall of four pivotal authoritarians and their regimes from recent world history, and asks what we can learn from their eventual downfall.

Today’s Authoritarians

Scholars describe our era as an age of resurgent global authoritarianism, driven by leaders who answer to no authority or law other than their own. Nahlah and panellists consider the rise of today’s authoritarians – Trump, Putin, Kim Jong Un, Khamenei, Xi, Orban, Duterte and beyond – and what we can learn from history about how authoritarianism is ultimately challenged and defeated.