Despots

De: Martin Sixsmith, Daniel Sixsmith

Brought to you by Penguin.

Long Live the King.

Since his re-election as US president, Donald Trump has made good on things he only dreamed of accomplishing in his first term. In six short months he has smashed constitutional constraints, trampled on free speech, suborned the judiciary, demonised the media and crushed protests on the streets. He has secured the backing of America’s oligarchs and inflated his personal wealth. US foreign policy is no longer based on values but on greed, while at home his administration has intervened in the almost every area of people’s daily lives, bringing the National Guard into America's cities, telling educators what schoolchildren should be taught and threatening universities when they beg to differ.

According to Martin Sixsmith, BBC’s Moscow Correspondent when Vladimir Putin came to power, it all looks eerily familiar to what Russia went through in the 1990s.

DESPOTS is Sixsmith's exploration of two aspiring dictators who came to power in nominally electoral democracies, then dismantled the pillars of democracy from within, one of them following confidently in the footsteps of the other. As in Putin’s Russia, so in Trump’s America: the US is fast-forwarding through what Russia endured in the first five years under Putin, and the parallels this time are much clearer, more overt, and increasingly terrifying.

© Martin Sixsmith and Daniel Sixsmith 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026