"They think we're being forced back into a pre-modern past before the United Nations Charter, before Westphalia, before the emergence of the modern state order. Calling this future "neo-royalist," however, doesn't sound quite right. It gives the new authoritarians a royal prestige that the princes of old-Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, and Bourbons-had by virtue of birth and lineage, but which the new authoritarians can only pretend to."
"Our new leaders are more John Gotti than Louis XIV. When United States president Donald Trump shows up at Davos, he parades like the Sun King and threatens like a mafia don. If, as Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said, we are not in a transition but a rupture, what has been ruptured is the very way the world's most powerful leader understands his power, exercises it, and performs his legitimacy."
The world appears to be reverting to pre-modern patterns of predatory rule resembling warrior princes and predatory cliques that extract resources from subjects and neighbours through violence or coercion to enrich families and courtiers. The label "neo-royalist" overstates regal legitimacy and understates the performative, often mafioso-like behavior of modern authoritarians. Contemporary leaders parade power through spectacle and rhetorical excess, fearing exposure if attention wanes. This shift represents a rupture in how the most powerful leaders understand, exercise, and perform legitimacy, returning international politics toward personalized, coercive extraction rather than institutional rule-based order.
Read at The Walrus
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