2,400 years ago, Aristotle perfectly described today’s leftist tyrants

The ideology is new, but using ancient examples, Aristotle proves that tyranny’s tactics are always the same.

Andrea Widburg | July 11, 2026

I admit without shame that I’m one of those people for whom classic philosophy is a closed book. That’s my excuse for being unfamiliar with Aristotle’s Politics, an eight-volume work from the middle of the 4th century BC that analyzes various political systems. Fortunately for America, many of the Founders had read Politics and applied it to the Constitution.

I mention Aristotle now because I learned yesterday that Aristotle, looking at examples in the ancient world, predicted the growing threat of leftist tyranny in the U.S. and Europe. He also answered a question I’ve been asking myself as I think about Europe’s imminent downfall because its leftist leaders decided to erase all borders and welcome in the entire Middle East and Africa to replace the native populations. Here, too, Democrats (and some Uniparty Republicans) tried desperately under Joe Biden to do the same, only to be foiled when voters insisted on reelecting Donald Trump.

With these thoughts in mind, I asked myself (literally, I spoke the words out loud), “Has there ever before been a country in which the leaders simply replaced the native population?” I couldn’t think of one—but Aristotle could. He revealed that one specific type of leader desperately wants to be surrounded by foreigners: the tyrant.

Having alienated his own people, writes Aristotle, the tyrant can no longer trust them, and he feels safe only when surrounded by those to whom he imputes the virtues he believes his own people lack—and whom he believes (probably naively) will not destroy him as his own people will eventually be driven to do.

Picking my way through Harris Rackham’s translation of Politics as it relates to tyranny (a task, thankfully, done with help from AI), I found the key language in §1314a: “And it is a mark of a tyrant to have men of foreign extraction rather than citizens as guests at table and companions, feeling that citizens are hostile but strangers make no claim against him.”

Indeed, §1314a, after making this point about a tyrant’s preference for citizens other than his own, adds this, which also sounds remarkably like leftist politicians across the West:

[F]or tyranny aims at three things, one to keep its subjects humble (for a humble-spirited man would not plot against anybody), second to have them continually distrust one another…and the third is lack of power for political action (since nobody attempts impossibilities, so that nobody tries to put down a tyranny if he has not power behind him). These then in fact are the three aims to which the wishes of tyrants are directed; for all the measures taken by tyrants one might class under these principles — some are designed to prevent mutual confidence among the subjects, others to curtail their power, and others to make them humble-spirited.

We see all this daily from Democrats in culture and politics.

There’s the forced humility. We’re taught that the climate is out to destroy us, so we must be cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and use one sheet of toilet paper; that we don’t even know the true meaning of what’s in our own underpants; and most significantly, we are taught that we are uniquely evil because our behaviors, despite having raised more people out of poverty than any other societies in the world’s history could do, are morally bad. We have sinned, and only our elite can save us.

There’s the distrust. Once, Germans trusted Germans, the British trusted the British, and Americans trusted Americans. Assimilation and shared cultural histories bound these groups together.

Now, though, among all the little bits and pieces in the salad bowl that replaced the melting pot, hatred is endemic. Because the government has become the fount of all good things, women, LGBs, transgenders, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, differently abled…all the little intersectional pieces are savaging each other. The only thing that binds them is that they all hate white men and Jews (and Christians aren’t getting any love letters either).

And finally, there’s the lack of power for political action. From a conservative perspective, there was the disaster of 2020, which culminated in the even greater disaster of January 2021. In 2020, we saw violent leftist street protests that were given a pass, only to experience the opposite outcome on January 6, 2021, which was much less destructive, but ended with a militarized government hunting down every granny whom the Capitol police invited in. 2020 also brought us the devastating systemic changes to elections (mail-in ballots, late voting, no ID, etc.) that destroyed faith in the system.

Leftists have their own issues. There was Kamala Harris’s anointing after primary voters were sold a decrepit, senile Biden. This year, the pattern is being repeated in Maine, where a sex-fiend Nazi whom the base preferred is summarily being replaced with someone (anyone) that the solons in the smoke-filled backroom prefer.

The left is a new tyranny, but the nature of tyrants is unchanged. In the upcoming election, it’s up to ordinary Americans to change what Aristotle (and, presumably, the Democrats) see as an inevitable drift toward tyranny.

Start by showing up. When Normal Americans stay home, they feed the tyrants. Let’s make November 2026 different. And for those who are unhappy with Trump, I won’t argue with you. I’ll just remind you that the Democrats are infinitely worse, and the election presents only a binary choice.

Image created using AI.

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Andrea Widburg

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There’s the distrust. Once, Germans trusted Germans, the British trusted the British, and Americans trusted Americans. Assimilation and shared cultural histories bound these groups