About Us

The Arab Tyrant Manual is an independent online publishing platform focused on freedom, human rights and the fight against all forms of authoritarianism globally –social, political or religious. We try to deeply understand authoritarianism, the logic and incentives behind it, and the strategies and tactics that authoritarians use, in order to understand why what’s in the news is happening, and to better equip ourselves to resist.

We aim to provide a hub for analysts, researchers, writers and activists to share notes and compare the experiences of different struggles, and how tyranny can be fought. We endeavour to be rigorous and objective in our analysis, but will never be neutral in the face of injustice.

Why Now?

In the last 3 years the world’s most stable liberal democracy elected a right-wing extremist who campaigned and won on an openly illiberal agenda. Since then it has been replicated in Europe, Latin America and even Asia. Democracy is in retreat on every continent, and global freedom has been falling for over a decade.

Trump’s has energized and normalized illiberalism worldwide – both of the same strand that he represents (figures like Putin and the European far-right), or the opposite extreme (religious extremists, many of whom welcomed his victory). Under him, US foreign policy has been even more transactional and dictator-friendly than usual, adding more fuel to the Middle East’s many fires.

As we see this happening, our team can’t help but occasionally think “we told you so�?. In truth, many people saw this coming, and for people who have experience of the Arab world (or indeed many other parts of the world) tyranny, systematic injustice and institutionalised bigotry – even governmental gaslighting – are absolutely nothing new. The liberal world order is failing, and it started failing first in the Middle East. But the lessons weren’t heeded.

Our founding team, a diverse group with an intimate, first-hand experience of authoritarianism and corruption in the Arab world, insists that marginalised voices have something to contribute to the global debate today. Some of the greatest liberal voices of the 20th century grew up under tyranny – one might remember Hannah Arendt, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Viktor Frankl, Isiah Berlin, Vaclav Havel, and even Angela Merkel, who was raised in Soviet-era East Germany. Many of the greatest liberal voices of the 21^st will be the same, and we hope to contribute to that discussion.