The atlas / People
The people behind the ideas.
Meet the leaders, thinkers, and activists who shaped political life. Explore their perspectives—and the ideas, places, and people closest to them.
449 profiles
Twelve dimensions in every profile
Religion13th Dalai Lama (Thubten Gyatso)
Head of theocratic Tibet, the 13th Dalai Lama expelled the Chinese and proclaimed independence in 1913, built an army, post and currency, backed down before the monasteries by closing the English school, and warned against communism in 1932.
PoliticsAbdullah Öcalan
A Kurdish political leader, Öcalan abandoned revolutionary Marxism and formulated democratic confederalism, inspiring the autonomous experiment of Rojava, based on self-management, ecology, and gender equality.
ReligionAbraham Isaac Kook
First Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine, Kook was the leading theologian of religious Zionism, saw secular pioneers as instruments of the divine plan and holiness in the Land of Israel, and founded the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva.
PoliticsAbraham Lincoln
US president during the Civil War, Lincoln preserved the Union, strengthened the federal government, and led the abolition of slavery, combining civic nationalism, democratic republicanism, and progressive moral reform.
EconomicsAdam Smith
A Scottish economist, Adam Smith founded modern economics in The Wealth of Nations, showing how the market and the division of labor generate prosperity and how the invisible hand coordinates individual interests.
PoliticsAdolf Hitler
Leader of National Socialism and the Third Reich, Hitler imposed a totalitarian, racist, expansionist regime, responsible for unleashing World War II and committing the genocide known as the Holocaust.
Intellectual lifeAdrian Wooldridge
A British journalist and essayist, Wooldridge is one of the leading defenders of meritocracy, arguing that selection by merit and ability drove the modern world and needs to be renewed in our time.
Political theoryAhad Ha'am
A Zionist thinker, Ahad Ha'am formulated cultural Zionism, proposing that Jewish national renewal should come first through culture, language, and ethics rather than immediate political and territorial sovereignty.
PoliticsAhmed al-Sharaa
Syria’s interim president since 2025 and former HTS leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa concentrates power during the transition, retains Islam as the main source of law and seeks to reintegrate Kurdish areas and attract investment amid sectarian violence and civil rights concerns.
ActivismAl Gore
A former US vice president, Al Gore became a reference of liberal environmentalism, advocating global climate action and market solutions to the ecological crisis, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Intellectual lifeAlan Turing
A British mathematician and logician, he cracked the Nazi Enigma code at Bletchley Park and laid the theoretical foundations of computing (Turing Machine, Turing Test). Prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952, chemically castrated, he died in 1954; posthumously pardoned in 2013.
PhilosophyAlbert Camus
French-Algerian writer and 1957 Nobel laureate, Camus fought in the Resistance, broke with Sartre by condemning the Soviet camps in The Rebel and defended a plural Algeria against terrorism on both sides.
Intellectual lifeAlbert Einstein
A German-Swiss-American theoretical physicist, he created the theories of relativity and won the 1921 Nobel Prize. A Jewish refugee from Nazism in 1933, he was a pacifist, a declared socialist in "Why Socialism?," and an advocate of world government and civil rights.
PoliticsAlberto Fujimori
President of Peru (1990–2000), Fujimori defeated the Shining Path insurgency and curbed hyperinflation through neoliberal shock therapy, but shut down Congress in the 1992 self-coup and was convicted of crimes against humanity and corruption.
Intellectual lifeAldo Leopold
An American conservationist, Leopold formulated the land ethic and defended a responsible relationship between human communities and soils, waters, and ecosystems, inspiring modern environmentalism.
Political theoryAleksandr Dugin
A Russian philosopher, Dugin formulated the Fourth Political Theory and Eurasianism, proposing a multipolar world founded on civilizations and tradition against liberalism and globalism, influencing the nationalist right.
BusinessAlex Karp
An American entrepreneur, Karp leads Palantir and symbolizes a security-focused technocracy that brings together state, defense, data, and artificial intelligence, defending strategic technology in the service of Western democracies.
Political theoryAlex Williams
British political theorist, Williams co-wrote the accelerationist manifesto and Inventing the Future with Nick Srnicek. He advocates automation, shorter working hours and a basic income as part of a postcapitalist left strategy.
PoliticsAlexander Hamilton
A founder of the United States, Hamilton championed strong federal government, robust public finances, a national bank, and industrialization, combining constitutional republicanism with modernizing economic nationalism.
PoliticsAlexander the Great
King of Macedon and conqueror of Persia, Alexander combined military monarchy, imperial expansion, city founding, and the integration of Greek, Macedonian, and Eastern elites after defeating the Achaemenids.
Intellectual lifeAlexandre de Moraes
A supreme court justice and former São Paulo public security secretary, Moraes served as rapporteur in the coup-attempt proceedings involving the former president, becoming the right's main target.
PhilosophyAlexis de Tocqueville
A French liberal thinker, Tocqueville studied American democracy and championed civil associations, decentralization, and political freedom as antidotes to the tyranny of the majority and the administrative centralization of the modern state.
BusinessAlwaleed bin Talal
Saudi prince and founder of Kingdom Holding, Alwaleed invested in Citigroup, Twitter, Four Seasons and News Corp and advocated economic opening and women's employment in the kingdom. He was detained in 2017 in Mohammed bin Salman's anti-corruption campaign.
PoliticsAnders Fogh Rasmussen
Liberal Prime Minister of Denmark (2001–2009) and later Secretary General of NATO (2009–2014), Rasmussen combined market reforms with the Nordic welfare state, championing free trade, European integration, and secular, progressive values.
Political theoryAndré Gorz
An Austro-French philosopher, Gorz was a pioneer of political ecology and post-Marxism, criticizing productivism and wage labor and defending shorter working hours and basic income in a freer society.
PoliticsAndy Burnham
British Labour politician Burnham advocates devolution, electoral reform, public control of essential services and closer EU ties. He supports Ukraine, border control and LGBT rights, influenced by Catholic social teaching.
PoliticsAnthony Albanese
Australian Labor prime minister since 2022, he expands Medicare and public housing, maintains AUKUS, tightens temporary visas and banned social media for under-16s, while defending multiculturalism and free trade.
Political theoryAnton Pannekoek
A Dutch astronomer and Marxist, Pannekoek championed workers' councils and the self-organization of the masses, criticizing both reformist parliamentarism and the centralism of vanguard communist parties.
PoliticsAntónio de Oliveira Salazar
Leader of the Portuguese Estado Novo, Salazar ran a conservative, corporatist dictatorship that united order, Catholic nationalism, and political control without mass mobilization, keeping the country isolated for decades.
Political theoryAntonio Gramsci
An Italian Marxist theorist, Gramsci developed the concept of cultural hegemony, showing how ruling classes govern through consent, and championed cultural struggle as the path to social transformation.
PhilosophyAristotle
A Greek philosopher, Aristotle formulated a political vision centered on the polis, civic virtue, and mixed government, defending moderate private property, natural hierarchy, and moral education as the foundations of common life.
PhilosophyArne Næss
A Norwegian philosopher, Næss founded deep ecology, defending the intrinsic value of all life and a radical change of values to reduce human impact and restore harmony between people and nature.
PhilosophyArthur Schopenhauer
A German philosopher, Schopenhauer saw the blind Will as the irrational essence of reality, a source of perpetual suffering, and advocated compassion, art and ascetic renunciation as the only relief, in a pessimism skeptical of all Enlightenment and political optimism.
ReligionAuguste Comte
A French philosopher, Comte founded positivism and sociology, holding that science should organize society toward order and progress, with strong influence on republican and technocratic thought.
ReligionAugustine of Hippo
Artistic depiction
Bishop and theologian of Roman North Africa, Augustine formulated the doctrines of original sin and grace, wrote the Confessions and The City of God, and defended imperial coercion against Donatist heretics.
Intellectual lifeAugusto Cury
Psychiatrist and best-selling self-help author, Cury ran for president in Brazil for Avante in 2026 on anti-polarization, semi-presidentialism, fiscal balance, entrepreneurship and mental health.
PoliticsAugusto Pinochet
A Chilean general and dictator, Pinochet overthrew Allende and established an anti-communist military regime, combining political repression, authoritarian conservatism, and neoliberal reforms.
PhilosophyAverroes
Philosopher, physician and judge from Córdoba, Averroes commented on Aristotle and held that philosophical reason and Quranic revelation do not contradict each other, influencing Christian scholasticism. He served the Almohad court and was exiled under pressure from theologians.
PoliticsB. R. Ambedkar
An Indian jurist and reformer, Ambedkar was the principal architect of India's Constitution and leader of the Dalits, fighting the caste system and defending rights, equality, and social justice for the oppressed.
PoliticsBaldwin IV
Crusader king of Jerusalem from 1174 to 1185, Baldwin IV ruled as a leper from childhood, defeated Saladin at Montgisard, defended the Latin kingdom by faith and sword and kept pragmatic truces with the Muslims.
PoliticsBarack Obama
An American statesman, Obama symbolized moderate progressive liberalism, expanding public healthcare, civil rights, and multilateral diplomacy within an institutional market economy.
BusinessBaron of Mauá
Industrialist and banker of the Brazilian Empire, Mauá founded a shipyard, a foundry, Brazil's first railway and banks across the River Plate; a liberal critic of slavery, he clashed with the government's restrictive credit policy and went bankrupt in 1875.
PoliticsBaron of Rio Branco
Foreign minister from 1902 to 1912, the Baron of Rio Branco settled Brazil's borders through arbitration and negotiation, as in Acre and Misiones, drew the country closer to the United States and made law and diplomacy the basis of foreign policy.
PoliticsBarry Goldwater
An American politician, Goldwater was a decisive figure of the modern right in the United States, defending free markets, anti-communism, and limited government, and paving the way for Reaganite conservatism.
PhilosophyBaruch Spinoza
A Dutch rationalist philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish descent, Spinoza identified God with Nature, rejected dogma and free will, and argued in the Ethics and the Theologico-Political Treatise for tolerance, freedom of thought and democracy as the most rational regime.
PoliticsBashar al-Assad
Syrian president from 2000 to 2024, Bashar al-Assad preserved his family’s Ba’athist regime through repression, a clientelist economy, and Russian-Iranian backing in the civil war; he was overthrown and lives in exile in Russia.
PoliticsBelisarius
Byzantium's most successful general under Justinian I, he reconquered Vandal North Africa and Ostrogothic Italy, and crushed the Nika riots (532) with a massacre at the Hippodrome. Loyal to the emperor even under suspicion and humiliation, he ran a rigidly disciplined army.
PoliticsBenito Mussolini
The creator of fascism, Mussolini ruled Italy as a totalitarian dictatorship built on a leader cult and a corporatist state. An atheist and anticlerical in his youth, he made the Church a political ally through the 1929 Lateran Pacts, more from expediency than faith.
PhilosophyBenjamin Constant
Franco-Swiss theorist of liberalism, Constant distinguished the liberty of the ancients from that of the moderns, denounced unlimited popular sovereignty as the origin of the Terror, and defended individual rights, a free press and constitutional monarchy with a property-based franchise.
PoliticsBenjamin Disraeli
A British statesman, Disraeli formulated one-nation paternalistic conservatism, reconciling tradition, monarchy, and social reforms to integrate the working classes and strengthen the country's cohesion.
PoliticsBenjamin Franklin
A polymath, diplomat, and founder of the United States, Franklin united republicanism, free thought, commerce, science, innovation, and institutional pragmatism, symbolizing a liberal, cosmopolitan, Enlightenment strand of modern politics.
PoliticsBenjamin Netanyahu
An Israeli politician, Netanyahu became a central figure of Israel's nationalist, security-focused right, uniting economic liberalism, conservative Zionism, and a hard line against regional adversaries.
Political theoryBenjamin Tucker
An American individualist anarchist, Tucker championed a free market without state or monopolies, uniting radical individual freedom and mutualism, and translated the great libertarian thinkers of his time.
ActivismBernie Sanders
An American politician, Bernie Sanders is the leading voice of democratic socialism in the United States, defending universal public healthcare, labor rights, and the fight against inequality and the power of large corporations.
PoliticsBill Clinton
President of the United States (1993–2001), Clinton promoted a 'Third Way' combining fiscal discipline and welfare reform with investment in education and technology, liberalized trade through NAFTA and China's WTO accession, and oversaw a period of strong economic growth despite being impeached over a personal scandal.
BusinessBill Gates
Co-founder of Microsoft and leader of the Gates Foundation, Gates combines technological capitalism, global philanthropy, public health, education, the fight against poverty, climate innovation, and trust in science, metrics, and technocratic solutions.
PoliticsBoris Johnson
A Conservative and Brexit leader, prime minister from 2019 to 2022, Johnson took the UK out of the EU, armed Ukraine, raised taxes and public spending, opened non-EU immigration and fell after Partygate; he is now a Daily Mail columnist.
ActivismBuenaventura Durruti
A Spanish anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary, Durruti was a central figure of the Spanish Revolution, leading workers' militias and collectivization during the civil war, becoming a symbol of militant anarchism.
PoliticsCaesar Augustus
The first Roman emperor, Augustus turned the republican crisis into a stable imperial order, preserving institutional forms while centralizing military command, administration, and political authority.
PoliticsCarl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim
Commander of Finnish forces and later president, Mannerheim led the defense against the Soviet invasion in the Winter War, sustaining universal conscription and fortifications, yet refusing to advance on Leningrad and seeking a separate peace in 1944.
EconomicsCarl Menger
Austrian economist, Menger founded the Austrian School with the subjective theory of value, won the Methodenstreit against the German historicists, and was a classical liberal who still accepted state protection against abusive employers.
Political theoryCarl Schmitt
A German jurist, Schmitt was an influential and controversial theorist of power, defining politics by the friend-enemy distinction and defending sovereignty and the state of exception.
Political theoryCarlo Rosselli
An Italian antifascist thinker, Rosselli formulated liberal socialism, seeking to unite liberalism's ideals of freedom with socialism's social justice, and organized the resistance against Mussolini's regime.
PoliticsCarlos Lacerda
Journalist and leader of the UDN party, Lacerda traded youthful communism for liberal anticommunism, helped topple Vargas and back the 1964 coup, governed Guanabara with major public works and favela removals and later founded the Broad Front.
PoliticsCarlos Menem
Argentine president from 1989 to 1999 elected by Peronism, Menem embraced neoliberalism: he privatized state firms, pegged the peso to the dollar, opened the economy, aligned with the US and pardoned junta officers.
EconomicsCelso Furtado
A Brazilian economist of the ECLAC school, Furtado explained underdevelopment as a historical result of the international division of labour, defending planned industrialisation, land reform and a developmental state.
PoliticsCharlemagne
King of the Franks and emperor, Charlemagne united military expansion, Christianization, administrative reform, and cultural patronage, becoming a symbol of imperial Christian monarchy and the medieval European order.
ReligionCharles Darwin
A British naturalist who formulated the theory of evolution by natural selection in 'On the Origin of Species,' Darwin revolutionized the scientific understanding of life, championed empirical observation and gradualism against established dogma, and his ideas were later appropriated (in distorted form) by social ideologies he himself did not endorse.
PoliticsCharles de Gaulle
President of France (1959–1969) and leader of the Resistance in World War II, de Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic with a strong presidency, withdrew France from NATO's integrated military command, and built an independent nuclear arsenal to secure strategic autonomy free of subordinate alliances.
Political theoryCharles Fourier
A French utopian socialist, Fourier linked social progress to the emancipation of women and criticized the patriarchal family, moral repression, and social hierarchies, imagining ideal cooperative communities.
PoliticsCharles I of England
The Stuart king defended royal prerogative and the divine right of monarchs. His conflicts with Parliament over taxes and authority, alongside his attempt to impose Anglican practices in Scotland, contributed to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and his execution in 1649.
PoliticsCharles III
King of the United Kingdom since 2022, Charles III combines constitutional neutrality with decades of environmental activism and advocacy for organic farming, traditional urbanism and interfaith dialogue, having lobbied ministers in the “black spider memos” and acknowledged the Empire’s slaving past.
PoliticsCharles V
Heir of the Habsburgs, Charles V united Spain, the Low Countries, the Holy Roman Empire and the American conquests, fought the Lutheran Reformation and the Ottomans as champion of universal Catholicism, crushed the Comuneros and abdicated in 1556.
PoliticsCharles X Gustav
King of Sweden from 1654 to 1660, Charles X Gustav invaded Poland and Denmark, crossed the frozen Belts in 1658 and imposed the Treaty of Roskilde, taking the empire to its greatest extent and beginning the reduction of noble lands.
ActivismCharlie Kirk
Founder of Turning Point USA, Kirk organised conservative activism on American campuses defending free markets, Christianity and immigration control, until he was assassinated at a Utah event in 2025.
ActivismChe Guevara
Argentine revolutionary who led guerrilla warfare alongside Fidel Castro in Cuba, advocating armed struggle and revolutionary internationalism. A Cuban minister, he died trying to export revolution to Bolivia, becoming a global icon of the radical left.
PoliticsChiang Kai-shek
Leader of the Kuomintang and the Republic of China, Chiang led the fight against the communists and the Japanese occupation, and after the 1949 defeat established a nationalist one-party regime and martial law in Taiwan, combining militant anti-communism with authoritarian developmentalism.
PoliticsChristopher Columbus
A Genoese navigator sailing for the Catholic Monarchs, he reached the Americas in 1492 seeking a trade route to the Indies. As colonial governor, he enslaved indigenous people in pursuit of gold and was arrested and sent to Spain in chains for abuses of power.
PoliticsCicero
A Roman statesman and philosopher, Cicero defended the republic, mixed government, and the rule of law, bequeathing the tradition of civic republicanism and natural law that influenced Western political thought.
PoliticsCiro Gomes
A Brazilian politician, Ciro Gomes champions a national-developmentalist project, with a strong state role in the economy, industrialization, and national sovereignty, positioning himself as a voice of center-left labourism.
ReligionConfucius
An ancient Chinese philosopher, Confucius created an ethic based on virtue, social harmony, and respect for hierarchies and traditions, shaping Chinese culture, morality, and politics for millennia.
PoliticsConstantine the Great
Roman emperor from 306 to 337, Constantine reunified the Empire, granted freedom to Christians in the Edict of Milan (313), convened the Council of Nicaea (325), founded Constantinople and reorganized the state with a mobile army and fiscal reforms.
Political theoryCurtis Yarvin
A political theorist known as Mencius Moldbug, Yarvin formulated neoreaction, proposing to replace democracy with a state run like a company by a sovereign-executive, on the model of neocameralism.
ReligionDalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso)
The spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the 14th Dalai Lama champions nonviolence, Tibetan autonomy through the middle way, democratization of the exiled community, and dialogue between science and religion.
Political theoryDaniel Guérin
A French libertarian socialist, Guérin sought to unite Marxism and anarchism, defending workers' self-management and sexual liberation, and was an important historian of revolutions and the labor movement.
Intellectual lifeDante Alighieri
A Florentine poet involved in municipal politics, Dante argued in De Monarchia for a universal imperial authority independent of the papacy’s temporal power. Exile after Florence’s factional disputes shaped his view of political order.
PoliticsDavid Ben-Gurion
Leader of Labor Zionism and the Mapai party, Ben-Gurion proclaimed Israel's independence in 1948 and was its first prime minister, building a secular, centralized state with a strong public sector, kibbutzim, and the army as the school of the nation.
EconomicsDavid Ricardo
British economist, Ricardo formulated the comparative advantage theory underpinning free trade, fought the Corn Laws and the Poor Laws, and defended the secret ballot, Catholic emancipation and religious tolerance in Parliament.
PhilosophyDemocritus
Greek philosopher from Abdera who, with Leucippus, developed an atomist account of nature in which reality consists of atoms and void. His writings also addressed ethics and politics.
PoliticsDeng Xiaoping
The leader who reoriented China after Mao, Deng promoted market reforms and economic opening under Communist Party control, creating the model of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the country's rapid growth.
ReligionDesmond Tutu
A South African Anglican archbishop and 1984 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Tutu led nonviolent campaigns against apartheid and chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He advocated human rights and public reconciliation on the basis of his Christian faith.
PhilosophyDiogenes of Sinope
Greek philosopher from Sinope and the leading figure of ancient Cynicism, he championed self-sufficiency and a simple life in accordance with nature, challenging social convention, wealth, and authority through provocation.
Intellectual lifeDomenico Losurdo
An Italian Marxist-Leninist historian and philosopher, Losurdo criticised liberalism, colonialism and anti-communism, reassessed Stalin and defended post-Mao China as a national path of socialist transition.
PoliticsDominik Tarczyński
Polish MEP for the Law and Justice party, Tarczyński champions national sovereignty within the EU, strict controls against illegal immigration, traditional Christian values, and firm opposition to Russia, having documented Russian war crimes in Ukraine since 2022.
PoliticsDonald Trump
An entrepreneur and US president, Trump leads the nationalist populism of the MAGA movement, with tariff protectionism, restrictive immigration policy, and anti-establishment rhetoric that redefined the right.
PoliticsDwight D. Eisenhower
Supreme commander of Allied forces in World War II and later President of the United States (1953–1961), Eisenhower expanded the interstate highway system, pursued containment of communism through diplomatic and intelligence means, and warned in his farewell address against the power of the 'military-industrial complex.'
PhilosophyEdmund Burke
The father of modern conservatism, Burke defended prudent reform, tradition, and institutions against abstract rationalism and revolutionary rupture, harshly criticizing the excesses of the French Revolution.
Political theoryEduard Bernstein
The father of Marxist revisionism, Bernstein championed a gradual, democratic transition to socialism through reforms, rejecting the inevitability of capitalist collapse and influencing modern social democracy.
PoliticsEduardo Leite
Governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Leite privatised the state water and power utilities and reformed its pension system; the first Brazilian governor to come out as gay, he switched parties to run in 2026.
BusinessElon Musk
An entrepreneur and billionaire, Musk leads technology companies such as Tesla and SpaceX and champions technological accelerationism, the colonization of Mars, and libertarian ideas, influencing the global public debate.
Political theoryÉmile Armand
A French individualist anarchist, Émile Armand championed the absolute sovereignty of the individual, a life free of moral and state impositions, and free association, influencing egoist anarchism and the counterculture.
ActivismEmiliano Zapata
A Mexican revolutionary, Zapata led peasants in the Mexican Revolution under the motto Land and Liberty, defending agrarian reform and the autonomy of rural communities against large landowners and the state.
PoliticsEmílio Garrastazu Médici
A Brazilian general and dictator, Médici governed during the most repressive period of the military dictatorship, uniting heavy censorship and political persecution with the so-called economic miracle of accelerated growth and colossal public works.
PoliticsEmmanuel Macron
A French statesman, Macron reached France's presidency as a centrist, liberal reformer, defending markets, European integration, and economic reforms, seeking to overcome the traditional divide between left and right.
PoliticsEmperor Jimmu
The first legendary emperor of Japan according to the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, Jimmu, a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, is said to have conquered Yamato by force of arms and founded the imperial line, a central myth of State Shinto and Japanese nationalism.
PoliticsEmperor Meiji
Emperor under whose 1868 restoration Japan abolished the shogunate and the samurai, centralized the state, industrialized under the slogan "rich country, strong army", adopted the 1889 constitution and State Shinto, and defeated China and Russia.
PoliticsEnéas Carneiro
A Brazilian physician and politician, Enéas championed economic nationalism, technological sovereignty, nuclear energy, strong armed forces, and state planning, becoming a popular symbol of national developmentalism.
PoliticsEngelbert Dollfuss
An Austrian chancellor, Dollfuss established Austrofascism, an authoritarian corporatist state with a Catholic base that dissolved parliament and repressed socialists and Nazis until his assassination by Nazi agents.
PoliticsEnrico Berlinguer
As leader of the Italian Communist Party, Berlinguer advocated a democratic, pluralist path to socialism, distanced himself from the Soviet model, and proposed the Historic Compromise with Christian Democrats.
PhilosophyEpictetus
Greek Stoic philosopher, born enslaved in the Roman Empire, he taught that freedom depends on distinguishing what is within our control and cultivating virtue. His student Arrian recorded his lessons.
PhilosophyEpicurus
A Greek philosopher who taught that happiness depends on the absence of pain and disturbance, supported by friendship and moderate desires. He understood justice as a useful agreement to neither harm nor be harmed, and advised avoiding political strife where possible.
PhilosophyErnest Renan
A French philosopher, Renan defined the nation as a daily plebiscite, founded on the will to live together and shared memory, offering the intellectual basis of civic nationalism as opposed to ethnic nationalism.
PoliticsErnesto Geisel
A general and president during the military regime, Geisel pursued a policy of "slow, gradual, and safe" political opening, combining controlled liberalization with selective repression of opponents and strong state intervention in the economy.
Intellectual lifeErnst Jünger
A World War I veteran and Conservative Revolutionary writer, Jünger praised technological mobilization and criticized bourgeois liberalism in The Worker (1932). He refused to join the Nazi Party and later criticized totalitarianism.
Political theoryErnst Niekisch
The leading figure of German National Bolshevism, Niekisch united radical nationalism and socialist revolution against liberalism and Western influence, seeking to bring Germany closer to the East and Russia.
ActivismErrico Malatesta
Italian anarchist communist, Malatesta spent decades underground and in exile organizing insurrections and workers' newspapers, advocating the abolition of the state and private property through direct action while rejecting both parliamentarism and Bolshevik dictatorship.
PoliticsEvo Morales
Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales led indigenism and the plurinational state, nationalizing resources and expanding the rights of native peoples within a left-wing project.
ActivismEzra Heywood
An American individualist anarchist, Heywood championed a free market without monopolies, the abolition of the state, and the emancipation of women, uniting radical economic freedom with the fight for sexual and civil liberty.
PoliticsFelipe VI
King of Spain since 2014, a militarily trained constitutional monarch. In his 3 October 2017 speech he condemned the Catalan separatist referendum to defend constitutional unity; he renounced his father's inheritance and promotes transparency and Europeanism.
PoliticsFerdinand III of Castile
King of Castile from 1217 and León from 1230, he consolidated the union of the crowns and conquered Córdoba and Seville. He ruled as a medieval Catholic monarch and promoted legal and administrative organization in conquered territories.
Political theoryFerdinand Lassalle
A pioneer of state socialism, Lassalle championed universal suffrage and state-funded cooperatives, founding the first major German workers' party and influencing European social democracy.
PoliticsFernando Haddad
An economist and former mayor of São Paulo, Haddad served as education and finance minister, passing a new fiscal framework and a landmark tax reform; he left the cabinet in 2026 to run for state governor.
PoliticsFernando Henrique Cardoso
A Brazilian sociologist and statesman, Fernando Henrique stabilized the economy with the Real Plan and, as president, conducted liberal reforms, privatizations, and the modernization of the state within social democracy.
PoliticsFidel Castro
A Cuban revolutionary, Fidel Castro led the 1959 revolution and built a single-party socialist state, anti-imperialist and nationalist, with a state-run economy and strong repression.
Political theoryFilippo Tommaso Marinetti
An Italian poet, Marinetti founded futurism, exalting speed, the machine, war, and the break with the past, and drew close to fascism, uniting artistic avant-garde and revolutionary nationalism.
PoliticsFlávio Bolsonaro
A senator from Rio de Janeiro and the eldest son of Jair Bolsonaro, he is the Liberal Party's candidate for the presidency in 2026; he made public security his main banner in the Senate and backs selective privatizations and spending cuts.
PoliticsFrancis I of Austria
The last Holy Roman Emperor and first Emperor of Austria, Francis I founded the Austrian Empire in 1804. Allied with Metternich, he suppressed liberal movements and supported the post-Napoleonic conservative order.
PoliticsFrancisco Franco
A Spanish general and dictator, Franco won the Civil War and ruled for decades over a nationalist, Catholic, authoritarian regime, repressing opponents and preserving a corporatist order until his death.
PoliticsFranklin D. Roosevelt
US president during the Great Depression and World War II, Roosevelt created the New Deal, expanding regulation, social rights, and federal intervention to save liberal democracy and reformed capitalism.
Political theoryFrantz Fanon
A Martinican psychiatrist and theorist, Fanon was a great anti-colonial thinker, analyzing the psychological effects of racism and colonization and defending the liberation of oppressed peoples from imperial rule.
PoliticsFranz Ferdinand
Heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand favored a trialist federalism to accommodate the empire's Slavic nationalities and ease internal tensions; his 1914 assassination in Sarajevo triggered World War I.
Intellectual lifeFranz Kafka
German-language Jewish writer from Prague, he portrayed in The Trial and The Castle the individual crushed by opaque bureaucracies and arbitrary authority. A workers' insurance official, he sympathized with Czech anarchists and cultural Zionism.
EconomicsFrédéric Bastiat
A French economist, Bastiat defended free trade and limited government with clarity and irony, denouncing protectionism and what is not seen in economic policies, becoming a classic of liberal thought.
PoliticsFrederick the Great
King of Prussia, Frederick the Great made the kingdom a military and administrative power, embodying enlightened despotism and the cameralist state of disciplined bureaucracy, centralized finances, and tolerance.
Political theoryFriedrich Engels
German revolutionary theorist, Engels co-authored the Communist Manifesto and funded Marx with his family's mill, tying women's oppression and the state to private property and studying war as a revolutionary art.
EconomicsFriedrich Hayek
An Austrian economist, Hayek championed the free market and spontaneous order, warning that central planning leads to serfdom and suppresses dispersed knowledge, becoming a reference of 20th-century liberalism.
EconomicsFriedrich List
A German economist, List championed economic nationalism and the protection of infant industry, arguing that lagging countries need tariffs and a strong state to develop and catch up with rich nations.
PoliticsFriedrich Merz
Christian Democratic chancellor of Germany since 2025 and former head of BlackRock Germany. He tightened migration and border policy, loosened the debt brake to rearm the country and keeps the firewall against the AfD; a Catholic, he is socially conservative.
ReligionFriedrich Nietzsche
A German philosopher, Nietzsche attacked egalitarian morality, Christianity, and modern resentment, defending the aristocratic creation of values, the affirmation of life, and the overcoming of inherited moral conventions.
Intellectual lifeFyodor Dostoevsky
Russian novelist sentenced to hard labor in Siberia for socialist activity, he converted to a Slavophile, monarchist Orthodox Christianity. In Demons and The Brothers Karamazov he attacked nihilism, atheism and Western rationalism.
Intellectual lifeG. K. Chesterton
A British writer, Chesterton popularized distributism, defending the wide distribution of property and small-scale production against monopoly capitalism and state socialism, with strong Christian inspiration.
Intellectual lifeGalileo Galilei
Tuscan physicist and astronomer, father of the experimental scientific method, he improved the telescope and defended Copernican heliocentrism. A Catholic, he was condemned by the Inquisition in 1633 and spent his last years under house arrest, under Medici patronage.
PoliticsGamal Abdel Nasser
Egypt's president from 1956 to 1970, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and expanded state ownership and land reform. He championed pan-Arabism and non-alignment while concentrating power and repressing the opposition.
Intellectual lifeGarrett Hardin
An American ecologist, Hardin popularized the Tragedy of the Commons, arguing that shared resources degrade without control, a thesis that influenced debates on the environment, property, and population control.
PoliticsGavin Newsom
Democratic governor of California since 2019 and a 2028 presidential hopeful, he leads state resistance to Trump on immigration, climate and redistricting. A same-sex marriage pioneer in San Francisco, he regulates AI but has cracked down on homeless camps.
PoliticsGenghis Khan
Born Temujin, Genghis Khan unified the Mongol tribes in 1206, reorganized steppe society into a meritocratic military machine, and launched conquests that devastated rival empires while opening routes of trade, exchange, and pragmatic religious tolerance.
PhilosophyGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
German philosopher, Hegel conceived history as the dialectical unfolding of freedom and saw in the rational state, above civil society and the isolated individual, the concrete realisation of ethical life.
Intellectual lifeGeorge Orwell
A British writer, Orwell was a democratic socialist and fierce critic of totalitarianism, denouncing in works such as 1984 and Animal Farm authoritarianism, the manipulation of truth, and the oppression of power.
BusinessGeorge Soros
An investor and founder of the Open Society Foundations, Soros defends liberal democracy, human rights, civil society, multiculturalism, drug policy reform, secularism, and open institutions against authoritarianism and closed nationalism.
PoliticsGeorge W. Bush
An American statesman, George W. Bush united religious conservatism, tax cuts, and a neoconservative foreign policy, marked by the War on Terror and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
PoliticsGeorge Washington
Founder and first president of the United States, Washington combined military leadership, constitutional republicanism, federalism, and diplomatic prudence, defending a strong republic without permanent entanglement in foreign alliances.
Political theoryGeorges Sorel
A French theorist, Sorel developed revolutionary syndicalism and the myth of the general strike, exalting direct action and proletarian violence with influence on left and fascist movements.
PoliticsGeraldo Alckmin
Four-time governor of São Paulo for the center-right PSDB, with concessions, PPPs and isolation of prison gang leaders, Alckmin moved to the PSB and is Lula's vice president and former industry minister, backing reindustrialization and the Mercosur-EU deal and opposing abortion.
PoliticsGetúlio Vargas
A Brazilian statesman, Vargas shaped modern Brazil with developmentalist nationalism, state-directed industrialization, and labor legislation, founding Brazilian labourism and marking decades of national politics.
PoliticsGregor Strasser
Leader of the anti-capitalist wing of Nazism, Strasser championed a mass nationalist socialism with nationalizations and social reform, before being eliminated by Hitler in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934.
PoliticsGrigory Zinoviev
A Bolshevik leader, Zinoviev chaired the Communist International from 1919 to 1926 and led the party in Leningrad. An ally of Stalin against Trotsky after Lenin’s death, he was later convicted in a show trial and executed during the Great Purge.
ActivismGuilherme Boulos
A founder of the Homeless Workers' Movement and the most-voted federal deputy for São Paulo in 2022, Boulos rose from housing and urban reform struggles to the left, joining the presidential cabinet in 2025.
Political theoryGuillaume Faye
A philosopher and activist of the French New Right, Faye coined the concept of archeofuturism, arguing for a fusion of archaic tradition, ethnic identity, and hyper-modern technology in the face of an approaching civilizational collapse.
EconomicsGustave de Molinari
A Belgian economist, Molinari pioneered competitive government, proposing free competition in security and governance as an intellectual root of anarcho-capitalism and voluntary jurisdictions.
PoliticsGustavus Adolphus
King of Sweden from 1611 to 1632, Gustavus Adolphus reformed the army with linear infantry and light artillery, made Sweden a Baltic power and entered the Thirty Years' War as a Lutheran champion, dying at Lützen.
Intellectual lifeH. L. Mencken
A scathing critic of American democracy, Mencken combined economic libertarianism, Nietzschean elitism, and militant atheism, attacking puritanism, mass culture, and popular faith in newspapers and essays.
PoliticsHafez al-Assad
Syrian president from 1971 to 2000, Hafez al-Assad consolidated a militarized authoritarian Ba’athist state, combining Arab socialism, nationalism, single-party rule, patronage and pragmatic regional diplomacy.
Intellectual lifeHal Finney
A cryptographer and cypherpunk pioneer, Finney created reusable proof-of-work, received the first Bitcoin transaction, and championed digital privacy, decentralization, and technical freedom.
EconomicsHans-Hermann Hoppe
A German economist, Hoppe radicalized anarcho-capitalism, defending absolute private property and criticizing democracy as a system that erodes freedom, proposing social orders based on voluntary contract.
PoliticsHarry S. Truman
President of the United States (1945–1953), Truman ordered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, launched the Marshall Plan and the containment doctrine at the outset of the Cold War, racially integrated the armed forces, and led the United States into the Korean War.
PoliticsHelmut Kohl
A Christian Democrat of the CDU and chancellor for 16 years (1982–98), Kohl led German reunification, deepened European integration through the Maastricht Treaty and the euro, made moderate liberalizing reforms and fell after the secret donations scandal.
PoliticsHendrik Verwoerd
Known as the architect of apartheid, Verwoerd systematized institutional racial segregation in South Africa, grounding racial nationalism in the legal and territorial separation imposed on the country's Black majority.
Political theoryHenri de Saint-Simon
A precursor of technocracy, Saint-Simon proposed an industrial society governed by scientists, engineers, and producers instead of politicians and aristocrats, influencing later socialism and positivism.
Intellectual lifeHenry David Thoreau
An American writer, Thoreau championed civil disobedience, simple living in contact with nature, and the right to resist unjust laws, influencing pacifists and environmentalists.
BusinessHenry Ford
Founder of the Ford Motor Company, Ford created the assembly line and the five-dollar day, lifting worker consumption; he was a pacifist in the First World War and spread antisemitic propaganda in the 1920s.
EconomicsHenry George
An American economist, Henry George proposed the single tax on land value, arguing that land rent should fund society and reduce inequality rather than burdening labor or capital.
PoliticsHenry Kissinger
An American diplomat, Kissinger was a master of realpolitik, shaping US foreign policy in the Cold War with détente, the opening to China, and controversial interventions in the name of the national interest.
PoliticsHenry VIII
King of England from 1509 to 1547, Henry VIII broke with Rome through the Act of Supremacy (1534), became head of the Church of England, dissolved the monasteries, centralized power in the Crown under Thomas Cromwell and executed opponents such as Thomas More.
PhilosophyHeraclitus
A philosopher from Ephesus known for fragments on change, opposition, and the logos that orders the world. His texts relate human law to a common order, but the scarcity of sources makes any reconstruction of his specific political positions controversial.
PoliticsHirohito
Emperor of Japan from 1926 to 1989, Hirohito reigned during militarist expansion and World War II as a figure of divine authority within the imperial system, and after defeat renounced his divine status and presided as a symbolic constitutional monarch over the country's democratic reconstruction.
PoliticsHo Chi Minh
Revolutionary and founder of communist Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh led the fight for independence against France and later the United States, uniting anti-colonial nationalism and Marxism-Leninism toward the country's reunification under single-party rule.
Political theoryHoward Scott
American engineer, Scott founded Technocracy Incorporated in 1933, proposing to replace the price system and money with energy certificates and to hand the government of a continental “technate” to engineers and scientists instead of politicians and businessmen.
PoliticsHu Jintao
Chinese Communist Party general secretary from 2002 to 2012, Hu formulated the Harmonious Society and Scientific Development, sustained growth with higher social spending and tightened digital censorship and repression in Tibet and Xinjiang.
PoliticsHugo Chávez
A Venezuelan statesman, Chávez led 21st-century socialism, nationalizing sectors, funding social programs with oil, and concentrating power in a Bolivarian project of strong popular and nationalist appeal.
PoliticsHumberto Castelo Branco
A Brazilian military officer and statesman, Castelo Branco was the first president of the military dictatorship begun in 1964, conducting the initial repression and economic reforms of liberal orientation and alignment with the United States.
ReligionIgnatius of Loyola
A Basque nobleman who became a priest, Ignatius of Loyola founded the Society of Jesus and wrote the Spiritual Exercises, a method of prayer that shaped Jesuit formation and missionary activity.
PhilosophyImmanuel Kant
German philosopher, Kant founded transcendental idealism and the ethics of duty, defending the autonomy of reason, republicanism and a federation of free states as the path to perpetual peace.
Intellectual lifeIrving Kristol
Considered the godfather of neoconservatism, Kristol united free markets, traditional values, and an interventionist foreign policy, shaping the American intellectual right of the second half of the 20th century.
Intellectual lifeIsaac Newton
An English physicist and mathematician, Newton founded classical mechanics and infinitesimal calculus in the "Principia Mathematica." He ran the Royal Society with an iron fist and, as Master of the Royal Mint, hunted counterfeiters to the gallows. A secret alchemist and anti-trinitarian.
PhilosophyIsaiah Berlin
A British philosopher, Berlin distinguished negative from positive liberty and championed value pluralism, warning against totalitarian utopias and becoming a reference of 20th-century liberal thought.
Intellectual lifeJ. R. R. Tolkien
Oxford philologist and author of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien was a devout Catholic who distrusted the modern state and industrialization, said he leaned toward anarchy or unconstitutional monarchy and idealized the rural life of the Shire.
Intellectual lifeJ. Robert Oppenheimer
American theoretical physicist who directed the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, widely regarded as the father of the atomic bomb. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he advocated for civilian and international control of nuclear weapons and had his security clearance revoked during McCarthyism (1954).
BusinessJack Ma
Alibaba's founder and a Chinese Communist Party member, Ma promoted entrepreneurship, global trade and technology, defended the 996 work culture and criticised state financial regulation before the Ant Group crackdown.
PhilosophyJacques Maritain
A French Catholic philosopher, Maritain renewed Christian thought and influenced Christian democracy, defending human rights, integral humanism, and the compatibility of faith, reason, and democratic freedom.
PoliticsJair Bolsonaro
A Brazilian politician, Bolsonaro reached the presidency leading the nationalist, conservative right, with agendas of security, traditional values, and economic liberalism; convicted over an attempted coup and barred from office, he remains influential.
Intellectual lifeJames Cook
A Royal Navy officer and cartographer, Cook led three scientific expeditions to the Pacific, charted New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, claimed lands in the name of the Crown, fought scurvy and died in a clash with Hawaiians.
Intellectual lifeJames Lovelock
British independent scientist, Lovelock formulated the Gaia hypothesis, which sees Earth as a self-regulating system, warned about global warming, broke with environmentalism by defending nuclear power and predicted in “Novacene” that cyborgs would succeed humanity.
PoliticsJames Madison
A founder of the United States and principal architect of the Constitution, Madison championed federalism, the separation of powers, and individual rights, seeking to balance strong republican government with checks against tyranny.
PoliticsJános Kádár
Hungary's leader after the 1956 Soviet repression, Kádár consolidated pragmatic communism, single-party rule, alignment with Moscow, and limited economic opening aimed at consumption.
EconomicsJavier Milei
An Argentine statesman and economist, Milei champions anarcho-capitalism and radical liberalism, proposing to drastically cut the state, dollarize the economy, and fight inflation, reaching Argentina's presidency.
PoliticsJD Vance
A former U.S. senator from Ohio and author of 'Hillbilly Elegy' who converted to Catholicism in 2019, Vance champions protectionist tariffs, mass deportation, cutting military aid to Ukraine, and pro-family natalist policies.
PhilosophyJean-Jacques Rousseau
An Enlightenment philosopher, Rousseau criticized social inequality and championed popular sovereignty, the general will, and a republican political community capable of forming free citizens through civic education and public virtue.
PoliticsJean-Paul Marat
A physician and journalist of the French Revolution, Marat edited L’Ami du peuple and advocated popular sovereignty, exceptional measures against counterrevolution, and vigilance over rulers. In The Chains of Slavery (1774), he denounced monarchical despotism.
PhilosophyJean-Paul Sartre
A French philosopher, Sartre was the great name of existentialism, defending the radical freedom and responsibility of the individual, and drew close to Marxism, engaging in the great political causes of his time.
BusinessJeff Bezos
Founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, Bezos reshaped global retail through logistics and cloud computing, resisted unionisation in his warehouses and bets on humanity's industrial expansion into space.
PoliticsJefferson Davis
U.S. senator and secretary of war, Davis presided over the Confederate States during the Civil War, defending secession, states' rights and slavery as the basis of the South's social and economic order.
BusinessJensen Huang
Co-founder and chief executive of NVIDIA, Huang turned the graphics processor into the engine of artificial intelligence, defends global semiconductor supply chains and criticises export controls that fragment the tech market.
ActivismJeremy Corbyn
A British politician, Corbyn led the socialist wing of the Labour Party, defending the nationalization of services, the welfare state, anti-imperialism, and policies of strong income redistribution.
EconomicsJerome Powell
Republican lawyer and former finance executive, Powell chaired the Federal Reserve from 2018 to 2026, fought the pandemic shock and inflation with high rates and defended central bank independence against Trump's pressure.
PoliticsJiang Zemin
Chinese Communist Party general secretary from 1989 to 2002, Jiang preserved the party monopoly after Tiananmen, suppressed Falun Gong and promoted the Three Represents, WTO accession and reform of state-owned enterprises.
PoliticsJimmy Carter
US president from 1977 to 1981 who emphasized human rights in foreign policy and brokered the Camp David Accords. After office, he co-founded the Carter Center and received the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
PoliticsJoão Doria
A businessman and broadcaster, Doria was mayor and governor of São Paulo, led the covid vaccination drive against the federal government and privatised state companies; now partyless, he backs a centrist path.
PoliticsJoão Goulart
A Brazilian statesman, João Goulart was a reformist left-wing president, a defender of grassroots reforms and workers' rights, deposed by the 1964 military coup that began the dictatorship in Brazil.
PoliticsJoe Biden
An American statesman, Biden represents the liberal Democratic center, combining a moderate welfare state, international alliances, institutional defense, and gradual progressive advances.
Political theoryJohn C. Calhoun
U.S. vice president and South Carolina senator, Calhoun formulated the doctrines of nullification and the concurrent majority and defended slavery as a positive good, inspiring Southern secession.
ReligionJohn Calvin
A French theologian and the main reformer of the Calvinist tradition, author of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, he organized Geneva as a theocratic republic between 1541 and 1564, disciplining public morality and creating the Puritan model.
BusinessJohn D. Rockefeller
Founder of Standard Oil, he built the largest industrial monopoly in American history until its breakup by the Supreme Court in 1911. A devout, teetotal Baptist, he became the greatest philanthropist of his era, founding the University of Chicago and the Rockefeller Foundation.
PoliticsJohn F. Kennedy
An American statesman, Kennedy combined reformist liberalism, Cold War anti-communism, civil rights, and technological modernization, symbolizing the New Frontier agenda.
PoliticsJohn IV of Portugal
The Duke of Braganza acclaimed king after the Restoration of 1640, John IV ended the Iberian Union and led Portugal in war against Spain to recover its independence. He founded the Braganza dynasty and sought diplomatic alliances to sustain the new kingdom.
PhilosophyJohn Locke
The father of classical liberalism, Locke grounded the natural rights to life, liberty, and property and government limited by consent and the separation of powers, inspiring the modern liberal revolutions.
EconomicsJohn Maynard Keynes
A British economist, Keynes formulated modern macroeconomics and championed the use of fiscal policy, public investment, and demand management to stabilize liberal capitalism without abolishing private property.
ActivismJohn McAfee
A programmer and entrepreneur, McAfee became a radical libertarian voice, defending privacy, cryptocurrencies, individual freedom, and deep distrust of the state, taxes, and government surveillance.
PhilosophyJohn Rawls
An American philosopher, Rawls reformulated liberalism with the idea of justice as fairness, defending equal liberties and inequalities acceptable only if they benefit the least advantaged in society.
PhilosophyJohn Stuart Mill
A British liberal philosopher, Mill championed individual liberty, tolerance, utilitarianism, and the harm principle, making him a foundational figure of modern liberalism.
Political theoryJohn Zerzan
An American philosopher, Zerzan is one of the leading voices of anarcho-primitivism, criticizing civilization, technology, and domestication as sources of oppression and defending a return to ancestral ways of life.
PoliticsJonas Gahr Støre
Labour leader and prime minister of Norway since 2021, re-elected in 2025. A pro-NATO social democrat, he keeps the wealth tax and state-owned Equinor, defends oil exploration and recognized Palestine, alongside a restrictive asylum policy.
Intellectual lifeJordan Peterson
A Canadian psychologist, Peterson became a reference of liberal cultural conservatism, criticizing identity progressivism and defending individual responsibility, tradition, free speech, and symbolic order.
PoliticsJosé Antonio Kast
Founder of Chile's Republican Party and president since March 2026, a conservative Catholic who has openly praised Pinochet's legacy. He pledges to expel irregular migrants, toughen sentences, cut spending and lower corporate taxes, and opposes abortion.
PoliticsJosé Antonio Primo de Rivera
Founder of the Spanish Falange, Primo de Rivera created national syndicalism, advocating a corporatist, nationalist, Catholic state against liberalism and Marxism, becoming a martyr of the Francoist right.
Intellectual lifeJosé Bonifácio
A scientist and statesman known as the "Patriarch of Independence," José Bonifácio was the chief political architect of Brazil's 1822 separation from Portugal, favoring a centralized state, gradual abolition of slavery, and a unified nation under constitutional monarchy.
ActivismJosé Bové
A French activist, José Bové became a symbol of the anti-globalization movement and peasant agriculture, defending food sovereignty, ecology, and resistance to multinationals and genetically modified food.
ActivismJosé Dirceu
A guerrilla militant against the dictatorship and a founder of the Workers' Party, Dirceu served as Lula's chief of staff, was convicted in the mensalão scandal, had Lava Jato sentences annulled and runs for Congress in 2026.
PoliticsJosé Mujica
A former guerrilla and Uruguayan statesman, Mujica embodied a democratic left, austere and libertarian in customs, defending moderate redistribution, civil rights, and a critique of consumerism.
PhilosophyJoseph de Maistre
The leading reactionary theorist, Maistre opposed the French Revolution by defending monarchy and the authority of tradition and religion against Enlightenment rationalism, influencing European conservative thought.
PoliticsJoseph Goebbels
Propaganda Minister of the Third Reich, Goebbels built the Nazi propaganda machine through radio, film and mass rallies, spread radical antisemitism and proclaimed total war, killing himself and his family in 1945.
PoliticsJoseph II of Austria
Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria, Joseph II abolished personal serfdom, decreed religious tolerance, closed hundreds of monasteries, imposed German on the administration and saw his reforms provoke revolts, in Belgium and Hungary.
EconomicsJoseph Schumpeter
Austrian economist, Schumpeter described the creative destruction driven by the innovating entrepreneur, reduced democracy to competition among elites for votes, and predicted capitalism would be destroyed by its own success.
PoliticsJoseph Stalin
At the head of the Soviet Union, Stalin imposed forced industrialization, agrarian collectivization, and central planning, consolidating a single-party regime marked by purges, terror, and mass repression.
PoliticsJosip Broz Tito
Leader of socialist Yugoslavia, Tito unified diverse peoples under a single party, adopted workers' self-management, and broke with Moscow, leading the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War.
PoliticsJuan Domingo Perón
An Argentine president and founder of Peronism, Perón combined popular nationalism, labor rights, corporatism, protected industrialization, charismatic leadership, and a third position between liberalism and communism.
PoliticsJulius Caesar
A Roman general and statesman, Caesar combined military prestige, popular reforms, and the concentration of personal authority, weakening the aristocratic republic and paving the way for imperial power in Rome.
Political theoryJulius Evola
An Italian philosopher, Evola was a traditionalist theorist of the radical right, defending hierarchy, spirituality, and the refusal of the modern world, becoming a reference of 20th-century reactionary and esoteric thought.
PoliticsJulius Nyerere
The father of Tanzania's independence, Nyerere created Ujamaa, an African socialism based on communal villages, self-reliance, and national unity above ethnicity.
PoliticsJuscelino Kubitschek
President of Brazil (1956–1961), Kubitschek launched the Target Plan and the construction of Brasília under the slogan "fifty years in five," promoting rapid industrialization, foreign borrowing, and developmentalist optimism.
PoliticsJustin Trudeau
Prime Minister of Canada (2015–2025) for the Liberal Party, Trudeau promoted multiculturalism, welcoming immigrants and refugees, progressive gender and environmental policies, and a centrist governing style backed by strong state social intervention.
PoliticsJustinian I
Mosaic depiction
Emperor of the Byzantine Empire at its height, Justinian I codified Roman law in the Corpus Juris Civilis, reconquered Italy, North Africa, and southern Spain, ordered the construction of Hagia Sophia, and imposed Chalcedonian orthodoxy.
ActivismKarl Liebknecht
A German revolutionary, Liebknecht was a socialist leader and co-founder of the Spartacus League, opposing World War I and leading the failed 1919 uprising, being murdered alongside Rosa Luxemburg.
EconomicsKarl Marx
A German philosopher and economist, Marx created historical materialism and the critique of capitalism, analyzing class struggle and the exploitation of labor, and became the greatest reference of socialism and communism.
EconomicsKarl Polanyi
Hungarian economic historian, Polanyi argued in The Great Transformation that land, labour and money are fictitious commodities, and that the self-regulating market generates a protective social countermovement.
PoliticsKeir Hardie
A Scottish politician, Keir Hardie was a founder of the British Labour Party, defending workers' rights, suffrage, and social reforms within democracy, marking the birth of modern labourism.
PoliticsKim Il-sung
Founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung created the Juche doctrine of national self-reliance and established a single-party regime with a cult of the leader that fuses communism, nationalism, and hereditary dynastic power.
PoliticsKim Jong Un
The North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un preserved the dynastic Juche regime, with single-party rule, a cult of the leader, nuclear militarization, a state economy, and rigid isolation from the outside world.
PoliticsKim Kataguiri
Federal deputy, MBL co-founder and the Mission Party’s sole representative in Congress, he combines economic liberalism and free trade with tough-on-crime policies, institutional reform, technology-focused industrial policy and moderate social conservatism.
PoliticsKing David
According to the Bible, David united the tribes of Israel, conquered Jerusalem and made it his capital, defeated the Philistines, brought the Ark to the city and built a centralized kingdom, and tradition attributes the Psalms to him and the line of the Messiah.
PoliticsKonrad Adenauer
West Germany's first chancellor, Adenauer consolidated Christian democracy, the social market economy, and the country's integration into the West, rebuilding the nation after the war and anchoring it in Europe.
PoliticsLachlan Macquarie
Colonial governor of New South Wales (1810–21), Macquarie replaced military rule with public works and town planning, granted land and office to freed convicts and founded schools for Aboriginal people, but ordered the Appin massacre against resisters.
PoliticsLázaro Cárdenas
Revolutionary general and president of Mexico, Cárdenas nationalized oil, expanded the ejidos, incorporated workers and peasants into the state, and consolidated post-revolutionary secular national populism.
PoliticsLee Kuan Yew
Founder of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew transformed the city-state into a model of authoritarian capitalism, uniting open markets, technocratic meritocracy, strict order, and heavily restricted political freedoms.
PoliticsLee Teng-hui
President of Taiwan (1988–2000) and the first directly elected by popular vote, Lee guided the transition from Kuomintang one-party rule to a full multiparty democracy, promoting a distinct Taiwanese identity and economic liberalization.
Intellectual lifeLeo Tolstoy
A Russian writer, Tolstoy united his literary work with pacifist Christian anarchism, preaching nonviolence, simplicity, and refusal of the state in ways that influenced Gandhi and later movements.
Intellectual lifeLeon Kass
An American bioethicist, Kass is the leading voice of bioconservatism, warning against genetic manipulation and human enhancement in the name of dignity, human nature, and the ethical limits of science.
PoliticsLeon Trotsky
Organizer of the Red Army, Trotsky championed permanent revolution and internationalism, becoming the main left-wing opponent of Stalinist bureaucratization until he was exiled and assassinated in Mexico.
PhilosophyLeonard Peikoff
An Objectivist philosopher, Peikoff was Ayn Rand's principal intellectual heir, systematizing Objectivism and defending reason, individualism, and laissez-faire capitalism as the foundations of life and morality.
ReligionLeonardo Boff
A Brazilian theologian, Boff is one of the leading names of Liberation Theology, uniting Christian faith with the struggle for social justice and the defense of the poor and the environment, with strong criticism of capitalism and inequality.
PoliticsLeonel Brizola
A Brazilian politician, Brizola was one of the great names of labourism, defending nationalism, social reforms, public education, and workers' rights, with strong activity before and after the dictatorship.
Intellectual lifeLinus Torvalds
Finnish-American software engineer, he started the Linux kernel in 1991 and created Git in 2005; his technical leadership and open development made these projects central to digital infrastructure.
PoliticsLouis Auguste Blanqui
French revolutionary and conspirator, Blanqui argued that an organized minority should seize power by insurrection and impose a provisional dictatorship, spent over thirty years in prison, was elected to the Paris Commune from his cell and took the motto "Neither God nor master".
PoliticsLouis XIV
France's Sun King, Louis XIV personified monarchical absolutism by divine right, centralizing power, subjecting the nobility to the court of Versailles, and expanding the cultural and military prestige of the French kingdom.
EconomicsLudwig Erhard
The father of the German economic miracle, Erhard implemented the ordoliberal social market economy, uniting regulated free competition, monetary stability, and welfare, later governing as Germany's chancellor.
EconomicsLudwig von Mises
An Austrian economist, Mises was a great defender of the free market and demonstrated the impossibility of rational economic calculation under socialism, becoming a pillar of the Austrian School and an inspiration for modern libertarianism.
ActivismLuís Carlos Prestes
Leader of the Prestes Column and for decades head of the Brazilian Communist Party, Prestes led the 1935 communist uprising, was jailed under the Estado Novo, elected senator in 1945 and followed the Soviet line until breaking with the party in 1980.
EconomicsLuiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira
A Brazilian economist and former finance minister, Bresser-Pereira formulated new developmentalism, defending a competitive exchange rate, national industry and a reformed state that drives growth without abandoning democracy.
PhilosophyLuiz Felipe Pondé
Brazilian philosopher and columnist, Pond? describes himself as a liberal conservative: he supports economic and civil liberties, criticizes moral progressivism and both left- and right-wing populism, and studies religion without adhering to a tradition.
PoliticsLula da Silva
A Brazilian statesman, Lula rose from union activism to Brazil's presidency, leading the left with social programs, anti-poverty policies, and a development project with a strong state presence.
PoliticsLyndon B. Johnson
A Democratic president from 1963 to 1969, Johnson launched the Great Society and the war on poverty, created Medicare and Medicaid and signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, but escalated the Vietnam War, which destroyed his popularity.
Intellectual lifeLysander Spooner
An American jurist and anarchist, Spooner championed natural law and the free market, questioned the legitimacy of the Constitution and the state, and challenged public monopolies, influencing libertarianism.
Intellectual lifeMachado de Assis
Brazil's greatest writer and founder of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, he ironically portrayed the elite of the Second Empire. A civil servant, he was a moderate liberal, a discreet abolitionist and skeptical of religion and scientism.
ActivismMahatma Gandhi
Leader of India's independence, Gandhi developed nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience against British rule, becoming a world symbol of the peaceful struggle for freedom and social justice.
ActivismMalcolm X
An American activist, Malcolm X was a radical voice of the Black struggle in the United States, defending pride, self-defense, and African-American emancipation, evolving toward a more universalist vision before his assassination.
PoliticsManuel I of Portugal
Manuel I reigned at the height of Portuguese maritime expansion, when Vasco da Gama reached India and Cabral reached Brazil, centralizing the spice trade through the Casa da India.
PoliticsMao Zedong
Leader of the Chinese Revolution and founder of the People's Republic, Mao adapted Marxism to the peasantry through people's war, collectivization, and the permanent mobilization of the masses in campaigns of radical transformation.
PoliticsMarcelo Rebelo de Sousa
Law professor, TV commentator and former PSD leader, Marcelo was president of Portugal from 2016 to 2026, with a warm, close-to-the-people style, moderate Catholic conservatism, Europeanism and cooperation with left-wing governments.
PoliticsMarco Rubio
A Cuban American, former U.S. senator from Florida, and Secretary of State since 2025, he led the crackdown on Venezuela (capturing Maduro) and Cuba, champions tariffs and 'common good capitalism', and is a practicing Catholic opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage.
PoliticsMarcus Aurelius
Sculptural depiction
Roman emperor from 161 to 180 CE and a Stoic philosopher. His Meditations explored duty, justice, and self-discipline; his reign faced frontier warfare, internal unrest, and epidemic disease.
ActivismMarcus Garvey
Founder of the largest Black mass movement in history, Garvey preached Black nationalism, racial pride, entrepreneurship as a path to emancipation, and the return to Africa, rejecting integration in favor of separation and self-reliance.
PoliticsMário Covas
Opposition leader stripped of his mandate by the dictatorship and founder of the PSDB, Covas called for a capitalism shock in the 1989 campaign and, as governor of São Paulo, pursued fiscal adjustment, privatizations and concessions with a social democratic, ethical message.
PoliticsMark Carney
A former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, Carney has been Liberal prime minister since 2025: he scrapped the consumer carbon tax, fast-tracked pipelines and major projects, raised defence spending and retaliated against Trump's tariffs.
PhilosophyMark Fisher
British cultural theorist, Fisher developed the concept of capitalist realism to examine the difficulty of imagining alternatives to capitalism. He connected culture, mental health and neoliberalism, and outlined acid communism.
BusinessMark Zuckerberg
Founder of Facebook and Meta, Zuckerberg built the world's largest social network, championed global connectivity and, after years of active moderation, moved to scale back fact-checking in the name of free speech.
PoliticsMarshal Deodoro da Fonseca
An army marshal who led the proclamation of the republic in 1889, Deodoro da Fonseca became the country's first president, ruling in a centralizing and authoritarian manner until dissolving Congress in 1891, resigning shortly after amid institutional crisis.
PhilosophyMartin Buber
An Austrian Jewish philosopher, Buber developed the philosophy of dialogue, summed up in the I–Thou relationship, and championed a communitarian, humanist socialism, influencing religious thought and cultural Zionism.
PhilosophyMartin Heidegger
German philosopher, Heidegger reopened the question of being and criticised modern technology as the uprooting of humanity; he joined the Nazi party in 1933 and became rector of Freiburg, support he never publicly recanted.
ReligionMartin Luther
The German monk who began the Protestant Reformation by challenging indulgences, Luther defended salvation by faith and the Bible in the vernacular, yet backed the princes against the peasant revolt of 1525.
ActivismMartin Luther King Jr.
Baptist minister and leader of the American civil rights movement, King led the Montgomery bus boycott and the March on Washington, advocating nonviolent civil disobedience, an end to racial segregation, economic redistribution and opposition to the Vietnam War.
PoliticsMatteo Salvini
An Italian politician, Salvini leads Italy's nationalist right, championing the fight against immigration, national sovereignty, and skepticism toward the European Union, with strong populist and identitarian appeal.
PhilosophyMax More
A British philosopher, Max More is one of the founders of modern transhumanism and extropianism, defending the use of technology to overcome human limits, extend life, and expand individual freedom.
PhilosophyMax Stirner
A German philosopher, Stirner is the great reference of egoist anarchism, rejecting state, morality, and institutions as oppressive abstractions and placing the sovereign individual and their interests at the center of everything.
Intellectual lifeMax Weber
A German sociologist and founder of modern sociology, Weber analyzed rational-legal bureaucracy, distinguished types of legitimate authority, and linked the Protestant ethic to the spirit of capitalism, without prescribing a political program of his own.
PoliticsMaximilien Robespierre
A central figure of the French Revolution, Robespierre linked republican virtue, popular sovereignty, and civil equality to a centralized revolutionary power, becoming a symbol of Jacobinism and the Terror.
PhilosophyMichael Sandel
An American political philosopher, Sandel is one of the leading exponents of communitarianism, criticizing procedural liberalism and holding that justice, virtue, and the common good arise from community bonds.
PhilosophyMichel Foucault
A French philosopher, Foucault analyzed prisons, sexuality, medicine, and modern knowledge as forms of disciplinary power, becoming a reference for critiques of social normalization, institutions of control, and cultural hierarchies.
PoliticsMichel Temer
A Brazilian statesman, Temer assumed Brazil's presidency after Dilma's impeachment, conducting a liberal agenda of economic reforms and fiscal adjustment with the support of the political center and the business community.
Political theoryMikhail Bakunin
A Russian revolutionary, Bakunin was the great theorist of collectivist anarchism, opposing the state and authoritarian Marxism and defending spontaneous social revolution and the free federation of communities and workers.
PoliticsMikhail Gorbachev
The last leader of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev launched perestroika and glasnost, liberalizing the economy and the press, reduced the nuclear arsenal with the West, and allowed the fall of the Berlin Wall, precipitating the collapse of the communist bloc.
EconomicsMilton Friedman
An American economist, Friedman led neoliberalism and monetarism, defending free markets, monetary stability, and a smaller state as essential conditions of freedom and prosperity.
PoliticsMohammad Reza Pahlavi
Iran's last shah (1941–1979), Mohammad Reza Pahlavi consolidated an authoritarian monarchy allied with the West. The White Revolution advanced land reform, industrialization and women's rights, while SAVAK repressed the opposition.
PoliticsMohammed bin Salman
Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman concentrates power and conducts a controlled economic and social modernization, diversifying the oil economy while maintaining strong political repression.
PhilosophyMontesquieu
A French Enlightenment philosopher, Montesquieu formulated the separation of powers and institutional moderation, defending constitutional monarchy and government limited by laws as a defense against despotism.
PoliticsMuammar Gaddafi
Leader of Libya for over four decades after the 1969 coup, Gaddafi established a "Jamahiriya" of theoretical direct democracy under de facto authoritarian control, nationalized oil, funded pan-Africanist and third-worldist movements, and was deposed and killed during the 2011 civil war.
ReligionMuhammad Abduh
Grand Mufti of Egypt and father of Islamic modernism, Abduh argued for reinterpreting Islam through reason (ijtihad), reformed teaching at Al-Azhar and the religious courts, and opposed both clerical stagnation and British rule.
PoliticsMuhammad Ali Jinnah
Lawyer and leader of the Muslim League, Jinnah led the creation of Pakistan in 1947 on the two-nation theory and was its first governor-general, advocating a Muslim-majority state with religious freedom for minorities.
Political theoryMurray Bookchin
An American thinker, Bookchin created social ecology and communalism, defending autonomous municipalities, direct democracy, and harmony with nature, influencing radical environmentalism and the Rojava experiment.
EconomicsMurray Rothbard
An American economist, Rothbard was the main formulator of anarcho-capitalism, defending the abolition of the state, absolute private property, and the provision of security and justice by the free market.
PoliticsMustafa Kemal Atatürk
Founder of modern Turkey, Atatürk imposed radical modernization from above, with secularization, a new alphabet, civil rights for women, and developmentalist nationalism, breaking with the Ottoman and religious heritage.
PoliticsNapoleon Bonaparte
A French general and emperor, Napoleon consolidated the Revolution's administrative and legal reforms while concentrating personal power, expanding France militarily and shaping European modernizing authoritarianism.
PoliticsNapoleon III
Nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, elected president of the French Second Republic and later self-proclaimed emperor in 1852, Napoleon III modernized Paris through Haussmann's urban renewal, promoted industrialization and free trade, but led France into disaster in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which ended his reign.
PoliticsNaruhito
Emperor of Japan since 2019, a symbol of the state with no political powers under the pacifist Constitution. An Oxford-trained historian and water-resources expert, he expresses "deep remorse" over the war and champions peace, the environment and international cooperation.
Intellectual lifeNathaniel Branden
An Objectivist psychologist, Branden was Ayn Rand's collaborator and a pioneer of the psychology of self-esteem, uniting Objectivism with the appreciation of reason, individualism, and personal responsibility in mental life.
PoliticsNayib Bukele
El Salvador's president, Bukele gained prominence for his tough security policy against gangs and the adoption of bitcoin, uniting strong popular support, digital communication, and growing concentration of power.
PoliticsNelson Mandela
A South African statesman, Mandela led the struggle against apartheid, spent decades in prison, and became the country's first Black president, a world symbol of reconciliation, democracy, and human rights.
PoliticsNero
The last Julio-Claudian emperor, Nero had his own mother Agrippina killed, persecuted Christians after the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, and grew ever more tyrannical and extravagant until his suicide in 68, ending the dynasty.
PoliticsNéstor Kirchner
Argentine president from 2003 to 2007, Kirchner led the recovery after the 2001 crisis with center-left Peronism: he renegotiated the debt, broke with the IMF, expanded social spending and reopened dictatorship trials.
Political theoryNiccolò Machiavelli
A Florentine diplomat and thinker, Machiavelli analyzed political power realistically, valuing virtù, one's own military force, reason of state, and republican institutions capable of preserving liberty and civic greatness.
PoliticsNicholas II
The last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II ruled as an autocrat reluctant to cede power, led the country to defeat in World War I amid economic and social crisis, and was deposed and executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918 following the Russian Revolution.
ActivismNick Fuentes
American commentator and streamer, leader of the Groyper movement, Fuentes advocates white Christian nationalism, rejects liberal democracy in favor of monarchy or dictatorship, opposes non-white immigration and denies the Holocaust.
PhilosophyNick Land
A British philosopher, Land founded accelerationism and the so-called Dark Enlightenment, advocating the acceleration of capitalism and technology and criticizing egalitarian democracy in favor of new hierarchies.
Political theoryNick Srnicek
A Canadian political theorist, Srnicek advocates left accelerationism, proposing to use technology, automation, and basic income to move beyond work and build a post-capitalist future of shared abundance.
PhilosophyNicolas de Condorcet
A French Enlightenment philosopher, Condorcet championed civil rights, legal equality, and women's suffrage, linking political liberalism to universalist reforms and confidence in the progress of human reason.
PoliticsNicolás Maduro
Hugo Chávez's successor, Maduro ruled Venezuela for 13 years deepening Chavista authoritarianism, with electoral fraud in 2024, repression by armed colectivos, and military alliances with Russia, China, and Iran, until his capture by the U.S. in 2026.
PoliticsNikita Khrushchev
First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party (1953–1964) and premier of the USSR (1958–1964), Khrushchev denounced Stalin and began de-Stalinization while retaining one-party rule. His government launched Sputnik and confronted the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Intellectual lifeNikola Tesla
A Serbian-American inventor, pioneer of alternating current and induction motors, he rivaled Edison in the "war of currents." A visionary obsessed with wireless energy, he saw universal electrification as human liberation and preached world peace through technology.
ActivismNikolas Ferreira
Brazil's most-voted federal deputy in 2022 and a candidate for re-election in 2026, Nikolas built his influence online defending conservative morals, Christianity, gun rights and opposition to the left.
Intellectual lifeNoam Chomsky
An American linguist and thinker, Chomsky revolutionized linguistics and became an influential voice of libertarian socialism, criticizing corporate power, the media, and US imperialism in the world.
PoliticsOda Nobunaga
A Sengoku-period daimyo, Nobunaga began the unification of Japan with massed arquebuses, deposed the Ashikaga shogunate, massacred the warrior monks of Enryaku-ji and the Ikko-ikki, abolished guilds and tolls, and tolerated Jesuit missionaries.
PoliticsOlaf Scholz
A Social Democrat and German chancellor from 2021 to 2025, Scholz proclaimed the Zeitenwende, with 100 billion euros for the armed forces and weapons for Ukraine, raised the minimum wage to 12 euros and defended the debt brake until the traffic-light coalition collapsed.
Intellectual lifeOlavo de Carvalho
A Brazilian writer and polemicist, Olavo shaped a generation of the new right by attacking what he called cultural Marxism, defending Christian tradition, moral conservatism and deep distrust of academic institutions.
PoliticsOliver Cromwell
Parliamentarian commander and Lord Protector of England, Cromwell took part in the execution of Charles I and consolidated a centralized Puritan republic; his campaigns in Ireland and Scotland extended English power.
PoliticsOlof Palme
A Swedish statesman, Olof Palme was one of the greatest names of social democracy, expanding the welfare state and championing disarmament, international solidarity, and the rights of poorer countries.
EconomicsOskar Lange
A Polish economist, Lange championed market socialism, arguing that planning could simulate prices and allocate resources efficiently, in the famous socialist calculation debate.
PhilosophyOswald Spengler
A Conservative Revolutionary philosopher, Spengler saw civilizations as cyclical in The Decline of the West. He advocated authoritarian, anti-Marxist Prussian socialism; he later criticized Nazism without abandoning nationalism.
EconomicsOtto Neurath
An Austrian philosopher and economist, Neurath championed a planned economy and the technical administration of production, rejecting the market and also creating the visual language of data known as Isotype.
Political theoryOtto Strasser
Brother of Gregor Strasser, he broke with Hitler in 1930 and founded the Black Front, championing an anti-capitalist, federalist and Christian national socialism with land for peasants; exiled, he returned to Germany in 1955.
PoliticsOtto von Bismarck
The unifier of Germany, Bismarck created the first modern welfare state, using conservative social reforms to contain socialism and strengthen order, and steered European diplomacy for decades.
PoliticsOtto von Habsburg
An Austrian politician and heir of the Habsburgs, Otto was a defender of constitutional monarchy, European federalism, and continental integration, serving for decades as a European parliamentarian and critic of totalitarianism.
BusinessPablo Marçal
Evangelical entrepreneur and influencer whose 2026 presidential registration was denied. He advocates an entrepreneurial society, privatization, digital technocratic management and a national crackdown on gangs, combining tax cuts with continued cash transfers.
Intellectual lifePablo Picasso
Spanish painter and co-founder of Cubism, Picasso painted Guernica against the Francoist bombing, joined the French Communist Party in 1944, backed the Soviet-led peace movement and never returned to Franco's Spain.
PoliticsPark Chung-hee
A South Korean dictator, Park Chung-hee led an authoritarian developmentalist regime that rapidly industrialized South Korea through state planning and discipline, turning the country into an economic power.
EconomicsPaul Romer
An American economist, Romer is a reference of endogenous growth theory, showing how ideas, innovation, and knowledge drive development, and proposed charter cities as an institutional reform.
Intellectual lifePaulo Freire
Brazilian educator and author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he created an adult literacy method based on political consciousness-raising. Exiled by the 1964 dictatorship, he was tied to Liberation Theology and later led São Paulo's schools for the Workers' Party.
EconomicsPaulo Guedes
A Chicago-trained economist and Bolsonaro's economy minister, Guedes delivered pension reform and central bank autonomy, preached sweeping privatisations that never happened, and loosened the federal spending cap.
PoliticsPedro I of Brazil
Painted portrait
Brazil's first emperor, Pedro I led independence and established a centralized constitutional monarchy, reconciling dynastic liberalism, personal authority, territorial unity, and the defense of the imperial order.
PoliticsPedro II of Brazil
Painted portrait
Brazil's second emperor, Pedro II governed as a constitutional monarch, valuing parliamentarism, institutional stability, science, education, and gradual abolition, preserving national unity under the moderating power.
PoliticsPedro Sánchez
PSOE leader and Prime Minister of Spain since 2018, Sánchez governs in coalition with the left and support from pro-independence parties, promoting abortion, euthanasia, migrant regularization and a 2% rent cap, while refusing to raise military spending to NATO's 5% GDP target.
Political theoryPentti Linkola
A Finnish fisherman and thinker, Linkola advocated an anti-democratic, anti-technological deep ecology, with a strong state, an end to economic growth, and a drastic reduction of population to save the biosphere, becoming a reference of eco-authoritarianism.
PoliticsPericles
Athenian statesman and general, Pericles led Athens through its democratic and cultural golden age, expanded popular participation in institutions, funded the Parthenon with the Delian League's treasury, and led the city into the Peloponnesian War.
Political theoryPeter Kropotkin
A Russian anarchist theorist, Kropotkin developed anarcho-communism and the idea of mutual aid as a factor of evolution, defending a stateless society based on cooperation, science, and free association.
ActivismPeter Maurin
A French Christian activist, Maurin co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement, defending social justice, voluntary poverty, and communities of work and mutual aid inspired by the social doctrine of the Church.
PoliticsPeter the Great
Tsar of Russia from 1682 to 1725, Peter I forcibly modernized the Russian Empire, Europeanizing the nobility, creating a navy, and subordinating the Orthodox Church to the state.
BusinessPeter Thiel
An American entrepreneur and investor, Thiel is an influential figure of tech capitalism and champions libertarian and neoreactionary ideas, skeptical of democracy and enthusiastic about disruptive innovation.
Intellectual lifePhil Zimmermann
An American cryptographer, Zimmermann created PGP, making strong cryptography accessible to everyone and defending digital privacy as a right, becoming a reference for crypto-anarchism and civil liberties.
PoliticsPhilip II of Spain
Painted portrait
Philip II ruled the largest empire of his age, defending the Counter-Reformation, financing the Inquisition, confronting England, and centralizing the Spanish monarchy at El Escorial.
Intellectual lifePier Paolo Pasolini
Italian Marxist writer and filmmaker, Pasolini defended Friulian cultural autonomy and criticized consumerism and social homogenization. Persecuted for his homosexuality, he also opposed the liberalization of abortion.
Political theoryPierre-Joseph Proudhon
A French philosopher, Proudhon was the first to declare himself an anarchist and formulated mutualism, defending fair exchange, free credit, and use-based property, with the famous phrase that property is theft.
PhilosophyPlato
A Greek philosopher, Plato criticized Athenian democracy and imagined a city governed by philosophers, with rigid education, moral censorship, and the strong subordination of private interests to the harmony of the political community.
PoliticsPlínio Salgado
Leader of Brazilian Integralism, Plínio Salgado created an authoritarian nationalist movement of Christian inspiration, with the motto God, Fatherland and Family and mass aesthetics inspired by the European fascisms of the 1930s.
PoliticsPol Pot
Leader of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Pol Pot imposed radical agrarian communism that emptied the cities and abolished property, causing one of the greatest genocides of the 20th century in the name of a peasant utopia.
ReligionPope Francis
The first Jesuit and Latin American pope, Francis championed migrants and the poor, criticized unregulated capitalism and the 'throwaway culture' in his encyclical Laudato Si' on the environmental crisis, and promoted greater pastoral decentralization and open dialogue within the Catholic Church.
ReligionPope Leo XIII
Pope from 1878 to 1903, Leo XIII founded Catholic social teaching with the encyclical Rerum Novarum, defending a just wage, workers' associations and private property against socialism and liberalism, and revived Thomism.
ReligionPope Leo XIV
The first pope born in the United States, elected in 2025 after decades of missionary work in Peru, Leo XIV chose his name in reference to Leo XIII and his social doctrine on workers' rights, champions migrants, and warns of the risks artificial intelligence poses to human dignity and labor.
ReligionPope Pius IX
The last Pope-King, Pius IX ruled the Papal States until 1870 in the longest pontificate in history, defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, proclaimed papal infallibility at Vatican I, and condemned liberalism in the Syllabus of Errors.
PhilosophyPythagoras
A Greek philosopher and community leader in southern Italy, Pythagoras linked mathematics and cosmology to religious discipline. Later accounts connect Pythagoreans to political influence in Magna Graecia, though his own ideas are hard to separate from those of his followers.
PoliticsQin Shi Huang
King of Qin who unified China in 221 BC and proclaimed himself first emperor, he ruled through Legalism with harsh laws, replaced feudalism with centralized commanderies, standardized script and coinage, burned books and began the Great Wall.
Intellectual lifeRandolph Bourne
An American essayist, Bourne sharply criticized militarism and nationalism, coining the idea that war is the health of the state, and championed a cultural cosmopolitanism open to diversity and freedom.
Intellectual lifeRay Kurzweil
An American inventor and futurist, Kurzweil popularized transhumanism and the Singularity, predicting the fusion of humans and machines and the radical expansion of human capacities through technology.
PoliticsRecep Tayyip Erdoğan
A Turkish statesman, Erdoğan shifted Turkey toward Islamic, nationalist conservatism, combining presidential centralization, an assertive foreign policy, and the erosion of democratic checks.
ActivismRenan Santos
A Brazilian businessman and political activist, he founded the Free Brazil Movement (MBL) in 2014 and has chaired the Mission party since 2025 on a platform he sums up as 'Milei in form, Bukele in substance,' running for the Brazilian presidency in 2026.
PhilosophyRené Descartes
A French philosopher and mathematician, father of modern philosophy and creator of analytic geometry, Descartes formulated methodic doubt and mind-body dualism ("I think, therefore I am"). He lived in the tolerant Dutch Republic, avoiding conflict with the Church after Galileo.
PoliticsReza Pahlavi
Son of Iran's last shah and an exiled opposition figure, Reza Pahlavi advocates a secular democratic transition, free elections and a choice between monarchy and republic. He prioritizes territorial integrity, individual liberties and market reforms; he has never governed Iran.
PoliticsRichard Nixon
US President (1969–1974), Nixon opened relations with China, ended the dollar’s convertibility to gold, created the EPA and the war on drugs, and resigned after the Watergate scandal.
Intellectual lifeRichard Rasmussen
Biologist and TV adventure host, he served as Bolsonaro’s tourism ambassador and ran for Congress in 2026. He champions wildlife breeders, Amazon smallholders and cattle grazing as fire prevention, criticizing environmental enforcement and NGOs.
ActivismRichard Spencer
An American activist, Spencer popularized the term alt-right and advocates identitarian white nationalism and an ethnically homogeneous state, supremacist positions widely repudiated inside and outside the United States.
PhilosophyRobert Nozick
An American philosopher, Nozick defended libertarianism and the minimal state in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, arguing that only the protection of individual rights justifies the existence of state power.
EconomicsRoberto Campos
A Brazilian economist and diplomat, Campos served as planning minister under the military regime, created the Central Bank and the housing bank, and became the country's most influential advocate of economic liberalism and privatisation.
PhilosophyRoger Scruton
A British philosopher, Scruton was one of the great contemporary conservative thinkers, defending tradition, beauty, nation, and institutions as sources of meaning and order against relativism and progressivism.
PoliticsRoman Dmowski
Founder of Polish National Democracy, Dmowski united ethnic nationalism, Catholicism, and sovereignty in a project of a homogeneous nation-state, becoming a central figure of modern Polish nationalism.
PoliticsRomeu Zema
Businessman and governor of Minas Gerais for the Novo party (2019–2026), he ran for president in 2026. He proposes privatizing every state company, leaving BRICS, curbing the Supreme Court, lowering the age of criminal responsibility and banning all abortion.
PoliticsRon Paul
An American politician, Ron Paul popularized libertarianism in the United States, defending the minimal state, individual freedom, sound money, and a non-interventionist foreign policy against the establishment.
PoliticsRonald Reagan
An American statesman, Reagan led the modern conservative right, championing tax cuts, free markets, traditional values, firm anti-communism, and expanded military power.
PoliticsRonaldo Caiado
Orthopedic surgeon, founder of the agribusiness UDR and governor of Goiás (2019–2026), he ran as the PSD's presidential candidate in 2026. He pledges a hard line on criminal gangs, a broad amnesty for January 8 defendants, spending control and protection of rural property.
BusinessRong Yiren
A Chinese industrialist known as the “Red Capitalist,” Rong cooperated with the regime after 1949, founded state-owned CITIC to attract foreign capital and became China's vice president during the market reforms.
Political theoryRudolf Rocker
German theorist of anarcho-syndicalism, Rocker championed revolutionary unions and free federations of communes in place of the state, and in Nationalism and Culture attacked nationalism and centralized power as enemies of cultural creation.
ReligionRuhollah Khomeini
Leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Khomeini created the Islamic republic and instituted the rule of the religious jurist, fusing theocracy and state and transforming Iran into a revolutionary power of Shia Islam.
Intellectual lifeRui Barbosa
Jurist and senator, Rui Barbosa drafted Brazil's first republican constitution, championed federalism, habeas corpus and civil liberties, argued for the equality of nations at The Hague and led the Civilian Campaign against militarism.
ActivismRui Costa Pimenta
A journalist who founded Brazil's PCO party in 1995, Pimenta advocates proletarian revolution, nationalizing banks and privatized firms, disbanding riot police and popular gun ownership, pairing economic radicalism with criticism of the left's identity politics.
PhilosophyRussell Kirk
An American political philosopher and historian, Kirk influenced postwar conservatism with The Conservative Mind (1953). He championed tradition, historical continuity, political prudence, local communities, and a moral order rooted in religion.
PoliticsS. W. R. D. Bandaranaike
Prime Minister of Ceylon from 1956 to 1959, he converted to Buddhism, founded the Freedom Party, nationalized ports and buses, made Sinhala the official language, pursued non-alignment and was assassinated by a Buddhist monk.
PoliticsSaddam Hussein
Dictator of Iraq for over two decades, Saddam Hussein led the Baath Party, fought the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War after invading Kuwait, violently repressed Kurds and Shiites, and was overthrown by the US-led invasion in 2003 and executed in 2006.
ReligionSaint Paul (Paul of Tarsus)
The apostle who carried Christianity into the Greco-Roman world, Paul established salvation by grace rather than Mosaic law, waived circumcision for gentiles and preached submission to constituted authority.
PoliticsSaladin
Founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, Saladin united Egypt and Syria, defeated the Crusaders at Hattin and retook Jerusalem in 1187, becoming a symbol of jihad against the Crusades and of chivalry recognized even by his enemies.
PoliticsSalvador Allende
A Chilean statesman, Allende was the first democratically elected Marxist president in Latin America, seeking to build socialism by peaceful means until he was overthrown by Pinochet's military coup in 1973.
Intellectual lifeSalvador Dalí
Catalan surrealist painter, Dalí was expelled from the surrealist group over his ambiguous sympathies for fascism, publicly backed Franco and the monarchy and, from 1949 on, embraced a Catholic nuclear mysticism fusing faith and science.
BusinessSam Altman
Chief executive of OpenAI, Altman led the mainstreaming of generative artificial intelligence, argues for international regulation of the field and funds universal basic income experiments as an answer to automation.
PoliticsSamora Machel
Guerrilla leader and first president of Mozambique after independence from Portugal, Machel led FRELIMO toward a single-party Marxist-Leninist state, with agrarian collectivization, Soviet support, and opposition to colonialism and regional apartheid.
Political theorySamuel Edward Konkin III
An American libertarian theorist, Konkin created agorism, advocating the replacement of the state through free, parallel markets and counter-economics, using informal activity to erode state power.
PoliticsSantiago Peña
Former IMF economist and president of Paraguay for the Colorado Party since 2023, backed by Horacio Cartes. He keeps taxes low, ties with Taiwan and alignment with Trump and Israel, and champions agribusiness and the traditional family.
Intellectual lifeSantos Dumont
Aviation pioneer who flew the 14-bis in Paris in 1906 and left his inventions in the public domain. Distressed by the military use of aircraft, he asked the League of Nations to ban airplanes from warfare.
Political theorySatoshi Nakamoto
Symbolic statue
Pseudonymous author of the Bitcoin whitepaper and original Bitcoin software. The proposal described peer-to-peer electronic payments using cryptographic proof and distributed consensus; the author’s real identity remains unknown.
Political theorySayyid Qutb
Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Qutb wrote Milestones, which declared modern Muslim societies to be in jahiliyya and called for a vanguard to establish God's sovereignty. He was executed by Nasser's government in 1966.
PhilosophySeneca
Roman Stoic philosopher and statesman, Seneca advised Nero and wrote about clemency, virtue, and mastery of the passions; his proximity to power and great wealth stand in tension with his counsel of simplicity.
PoliticsSergei Melikov
A Russian National Guard general and Putin ally, Melikov headed Dagestan from 2020 to 2026, a period marked by war mobilization, the antisemitic airport pogrom, and jihadist attacks, and in 2026 became a senator for Bryansk.
PoliticsSergio Mattarella
President of Italy since 2015, re-elected in 2022, Mattarella comes from left-wing Christian Democracy and guards the Constitution, Europeanism, NATO and support for Ukraine, against the Mafia that killed his brother.
PoliticsSérgio Moro
A former federal judge, Moro led Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato), Brazil's biggest corruption probe, targeting state oil giant Petrobras, then served as justice minister under Bolsonaro before resigning; now running for governor of Paraná in 2026.
EconomicsSidney Webb
Co-founder of the Fabian Society and the London School of Economics, Webb advocated a gradual parliamentary and administrative transition to socialism, drafted Clause IV of the British Labour Party, and praised Soviet planning in his old age.
ReligionSigmund Freud
Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis and developed concepts such as the unconscious, repression, and the Oedipus complex. In The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and Its Discontents, he critically examined religion, culture, and conflicts between individual desire and social life.
PoliticsSimón Bolívar
A South American military leader, Bolívar was the great liberator who led the independence of several countries of Spanish America, dreaming of uniting the continent under strong, centralized republics.
PhilosophySlavoj Žižek
A Slovenian philosopher, Žižek unites Marxism, psychoanalysis, and cultural criticism to analyze ideology and contemporary capitalism, becoming one of the most popular and provocative left-wing thinkers of our time.
PhilosophySocrates
Athenian philosopher, Socrates created the dialectical method of questioning to examine beliefs and pursue virtue, distrusted mass politics and the rhetoric of demagogues, and was executed for corrupting the youth.
ActivismSteve Bannon
An American political strategist, Bannon articulated right-wing national populism, pitting globalist elites against an economic, cultural, and sovereigntist nationalism that influenced populist campaigns around the world.
PoliticsSun Yat-sen
A Chinese statesman, Sun Yat-sen led the revolution that overthrew the empire and founded the Republic of China, formulating the Three Principles of the People, uniting nationalism, democracy, and the people's welfare.
PoliticsTarcísio de Freitas
A military engineer and Bolsonaro's infrastructure minister, Tarcísio has governed São Paulo since 2023 with concessions, privatisations and a technocratic managerial pitch, reelected in October 2026.
ActivismTed Kaczynski
A former mathematics professor who withdrew to a remote cabin in Montana and carried out a nationwide bombing campaign for nearly two decades against scientists and executives, Kaczynski argued in his manifesto 'Industrial Society and Its Future' that industrial technology destroys human freedom and must be reversed through deliberate collapse.
Political theoryTheodor Herzl
An Austro-Hungarian journalist, Herzl was the founder of modern political Zionism, advocating the creation of a Jewish national state as a response to antisemitism, becoming a central figure in Israel's history.
PoliticsTheodore Roosevelt
A US president, Theodore Roosevelt led the Progressive Era, fighting monopolies, regulating the market, and creating policies of environmental conservation and protection for consumers and workers.
ReligionThomas Aquinas
A Dominican friar and the foremost systematizer of medieval scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas fused Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology in the Summa Theologica, arguing for natural law as the basis of moral and political order, the authority of the Church and the Christian monarch, and hierarchy as the earthly reflection of divine order.
Intellectual lifeThomas Edison
American inventor and businessman with over a thousand patents, he created the phonograph, the commercial light bulb and the first industrial research lab. He backed direct current against Tesla and was a deist freethinker critical of organized religion.
PhilosophyThomas Hobbes
An English philosopher, Hobbes founded a contractualist theory of the sovereign state, defending strong central authority to contain civil war, guarantee security, and subordinate religious and factional conflicts to public peace.
PoliticsThomas Jefferson
Author of the Declaration of Independence and third US president, Jefferson championed an agrarian republic of small landowners, limited and decentralized government, religious freedom, and distrust of banks, armies, and cities.
ReligionThomas Müntzer
Radical Reformation preacher who broke with Luther and led peasants and miners in the German Peasants' War of 1525. He preached an apocalyptic theocracy of the elect, with goods in common and the overthrow of godless princes; he was beheaded after Frankenhausen.
Political theoryThomas Paine
A pamphleteer of the American and French revolutions, Paine defended the rights of man, the republic, and radical social reforms in popular language, spreading democratic ideals among the masses of his time.
PoliticsThomas Sankara
A revolutionary from Burkina Faso, Sankara led a Marxist, pan-Africanist government that promoted self-sufficiency, women's rights, and radical social reforms, becoming an anti-imperialist icon of Africa.
ActivismTiradentes
Ensign and dentist who led the Minas Conspiracy against colonial taxation and Portuguese rule. Inspired by American independence, the plot envisioned a republic with a university and local manufacturing; he was hanged in 1792.
PoliticsTomáš Garrigue Masaryk
A Czech statesman and philosopher, Masaryk was the founder and first president of Czechoslovakia, defending humanist democracy, minority rights, and ethical values as the basis of national political life.
PoliticsTony Blair
British prime minister from 1997 to 2007, Blair took New Labour to the Third Way, with markets, investment in education and tough sentencing, backed the invasion of Iraq and now champions digital ID and AI in government.
Intellectual lifeVictor Gao
Former Deng Xiaoping interpreter and vice president of the CCG think tank, Victor Gao defends one-party rule, unifying Taiwan by any means, Hong Kong's security law and the claim that NATO caused the war in Ukraine.
PoliticsViktor Orbán
Hungary's prime minister from 2010 to 2026, Orbán built so-called illiberal democracy, combining nationalism, Christian conservatism, sovereignty vis-à-vis the EU and control over media and courts; defeated in 2026, he leads Fidesz in opposition.
BusinessVitalik Buterin
Creator of Ethereum, Buterin formulated d/acc — defensive, decentralized technological acceleration —, funds public goods through quadratic funding, champions cryptography and privacy, condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and criticizes both the state and corporate monopolies.
PoliticsVladimir Lenin
Leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution and founder of the Soviet Union, Lenin theorized the vanguard party, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and imperialism as the final stage of capitalism, shaping 20th-century communism.
PoliticsVladimir Putin
Russia's leader for over 25 years, Putin crushed all real opposition, nationalized strategic sectors under patrimonial state capitalism, pushes anti-LGBT and traditional-values laws with the Orthodox Church, restricts Central Asian immigration, wages war on Ukraine, and censors the internet via AI in the name of digital sovereignty.
PoliticsVladimir the Great
Grand Prince of Kyiv from 980 to 1015, Vladimir the Great unified and expanded Kievan Rus', ended paganism by adopting Byzantine Orthodox Christianity in 988, married the Byzantine princess Anna and had his people baptized in the Dnieper.
PoliticsVolodymyr Zelensky
Ukraine's president, Zelensky went from actor to statesman and became a symbol of national resistance to the Russian invasion, defending democracy, sovereignty, and his country's rapprochement with the West.
PhilosophyVoltaire
A French Enlightenment writer and philosopher, he attacked religious fanaticism and the Church ("crush the infamous thing"), championed free speech and tolerance in the Calas affair, but favored enlightened monarchy over popular democracy. Deist, author of Candide.
PoliticsWalter Ulbricht
German communist leader who ruled East Germany under tight Soviet control, building the Berlin Wall in 1961, collectivizing the economy, and repressing dissent under Stasi surveillance and single-party rule.
BusinessWarren Buffett
The investor behind Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett popularised value investing, argues for higher taxes on the very rich and pledged to give away nearly his whole fortune, criticising the inequality the system produces.
PoliticsWilhelm II of Germany
Last German emperor and king of Prussia (1888–1918), Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck, pursued Weltpolitik with the High Seas Fleet, militarism and colonial expansion, led Germany into the First World War and abdicated in 1918, going into exile in the Netherlands.
EconomicsWilliam Beveridge
A British economist, Beveridge designed the United Kingdom's welfare state, proposing universal social security against poverty, disease, and unemployment as a basis for social liberalism.
Intellectual lifeWilliam F. Buckley Jr.
An American intellectual, Buckley articulated modern conservatism in the United States, uniting free markets, anti-communism, and traditional Christian values into a coherent, influential political and cultural force.
PoliticsWilliam of Orange
A Lutheran-born noble who converted to Catholicism and later Calvinism, William led the Dutch Revolt against Philip II of Spain, championed relative religious tolerance, and was assassinated in 1584 by a Spanish agent, becoming the "father of the fatherland."
PoliticsWinston Churchill
British prime minister who led the United Kingdom against Nazi Germany in World War II, Churchill combined staunch defense of the British Empire and liberal capitalism with fervent anti-communist rhetoric, and was also the author of controversial colonial and wartime decisions.
PoliticsWoodrow Wilson
President of the United States (1913–1921), Wilson pursued progressive domestic reforms, led the country into World War I in the name of liberal democracy, and championed national self-determination and the creation of the League of Nations, despite maintaining segregationist policies at home.
PoliticsXi Jinping
China's leader, Xi Jinping concentrated power like no successor of Mao, reinforcing the Communist Party's control, nationalism, and the country's global projection through technology and economic influence.
PoliticsYamandú Orsi
History teacher, Mujica's political heir in the MPP and president of Uruguay for the Broad Front since 2025. A moderate, consensus-seeking leftist, he pairs stronger social programs and policing with fiscal prudence and no new taxes, and signed a euthanasia law.
ActivismZe'ev Jabotinsky
Leader of Revisionist Zionism, Jabotinsky championed an assertive Jewish nationalism, an independent military force, and a Jewish-majority state, becoming an inspiration for the contemporary Israeli right.
PoliticsZohran Mamdani
Mayor of New York City and Uganda-born democratic socialist, Mamdani champions rent freezes, city-owned grocery stores, free buses, and sanctuary-city protections for immigrants, while moderating in office by keeping the police commissioner in place.
ActivismZumbi dos Palmares
The last great leader of Palmares, the largest settlement of escaped slaves in the Americas, Zumbi resisted colonial expeditions for decades in defense of freedom for thousands of enslaved Africans and their descendants, becoming a foremost symbol of anti-slavery resistance.
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