The Conductors of the Leaders
Who leads the leaders?
A conductor generates no current. It carries it, it decides what gets through, and without it the voltage has no effect. The same holds for the ideologies and mentors behind those in power: they do not design the policy, but they supply the language in which it can be presented as necessary — and they bind whoever speaks it.
The series proceeds case by case. Each text stands on its own; together they make a book. The typology comes at the end, not at the beginning, so that the cases do not have to fit a scheme.
I. The Dead
Mentors who can no longer object. Their influence runs through quotations and through disciples.
- “The Bones from Zollikon” — Putin and Ivan IlyinSeptember 2026
- “Only Strength Preserves Peace” — Fritz Kraemer, Hubertus Hoffmann and Friedrich Merzin progress
- “The Invisible Mentor” — Fritz Kraemer, the man without an office and without a bookJune 2026
II. The Living
Mentors who still speak, contradict and can watch their own influence.
- Wang Huning — the mentor who sits at the top himselfplanned
- The New Right — Yarvin, Thiel and a thousand-page programmeplanned
- Olavo de Carvalho — a government advised from exile by videoplanned
III. The Apparatus
Here no person leads, but an organisation: cadre schools, brotherhoods, institutes.
- The RSS and Narendra Modi — shaped before the careerplanned
- Millî Görüş and Recep Tayyip Erdoğanplanned
- The institutes of Budapest — Viktor Orbán and illiberal democracyplanned
IV. Without Doctrine
The control group. Without it, there is no telling whether an ideology achieves anything at all.
- Angela Merkel — sixteen years without a creedplanned
- Lula and Gustavo Petro — biography instead of a bookplanned
- Deng Xiaoping — the colour of the catplanned
Conclusion. The Typology
The whisperer talks, the court theorist justifies, the mentor shapes. And the question at the end: if even the leaders are led, where does responsibility lie?
- Introduction and conclusion of the serieslast