An itinerant Islamist activist, he also spent time in Egypt, India, Turkey and Russia, railing against the feebleness and injustices of Oriental despotisms and the immorality of Western imperialism, and trying to forge a Pan-Islamic movement.

ECONOMIST: The intellectual roots of Asian anti-Westernism

Russian foreign policy had always been motivated by fear of the outside world, and Marxism gave the current regime, which Kennan considered simply the latest in a line of Oriental despotisms, an ideological fig leaf for its insecurity and paranoia.

NEWYORKER: Getting Real

So it is with most despotisms.

WSJ: Review & Outlook: Barbarians at the Digital Gate