A despot in disguise: one man’s mission to rip up democracy | George Monbiot

James McGill Buchanan's vision of totalitarian capitalism has infected public policy in the US. Now it's being exported

" George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

It's the missing chapter: a key to understanding the politics of the past half century. To read Nancy MacLean's new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America, is to see what was previously invisible.

The history professor's work on the subject began by accident. In 2013 she stumbled across a deserted clapboard house on the campus of George Mason University in Virginia. It was stuffed with the unsorted archives of a man who had died that year whose name is probably unfamiliar to you: James McGill Buchanan. She says the first thing she picked up was a stack of confidential letters concerning millions of dollars transferred to the university by the billionaire Charles Koch.

Related: How corporate dark money is taking power on both sides of the Atlantic | George Monbiot

Related: Koch network 'piggy banks' closed until Republicans pass health and tax reform

Related: The Grenfell inquiry will be a stitch-up. Here's why | George Monbiot