Bernie Sanders is frequently accused of having different standards for left- and right-wing authoritarians. Is that true?
Mostly, yes. The implication that Sanders wants to turn America into Cuba or Venezuela is completely false; he has made it abundantly clear that his role model is Denmark, not a banana republic. Bernie doesn’t have an authoritarian bone in his body. That said, there is no doubt that he considers leaders like MBS and Erdogan to be evil by choice, and left-wing Latin American authoritarians like Maduro and the Castro brothers to be the well-meaning victims of unfortunate circumstances–most of them involving unwarranted American hostility. If he were elected president, this attitude would carry forward into his foreign policy. It is a change I don’t care to contemplate; fortunately, the electorate has solved that problem for me.