How to Be a Dictator
The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
'Brilliant' NEW STATESMAN, BOOKS OF THE YEAR
'Enlightening and a good read' SPECTATOR
'Moving and perceptive' NEW STATESMAN
Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, Ceausescu, Mengistu of Ethiopia and Duvalier of Haiti.
No dictator can rule through fear and violence alone. Naked power can be grabbed and held temporarily, but it never suffices in the long term. A tyrant who can compel his own people to acclaim him will last longer. The paradox of the modern dictator is that he must create the illusion of popular support. Throughout the twentieth century, hundreds of millions of people were condemned to enthusiasm, obliged to hail their leaders even as they were herded down the road to serfdom.
In How to Be a Dictator, Frank Dikötter returns to eight of the most chillingly effective personality cults of the twentieth century. From carefully choreographed parades to the deliberate cultivation of a shroud of mystery through iron censorship, these dictators ceaselessly worked on their own image and encouraged the population at large to glorify them. At a time when democracy is in retreat, are we seeing a revival of the same techniques among some of today's world leaders?
This timely study, told with great narrative verve, examines how a cult takes hold, grows, and sustains itself. It places the cult of personality where it belongs, at the very heart of tyranny.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dik tter (The Cultural Revolution), a University of Hong Kong humanities professor, explores modern dictators and their "illusion of popular support" in this richly detailed yet disappointing study. Focusing on eight authoritarian regimes, including Italy under Benito Mussolini, China under Mao Zedong, Russia under Joseph Stalin, and Haiti under Fran ois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, Dik tter describes massive parades, weekly radio broadcasts, and marathon speeches before enraptured crowds. The purpose of these "cults of personality," he writes, was "not to convince or persuade," but rather to "enforce obedience": if no one can tell who's a true believer and who's lying, everyone has to self-censor. Dik tter reveals that Mussolini shaped his public image by leaving his office lights on at night (to prove that he never slept), and cites American journalist Edgar Snow's 1937 bestseller Red Star over China as an example of how dictators manipulate foreigners to burnish their international reputations. (Mao Zedong vetted Snow and reviewed the book's every detail.) But these rulers' true power, Dik tter contends, is fear without it, there is no cult. However, he fails to sufficiently analyze the mechanisms of fear and how they fit with the careful cultivation of these leaders' public images. Such oversights mar what might have been a fascinating work.
