Dictatorship: It's Easier Than You Think!
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Co-hosts of the popular podcast Gaslit Nation outline the authoritarian's playbook, illuminating five steps every dictator needs to take to successfully amass and maintain power.
Do you crave the power to shape the world in your image?
Can you tell lies without blinking an eye?
Do you see enemies all around you?
If you answered yes to all of the above, then this is the job for you! And if becoming a dictator sounds intriguing, well, you’ve just stumbled upon the playbook that will guide you step by step towards making your big lie a reality.
Join Gaslit Nation co-hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa, with artist Kasia Babis, on a journey from riches to even more riches. They’ll show you how to consolidate your authority, silence your critics, weaponize your citizens, and even prolong your inevitable downfall!
Dictatorship! It’s easier than you think.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The joke underpinning this dead-serious yet seriously funny graphic how-to is that dictators don't need a guidebook: There have been so many successful tyrants, up-and-comers can just follow suit. Gaslit Nation podcast hosts Kendzior (They Knew) and Chalupa (Orwell and the Refugees) set a cheeky tone with a narrator—one of the "behind-the-scenes mad men" who sells fascism to the masses—rattling off the basic tenets of dictatorship. Recurring themes, such as "fake populism" and "scapegoating," are drawn with choice historical anecdotes: Stalin represents how paranoid purges and recruiting "useful idiots" can extend a dictator's lifespan, while Mussolini and North Korea's Kim Il Sung exemplify the mastery of all-encompassing propaganda machines. The creators don't shy from recent (or looming future) examples, going for the jugular with a page pairing Ivanka Trump and Mein Kampf quotes and arguing that Henry Kissinger abetted dictators such as Chile's Augusto Pinochet. A running theme about dictators gaining power with the acquiescence of a divided, distracted populace heightens the timeliness of their message in a polarized era. The bouncy art by Polish political activist and cartoonist Babis (Re: Constitutions) meshes well with the half-trenchant, half-goofball satire. This alarming guide to how democracies are lost is deceptively entertaining.
