HOW TO BE A DICTATOR

Comparative study of eight dictators, plumbing the connections between their ruthless political narratives and their fluctuating popular appeal.

Samuel Johnson Prize winner Dikötter (Chair, Humanities/Univ. of Hong Kong; The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976, 2016, etc.) writes with academic rigor and awareness that these megalomaniacal figures continue to inspire fascination relevant to politically volatile times—see Putin, Erdoğan, and others. “Throughout the twentieth century,” writes the author, “hundreds of millions of people cheered their own dictators, even as they were herded down the road to serfdom.” Dikötter moves from the most notorious dictators—Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il-sung—to the less well-known, including Haiti’s Duvalier, Romania’s Ceausesçu, and Ethiopia’s Mengistu. Mussolini established the fascist autocrat archetype almost accidentally, consolidating power with a spike in state-sanctioned violence. He received sustained popular acclaim while seeking a “self-sufficient economy” to prepare for war until his calamitous alliance with one-time protégé Hitler. Of the quintessential dictator, the author writes, “when Hitler had given his first political speech at a beer hall in Munich, few could have predicted his rise to power….He enjoyed a bohemian lifestyle, reading widely and pursuing his passion for opera and architecture.” While he was a master manipulator of his political circle, he channeled his popular appeal into “a costly war of attrition.” Following a chronicle of the devastation of World War II—and a similarly compelling examination of the ruthless Stalin—the author examines the politically complex and socially brutal reigns of Mao and Kim. “As Kim’s word became absolute the epithets used to describe him became ever more extravagant,” and “his cult extended to his family.” While Dikötter focuses broadly on the biographies of each dictator (and their crucial sycophant enablers), each chapter establishes a firm sense of time and place, capturing the palpable dread these figures established within their societies.

An approachable discussion of a brand of political menace that seems both faded into history and oddly relevant.