The Dictator's Playbook

For the North Koreans, Kim Il Sung was a living God. And these people were being told that God was dead. Mussolini wanted an overthrow of everything. He was a disruptor. Saddam was so ruthless, so violent in all sorts of ways. Noriega was a gangster in a military uniform. Kim just cashiered his enemies. Amin was a master strategist. He knew what they needed to hear. Franco never lost a minute's sleep, over the crimes committed in his name. Dictators learn from each other all the time, about how to deal with opponents, about how you maintain a dictatorship for decades on end. Mussolini absolutely wrote the blueprint, for how to destroy a democracy. He understood the mechanisms of mass indoctrination. No dictator can survive with just repression alone. They have to cultivate some form of popularity. Absolute control over the people. Controlling what they think, where they work. A dictatorship needs to have a culture of fear, in order to enforce a sense of loyalty. This image of control - that if anyone tries to threaten the regime they will be dealt with. Dictators create a sense that you might be picked up, or if you do something wrong, your mother might be interrogated. Dictatorships have had an incredible impact on the past century. These dictators ended up learning from one another. They're all different, but many use the same tactics. The use of terror, propoganda, control of the elites, create an enemy, cult of personality, use violence. These are tools that dictators use to stay in power.