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How to Be a Dictator

How to Be a Dictator

The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century

by Frank Dikotter
Hardback
Publication Date: 01/10/2019

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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.

ISBN:
9781408891629
9781408891629
Category:
Comparative politics
Format:
Hardback
Publication Date:
01-10-2019
Language:
English
Publisher:
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Country of origin:
United Kingdom
Pages:
304
Dimensions (mm):
234x153x29mm
Weight:
0.63kg
Frank Dikotter

Frank Dikotter is Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has pioneered the use of archival sources and published a dozen books that have changed the way historians view China, from the classic The Discourse of Race in Modern China (1992) to his last book entitled The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976 (2016). His new book, Dictators and their Cult of Personality, is due for publication in September 2019. Frank Dikotter is married and lives in Hong Kong.

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