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How to be a dictator : the cult of personality in the twentieth century / Frank Dikötter.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, New York : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019Copyright date: ©2019Description: xvi, 274 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
  • still image
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 1635573793
  • 9781635573794
  • 9781408891629
  • 140889162X
  • 9781408891612
  • 1408891611
Subject(s): Additional physical formats: ebook version :: No titleLOC classification:
  • JC495 .D55 2019
Contents:
Mussolini -- Hitler -- Stalin -- Mao Zedong -- Kim Il-sung -- Duvalier -- Ceausescu -- Mengistu -- Afterword.
Summary: "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. In the twentieth century, as new technologies allowed leaders to place their image and voice directly into their citizens' homes, a new phenomenon appeared where dictators exploited the cult of personality to achieve the illusion of popular approval without ever having to resort to elections. In How to Be a Dictator, Frank Dikötter examines the cults and propaganda surrounding twentieth-century dictators, from Hitler and Stalin to Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung. These men were the founders of modern dictatorships, and they learned from each other and from history to build their regimes and maintain their public images. Their dictatorships, in turn, have influenced leaders in the twenty-first century, including Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Using a breadth of archival research and his characteristic in-depth analysis, Dikötter offers a stunning portrait of dictatorship, a guide to the cult of personality, and a map for exposing the lies dictators tell to build and maintain their regimes." -- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Non-Fiction Davis (Central) Library Non-Fiction Non-Fiction 321.9 DIK Available T00828541
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From the Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author of Mao's Great Famine , a sweeping and timely study of twentieth-century dictators and the development of the modern cult of personality.

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. In the twentieth century, as new technologies allowed leaders to place their image and voice directly into their citizens' homes, a new phenomenon appeared where dictators exploited the cult of personality to achieve the illusion of popular approval without ever having to resort to elections.

In How to Be a Dictator , Frank Dikötter examines the cults and propaganda surrounding twentieth-century dictators, from Hitler and Stalin to Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung. These men were the founders of modern dictatorships, and they learned from each other and from history to build their regimes and maintain their public images. Their dictatorships, in turn, have influenced leaders in the twenty-first century, including Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Using a breadth of archival research and his characteristic in-depth analysis, Dikötter offers a stunning portrait of dictatorship, a guide to the cult of personality, and a map for exposing the lies dictators tell to build and maintain their regimes.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [207]-262) and index.

Mussolini -- Hitler -- Stalin -- Mao Zedong -- Kim Il-sung -- Duvalier -- Ceausescu -- Mengistu -- Afterword.

"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. In the twentieth century, as new technologies allowed leaders to place their image and voice directly into their citizens' homes, a new phenomenon appeared where dictators exploited the cult of personality to achieve the illusion of popular approval without ever having to resort to elections. In How to Be a Dictator, Frank Dikötter examines the cults and propaganda surrounding twentieth-century dictators, from Hitler and Stalin to Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung. These men were the founders of modern dictatorships, and they learned from each other and from history to build their regimes and maintain their public images. Their dictatorships, in turn, have influenced leaders in the twenty-first century, including Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Using a breadth of archival research and his characteristic in-depth analysis, Dikötter offers a stunning portrait of dictatorship, a guide to the cult of personality, and a map for exposing the lies dictators tell to build and maintain their regimes." -- Provided by publisher.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Preface (p. ix)
  • 1 Mussolini (p. 1)
  • 2 Hitler (p. 32)
  • 3 Stalin (p. 65)
  • 4 Mao Zedong (p. 93)
  • 5 Kim Il-sung (p. 123)
  • 6 Duvalier (p. 145)
  • 7 Ceausescu (p. 166)
  • 8 Mengistu (p. 186)
  • Afterword (p. 203)
  • Select Bibliography (p. 207)
  • Notes (p. 223)
  • Acknowledgements (p. 263)
  • Index (p. 265)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Dikötter (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 François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, Dikötter 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. Dikötter 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, Dikötter 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. (Dec.)

Booklist Review

A leading scholar of China under Mao considers eight of the twentieth century's most notorious dictators, suggesting that self-aggrandizement is a key component of successful autocracy. Violence and fear are messy and will only get you so far, emphasizes Dikötter (Mao's Great Famine, 2019). True tyranny requires a cult of personality around the Great Leader. Mussolini demolished Roman neighborhoods so that he could be remembered as the greatest destroyer who rebuilt Rome. Giant busts of Stalin were placed on 38 Central Asian mountain peaks. Portraits of President for Life Duvalier had to be displayed in every classroom in Haiti. Ceauescu's Bucharest palace was to be more voluminous than the Great Pyramid of Giza. Dikötter's capsule biographies are vivid and pithy, revealing similar megalomania across regimes (these men learned from each other) but also commonalities in how they were enabled by opportunistic aides, gullible journalists, duped foreign leaders, and cowed rivals. And if there's something unavoidably grim in the pattern that emerges, there's also the observation that most dictators, in the end, become victims of their own hubris.--Brendan Driscoll Copyright 2019 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Comparative study of eight dictators, plumbing the connections between their ruthless political narratives and their fluctuating popular appeal.Samuel Johnson Prize winner Diktter (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 timessee Putin, Erdoan, 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." Diktter moves from the most notorious dictatorsMussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il-sungto the less well-known, including Haiti's Duvalier, Romania's Ceausesu, 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 protg 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 IIand a similarly compelling examination of the ruthless Stalinthe 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 Diktter 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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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