Dictatorship: It’s Easier Than You Think!

Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, there has been a cottage industry of books warning about a growing authoritarian movement in the United States. Readers can choose from Twilight of Democracy by Atlantic columnist Anne Applebaum, The Road to Unfreedom and On Tyranny both by historian Timothy Snyder, and Fascism: A Warning by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, to name but a few. Now, Dictatorship: It’s Easier Than You Think written by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa and illustrated by Kasia Babis has joined them.

The book’s throughline is an unnamed narrator who plays a role similar to Satan in the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” though he may or may not have rode a tank, held a general’s rank, etc. If that’s not enough of a comic book reference, think of the Mr. Crime mascot from Lev Gleason Publications’ Crime Does Not Pay. Co-writer Chalupa described the omniscient, omnipresent narrator as being visually Cary Grant, and snarky like Stephen Colbert, but with a devilish tempter. In appearance and demeanor, however, he more resembles a too-slick-by-far used car salesman than the suave, debonair, Grant.

Babis’ bouncy, cartoony style, which has appeared on the Nib or in In These Times, works well. The same cannot be said for her digital coloring job. The skin coloration of this narrator left me scratching my head. While on the cover, his skin has normal flesh tone, within the book he’s a dark purple. At first, I thought this was a clever intra-comic reference to the Daredevil foe the Purple Man, made famous on the Netflix show Jessica Jones. The villain’s superpower is a compelling voice that forces all who hear it to do whatever he says. Surely that would be a helpful ability for any aspiring autocrat. Then I saw that all humans in the book have the same unnatural skin colors and I realized that it couldn’t be the case. In all, I found the digital coloration of all greens, purples, and blues rather unpleasant to look at.

In surveying Dictatorship’s assortment of autocrats, it stands out that almost all of them are opponents of U.S. policy. Pro-U.S. dictators like the Shah of Iran, the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua, or the various juntas in El Salvador and Guatemala are all absent. When dictators who leaned towards the U.S. are present, such as Haiti’s “Baby Doc” Duvalier and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, this aspect of their rule is ignored. The exception is Augusto Pinochet the military dictator of Chile who took power in a U.S. backed coup, but this is presented as an aberration caused by a “bad apple” in the form of Henry Kissinger. The late Dr. Kissinger is rotten enough, but U.S. support for dictatorships preceded him and likely will succeed him for years to come.

Opposing the creators’ cast of villains is an odd assortment of heroes. Of course George Orwell is there; I’d be surprised if any student from an English-speaking country graduates without knowing him as a foe of dictatorship. Just as important though, is to note that Orwell fought with a socialist militia in Spain and sympathized with Catalonian anarchists. In one essay he went so far as to say that “Only revolution can save England. ... I dare say the London gutters will have to run with blood. All right, let them, if it is necessary.” Orwell’s politics make him an odd companion for the other heroes Kendzior and Chalupa have assembled.

What are we to make of the valorization of President Harry Truman? Truman shows up during a sequence about the Korean War. The narrator cowers in fear at Truman’s appearance, while the president poses in front of an American flag, surrounded by tanks and fighter jets. Truman, however, was no principled foe of dictatorship as he gave support to the royalist right in the Greek Civil War. As Noam Chomsky put it the royalists practiced “...torture, political exile for tens of thousands, reeducation camps, destruction of unions and any independent politics. ... The beneficiaries again included Nazi collaborators, while the primary victims were the workers and peasants of the Communist-led anti-Nazi resistance.” In Greece and other countries, it was more important to U.S. leaders keep out socialism or communism than to respect democracy.

Another bizarre sequence featuring a World War II-era leader occurs when Winston Churchill busts through a wall, cigar in hand, accompanied by the Kool-Aid man. The narration tells us that Churchill “achieved one of the greatest political comebacks in history as he rapidly prepared Great Britain for war and led the defeat of Hitler.” Our host then reminds us that Churchill was “great at stopping Nazis. Terrible at stopping the Bengal Famine in British India that killed an estimated three million people in 1943.” That’s true enough, but what is the audience to make of the contradictions inherit in this scene? The whole thing sits in the mind uneasily.

The circa-2016 liberal politics of Dictatorship come across most clearly when discussing useful idiots, which Chalupa refers to as “the theme of the book.” A useful idiot is a prejorative for an individual who is flattered and manipulated into a political cause. Examples given in the book include George Bernard Shaw, who denied Stalinist atrocities, and Ernest Hanfestaengl, a German-American businessman who provided support for Hitler. Also included is actress Susan Sarandon who is described as having “promoted Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.” In reality, Sarandon endorsed the Green Party-candidate Jill Stein. This false statement, alongside being compared to Nazis and Stalinists, may give the star grounds for a libel suit.

It should be clear from my review that radicals like myself are not the target audience for Dictatorship. Who is then? In a Guardian interview, Chalupa asserted that this is a book for younger readers. Yet Dictatorship’s lengthy bibliography includes Orwell’s novels and dense history books, plus articles from the Economist and the Atlantic. None of these are candidates for a typical young person’s bookshelf. In truth, the audience for this book can be stated thus: If you bought an “America Is Already Great” hat in 2016, this book is for you.

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