Professor and authoritarianism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat joins WIRED to answer the internet's burning questions about dictators and fascism. Why do people support dictators? How do dictators come to power? What's the difference between a dictatorship, an autocracy, and authoritarianism? What are the most common personality traits found in tyrants and dictators? Is Xi Jinping a dictator? How do dictators amass wealth? Professor Ben-Ghiat answers these questions and many more on Tech Support: Dictator Support.
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Expert: Ruth Ben-Ghiat
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Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Director: Lisandro Perez-Rey
Director of Photography: Ben Dewey
Editor: Paul Tael
Expert: Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas; Brandon White
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Casting Producer: Nicholas Sawyer
Camera Operator: Constantine Economides
Sound Mixer: Sean Paulsen
Production Assistant: Caleb Clark
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Rachel Kim
Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo
Additional Editor: Brenda Cespedes; JC Scruggs
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
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TechTranscript
00:00I'm professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat. I study authoritarianism. Let's answer some questions from the internet. This is tech support
00:07dictators
00:12At system Kumar 999 asks bro
00:16WTF is fascism fascism is a one-party state
00:21Classically with an all-powerful dictator at its head meaning no more separation of powers
00:27No independent judiciary
00:29Mussolini in the 1920s coined the term fascism. He also said everything in the state nothing outside the state
00:36So the state reaches into areas that in democracies the state has no place
00:42There's no more trade unions except the state unions
00:45Employers and employees were in the same Union and that tells you what kind of Union it was
00:50Fascism is also classically expansionist the conquest of territory
00:55Imperialism is intrinsic to
00:57fascism there is no sense of fascism without violence fascists truly believe whether it's Hitler or
01:05Francisco Franco in Spain or Mussolini that violence is the way you change the world
01:09They declare one category of person as an enemy could be a racial enemy as in Nazi Germany
01:15It could be a political enemy as it was in Italian fascism and for Francisco Franco in Spain
01:21But that enemy must be exterminated
01:24so the state organizes itself around the practice of violence and regular people are trained to become
01:31Vigilant and informers and use violence themselves. So violence is at the very core of fascism
01:38Malice Liddell asks why is Putin shirtless and so many of his pictures Putin takes up where Mussolini left off in
01:46Using his body as an emblem of strength Mussolini stripped off his shirt
01:51he was the first leader ever to do that on camera and that stood for Italy's strength and dynamism and modernity this idea of
02:00The dictator being the man. Everyone should look up to is very old. It goes back to the fascist years
02:07This is a period cartoon making fun of Hitler Goebbels
02:12His propaganda minister was depicting him as a kind of demigod
02:17Dictators and authoritarians pose as the macho men
02:20But they also create a climate in their countries of a kind of lawless
02:25Masculinity that says that a real man should be able to have anyone and anything he wants without
02:31Asking for consent and so Berlusconi created such an atmosphere in Italy of misogyny that the United Nations
02:39Issued a special report after he had been in and out of power for a decade saying that there was grave risk to Italy's
02:46Women because of the rise in domestic violence and hate crimes against women the bang asks what defines a dictator?
02:54It comes from the verb to dictate that gives us a clue
02:57So a dictator is somebody who wants to get his way doesn't care about public welfare
03:02Often is very very corrupt steals from the people manipulates people through propaganda
03:07They don't agree with the separation of powers. So the executive power becomes
03:12Overwhelming in a dictatorship a dictator is a leader who wants absolute power
03:17Someone who does not want his authority to be checked by any institution
03:22And so he proceeds to take those institutions apart to void them of all people who are not loyalists
03:30To create his state in his own image and make everything be about him at angel
03:36Uma5 asks
03:38Dictatorship
03:39authoritarianism
03:40Autocracy are the three forms of governance really different
03:45Authoritarianism is a political system that often is
03:49Dictatorship, you can have civilian dictatorships like the fascist dictatorships. You can have military dictatorships nowadays
03:56Some of the authoritarian leaders don't correspond to the one-party
04:01Dictators of earlier times like Mao or Hitler or Stalin
04:06Autocracy is another name for the political system of authoritarianism
04:10we have democracies where you have voting rights and the will of the people translates into the leadership and
04:17autocracies where the leader does their best to stay in power no matter what the people think
04:23Kozlowski from reddit asks
04:25How do dictators maintain power when it seems that most of the country is against them?
04:30Dictators use the
04:31Authoritarian playbook the playbook is while you're running for office while you're building up your power
04:37You want to discredit journalists?
04:39you want to call them fake news or vermin or
04:44Communists and authoritarians do this because if evidence of their corruption comes out or their violent acts
04:51They need the public to not believe the press to think the press is lying
04:56So there is no other voice telling the truth. The truth is gone. The Nazi term was the lying press today
05:04We talk about fake news many
05:06Dictators use what today in Russia is called the fire hose of falsehood
05:11This is a high volume of lies half-truths conspiracy theories because conspiracy theories are as old as
05:19Propaganda the fact the Jews were supposed to be controlling the globe. That was a fascist
05:24Conspiracy theory dictators also maintain power by creating an atmosphere of terror of intimidation whether it's physical
05:32violence against enemies of the state or today they harass people with
05:37Lawsuits with smear campaigns they try and ruin you because the goal is to get you to self-censor
05:44Then you're doing the dictator's work for him avj164b from reddit asks
05:50What are the differences between a fascist dictatorship and a communist dictatorship? They do many many things in common
05:56They have an all-powerful leader with a personality cult. They use propaganda
06:00The difference is in who the target is. So
06:05fascists go after
06:07leftists and although
06:09national socialism and
06:11Italian fascism took
06:13Originally at their very beginnings from the left as soon as they constituted into parties their main
06:21Enemy was the left the most consistent
06:24targets of
06:26Nazism and fascism were communists and socialists. So
06:30fascist dictatorships are
06:32Anti-communists, obviously, that's one huge difference from communist dictatorship there the targets the enemies are
06:40Counter-revolutionaries anyone who's going to put the march of the revolution into jeopardy and so Mao killed millions and millions of people
06:49Justifying it as getting rid of counter revolutionaries
06:52Jay Anderson asks, what are the most common personality traits tyrants and dictators possess? They are
06:59Narcissists meaning they care only about themselves
07:03Dictators attract attention and adulation because they tend to be very charismatic
07:08So they're very good performers. They're very good orators. They will do anything to preserve their power
07:14For example Benito Mussolini the first fascist dictator in
07:181924 he had his main political opponent killed and in order to escape an investigation
07:24He declared dictatorship dictators tend to be paranoid
07:28They construct something called the inner sanctum and this is an inner circle of advisors and very common is that it includes?
07:36Family members. There's a whole history of sons-in-law being given important positions from Benito Mussolini
07:42the fascist who had his son-in-law as foreign minister Pinochet used his son-in-laws and put them at the head of the
07:50Privatization agencies, so they made a lot of money
07:52they also end up in this kind of cocoon where they start to believe their own propaganda and
07:59Stop making good decisions
08:01Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022 without
08:06Consulting his military or his economic specialists adequately
08:10And so the military had huge losses at the beginning of the Ukraine conflict more generals died
08:16than since World War two at the beginning because Putin did not listen to criticism and objective feedback
08:23Dictators don't have any moral code
08:25They will ally with anyone think about Hitler the fascist allying temporarily with Stalin the communist think about today
08:33Xi Jinping the communist allying with Vladimir Putin the far-right leader
08:37So that old Machiavellian saying the ends justified the means perfectly sum up the dictator's personality
08:44at
08:46Volpeculi June asks, why do dictators have statues and pictures of themselves all over the countries?
08:51They oppress dictators have giant egos
08:54But their secret is that they're very insecure the rules of personality cults have not changed for a hundred years
09:01You have to be the man of the people you speak in a plain language
09:05You connect with the people but you've also got to be the man above all other men the man who's untouchable
09:11The man who's kind of like a god so they build statues of themselves to give a sense of this godliness of this
09:19Omnipotence so the statues are their way of saying I'm gonna be here for a thousand years
09:25So dictators want to be omnipresent
09:28They have so many reminders of themselves in every way rituals
09:33statues books
09:35Photographs and they become kind of inescapable take the heil hitler salute in nazi
09:40Germany anytime you went into any social context you had to perform it you both used your hand to salute
09:48But you had to say out loud heil hitler this brought hitler into the conversation into every conversation
09:56Even though he was not physically present and what you were doing is saying you were
10:00Submissive to him and wishing him good health this corresponds to the desire of the dictator to be everywhere and people should not have
10:09Social relations without the dictator being part of them and that's also why their populations get really sick of them. Mr
10:16Cornfield asks, how do dictators come to power?
10:19They can be appointed as the classic fascists were Mussolini was appointed by the King German elites
10:26politicians brought in Hitler nowadays
10:29Dictators can come to power initially through elections and then become
10:35Dictators for example of Vladimir Putin when he was put into place
10:39He was backed by the oligarchs at the beginning. He was not an all-powerful dictator
10:43It takes people years to amass enough power to do that about
10:4775% of authoritarian regimes in the 20th century were created through coups a group of soldiers and generals
10:55They just take power. These can be civilian coups or military coups
10:59But the point is that they impose themselves on power forcibly at George Forrester
11:0417 asks
11:07WTF is a quote self coup d'etat a self coup is a variety of coup when the leader
11:13Is already in office perhaps you are the leader and you've lost an election. Well, you just refuse to leave
11:19That's what Nicolas Maduro did in Venezuela. That's what Donald Trump tried to do through the January 6th insurrection
11:26But in that case it failed president Yoon of South Korea declared martial law
11:30Instead of having to be impeached in that case
11:33It was promptly dismantled and he is under detention the same thing happened in Peru in
11:402022 president Castillo was about to be impeached. So he refused to leave he tried to have martial law
11:46It was very again very swiftly taken care of and justice was served
11:49The joke was that president Castillo started his day as president and he ended it as a prisoner
11:56It's very important to find perpetrators of self coups
12:00Accountable this next question is from Kai. Did y'all know Hitler tried to overthrow the government during the Beer Hall Putsch in
12:071923 but failed and was jailed I did know and it's important for everybody to know this history now
12:13So Hitler tried to overthrow the government. He was put in jail
12:171924 that's where he wrote Mein Kampf when he came out. He was ranting and raving with his racist
12:24Diatribes, he was not taken seriously
12:27Although several German states did prevent him from speaking publicly because of his hate speech
12:33But then he promised to obey the Constitution to get those bans on his hate speech
12:39Removed and he proceeded to build up the Nazi Party over the 1920s
12:44And then the depression hit and social unrest increased the left
12:50parties increased and so Germany leads in
12:541933 decided to appoint Hitler who by then was the leader of an
12:59Increasingly popular party to get rid of the left for them
13:02so the German elites who brought Hitler into power thought they could control him and use him to get rid of the left and
13:10Then the rest was history where they were not able to contain him and he ended up controlling them
13:16Midwest mama says many dictatorships criminalize abortion
13:20China Russia several others say it's a woman's duty to breed as many children as possible for the state
13:26That's correct
13:27And we can ask why that is throughout history
13:30Dictatorships even in the case of China where they had a one-child policy for many years have now started to reverse this and
13:37dictatorships in particular that have
13:40fantasies of national purity of designing a perfect race or of having more as Victor Orban says
13:47Hungarian babies to combat the number of immigrant babies all these different reasons are why many
13:54Dictatorships and authoritarian states encourage the right kind of women to have babies along with the political opposition
14:02journalists LGBTQ people women have been the enemy of the strongman and every regime acts to take
14:10bodily autonomy away from women take their agency away and
14:14criminalizing abortion and rolling back or getting rid of
14:18Reproductive rights is part of that this next question is from Karen
14:22Sake do Americans want to live in a dictatorship many Americans have no idea what dictatorship entails
14:28But have been convinced that democracy is failing them and have seen dictators held up as superior role models
14:34They have been conditioned by the media by President Trump to feel that
14:41Autocrats that dictators whether it's Xi Jinping whether it's Vladimir Putin are superior brands of leaders
14:48Studies have shown all over the world about 30% of the population holds
14:54authoritarian leanings that are often expressed in
14:58Parenting styles in how they think about authority
15:01Are you kind of a mini dictator at home or are you a collegial collaborative type?
15:06These people can get activated if a demagogue comes on the scene
15:11for almost 10 years now Donald Trump has
15:14Appealed to certain groups who are more comfortable with authoritarian context
15:20He created a big tent for every kind of political extremist every kind of racist from people who were southern racists to neo-nazis
15:28Those people who already have authoritarian views on the world can be very
15:35Seduced by a politician who comes and says I am a strong man. I will decide things for you
15:41I will bring order into society and it becomes a natural meeting of that
15:46Kind of person with that kind of leader and so together all of this created an environment where many Americans
15:54Felt that they could see themselves in some kind of political system
15:59That's not a democracy sharp boy from Reddick asks
16:02How do dictators actually make their money the history of dictatorship and the history of corruption are completely entwined at their extreme?
16:10You have something called
16:13kleptocracy that is when it's a state of thieves an example was
16:18Qaddafi in Libya where the leader and his cronies were stealing from state agencies. They were
16:24expropriating private citizens
16:26Factories they were taking over state agencies and funneling the money to the Swiss bank accounts
16:33The same thing is true of Putin's Russia, which is a fully formed kleptocracy
16:38Where Putin and his cronies kind of plunder for example Gazprom the state energy conglomerate
16:45They take profits out of state agencies
16:48So instead of working for the people the agency works to fund the dictator and the money today
16:53Goes less to Swiss bank accounts than to offshore accounts
16:57For example Vladimir Putin after 20 years in power is now one of the very richest men in the world
17:04So dictators make money in an illegitimate fashion, which is why they use propaganda
17:11Violence repression to make sure that none of their secrets come out based Mike Lee
17:18Writes name a fascist dictator whose agenda entailed limiting the size
17:24Cost and power of government. Well, Senator Lee there is one Augusto Pinochet the bloody
17:31military dictator of Chile who came to power through a US-backed coup and made Chile a
17:37laboratory of neoliberal economics
17:40privatizations
17:41Cutting social
17:43Services and at first this provided a boost to the economy mostly to giant corporations including American corporations
17:50But within a few years it caused bank failures massive hardship and people went into debt
17:56and so the long view is that we can think of
17:59Dictators as always expanding the government and causing a lot of waste and bloat in the process actually
18:06But even when they cut the size of the government it doesn't end up
18:10Well Johnson Tao
18:12Says I don't understand. Why do people support dictators?
18:17It can seem strange that people support
18:19Dictators who take their rights away because what dictators want you to do is not only betray other people people in your communities
18:26You're gonna inform on them. You're gonna look the other way when your loved ones get taken away by the secret police
18:32They also want you to betray yourself. They want you to lose your moral compass to self-censor
18:37Dictators are very skilled at posing as saviors at creating crises or
18:44exploiting crises and then posing themselves as the solution whether it's an economic crisis or the
18:50perception of social unrest one of the classic dictator narratives for a hundred years is that only the
18:57Authoritarian is going to keep people safe against the threat of immigrants coming across the border now
19:03There's a grain of truth always to this because immigrants to come over the border
19:08But what dictators do is say that immigrants are coming over the border to rape our women to take our jobs to dilute our
19:16Population because they're the wrong skin color and the wrong faith
19:19And so the same excuses for a hundred years are used to justify their national purity campaigns
19:26Mussolini used to talk about black brown and yellow people
19:30That's his words coming across the border and having too many babies. These are old
19:36narratives and they work because they make people fearful fearful for their
19:41Security for their family and then the dictator is there to say I alone can fix it snowflake
19:47100% pure Masshall says why is he even having rallies?
19:51He's referring to President Trump US presidents don't have rallies dictators have rallies Hitler had rallies
19:58Authoritarians love adulation and they love opportunities to perform because rallies are an
20:04Occasion where people come out in mass numbers to show their loyalty and what dictators care about more than anything is people
20:12showing loyalty to them on
20:15Camera, and so that's one reason whether they're right or left or anti-colonial or imperialist
20:21They all have rallies early on Joseph Goebbels who later became Hitler's
20:26Propaganda chief. He realized that Hitler was terrible in a studio. He was wooden
20:31He needed the energy of crowds to come alive and that's why Goebbels hit on this idea of having rallies
20:39Non-stop and that has remained a feature of dictatorship. Think of Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo
20:46Constantly had rallies where he dressed up. His thing was being the leper. He sat on a throne
20:50These are shows of power and omnipotence. Here's a question from the political discussion subreddit
20:57Does the Internet improve democracy or enhance the potential for dictatorship? The Internet is a double-edged
21:04Tool it has allowed dissidents who are operating in repressive context to have new audiences
21:10They would never have had such as the protesters in
21:142019 in Moscow who live-streamed on Twitter themselves getting arrested having millions and millions of views
21:21However, the Internet has allowed
21:24dictators to
21:26Centralize and speed up the circulation of their propaganda. Now this goes back all the way to the beginning of authoritarianism
21:33Smart dictators savvy dictators have always known how to take the latest media technology and use it to their advantage
21:40So Mussolini used newsreels and he was a great performer Hitler had that crazy ranting voice
21:46So he was very effective radio
21:48Modi of India when he first ran for office and he's the most followed leader on Instagram in the world right now
21:56He used holograms
21:57So he could be in a hundred different cities at the same time up through Bolsonaro in Brazil and Trump who used social media
22:05Very very effectively. So the Internet is a tool like other tools before it
22:10however
22:10the Internet has the ability to
22:13hugely increase the volume of propaganda and the circulation of propaganda at e Harding
22:192000 asks is Orban a fascist Victor Orban prime minister of Hungary has fascist qualities
22:26But today in the 21st century
22:29Fascism looks different you have elections
22:32You keep them going but you manipulate the system by control of the media by control of the judiciary and the election
22:39Apparatus to make sure that the election goes out your way
22:44Orban has become a hero to the new right because he has perfected what we call electoral autocracy
22:51You keep elections going but you find ways to get the results that you need. So that's different from old-school fascism
22:57Orban has gotten his cronies to buy important media properties
23:01So it's indirect control of the media and you control the electoral system you hollow out the institutions
23:08So that everybody's loyal to you. So these are things that go back to fascism
23:12but today they take place within a multi-party state one continuity of Orban with
23:18Classic fascism is trying to grow the population
23:21But only some people are encouraged to have babies white Christians
23:27Immigrants are not encouraged to have babies. Indeed. He's trying to get rid of immigrants and have them deported
23:33Another continuity is homophobia
23:36LGBTQ people have been
23:38legislated
23:39bureaucratically out of existence and that goes back to
23:42Fascism anybody who does not fit those roles of what they call the natural family one man one woman both straight
23:49Does not have a future in Hungary at on the XS says Pinochet was evil
23:56But he made Chile what it is today benevolent dictator. I study dictators
24:01I do not believe any dictator is benevolent because the definition of a dictator is someone who represses the popular will
24:08There's no voting in a classic dictatorship
24:11There's no free press if you are an opponent of the regime you will be sent to jail or killed
24:18That's not to me the definition of benevolence at Tyler e Harris asks honest question
24:25But why do dictators even bother to hold elections? They're just gonna rig anyway today
24:30Dictators keep elections going and so we often call them authoritarians rather than dictators
24:37But they rig the system through colonizing the media. So the opposition's message can't get there
24:43They'll put a prominent opponent under house arrest
24:47That's what Vladimir Putin did with Alexei Navalny who was extremely popular. He sent him to jail
24:53So he couldn't be a candidate. So the new system is called electoral autocracy you hold elections
24:59But you use all these tricks to make sure that they're not free and fair elections
25:04You can even once you feel you've amassed enough power
25:07Hold an election and then just refuse to recognize the results if you have lost and we have several
25:13Examples of that recently the biggest one in Venezuela still playing out today Maduro who lost an election to the opposition
25:21refused to leave office in
25:232023 we had Bolsonaro trying to have a coup because he was claiming he
25:29Actually won the election when he lost and in the United States
25:33Donald Trump claimed that he won the 2020 election when he did not
25:38Epic Thundercat says at what point do we start calling what Elon Musk is doing inside our government a coup as a
25:46Historian of coups. I consider this to be a situation
25:50That merits the word coup. So coups happen when people inside state institutions
25:56Go rogue. This is different
25:59This is unprecedented a private citizen the richest man in the world has a group of
26:051920 year old coders who have come in as shock troops and are taking citizens data and
26:13closing down entire government agencies when we think of
26:17traditional coups often
26:19perpetrated by the military you have
26:21foot soldiers who do the work of
26:24Closing off the buildings of making sure that the actual government the old government
26:29They're trying to overthrow can no longer get in what we have here is a kind of digital
26:34Paramilitaries a group of people who have taken over and they've captured the data. They've captured the government buildings
26:41They were sleeping there
26:4324-7 and elected officials could not come in when our own elected officials are not allowed to enter into
26:50Government buildings because someone else is preventing them who has not been elected or officially in charge of any government agency that
26:58qualifies as a coup Pat Berry despondent American
27:03Asks, how do the oligarchs who help authoritarians come into power?
27:07Fair after the dictator has what he wants. Does he ever turn on them?
27:12Oligarchs are immensely wealthy and powerful
27:14Individuals who can help to change the political environment by putting certain candidates in office
27:21This was the case with Putin. He was chosen to run for president in
27:262000 by oligarchs one of the pillars of authoritarianism is what's called authoritarian bargains
27:33These are deals that leaders make with powerful people
27:37They could be oligarchs in the media area in finance and business
27:42They could also be faith leaders some faith leaders are so powerful to be almost like
27:47oligarchs and so these people team up the dictator needs these people to
27:52Legitimate them to tell the rest of the population because they're so influential that this guy is actually okay
27:57He may be violent, but he's our guy
28:00The problem with this is
28:02Inevitably when the dictator has seen that the oligarch has outlived his usefulness
28:08They will throw them under the bus early oligarchs who brought Putin to power
28:12He tried to then colonize or seize their assets
28:15And if they didn't agree to give him their assets he tried to jail them or they had to go into exile
28:20There's been something called sudden Russian death syndrome where many many
28:26Powerful elites connected with the energy industry have fallen out of windows or gone into the hospital and never emerged again
28:33Because Putin is cleaning house
28:36Tanvir Hassan asks how can a dictator be good for a nation?
28:40Dictators certainly want to be seen as being good for the nation and many people become fans of dictators because dictators are into
28:49Infrastructure they have huge egos. They want to be identified with grandiose public works
28:54Mussolini built sports stadiums
28:56He built miles of railroads and the myth was that he made the trains run on time
29:01Hitler built the autobahn of high-speed highways today in Turkey Erdogan has very large
29:08Construction projects such as the Istanbul Canal and so there's a sense of modernity and things happening
29:14The problem is when you don't have a free press
29:16Nobody can be tracking with accurate statistics
29:20How these big public works are affecting the economy and what kind of corruption is happening behind the scenes
29:27So dictators can attract a lot of support by people who fall for the appearances
29:33Look, he's doing things other people are not doing things. The dictator gets things done
29:37However, it's only later that the economic and social outcome of those big projects comes to light
29:45Alex Gretsch asks, why do dictators love Trump?
29:49We know that Trump loves dictators
29:51He even has talked about exchanging love letters with the leader of North Korea
29:56Not someone you would often think of as a particularly sentimental type do dictators love Trump? That's unclear
30:04dictators are
30:06transactional they use each other if dictators are loving Trump at the moment
30:10It's because they think that he can be an ally that they can get something from him
30:14If we take as the example Vladimir Putin he and Trump have a good relationship and yet he allows Trump to be mocked on
30:22Russian television as a useful fool. So this is an example of them using each other
30:29Which is what dictators know how to do beautifully at Eric E Warren asks
30:34Why do dictators always blame media opposition foreign countries and terror groups?
30:40Dictators are expert at creating a sense of existential dread. So it's not just polarization
30:46We don't agree, but we're in the same framework. We agree to disagree. They go for what I call survivalism
30:53It's me or you and only one of us is going to survive. This is what the Nazis did with the Jews
30:58This is what racists everywhere do with non-white peoples
31:02they create a sense of existential dread that this group must be attacked and
31:08Sometimes in the case of genocide must be removed from the face of the earth in order for our country to have peace and safety
31:15Often the enemy is a foreign country and there's a long history of
31:21Dictators saying that their countries have been victimized
31:24Mussolini talked about Italy as victimized by more
31:29powerful countries
31:31Democracies up to Xi Jinping who has a long history of talking about Chinese
31:37victimization by the West or Vladimir Putin Russia's
31:41Victimization by the West and so these are very powerful narratives that can justify foreign invasion
31:47The dictator says we've been victimized. It's time for us to protect ourselves by getting more territory
31:53Here's a question from magic. Is Xi Jinping a dictator?
31:57Not only is Xi Jinping a dictator the communist system only permits dictators
32:02But Xi Jinping is becoming more of a dictator. This is one way we can track how
32:08Dictatorship expands is your personality cult becoming more prominent check Xi Jinping's cult is becoming more prominent
32:16Are you trying to rehabilitate past dictators to kind of bolster your own glory check?
32:23Xi Jinping is talking a lot about Mao and styling himself as the inheritor of Mao
32:28Here's a question from Peter Quinn's. Why do dictators and wannabe dictators always want more land?
32:34That's kind of in the nature of being the dictator. You always want more power. You always want more control
32:41You also want more assets
32:42You want more natural resources to exploit if you're corrupt the same narratives get put forth over and over again
32:50Narratives of national purity. So for example the Nazis it wasn't enough to have conquest of Germans
32:56You had to go into Austria because there are people or you have these myths of national unification
33:02And that's being used right now by Xi Jinping a communist for Taiwan that Taiwan must be China because it needs to be
33:11Reunified as though it was part of China to begin with the same with Putin and Ukraine
33:16That they called the conquest of Ukraine a
33:21Reunification. So these are imperialist justifying narratives and dictators use them over and over again
33:26so it's no surprise to find President Trump a man of authoritarian leanings having come back to power and
33:34Becoming an imperialist talking about Canada becoming the 51st American state
33:39Talking about taking control of Greenland. So those are all the questions for today. Thank you for watching
33:46You