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Dictators in Cartoons
What is it that makes dictators fear cartoonists? The answer is that they can't stand to be ridiculed. And they don't help their cause much by so obviously enjoying the trappings of power, appearing in public with a retinue of bodyguards, a fleet of limousines and rows of medals across their chests topped off with over-sized sunglasses. Cartoonists may not be able to topple tyrants or change the course of history, but they can lessen the climate of fear and bring courage to the victims of state bullying with their subversive drawings. Laughter is the last thing dictators want to hear, especially when they are the subject of it. This hardback book has 192 pages and measures: 25.5 x 19 x 2cm
192 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2016
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About the author
Tony Husband
83 books4 followersTony Husband was a British cartoonist known for his black humour. He was mainly known for his work in Private Eye magazine, and his work has appeared in The Times, the Daily Mailand the Sunday Express as well as magazines including Playboy and The Spectator.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 27, 2023
It is a very strange feeling...how do you 'laugh' or 'make fun' of these monsters? When you think of the suffering they have caused the human race there is nothing funny about it. But then it occurred to me that the fact of the matter is that they HATE when they are made to look foolish; and that is the very reason we all should laugh at them - because by making them look foolish we are all the little boy who laughs at the emperor with no clothes on.
March 24, 2017
The Emperor Has No Clothes
I am not sure exactly what I was expecting from this book when I picked it for its title. I guess I was hoping for Trudeau's Yuge about Trump, Doonesbury-type laughs about subjects familiar to me: Hitler, Stalin. About once a month here I need to laugh, given the political tensions and fears in my country right now. Tony Husband is an award-winning British cartoonist, very prolific, lots of books, lots of yuks. Just the ticket.
But Dictators in Cartoons: Unmasking Monsters and Mocking Tyrants is not a silly book. It is a scholarly worked, well-researched, about cartoons against dictators across history. As he says, it is “a pictorial history of the fightback cartoonists have led against the tyrants of history on behalf of ordinary men and women everywhere.”
Dictators in Cartoons features cartoons (and not strips) by primarily editorial page political cartoonists, accompanied by short analytical texts by Husband, sometimes discussing the cartoonists and the degree of pushback they got for their cartoons. Hitler hated one British cartoonist so much he vowed to execute him as soon as Germany took over England.
The first chapter is devoted to nineteenth-century cartoons (of Napoleon, Tsar Nicholas, and others), and subsequent chapters examine cartoons skewering Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Franco and Mao Zedong. There are also examples of cartoonist making fun of more contemporary dictators such as Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Kim Jung Un, Milosevic, and others.
There have been a lot of dictators in the last century or so! So cartoonists will always be there, helping us to laugh even as we cry. This is a good book about taking the work of political cartoonists seriously, seeing them and acts of satire, parody and laughter as necessary.
I am not sure exactly what I was expecting from this book when I picked it for its title. I guess I was hoping for Trudeau's Yuge about Trump, Doonesbury-type laughs about subjects familiar to me: Hitler, Stalin. About once a month here I need to laugh, given the political tensions and fears in my country right now. Tony Husband is an award-winning British cartoonist, very prolific, lots of books, lots of yuks. Just the ticket.
But Dictators in Cartoons: Unmasking Monsters and Mocking Tyrants is not a silly book. It is a scholarly worked, well-researched, about cartoons against dictators across history. As he says, it is “a pictorial history of the fightback cartoonists have led against the tyrants of history on behalf of ordinary men and women everywhere.”
Dictators in Cartoons features cartoons (and not strips) by primarily editorial page political cartoonists, accompanied by short analytical texts by Husband, sometimes discussing the cartoonists and the degree of pushback they got for their cartoons. Hitler hated one British cartoonist so much he vowed to execute him as soon as Germany took over England.
The first chapter is devoted to nineteenth-century cartoons (of Napoleon, Tsar Nicholas, and others), and subsequent chapters examine cartoons skewering Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Franco and Mao Zedong. There are also examples of cartoonist making fun of more contemporary dictators such as Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Kim Jung Un, Milosevic, and others.
There have been a lot of dictators in the last century or so! So cartoonists will always be there, helping us to laugh even as we cry. This is a good book about taking the work of political cartoonists seriously, seeing them and acts of satire, parody and laughter as necessary.
July 23, 2016
Tony Husband is an award winning British cartoonist. His book, Dictators in Cartoons: Unmasking Monsters and Mocking Tyrants, is “a pictorial history of the fightback cartoonists have led against the tyrants of history on behalf of ordinary men and women everywhere.” As Husband put it: “The more they (the dictators) promoted themselves, the more dictators challenged cartoonists to take them down a peg or two…Laughter confuses dictators, and knocks them off stride.”
Dictators in Cartoons is not just a picture book consisting of old editorial cartoons. Each cartoon is accompanied with short text explaining the context, translating if in a foreign language, and sometimes providing information about the cartoonist. Entire chapters are devoted to Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Franco and Mao Zedong. Others are included in Tyrants of Long Ago (King Louis-Philippe, Napoleon, Tsar Nicolas II, etc.) and in Modern Despots (Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jung Un, etc.).
Dictators in Cartoons is not just a picture book consisting of old editorial cartoons. Each cartoon is accompanied with short text explaining the context, translating if in a foreign language, and sometimes providing information about the cartoonist. Entire chapters are devoted to Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Franco and Mao Zedong. Others are included in Tyrants of Long Ago (King Louis-Philippe, Napoleon, Tsar Nicolas II, etc.) and in Modern Despots (Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jung Un, etc.).
August 20, 2016
Awesome! I really enjoyed this book as a break from my usual reads. Not only does it include some fantastic historical primary cartoons that were published during the rise and fall of leaders (for some), the additional extracts accompanying them also really does give some good brief information on more obscure facts about the rulers as well as the cartoonists.
January 22, 2017
Political cartoonists can make very large statements in just one picture. This book is brilliant and the commentary is a very quick way to pick up a history lesson
September 5, 2020
I have always been a huge fan of satirical cartoons. There might be a couple of good comedians performing political satire nowadays. Nevertheless, cartoons aren’t such a big deal as they were a few decades ago. That’s a shame and a big loss.
Tony Husband has collected and categorized a few dozens of “old” cartoons. He did a good job by showing many possible ways how to laugh about dictators. I had a huge fun but I was missing a more consistent approach. Husband comments and/or explains all of the cartoons but he does it in quite a disorganized way.
Tony Husband has collected and categorized a few dozens of “old” cartoons. He did a good job by showing many possible ways how to laugh about dictators. I had a huge fun but I was missing a more consistent approach. Husband comments and/or explains all of the cartoons but he does it in quite a disorganized way.
November 16, 2017
This is a great book for the cartoons, but weak on context. It needs more than the captions to be really effective.
May 31, 2017
The hover tags for Goodreads tells me that two stars equals "it was OK" which seems bonkers to me (because 4/10 or 2/5 seems more like I hated it) but I am trying to get used to it. This is a mildly entertaining little book I found in Hoopla. I would recommend finding a physical copy because the layout in Hoopla was seriously glitchy and frustrating.
I was intrigued by the title because I've gained a slight fascination with WWII propaganda after stumbling upon a bunch of it in the wake of the creeping fascism put on acceleration that was our most recent election and decided to finally read it today. And while is a good source of interesting cartoons lampooning dictators through time, I find its historical commentary off-putting or just generally not very informative. This book reinforces the pro-US/capitalist version of history, piling all the 'Socialist' and 'Communist' dictators together with the many Fascists from the past century and the more ancient dictators while shrugging off the dictators that the US put in power to stop the spread of anti-capitalist ideals. The chapter on Mao is also particularly awkward since it is mostly racist depictions of Chinese folks, which the book justifies only by saying that Communist China was too strict to have any homegrown political cartoons.
Anyway, 'it was OK' because it's still a decent little collection of cartoon propaganda, despite Husbands's biased commentary. (Note: Some of the commentary IS informative, since you're still provided context to most of the drawings.)
I was intrigued by the title because I've gained a slight fascination with WWII propaganda after stumbling upon a bunch of it in the wake of the creeping fascism put on acceleration that was our most recent election and decided to finally read it today. And while is a good source of interesting cartoons lampooning dictators through time, I find its historical commentary off-putting or just generally not very informative. This book reinforces the pro-US/capitalist version of history, piling all the 'Socialist' and 'Communist' dictators together with the many Fascists from the past century and the more ancient dictators while shrugging off the dictators that the US put in power to stop the spread of anti-capitalist ideals. The chapter on Mao is also particularly awkward since it is mostly racist depictions of Chinese folks, which the book justifies only by saying that Communist China was too strict to have any homegrown political cartoons.
Anyway, 'it was OK' because it's still a decent little collection of cartoon propaganda, despite Husbands's biased commentary. (Note: Some of the commentary IS informative, since you're still provided context to most of the drawings.)
July 22, 2024
There are many ways to express the belittlement of political opponents, but the best by far is the political cartoon. The best has the power to alter the very power structure of the political landscape and motivate a population to engage in warfare against their current enemies. The easiest targets are the pompous and arrogant, which most dictators are.
This book contains some of the best political cartoons ever produced, as the title states, the subject matter is the most prominent dictators down through history. It is interesting that the first true cartoon in this book features Vlad the Impaler. The primary focus is Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and to a lesser extent Franco and Mao Zedong. Lesser lights of the modern world such as Idi Amin, General Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi also are given a little ink.
Even though the Second World War ended 80 years ago, the images in these cartoons are still capable of generating the desired animosity to the other side. They are some of the most effective propaganda tools ever created and it is easy to see how they motivated the populations to engage in the brutal, dehumanizing actions of total war.
This book contains some of the best political cartoons ever produced, as the title states, the subject matter is the most prominent dictators down through history. It is interesting that the first true cartoon in this book features Vlad the Impaler. The primary focus is Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and to a lesser extent Franco and Mao Zedong. Lesser lights of the modern world such as Idi Amin, General Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi also are given a little ink.
Even though the Second World War ended 80 years ago, the images in these cartoons are still capable of generating the desired animosity to the other side. They are some of the most effective propaganda tools ever created and it is easy to see how they motivated the populations to engage in the brutal, dehumanizing actions of total war.
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October 4, 2025This is an interesting collection of cartoons.
However, I find myself disagreeing with the thesis of the book: that laughter directed at dictators signifies their downfall. We know from an overwhelming number of sources that people were laughing at Hitler before he came into power and did not take him seriously as a politician (some included in this collection) and look at what happened. And look at all of the people making fun of our current president as he guts the power of the congressional and judicial branches of government. Laughter without backing is simply a way to contextualize the times, not a movement in and of itself.
However, I find myself disagreeing with the thesis of the book: that laughter directed at dictators signifies their downfall. We know from an overwhelming number of sources that people were laughing at Hitler before he came into power and did not take him seriously as a politician (some included in this collection) and look at what happened. And look at all of the people making fun of our current president as he guts the power of the congressional and judicial branches of government. Laughter without backing is simply a way to contextualize the times, not a movement in and of itself.
December 26, 2018
Worth it for the collection of vintage satires, could have used a bit more interesting text in between them.
May 13, 2021
Very good book, especially if you enjoy history. It's not exactly for everyone, but I enjoyed it very much.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews