How to Be a Dictator: An Irreverent Guide

by Mikal Hem

That is exactly what Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, did in June 2012. Following multiple revelations that the dictator and his family happened to control substantial portions of the country’s mining operations, telephone companies, and construction ventures, its parliament adopted laws granting the president and his wife immunity against prosecution for all crimes committed during his tenure. They also adopted a law banning the media from publishing information about the president’s business undertakings without explicit consent from those concerned.

Together with Ethiopia, Liberia is the only African country that has never been a colony.

Many people associate the entire Latin American continent with frequent coups, not without reason. In the last one hundred years, there have been forty-five coups and attempted coups in Paraguay alone.

It follows that the perfect candidate for a coup is an impoverished country where power is located in the hands of a small elite that is largely independent of outside influence.

Nonetheless, the most important rule of thumb is to have the military on your side. Without military support, a coup is practically impossible.

Once upon a time, if you wanted the help of the United States, all you had to do was claim you were trying to prevent the communists from coming to power. Similarly, if you wanted to secure Soviet Union support, you could claim you were fighting the good fight against capitalism.

In addition, it affords you a grace period of “moral superiority,” during which it is not considered acceptable to criticize you.

In his book On Guerrilla Warfare, Mao describes the three stages of a successful guerrilla war. The first stage is a propaganda campaign directed at the populace in order to muster support for your cause. The second stage is a targeted campaign against military installations, strategically important infrastructure, and political objectives. This stage is designed to weaken and demotivate the enemy, while garnering support through a show of strength. The third stage employs conventional warfare techniques for capturing cities, toppling the regime, and taking control of the country.

Indeed, one of the surest paths to dictatorship is to have a dictator dad, and inheriting power is an old and respected tradition.

When it comes to North Korea, dynastic succession has been the number one rule for choosing state heads. In December 2011, Kim Jong-un came to power after his father died. Jong-un was third in the line of Kim dictators, following his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, and his father, Kim Jong Il.

Coming to power is easy—remaining at the top is much more difficult.

Staying in power over a long period of time requires cleverness, finesse, and tact—all characteristics that Strasser clearly did not possess.

Fortunately, there are also less violent methods for maintaining power. If you are wealthy enough, you can simply buy yourself support. Sheikh Hamid bin Khalifa Al Thani, the emir of Qatar, keeps his population content by ensuring an unusually high standard of living. The average income among the oil-rich emirate’s 250,000 inhabitants is well over $50,000–60,000 a year.

As dictator, your tenure in office does not actually depend on the will of the people. The people hardly know what is best for them anyway—that is your responsibility. Nonetheless, in some cases a “democratic” election can be advantageous, if for no other reason than to shut the mouths of irritating leaders from such idealistic micro-countries as Norway, for example. Plus, democratic elections also serve a number of other useful functions.

Laws prohibiting insults to the country or the president are also good to have in your pocket when it comes to shutting critics’ mouths. However, you should also make a show of granting your opposition limited media presence. This makes the illusion of a free election slightly more realistic.

When the media is in your hand, it is a simple matter to throw dirt on the opposition. For example, do they have contacts with other countries? Why, then they are obviously operating under the auspices of countries with imperialistic agendas.

According to Joseph Stalin’s secretary, the Soviet dictator put it like this: “You know, comrades, that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.”

Propaganda is one of the most important tools a dictator has. The fact that dictators almost always have a propaganda department in one form or another, something one seldom encounters in democracies, is a sign of just how critical it is for a dictator to control the flow of information. Propaganda can take many forms. Many countries showcase huge placards with appeals to the people or dictatorial words of wisdom. Textbooks are adapted so that the correct sides of the regime come to light and the dictator’s accomplishments receive adequate coverage.

In a dictatorship, truth is never absolute.

At the beginning of the 1930s, Romania’s president, Nicolae Ceauşescu, ordered nearly all the country’s agricultural products to be exported in order to cover the enormous foreign debt he had incurred. When that created a food shortage and people starved, he dismissed the fact by stating that Romanians eat too much anyway.

“Religion is the opiate of the masses,” wrote Karl Marx.

As such, the world’s most corrupt heads of state are typically dictators.

In fact, in 2004, the organization Transparency International, which is dedicated to fighting corruption, compiled a list of the previous decade’s most corrupt state leaders. Mohamed Suharto, who governed Indonesia from 1967 to 1998, apparently squirreled away between $15 and $35 billion. Behind him is Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, with $5 to $10 billion; Mobutu Sese Seko of the Republic of Zaire, with $5 billion; Sani Abacha, with $2 to $5 billion; Slobodan Milosevic, with $1 billion; and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier of Haiti,

For example, it is common in dictatorships to require businesses to have licenses. Be sure to make the bureaucratic procedures involved so laborious and time-consuming that no one will bother to follow them. Instead, to secure a license, one simply bribes a functionary.

Before his death in 2016, King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand was among this group and was in fact the world’s richest monarch.

Among the twenty richest monarchs in the world, eight are dictators: the emir of Abu Dhabi, the king of Saudi Arabia, the sultan of Brunei, the emir of Qatar, the sultan of Oman, the king of Swaziland, the king of Bahrain, and the king of Jordan.

He is closely followed by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud. With a net worth of $18 billion, the king is definitely no pauper.

Brunei is an oil country, something that has made Bolkiah one of the world’s richest men. At one point, he was the richest man on earth. It is said his wealth increases by $100 a second.

Kleptocracy implies that the ruling elite occupies power exclusively to enrich themselves as much as possible.

This governmental form has been practiced with great success in countries whose economy is based largely on raw-material production.

As you can see, dictatorship, so to speak, is an automatic guarantor of wealth. The paths to it are limited only by your imagination.

“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” Henry Kissinger replied when Mao Zedong asked him how a fat man like himself attracted so many women. During a Chinese summit, Mao, for his part, offered to ship ten million Chinese women back to the United States for Kissinger. “You know, China is a very poor country. We don’t have much. What we have in excess is women. So if you want them we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands.” A few minutes later he raised his offer: “Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million. We have too many women. They give birth to children and our children are too many.” Kissinger answered quickly and disarmingly, “That’s such a new proposition, we will have to study it.”

If power is sexy, sex can also be a tool for power. King Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, united the nation by marrying women from more than thirty of the country’s many tribes. He always had four wives, four concubines, and four female slaves at his beck and call. When one of the tribes spread rumors about the king’s decreasing virility, he paid them a visit and took the virginity of all the tribe’s young girls. He bragged that during his life he had taken the virginity of seven hundred girls.

However, some dictators are not content to merely attach their name to an already existing city—they prefer to build one from scratch.

Playing God is fun, but it does come with a price.

Indeed, in many ways it is better to be related to a dictator than to be the actual dictator. You receive a wealth of benefits without having to shoulder the heavy responsibility of state leadership.