Frank Dikötter : How To Be A Dictator

[@Time4View]

Always great to hear Frank Dikotter’s fascinating insights. Long live free speech❤️

[@DavidInSydney1]

This is important, Frank Dikkotter nails it: At 8:06 "…it is good to police every street it is probably better if he can police every mind. Your goal really ought to be that people wake up in the middle of the night afraid of their own thoughts.”

[@user-vp5iy8ec9q]

likely his last talk in HK

[@cueva_mc]

3:23

[@anarchynow3185]

Why is he dissing Timothy Snyder?

[@Extra-dg7uv]

There's probably some kind of personal spat there that lies behind this imo.

[@mrniceguy7168]

He rejects Tim’s argument that America is not really democratic and is quite tyrannical

[@thewolfofswingthat2035]

The word dictator was originally termed in rome. When roman empire is in danger the senate will elect a general to become the dictator. So how to become a dictator? Get elected in by the senate.

[@rishav4343]

I think the term has cultivated new meanings thousands of years later...

[@stevelenores5637]

The Senate of Rome did give that power but it expired when the war ended. It was to coordinate the entire republic in the war effort. Today the lesson is when you become a dictator you have to create new crises to justify holding on to power.

[@thewolfofswingthat2035]

@@rishav4343 well sorry i dont do revisionism

[@NoreenHoltzen]

I like that he critiques power and how we allow it to take hold but he fails to realise that we support unjustified power also such as cheering the combing of Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea, Iraq, Lybia, execution cruel harsh sanctions and so on. As for the deaths constantly quoted under Mao, the exaggerate claims of deaths from starvation were not increased but decreased from the deaths *before* Mao’s reforms owing to Western imperialist interference with China prior to 1950. Look up life expectancy data from 1950 to 1970, and multiply that through the large population. Mao brought live expectancy from 45 to 70 over his career, literacy from 10% to 80%. I sympathize with you as I used to have similar notion but after a lot of work realized I was completely brainwashed within Australia. Upon a lot of research it turns out that Mao did exceedingly more for the people of China than he caused problems and without Mao and their liberation of China from capitalists in the early 1950s, the whole county of China would have followed a path similar to India or Indonesia which both had a similar (even slightly better) initial conditions. Now China has eliminated poverty and has far better health care, higher literacy, economic mobility and business than India or Indonesia and is even catching up to the West which it was exceedingly behind in 1950s when Britain was still bribing and calling the shots over there.

[@geeflat]

Quite unnecessary, and in poor taste, to ridicule Timothy Snyder. “Can’t find Beijing on a map”? What’s that about?

[@Extra-dg7uv]

There's probably some kind of personal spat there that lies behind this imo.

[@redsis3558]

To be honest, I read his books and the graphic description of things seems a little over the top and too fake to be believable.

[@cold_static]

To be honest, you are a chicom glowie.

[@stevelenores5637]

You would think it is over the top, but the human remains found in mass shallow graves testify to the the truth of what he says. After Germany lost WWII for example the population of Germany refused to believe the horrors of the holocaust occurred. Nazi Germany lasted only 12 years so their crimes were exposed. Germany killed about 10 million total in their concentration camps. Those that killed many more in the Soviet Union and China have never received punishment and are often revered even to this day. Stalin and Mao are just 2 examples. The worst murderers in history almost always get away with it. Germany was the rare exception to the rule.

[@CKWong-jk5st]

If you have not read the primary sources, interviewed with people who lived through the events, read memoirs of people who survived those events, talked with journaliasts other historians who studied PRC including those inside PRC and read their books and articles, on what basis do you find it "a little bit over the top and too fake to be believable"? If I come from Mars and had no knowledge of earth, I would find history of Cambodia under Pol Pot, Russia under Stalin, North Korea under the Kim dynasty, and the Holocaust under Nazi Germany "over the top and too fake to be believable."