In its latest documentary production, Netflix takes you on a quick historical journey through the 20th and 21st centuries to learn about the most famous dictators who changed the history of their countries and peoples in the series "How to Become a Tyrant?"
(How To Become Tyrant).
The series, divided into 6 chapters, revolves around the guide followed by the most famous tyrants, and the episodes mainly focus on how to obtain power, and most importantly, keep it, and how the world's most famous tyrants follow the same methods, with each of them choosing some special details that give His story is more injustice and brutality.
Each episode deals with the story of a different dictator, through archival footage, interviews with experts, and re-enactment of some scenes with animation, and each chapter focuses on the thing that characterized the dictator as its hero, which is one of the elements of the formation of tyrants.
I'm the only one who fixes everything
During the documentary, experts explain the extent of the narcissism of these rulers, and how their cruelty can be devastating to their people and their countries.
"When you look at human history, freedom isn't the rule, people like to rule, and when you're going through a tough time, there's an attraction to someone who comes up and says I alone can fix everything," author and political commentator Andrew Sullivan says at the start of the series.
This is what the dictators, the heroes of the documentary, applied, as each of them managed to convince his people that he is the only safe haven for them, the fulfiller of their dreams and the one who will save them from the imaginary enemies that he also made, some of them even set themselves up as the god of the people.
trick book
The series begins with scenes of the various countries ruled by dictators over the past century, and the narrator says, "Ultimate power, you know you want it, but you just don't know how to get it...I know, there is a book of tricks; a series of methods used by the most famous tyrants in history. To achieve unimaginable power, each in his own unique way.
And he continues, "But there is a simple complication, which is that the book of tyrants' tricks includes making unpleasant choices." Then he begins by presenting the stories of tyrants, one by one, and presenting the violations they committed against their people without mercy, and he knows those "unpleasant choices" they made in order to maintain their power.
6 tyrants
German dictator Adolf Hitler leads the series' first episode, titled "The Seizure of Power", which documents how Hitler went from a "sweaty soldier and a failed painter" in World War I, to the Supreme Leader of Germany from 1934 to 1945, and the series illustrates the steps that Hitler followed to accomplish this historic transformation.
As for the character of the second episode, it is the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein entitled "Crushing the Rivals", and it focuses on how to maintain power once it is seized. After 10 years of becoming Vice President, he took over the final authority of Iraq in 1979, and proceeded to kill, torture and threaten anyone. He believes he could be ousted, including close advisors and even family members, according to the documentary.
Then the third chapter deals with the story of former Ugandan President Idi Amin Dada, entitled "Ruling through Terror", and how he controlled his people through violence, and he believed that "militarism is a good thing, because people respect you", which he actually implemented during the years of his rule (1971- 1979) during which more than 300,000 Ugandans disappeared or were killed during his presidency.
Under the title "Control of Truth," the fourth chapter tells the story of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who realized the importance of distorting the truth and exporting only his version of reality;
To maintain complete control of the great "Soviet Union", and did so through the use of propaganda, disinformation and other clever tricks, there was no personal freedom, he controlled the minds of his people.
In the fifth chapter, the second Arab ruler included in the documentary, the ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi (1969-2011) comes in an episode entitled "Building a New Society", and how he devoted his life to fundamentally transforming his country and building an ideal new reality as he wished in "good, bad and strange" ways. , and how to suppress civil liberties such as expression of opinion and the right of assembly.
And finally, the last chapter in the documentary about the founder of North Korea, dictator Kim Il Sung (1948-1994) entitled “Ruling Forever,” who succeeded in what the rest of the tyrants did not succeed in, which is to maintain power, as the Song family discovered the secret of rule for life, as They declared themselves gods.
Through its six chapters, the documentary presents a historical capsule about different spots on the earth, and secrets about rulers, which were hidden even from their peoples.
The events of the documentary are narrated by American actor Peter Dinklage, who was nominated for 9 Emmy Awards, won 4 of them, and also won a Golden Globe.