Tag Archives: Dictators

On Stalin, Putin, & Orwell’s Napoleon

Putin has certain resemblances to Orwell’s Napoleon (in “Animal Farm”), who was modeled on Stalin–whom Putin seeks to emulate.

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Euripides’s Attack on Authoritarianism

It’s possible to read “The Bacchae” as a critique of the autocrats who hijacked Athenian democracy and were running Athens into the ground.

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Satan: Freedom Fighter Turned Dictator

“Paradise Lost” can function as a lesson in how freedom fighters become dictators. It also shows what we must do to resist this tendency.

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The Perfection and Poetry of Tyrants

W. H. Auden’s chilling “Epitaph on a Tyrant” matter-of-factly shows the deadly but seductive simplicity that characterizes dictators like Qaddafi and Assad.

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Qaddafi Died Like Macbeth, Richard III

As Shakespeare understood with Macbeth and Richard III, narcissistic dictators like Qaddafi are so obsessed with control that they think they can stage manage their own deaths.

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