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We love your adherence to democratic principles and to the democratic process. George H W Bush, toast to Ferdinand Marcos
God: If it were to be true, one would be living under a permanent surveillance, a round-the-clock celestial dictatorship that watched you while you slept; and could convict you of thought crime, could indict you for things you thought in the privacy of your own skull, and sentence you to quite a long stretch, namely an eternity of punishment for that. Or dangle not to me very attractive reward of life of eternal praise and grovelling and sprawling and singing the praises of someone who you are ordered to love; someone whom you must both love and fear ... Compulsory love – how fascinating. Christopher Hitchens, interview Divine Impulses
Dictatorship for your own good is the most oppressive kind. Christopher Hitchens, lecture The Moral Necessity of Atheism
Terrorism works better as a tactic for dictatorships, or for would-be dictators, than for revolutionaries. Christopher Hitchens
As well as being man-made, it’s fear-made ... At its worse it’s the undeveloped part of the psyche that leads to totalitarianism that wants to worship, that wants a boss. That wants a celestial dictatorship. Christopher Hitchens v Rabbi David Wolpe, debate Boston 2010
The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not. Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
Once you assume a creator and a plan it makes us objects in a cruel experiment whereby we are created sick and commanded to be well ... And over us to supervise this is installed a celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea. Christopher Hitchens v Tony Blair: Is Religion a Force for Good in the World? Debate 2010
We don’t need dictatorship to give us right from wrong. ibid.
The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey. The resulting tyranny is even more impressive if it can be enforced by a privileged caste or party which is highly zealous in the detection of error. Most of humanity, throughout its history, has dwelt under a form of this stupefying dictatorship, and a large portion of it still does. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great p212
Psychopathic sadistic dictators like to do this to people – they like to show who’s boss; people often use the word systematic … it must be unsystematic also, it must be capricious, it must be unpredictable, nobody must know they’re safe, nobody can think I have now passed all the tests. Christopher Hitchens, lecture Centre for American Studies University of Western Ontario 2005, ‘The Axis of Evil’, Youtube 1.12.27
By the 1970s most of Latin America was controlled by dictators, including those like Pinochet who were openly fascist. All of them were backed directly and indirectly by United States. John Pilger, War on Democracy
Every dictator uses religion as a prop to keep himself in power. Benazir Bhutto
In dictatorships we are more fortunate than you in the West in one respect. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and nothing of what we watch on television, because we know it’s propaganda and lies. Unlike you in the West, we’ve learnt to look behind the propaganda and to read between the lines. Unlike you, we know that the real truth is always subversive. Zdenuk Urbanek, novelist & Charter 77, interview John Pilger
You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home – all the more powerful because forbidden – terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. (Civil Liberties & Dictator & Tyranny & Totalitarianism) Winston Churchill, broadcast to the United States from London 16 October 1938
Dictatorship – the fetish worship of one man – is a passing phase. A state of society where men may not speak their minds, where children denounce their parents to the police, where a business man or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinions; such a state of society cannot long endure if brought into contact with the healthy outside world. The light of civilised progress with its tolerances and co-operation, with its dignities and joys, has often in the past been blotted out. ibid.
Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry. Winston Churchill, 1937
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty. Thomas Jefferson
Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man’s self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man. Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear
Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship. Bruce Coville
The busy life of an interstellar despot. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s6e3: Sons and Daughters, Kira to Gul Dukat
You are an opportunistic power-hungry dictator, and I want nothing more to do with you. ibid.
Hitler comes to power legally on 30th January 1933. Within a few months his dictatorship is firmly in place. World War II: The Apocalypse: Hitler’s Rise to Power aka Apocalypse: The Second World War: Aggression, RTBF 2009
He was dictator. Third Reich: The Rise I, History 2010
Sightless and defeated he makes a fateful decision to go into politics. His experiences in World War I could reveal why he went from being a drifter before the war to becoming the most infamous dictator in history. Mystery Files: Hitler, National Geographic 2011
The baleful shadow of dictatorship spreads over Germany. Apocalypse: The Rise of Hitler II: The Fuhrer, National Geographic 2011
Our government will soon become what it is already a long way toward becoming, an elective dictatorship. Senator J William Fulbright
If the test of patriotism comes only by reflexively falling into lockstep behind the leader whenever the flag is waved, then what we have is a formula for dictatorship – not democracy ... But the American way is to criticize and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country. Michael Parenti
Every dictatorship has ultimately strangled in the web of repression it wove for its people, making mistakes that could not be corrected because criticism was prohibited. Robert Kennedy, March 1968