HOW TO BECOME A TYRANT: Satirical Lessons on Dictatorship

How to Become a Tyrant is a six-episode political documentary series that you can watch on Netflix. Its narrator (and also executive producer) is the actor Peter Dinklage, whom you surely know, whose voice guides the viewer through the backstage of the dictatorships of Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin, Muammar Gaddafi, and the Kim dynasty of Korea.

The starting point on which the series is based is the existence of The Playbook, which, like the Playbook in How I Met Your Mother, constitutes a set of rules and regulations forming a precise plan on how to take over – in this case, not a woman but an entire state. Netflix’s recipe for becoming a tyrant can be reduced to six main steps corresponding to the six episodes: Seize power like Adolf Hitler, Eliminate your rivals like Saddam Hussein, Reign through terror like Idi Amin, Control the truth like Joseph Stalin, Create a new society like Muammar Gaddafi, and Rule forever like the Kim dynasty.

The series ends with the words: Anyone can become a tyrant. Ready to give it a try? It is therefore not difficult to guess that, despite its serious subject matter, the whole thing is kept in a satirical convention. It thus takes a path that for some may be quite controversial but at the same time intriguing, making the production not just another historical documentary but also entertainment.

Thanks to its light and accessible form (each episode lasts about half an hour, and the documentary fragments are interwoven with animations), you can binge How to Become a Tyrant in one evening. Even though it is hard to talk about suspense – considering the fact that the stories told in the documentary are widely known – it still manages to capture the viewer’s attention without any problem. The pace that the series sets is very dynamic, there are no longueurs or pauses, no time to catch a breath, we are constantly rushing forward.

The urge to keep watching comes very naturally; you know exactly what is going to happen, but you still cannot wait for it to happen, so you immediately click on the next episode before Netflix even loads it for you automatically. You follow the successive steps of the dictators’ careers with bated breath. Why? Because the concept of How to Become a Tyrant is constructed in such a way as to appeal to the eternal human weakness that is the fascination with evil.

However, it should be clarified at this point that the accusations one can encounter on various film forums, that the series encourages its viewers to follow a path similar to that of the leaders it depicts, are of course completely unfounded – it is hard not to notice that behind the humorous veil of admiration lies a sharp critique of totalitarianism.

It is not, however, as if the light form of the series turns out to be one hundred percent ideal for dealing with this type of subject matter, since it leads to many historical and political simplifications. People previously interested in the topic will probably not learn anything here that they do not already know. From a layperson’s perspective, many threads are cut off or at least insufficiently developed, leaving a sense of insufficiency.

Everything has been consolidated in such a way as to fit into a maximum of half an hour per episode – and how can one tell in such a short time the detailed intricacies of the very process of individual dictators’ rise to power, let alone the entirety of their rule? Fortunately, we live in the Internet era, so any doubts that the viewer may be left with after the screening can be quickly and efficiently dispelled. The screening is not exhaustive, but on the other hand – is it bad if, by not answering some questions, it encourages further investigation and searching for information on one’s own?

How to Become a Tyrant is by no means a comprehensive history lesson – but as an entertainment series with educational elements, it works quite well. And these are elements that, in today’s reality, seem to need to be reminded. To paraphrase the words that are spoken in one of the episodes: if success is to be defined as achieving one’s goals, then a dictator is a successful person. However, what remains crucial in this matter is at what cost.