HOW DOES A SINGLE HUMAN BEING CONVINCE THOUSANDS TO KILL FOR THEM AND MILLIONS TO TURN A BLIND EYE?
Real Dictators is the new podcast series hosted by Paul McGann (Dr Who, Luther, Withnail and I) that explores the hidden lives of history’s tyrants. We encounter the American-trained doctor, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who used modern medicine to convince the people of Haiti that he was a Voodoo god. There’s Kim Jong-il, who developed nuclear warheads alongside blockbuster movies. There’s Mao Zedong – the peasant’s son who transformed China, presiding over the catastrophic Great Chinese Famine and the bloody Cultural Revolution. And Joseph Stalin, the man who turned Russia into a superpower and set the stage for the Cold War, while upending and destroying the lives and livelihoods of millions of his own people.
Real Dictators fuses immersive, dramatic storytelling with interviews with world-renowned experts. The voices of historians sit alongside an array of regime insiders such as Jang Jin-sung – a former psychological warfare officer for Kim Jong-il – and François Benoit, a survivor of ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier’s reign of terror.
Latest Episodes
Featured
The Dictators
“Papa Doc” Duvalier
HAITI’S VOODOO-INFUSED DICTATOR
François Duvalier was the President of Haiti from 1957 to 1971, elected on a platform of populism and black nationalism. After thwarting a military coup d'état in 1958, his regime rapidly became totalitarian and despotic.
His government death squad, the Tonton Macoutes, indiscriminately killed Duvalier's opponents. The Macoutes were so pervasive throughout Haitian society that people became fearful of expressing any form of dissent, even in private. Duvalier sought to cement his rule by incorporating Haitian voodoo mythology into his personality cult.
Joseph Stalin
MACHIAVELLIAN MANIPULATOR
A Georgian revolutionary turned politician, Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the mid–1920s until 1953, first as the General Secretary of the Communist Party and later as Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 until his death. Despite initially governing as part of a ‘collective’ leadership, he consolidated power to become the country's de facto dictator. Over a million people perished in his gulag camps, with millions more displaced and impoverished by his radical overhaul of the Russian economy.
A communist, ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own blend of top-down policy and strongman persona became known in its own right as Stalinism.
Kim Jong Il
north korea’s “dear leader”
The second supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il assumed leadership from his late father during a period of economic turmoil. He used this to justify continued aggression towards neighbouring South Korea, as well as other rival world powers including the United States. His militaristic one-upmanship led to the creation of a formidable nuclear arsenal.
His cruel, distant and paranoid reign led to death and incarceration on an astounding scale, destroying the lives of millions of North Koreans. The Kim Dynasty continues to rule North Korea to this day, in the form of the dictator’s son, Kim Jong-un.
Mao Zedong
china’s “great unifier”
Better known as “Chairman Mao”, Mao Zedong was a communist revolutionary who became the founding father of the People's Republic of China, which he ruled from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. Though ideologically a Marxist, Mao pursued a very different form of communism from Stalin – focussing on the rural peasantry, rather than the urban proletariat. Mao’s policies exacerbated, even caused, a cataclysmic famine, while his Cultural Revolution sought to purge China of western thought and influences. His theories, military strategies, policies and teachings have informed imitation tyrants across the globe.
