Modern Wisdom - #102 - Frank Dikotter - How To Be A Dictator

Episode Date: September 12, 2019

Frank Dikotter is a historian and author. The 20th Century was characterised by an attempt on the one hand to build up civil society and have cheques & balances, and on the other hand an attempt to concentrate power into the hand of a single dictator. Expect to learn what the characteristics of a dictator are, why the 20th century created a perfect petri dish for this proliferation, how a dictator coerces his people into supporting him and how dictators deal with the paradox of hiding their goals of tyranny in a democratic society. Extra Stuff: Buy How To Be A Dictator - https://amzn.to/2PZSlFd Check out Frank's Website - http://www.frankdikotter.com Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, hello there friends. Today we're going to learn how to be a dictator. What? Kind of. Frank Dickeurter is an author and his most recent book, How to Be a Dicctaider, looks at eight of the most chillingly effective dictators of the 21st century. So we're going to learn about Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung,

and a couple of leaders that I'm going to leave to Frank to pronounce. But yeah, the characteristics of a dom, Kim Il Sung and a couple of leaders that I'm going to leave to Frank to pronounce. But yeah, the characteristics of a dictator are oddly similar whilst also being incredibly unique, as Frank identifies one dictator from one regime at one particular period of time, wouldn't work at all if he was to swap places with another. As always, if you've got any questions, comments or feedback feel free to get at me at ChrisWillX wherever you follow me, but for now please welcome Frank Dickeutter. I am joined by Frank Dickert at the beginning of his book tour. Frank, how are you? Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's absolutely pleasure to have you on. So today you're going to teach us how to be a dictator, right? That's the title of the book, not so I can really help you go all the way. It's not a personal development, self-development, how to book. It is probably more of a history book that will tell you how to spot other potential dictators. Got you, OK.

Well, if there are any budding dictators in the audience, they might be a little disappointed. But for everyone else, those of us were going to be fascinated. So tell us why you wrote the book first off. Well, I'm a historian. And when you think about it, you could pretty much summarise the 20th century in about a sentence. There is

an attempt on the one hand to separate out powers in other words to build up a civil society to have checks and balances. That's a very difficult thing to do. It's frail, it's fragile, but it's made great progress. And then on the other hand, there's an attempt to concentrate all power. In other words, to make sure that there is an authoritarian regime with one person who makes all the decisions.

These are two very contradictory trends. And I spent my career really studying countries where attempts have been made to concentrate powers in the hands of a dictator. So that really was what prompted me to write this book. I suppose that when people think back to the 20th century, that will be some of the defining characteristics, right? So what is a dictator in its purest form? Well, this may sound strange, but you have to think of a dictator as developing against a background of democracy. In other words, to put it slightly differently, we live in an age of democracy. In fact, since the French and the American revolutions of the 18th century, we live more or less in an age of democracy. In other words, sovereignty with the collapse of old regimes in France, in

particular, power is seen to reside no longer in some sort of heavenly mandates or in the divine rights, but in the people and people select the leader through a process of elections. Of course, this is a very drudgery unfolding age of democracy, but it means that there is a paradox with dictators. They seize power on the one hand, but they must also create the illusion somehow of popular support. And that's where the cult of personality comes in. That's one of the key focuses of the book. A dictator must, under one hand, use terror, you know, the secret police, military forces, tortures, spies,

a Praetorian guard, concentration camps. But on the other hand, there must also be an attempt to build up what I call a cult of personality. In other words, a dictator must coerce his people into acclaiming him. He must create the illusion that people actually support him. Yeah, you've got to still play the game whilst also not looking like you're playing a different game. Exactly. So this is the great paradox of modern dictators. They all claim to be rather democratic. Or at the very least, they claim to represent the true will of the people. Yes, I understand. And it's then a game of switching that round. How much of this do you think is very well laid out in advance

from the position of the dictator, and how much of it is us post-hoc rationalising, they ended up being a dictator? Could some of them have begun with the best ideas of holding democracy in mind and then changed when power became easier for them to take and advantages became available? I understand the question, it's a very good one. You have to bear in mind that successful dictators are extremely pragmatic and at heart opportunists. They use whatever comes their way to their own advantage. I'll give you one example. Hitler carries out a coup in 1923 by storming a beer hall in Munich. It doesn't succeed. But then he turns the feet into a victory by turning the courtroom into a

propaganda platform with newspapers reporting everything he says. And then uses this time in prison behind bars to write his political autobiography called Mein Kampf. This goes on and on. Whenever something happens that might be seen to go against a dictator, many of them manage to make the very best of it. So they are definitely opportunists who seize particular occasions and turn it to their advantage. But on the other hand, I think it's fair to say that most of them are pretty convinced that this sort of, that pretty convinced that power must end up in the hands of one person. All of them express contempt for what they see as weak, wishy, washy, parliamentary democracy. Hitler says so openly. The communist, of course, talked about democratic centralism. In other words, democracy is exercised by a small committee of people on behalf of the entire population.

It doesn't sound massively like a democracy, though. No. But of course, again, it's crucial to realize that they must invoke the will of the people. They must try to come up with at least the illusion that coercion is in effect consent. How much of the rise of a dictator do you think is the manifestation or the projection of one person's inner personality, their particular makeup that they have, and how much of it do you think is them chasing a dream? I guess the difference between a career and a calling, so to speak, are some of them doing it because they just want power at all costs, or do you think some of them have got a more meaning, more purpose behind their particular movement? Yes, it's the classic question of power versus ideology.

Are they there to seek power and more power? Or do they have a particular vision, a particular ideology. That's exactly what I meant. Yes, just to be fair. Well, it's an old debate. And what I'm trying to show is that all the emphasis that historians have put on ideology, I remember being a student 30 years ago,

and I was all about studying the ideology of Marxism, communism, studying Maoism, studying Leninism, Stalinism, you name it. But in the end, what I'm trying to show is that ideology doesn't really matter all that much to a dictator. What matters is not loyalty to recreeds, but loyalty to his person. That's what a dictator wishes. The reasons for that are reason we straightforward, a dictator by definition, is somebody who sees his power and power has to be maintained. Power sees through violence must be maintained through violence.

And that can be a very blunt instrument. through violence, and that can be a very blunt instrument. So it's much better to try to create loyalty, to enforce it, so to speak. At most of all, when a dictator sees his power, he runs the risk of somebody else doing the same thing to him. In other words, there are rivals somehow waiting in the wings. The prospect of a stab in the back appears. So what do you do to control you in the court to make sure that your allies or rivals don't organize a coup against you as new dictator? I think here again, cult of personality is all important. You make sure that the people around you, acclaim you. They are based by being forced to acclaim you as a great leader. And most of all, by acclaiming you as a great leader, allies, rivals, all of them have to lie.

And when they lie, when everybody lies, it's very difficult to find out who actually supports who. So loyalty is the greatest concern for anyone dictator. They're constantly keeping tabs on the people around them. They're worried about who might betray them. Yeah, there's a Instagram quote going around which you probably almost definitely won't have seen, but it's talking about boys that cheat on girls and it says, if he cheats with you, he'll cheat on you. And I think that what that suggests is past behavior is suggestive of future behavior.

And if you've taken power and you have managed to have a group of sicker fans around you that are supporting you in this power grab, you're totally right. It must be an incredibly anxious and paranoid environment to be in, is that one person at the top? If you did it, what's stopping everybody else? Well, that's exactly it. That's precisely the point, is that you want to have people who are loyal or at least proclaim themselves to be loyal.

You're constantly watching your back. So you really as a dictator, you somehow tita between hubris under one hand having to make all major decisions on your own because you don't trust anyone else. And paranoia and the other where you see plots around you, where you imagine that there might be enemies, when in fact there might be allies, when you purge friends and foes alike. When you are pretty much on your own at the very top towering far above all the others. This meta cognizant way of living, almost having two lives, your own plus the one that you're playing with everybody else, plus keeping in mind all of the interplay, the connections

between all of those people and what they genuinely believe and the games they're playing as well. It must be almost untenable to live this life without being on the verge of a breakdown at all times. You can only imagine how testing it must be. I've learned a little bit about Hitler and I know that he was on all manner of cocktail of drugs by the end of World War II in an effort to keep him up with some maladies that were perhaps oncoming no matter what, but definitely a lot that were due to stress and just him trying to keep

all of this up. During your research for the book, did you find any dictators who seemed to be designed for the job, so to speak? They were just made to measure for the tasks that they had to do and they took all of this pressure and worry in their stride? Well, the ones who last tend to be very gifted. We have images in mind of Hitler being a sort of non-person or a grotesque figure, but the truth is that he was extremely hardworking and he was a very good orator, actor and choreographer. He worked endlessly at building up his party over the many years in the early 1920s. He had a true instinct for power and was suspicious of anyone who wasn't truly loyal.

The same could be said of Stalin, an enormous appetite for work, but also great organizational ability. Of course, some went too far. Miss Alini spanked by some account, half of his time projecting himself as the omniscient, omnipotent dictator of Italy, while also running something like half a dozen ministries. half a dozen ministries. He had time apparently in the 1930s to even dictate the collar for the cover of a women's magazine. That's a dictatorship that extended all the way down to daily objects weirdly enough. Wow. It goes hand in hand I suppose. This level of neuroticism must require the dictator to be very thorough, must make them fearful of relinquishing control and of delegating, but also they have to do that, right? You can't scale this movement without at least letting some people into the inner circle. Yes, but it's best to purge occasionally,

which is why it is so very dangerous to be the number two in a dictatorial regime, in particular communist ones, because there's always a suspicion that number from on the part of number one, that number two wants to take its place. I understand. So, in the career of a dictator, where are the major stumbling blocks? Where do they mostly fail? We're talking about how to be a dictator. And if we've got our imaginary dictator in the audience who's listening, what does he need to do first?

Well, there is really no magic list. It's on the one hand, these dictators have an awful lot in common, although you will always find an exception to the rule. But on the other hand, they're extremely individual. And you can see why conditions very enormously from a reasonably developed modern country like Germany in the early 1930s to a very impoverished, mainly rural country like Haiti in the 1960s under Papadoc or Duvalier. But the conditions vary enormously. So, I guess one of the very attributes of a dictator is to understand local culture extremely well

and be able to use it in order to become a dictator. If you would take Stalin and take him out of the Soviet Union and somehow make him run the People's Republic of China for a while, it would not work. These are individuals who are very closely linked to the times and circumstances of their countries. They were made to measure in that way, I suppose. Very much, and they also made themselves to measure. They were not afraid of turning ideology on its head. Take, for instance, Marxist ideology. It says that there will be a world revolution solution carried out by the workers. But Mao, in 1927, takes off to the countryside and embraces the very peasants that are derided by Orthodox Marxism. In other words, he makes

villages, you know, the focal point of this revolution, turning it upside down. Kim Il Sung, North Korea, very much the same thing. Embraces Marxism, but then after a while comes up with a theory of self-reliance, where people who are self-reliant can somehow achieve the revolution without any regard to the so-called material circumstances, which is, you know, the bedrock of Marx's theory. In fact, by 1972, Kim Will Song in North Korea has virtually written Marxism out of the Constitution to even study Marx or angles, is seen as a sign of lack of loyalty to the leader himself. So in other words, under Kim Will's song, one reads Kim Will Song, under Mao, you read Mao, under Stalin.

They've transcended what they were before. Quite. Quite. That's interesting. So it's a recently brought up topic with regards to North Korea and the movements that it's making at the moment. So why don't you tell us some of the things that you learned about Kim Il Sung during your research? I'm fascinated to learn about how North Korea got the particular approach to politics that it has now. Now, Kim Il Sung is quite an extraordinary figure because he is somebody who is pretty much imposed by the Soviet Union on an unwilling population. Yet within several years he manages to play two great backers and superpowers against each other to obtain more independence.

Namely, the People's Republic of China that helps Kimberl's song start his war of unification against South Korea in the early 1950s, and the Soviet Union that installed them in the first place. So within years by 1956, he's managed to play the one against the other, is managed to purge all those who were loyal to Moscow or to Beijing and install his own people. By then, he tours the country in whirlwind visits to factories, to the countryside, dispensing his advice, making himself visible literally to millions. His portrait is everywhere. His words are in every newspapers, committed to memory by ordinary people. By the 1960s and 70s, family members up to a good dozen of them are in keep positions of power. So from there onwards you can see

that this will become a dynasty when he passes away in the early 1990s his son takes over and keeps all the attributes of power, namely fear, terror under one hand and an extravagant cult of personalities on the other. It lasts to this very day. Is it common for dictators to keep it in the family? It doesn't seem that way, but my understanding isn't so much. Certainly with North Korea it does, but has that been a tactic used elsewhere? North, again, it all depends on circumstances. The dictators who succeed, so to speak, by that I mean they die in their own bed, as opposed to, or as opposed to Mussolini, but the ones who succeed are extremely pragmatic. So if you can't trust anyone, it might be a good idea to have a family

member there, but it doesn't always work like that. Mal tried with the nephew, but it backfired rather badly. Another example, besides Kim Il Sung, who successfully installed his own son, would be Papa Dock, who I mentioned earlier on, or Du Vallier. He manages to install his own son in 1972 when he dies, so that regime will last for another good decade or so. But the truth is, succession is always a great issue for dictators. The reason is very simple. In a democracy, there's not so much that people get voted in. They get voted out. If you're a dictator, there's no point at which you can leave without fear for your life.

It's very difficult to just say, I think there have can leave without fear for your life. It's very difficult to just say, ah, I think I've been a good dictator for 20 years. Now, let me get back to my stamp collection and go fishing in the countryside. There's no general retirement plan once you've chosen the profession of dictator, is there? Precisely. That is interesting.

So, I know that we've got some examples from Ethiopia as well. I didn't know the background was so dictatorial. What's the story behind that? Well, again, an empire, Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, and then a famine that very much prompts a popular uprising in 1974, a number of soldiers seized power, one of them called Minguistu gradually eliminates all others and becomes dictator. He manages to eliminate all the others because he's extremely hardworking, He's very good at reading other people, and he's more determined and ruthless than all the others. One of the very first victims is General Man and Dom, who was actually the man who took Mingistu under his wing when he was still young. So Mingistu sends soldiers to kill him several years after the 1974 revolution,

making sure that the very man who wore us adopted him and became as manter is eliminated. He does so with others too. That big committee called the Durg, Durg, D-E-R-G means committee in a numeric, was established by about 120 people by 1976 and onward and 60 are left. People are literally carried out from the imperial palace, the grand palace that he occupies, after having been shot with a gun. That is not a very good party, I don't want to go to you. No, no. The emperor himself, highly celessious, is deposed, locked up, and allegedly throttled to death. Mingisto has unbearings in the Grand Palace, which he occupies, underneath his office, and then places his desk right above his corpse,

somehow absorbing the charisma of the emperor. Wow, that is a one way to make sure that he's dead, I suppose. So one of the topics that I know that you covered was to do with parades and me thinking about dictatorships, you have these images of dictate the ships, you have these images of huge armies and these massive shows of force. Were there some of these that were particularly massive that you looked at? Well, they're all massive. I mean, the whole point of a parade, of course, is to display your military might. The world is astonished when, on 20 April 1939, the formal corporal called Adolf Hitler acts like an emperor sitting on a gilded chair on a raised day as reviewing the mighty war machine

he has assembled. But what you have to bear in mind is that it's also meant to be a display by ordinary people of their love for the dictator. So in the case of Haiti, for instance, occasionally people are rounded up with lorries, very much brought to the capital, Porto-Prince, roads are locked off, they're not fed, they're not given anything to drink, and then they must parade in front of the presidential palace and cheer their leader, chant the slogans, and put on a happy face. They must quite literally create the illusion of consent. So, parades are very much part of that culture personality where people are, if you wish, condemned to perpetual enthusiasm. Yeah, again, doesn't sound like a good afternoon to me. I don't want to be in the palace

where I get shot. I don't want to be on the parade, don't get any drink or water. It doesn't sound like a very happy place to be. Have there been many dictator ships where you would have said the population had a good time? Well, this is the great thing about dictators. The population always looks very happy. They're their cheering the leader. They're their chanting the slogans. They put on happy faces. And when the dictators die in the case of Mao in 1976, in the case of Kim Jong-un's song in 1994, people seem to cry. In Korea, they pound the chest, rip off their

clothes, you know, or shake a fist at the sky in famed rage. But you don't know who believes what, are they really upset or not in some cases People will pretend to cry in public, but once they are back home, they will open a good bottle of wine and celebrate very quiet Yeah, it is crazy. I saw a vice documentary about whether it got into North Korea and this So popper style a vice documentary about where they'd gone into North Korea and this soap opera style act, act, actorship, I suppose, as people were driving around and they were going into restaurants where there was huge swaths of serving staff and food laid out, but the only customers were them. And then they got to school and speak to the children and the children would have oddly clear responses and so would the parents

that sounded almost as if they'd been scripted. And again, it's that show of unification, isn't it, both inward and outward? Well, that's exactly it. In a good dictatorship, dictators are great actors and people are great actors. As Adolf Hitler said in an unguarded moment, he considered himself to be Europe's greatest performer. But ordinary people are great actors. They must learn how to jump to attention, chant the slogans, cheer the leader, and if they don't, there is being a fine in prison, occasionally shot.

Occasionally shot. Well, at least I've got a chance of not being shot this time. So, as we move towards the modern day of politics, how do you think this last hundred years history of prominent dictators has shaped how we look at politics now, and also how political figures nowadays are behaving. Well, remember what I said in the beginning, you could summarise the 20th century as two opposite trends. One trend is towards the separation of powers and the building of an accountable civil society with checks and balances and an independent judicial system, rule of law, and the other

one is a trend towards the concentration of power in the hands of either one party or one person, and one party always ends up being one person. So if you look at it from a very broad perspective, then quite clearly, one trend has been on the up and the other one has not quite vanished, but very much been on the losing end of history. To put it differently, I think we tend to underestimate how far we have come. We tend to overestimate how many dictators there still are and what threats there might be to democracy. We hear terms of a coup or a dictator or a cult of personality used in the case of democratically elected people of the recent May or Trump, sometimes even the Pope. But quite clearly, there was

a time in the 1930s, in the 1950s, in the 1970s when half the planet was run by rather nasty dictators. Now remember that even in Europe, up till 1973 1973 there was no talk about Western democracy as in Western Europe because it was only the northwest of Europe in Portugal, yeah, it's Elazar, in Spain, you had Franco in Greece, you had a number of Nazi generals. It was all only with the Carnation Revolution and Portugal and the death of Franco that all of a sudden one could talk about Western Europe as being democratic, never mind the rest of the world, and then you have the collapse of the Soviet Union, all of it, in 1991-92. It's come a very long way. It's not to say that we shouldn't be vigilants.

Do you think it would be realistic for a dictator to rise to power? No. It's bloody hard work. And I would say that as a result of all the dictatorships we've had in the 20th century, it is extremely difficult because with every dictated that has been defeated, democracy has been reinforced, has been fortified. That separation of powers has become more entrenched. The separation of power, the checks and balances have become far more sophisticated. So it's difficult. It's not to say that we don't have dictatorships. Clearly there is one in the people's Republic of China and clearly there's one in Northern Korea and other countries.

But overall, I would think it's pretty much a losing bat. Yeah, you're going to be fighting against the tide a little bit, aren't you? It's interesting. Interesting what you say about this cult of personality and these these terms that are thrown around these slurs or labels or sometimes just throw away lines. People are constantly looking for the new world order. There's the accusations of the queen being a lizard person or Donald Trump being part of some Masonian lodge that's actually trying you know, is this, is this people chasing down a narrative which has kind of been and gone a little bit now? Well, it trivializes what happens to hundreds of millions of ordinary people throughout the 20th century. In the People's Republic of China under Mao alone, tens of millions of people were starved,

beaten, worked to death. The number of victims under Stalin is also enormous, not to mention out of Hitler. So when we use terms like a coup or a dictator or a cult of personality, for people who have been more or less democratically elected into 21st, I think there's a danger of losing any sense of perspective. That's happening with everything at the moment though, right? The people are throwing around the word Nazi, like it's calling someone tall, like it's just a common word to call someone,

or accusing Trump of being a white supremacist. And he said a lot of things that I find pretty terrible to agree with, but there's a big jump between what he said and being a white supremacist. Indeed. If you want to know whether there is a dictator ship or not, I would say travel to the country you are interested in and find out if you can say something negative about the man in charge. Well, I would say there's plenty in the United States that is critical of Trump. Is that the Canary in the coal mine? Pretty much. If you don't want to go to the United States, why don't you travel to the People's Republic of China and see if you can say something negative about Xi Jinping.

I would say good luck with that one. What do you think would happen? I think you'll be arrested and put away. Wow. Is that how quickly they're going to respond? How would they find out? Would it be somebody else, another member of the general public? Yes, you'll be denounced. Try publishing something, be very difficult. There's no freedom of speech, there's no freedom of publication. What's happening in China at the moment to me just seems so alien given the current makeup of the world in the 21st century.

Well, that's one of the points I was trying to make earlier on. It resembles a good old fashioned dictatorship, but they're running out of time. They seem out of place. Yeah, they do, don't they? It's this archaic old and but is the pressure ever going to come from within with these modern dictatorships as I can't think of another name for them. These modern dictatorships is the uprising going to come from within or is it going to be the job of another government to step in and say, look, this is this is no longer allowed. Well, you never know, but generally comes from within. You know, all these people who have been such good actors, all of a sudden, will drop the pretend and spawn your headquarters. This happened in Romania, under Choshescu. You can see how, under 21st of December 1989, he gives his speech from the balcony of the party headquarters. And bit by bit, the people who were supposed to be cheering him start shouting back and booing him.

You can see almost a minute where this is obviously televised. You can see almost the minute where the fear breaks down, and Cheshasko looks at the crowd utterly stupified at what is happening. Three days later, he's shot. Wow. Yeah, it's interesting to have that that those two realities existing at the same time The one that is being dictated and the one which is actually happening So one of the things that you've kept on mentioning is the charisma of the leaders the fact that they are often great speakers or orators in the case of Hitler obviously today we are seeing these techniques and these skills highly valued. You've got television debates, you've got social media and always on communication.

Do you think that the tactics and the techniques of the 20th century are being used at any point right now? Well, you know, dictators are always good in exploiting the latest technology. Aloff Hitler was very skilled at broadcasting his speeches. He worked at his broadcasting skills. He was a very good orator as well. Mussolini too tried to use television and radio to make sure that his presence was felt in every square. There would be public loudspeakers and cities.

Mobile ones taken to the countryside. So today, of course, the internet is the latest technology. And indeed, certainly North Korea and the people's Republic of China, you can see how it is extremely carefully monitored. We thought for a while here in our democracies that the Internet would be a tool of liberation, it turns out as the exact opposite when it's used by a dictatorship. It's very or well, isn't it? Indeed. Yeah, I wonder what it would be like to live in that environment. It's the same to me as saying, imagine what it's like to live on the moon, because it would

be so many fundamentals of the way that you operate in society, on your own, interpersonal at business, at work. I'm a small business owner, and how I would operate at work would be completely changed. If I was in China, I'd probably have a government representative either in my company or constantly checking in. It seems so alien. Well, it is alien.

It's a different civilization altogether. It's a clash of civilizations. I would have a party secretary in my history department who decides what kind of research I can do, what I should teach, and who we should invite, that be a party member at every level. There would be no freedom of assembly, no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, except for the religion tolerated by the regime. of religion, except for the religion tolerated by the regime. And, you know, no freedom of association either. So, it's just an alien regime, which is why you see what is happening in Hong Kong today. A very backwards, almost barbaric regime, that simply is incapable of administering a very sophisticated city like Hong Kong. If you cross the border from Hong Kong into the People's Republic of China, it's a different culture.

It's a different place. It's a different planet. And we tend to forget how alien it can be. Is there on pretty much every dictatorship, is there a limited lifespan? It's so volatile and there's so many ways it can go wrong that inevitably it's going to happen. Or could you see a world in which you get this 1984-style authoritarian regime that rises to the top and holds its power? Some of them last for a very long time. The Soviet Union would be one example. But still, just over 70 years, the people's Republic of China will be celebrating its 70 years on the 1st of October next month. They rarely last much longer. So good luck.

Frank, today's been absolutely fantastic. Opened my eyes to a lot. Hopefully we haven't inspired any would-be dictators, but we'll have to wait and see. Link to how to be a dictator will be in the show notes below. Highly advise that you go and check it out. Link to how to be a dictator will be in the show notes below. Highly advise that you go and check it out. If anyone wants to read more of your work or find out some more information, where should they head online, Frank? Amazon.co.uk. That's the hub for everything.

Do we think Amazon might be a dictatorship? I think it might be. No, I doubt it. Jeff Bezos might be living a double life. You never know. If we have any Amazon workers that are listening, feel free to give me a message and let me know if Jeff Bezos is actually

a tyrant in waiting. But no, Frank, today's been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.