Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” roars Michael Corleone in The Godfather: Part III. He wants to put his life of crime behind him and go legit, but circumstances conspire against him. It’s a frustration shared by tyrants. Being one, Marcel Dirsus says, is “like being stuck on a treadmill that one can never get off”.
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In How Tyrants Fall, Marcel Dirsus exposes the precarious reality behind the façade of the dictator's absolute power. With keen insight and gripping narrative, Dirsus reveals how the very strategies tyrants use to stay in control sow the seeds of their ultimate downfall. An essential and captivating look at the perils of authoritarian rule and the remarkable ways in which even the most ruthless despots can be toppled.
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Marcel Dirsus: "Take it from someone who just wrote a book about the fall of tyrants: All of these dictatorships are more fragile than they look, it's not just Syria. All of them should be afraid."
“There is no good reason good can't triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the mafia.”
~ Kurt Vonnegut
“As soon as enough people realize the emperors have no clothes, it will collapse with incredible speed.”
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The miserable lives and golden guns of tyrants, dictators and despots
With democracies seemingly faltering worldwide, political scientist and writer Marcel Dirsus is putting tyrants under the microscope to better understand how they rise and how they fall.
Years ago, Marcel took a break from his university studies and travelled to central Africa, where he took a job in a brewery.
One day, while walking to work, he heard shots fired and an explosion in the distance as the military was launching a coup.
The experience terrified him, and drew him into a study of tyrants — the dictators and despots who make life miserable for so many people on the planet.
While they project an image of strength, guarded on all sides, and surrounded by people who do their bidding, Marcel says they live in fear.
For the road to power is often flanked by the road to revolution.
These men know a mass uprising, an assassination, a mutiny or a foreign invasion could end their reign at any moment, and who, or what will take their place?
In investigating the long history of tyrannical leaders, however, Marcel has found a renewed optimism for Western Democracy.
Further information
How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive is published by Hachette Australia.
Marcel is appearing at the Sydney Writers' Festival on Friday 23 May.
Dr Marcel Dirsus is a political scientist and the author of How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive. Dirsus writes The Hundred, a politics newsletter.
In addition to being a Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University (ISPK) in Germany, he is a member of the Standing Expert Committee Terrorism and Interior Security at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.
mainly works on regime instability, political violence and German foreign policy. He has advised democratic governments, foundations, multinational corporations and international organisations like NATO and the OECD.
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In How Tyrants Fall and How Nations Survive political scientist Marcel Dirsus offers insights into the minds of dictators and how they can be toppled from power. While Tyrants project invincibility, history shows us that eventually all of them fall. And it's what happens in the aftermath that can change the fate of a nation.
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Excitement, hope, fear. These are the emotions when a dictator falls. In Bucharest in the weeks after the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu in December 1989, Romanians oscillated between the sheer thrill of being able to talk freely to a foreigner after decades of communist tyranny and fear that doing so might still lead to trouble.
How Tyrants Fall by Marcel Dirsus review – road to revolution
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” roars Michael Corleone in The Godfather: Part III. He wants to put his life of crime behind him and go legit, but circumstances conspire against him. It’s a frustration shared by tyrants. Being one, Marcel Dirsus says, is “like being stuck on a treadmill that one can never get off”.
But then, losing control can be a devastating experience. Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s brutal killing at the hands of rebels after four decades of misrule was a lesson in the transience of autocratic power
How dictators fall: Expert reveals vulnerabilities of tyrannical regimes - The Front Page
Adolf Hitler. Joseph Stalin. Benito Mussolini. Pol Pot. Saddam Hussein.
Apart from being some of the most infamous dictators in human history, they all have one thing in common.
They all had dramatic, violent, and disgraced downfalls. But, in almost every case, foreign powers played a major role in shaping the post-dictatorship future
“When political scientists looked at the statistics for this, they found that over two-thirds of personalised dictators ended up imprisoned, in forced exile, or dead, after losing power,” he said.
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How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive
How Tyrants Fall can be bought from your local bookshop or online. If you prefer, audiobooks and electronic books are available, too. Here are some
Marcel Dirsus studied at Oxford and worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo during a failed coup in 2013. In addition to writing the politics newsletter The Hundred, Dirsus has advised major foundations and international organisations like NATO and the OECD. You can find him at marceldirsus.com and @marceldirsus on Twitter."
Marcel is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University in Germany and a member of the Standing Expert Committee Terrorism and Interior Security at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.
