When I was a kid, my favourite toy was my My Little Autocrat doll. I loved that doll.
Of course, in this “political correctness gone mad” world of ours now, I don’t imagine Hasbro could get away with selling such a toy anymore. And if they did, I’m guessing it wouldn’t be acceptable for it to be half the height of an Action Man doll and almost as wide it is high.
Oh, and if you pulled the string in it’s back, it would probably say something like “these extensive multinational sanctions are really making me reconsider whether I want our humble nation to be such an international pariah and disappointing example to the young everywhere”, rather than “guards, take the capitalist-imperialist pig-dog spy outside and blast him to smithereens with the anti-aircraft cannon!” or “oh Margaret, I do so love it when you tell me to stick it up my junta!”
Oh dude, yes, I really loved that doll.
But possibly my favourite part about it was the My Little Autocrat Playbook that came with it.
Literally a step-by-step explanation of how to subvert girly democracy1 and replace it with manly autocracy.
I remember how I thought Mrs Fairy (my first primary school teacher), with me by her side, could rule class 4B with an iron fist. Obviously hers would have been a puppet role with me pulling the autocratic strings.
However, it turned out Mrs Fairy was more fairy by name than nature and was quite happy maintaining the status quo, while governing my backside with an iron palm.
Still, her loss is your gain. While my copy of the My Little Autocrat Playbook disappeared decades ago, I think I can still remember most, if not all, of the various actions it recommended. These are the steps and processes every autocrat always takes in order to assume total control of a population and turn them from people into assets.
Autocrat Bingo
So how about a game of Autocrat Bingo? How are your country’s leaders doing on the see-saw of democracy and autocracy?
Jingo bells, jingo bells, jingo all the way
Jingoism is right at the top of the My Little Autocrat’s Playbook.
Defined as an extreme form of patriotism, it works by making a large part of the people closely bonded around the belief that they are special. That they’re better than others and that it’s vital they protect their position because they’re constantly at threat from others who want to bring them down.
Find an enemy
Which leads neatly to finding an enemy or, better still, enemies – the more the merrier. These may be both internal and external.
Immigrants are always a popular choice, particularly if they stand out physically. Supporters of other political parties are a popular choice too, with them often being painted as unpatriotic.
Neighbours are another natural target, especially if they’re a smaller or seemingly weaker country.
All claims against these enemies will be starkly black and white. People don’t get worked up about grey areas. You need to make them angry and scared, and if that means exaggerating or just plain lying, well that’s what you’ve got to do.
Control the media
Obviously, you need to get your message out there and in front of the people. In the early days of transitioning from democracy to autocracy, you’re probably going to need to rely on the assistance of friendly media owners. The good news is that many, perhaps most, owners of media channels are quite happy to work closely with politicians, to promote a news narrative that suits both.
In addition, few media channels can be considered as friendly as social media, which pretty much allows anyone to post anything as news with next to no form of fact-checking.
With a focus on pushing the jingoistic, anti-enemy story, social media becomes a glorious place to fan the flames of anger among the loyal.
Of course, once the transition to autocracy passes the tipping point, you need to take control of the media much more firmly. You can completely close down those channels you most dislike and assume executive control of those you’ll keep running to maintain your message. Whether you work with the original owner or just imprison them for some heinous unpatriotic crime is really down to you. Enjoy the feeling of liberation such power gives you.
As for social media, well probably best if you just ban it now because it turns out such hotbeds of lies are a danger to the nation. Though don’t forget to create your own version that can be managed to let everyone know how great you are.
Court the religious
Assuming you’re not promoting a political system that doesn’t recognise religion, getting the support of the dominant religious leaders shouldn’t do you any harm. Regardless of your own beliefs, being photographed holding a religious book like The Bible or Quran, or attending church, temple or mosque will surely go down well with the followers.
If there’s a substantial part of the population with strong religious views, getting their religious leaders onside is an easy shortcut to ensuring long-term support from a big chunk of people. You can even claim to be doing God’s work as you crush all dissent and opposition to your rule. Hallelujah and Allāhu ʾakbar!
Install your own judges
As you’ll discover, few things are as wholly frustrating to any budding autocrat as namby-pamby, bleeding-heart liberal judges getting in the way of your march to autocratic control by placing the exercise of established law over your desires. They’re an utter bunch of bar stewards.
The first chance you get, you’ll want to be elevating those judges that can be trusted and sidelining any pesky judges who don’t have your worldview and replacing them with loyalists. You’ll probably want to frame this as an exercise in democracy to prevent unelected judges from overstepping their powers and forcing the people to follow their commands.
Change laws to hand more control to you
Now, with the judges offering a more patriotic and supportive view of your government, why not indulge yourself with a raft of changes to the laws to make it easier for you to extend your power while weakening the opposition?
If your country has rules restricting the number of times you can hold power, you’ll be wanting to change that as quickly as possible. Rules like this are seen as stopping one person from gaining too much power, but you know they weaken the country by removing your immense talent from government before your work is completed.
Harass opponents
In an ideal world, you’d just be able to ban political opponents, but it takes time to get to the point where you can lock them up indefinitely.
Initially, you’ll just have to accept that you can only harass your opponents and make life more awkward. You’ll want to pass laws that make it more difficult for them to run in elections against you. Be sure to charge them with or even try them for crimes in the run-up to elections to distract them and discredit them in the eyes of the electorate.
Use police and military to clamp down on protests
Obviously, with the laws adapted to suit your ends, you need to be sure you’ve got the means to enforce these laws across the population.
You’ll want to install friendly and supportive individuals into leadership roles of the police and army. Just playing up the importance of their role in protecting the future of their (your, obviously) nation will go a long way to getting them to fall into line, but a more generous wage structure should carry most across the finishing line.
A cool new uniform wouldn’t go amiss either. I hear black is very much in vogue this season for the uniform of authoritarian police forces (you’ll be wanting to reserve pink and orange for prison uniforms). But then, isn’t black very much in vogue every season for the uniform of authoritarian police forces? Trust in the My Little Autocrat’s Playbook for all your sartorial guidance, your officers will love you for it.
Suppress intellectuals
No-one likes a smart ass, so why not lock them all up?
Having too many free thinkers, such as teachers and university professors, sharing crazy ideas about democratic freedom is just going to confuse the people. Far better to get these radicals out of society and into a secure prison as soon as possible. You can replace them with new educators who will teach your future assets that you’re great, really great.
Jail all dissenters
Why stop at just jailing intellectuals? Let’s jail every bar steward who mentions democracy, protests against your rule or even just looks at your drink funny.
Corruption, crimes against God and working for enemy nations are all popular classics from the Playbook for giving you good cause for locking anybody up.
Did your paper boy drop your newspaper on the front step on a rainy day? 12 years hard labour will ensure that’s a mistake he won’t repeat and he’ll love you for helping make him a better person.
Bribe people to side with you
People love money. Often more than they love other people in fact. Diverting vast sums of public money into the pockets of those you install in your society’s positions of power will quite literally buy you loyalty. What’s not to love?
Ban opponents
Once you’ve twisted the law sufficiently to work for you instead of the people, you can start banning political opponents from elections completely.
Throw a party for some of your most trusted supporters and come up with a range of reasons for banning unsuitable candidates from running. Anti-patriotic actions are always good here, as is working as an agent for a foreign country. Be sure to hand out a special prize to the first person to suggest banning someone from the election for anti-democratic actions 😉
Ban other political parties
Even the revered American President George Washington said of political parties that they are likely to “become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
Hang on, that’s your job 😉
Ha ha, kidding aside, if a great leader and believer of democracy thinks so little of political parties, surely no-one can complain about you banning them. It’s literally the right thing to do and what Washington would have done himself if he hadn’t been such a namby-pamby bleeding-heart liberal.
How’d You Do?
If you live in a democratic society, you hopefully won’t have ticked off very many of those, yet you may still be surprised by just how many gave you a sense of déjà vu.
The blind patriotic jingoism tends to be an approach favoured more by the extremes on the left and right and it seems to riding high across much of the Western world.
That usually ties into the targeting of immigrants as a natural enemy for everyone. Anti-immigration arguments seem to have come back into fashion, having been sidelined for a few decades. However, as the prosperity enjoyed by a generation or two is subsiding, picking on the immigrants who are coming in and trying to take a share of the 2.5% wealth that the poorest 50% of Americans own and the less than 6% of wealth owned by the poorest 50% of Britons. Most of the people being poor has nothing to do with all the wealthy people who own the other 97.5% of American wealth or the other 94.08% of British wealth.
Politics across the Western world has also become more partisan with it now more common to attack political opponents as enemies rather than respected colleagues with different views on how to achieve things. Opponents are often unpatriotic too.
While politicians in democracies can’t control the media, it’s still not unusual for many media companies to have a strong bias for specific parties and leaders, with reporting of the same stories often being very different depending on who’s reporting it.
The hopeless ex-British Prime Minster Liz Truss is just one of several leading Conservative politicians who have suggested politicians should appoint judges, while amazingly, the US system works that way already.
The religious angle varies by country, but in those where it is a factor, it’s not unusual to find politicians who have never seemingly had any religious convictions suddenly saying how great God is.
Moving further down the list, most of the later stuff really does require a degree of autocracy and will have to remain nothing more than a wet dream for politicians constrained by the shackles of democracy. Though, that said, in preparation for the 2024 Presidential election, several US states unsuccessfully attempted to block Donald Trump from standing.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step and many politicians in Western societies have already taken many steps towards a less democratic future. How far they get on that journey will depend on you.
- It was the 1970s and sexual equality wasn’t a mainstream concept back then ↩︎