Thursday, October 1, 2026
Despot: from the Greek despotes, meaning master or lord of the house. The despot seizes and exercises absolute authority, demands blind loyalty, and punishes any hint of insubordination or dissent.
You might imagine that becoming a despot requires tanks, secret police and a balcony from which to wave at enormous, inflamed crowds. You might believe you need a special degree or a fake Nobel Prize. But the road to becoming a despot is surprisingly well-traveled.
Step one: Convince people that facts are negotiable. To be an effective despot, you need to persuade the people that you alone know the truth, and that those who contradict you should consider themselves in harm’s way. But don’t waste time proving that your statements are true. That’s exhausting. Instead, make truth itself seem optional.
Contradict yourself without embarrassment. Deny what everyone watched you say yesterday. Declare that the media are fake, statistics are rigged, experts are corrupt and eyewitnesses are blind. If you’re caught telling a lie, just insist you never said it.
Make up statistics. Say things like 92 percent of Iran’s military capability has been destroyed. Claim a 59 percent approval rating even when reputable polling averages have you below 40 percent. Tell the people that prices are coming down on days when they’re going up. Say the war is over on the day you launch new attacks.
Step two: Attack those who disagree with you. As a despot-in-training, you must learn how to denounce those who don’t support your views, decisions and actions. That includes Supreme Court justices you installed and who now occasionally displease you. When a book documenting troubling facts and events in your administration sells a million copies in its first week, go on record saying that the authors are stupid people who got everything wrong, and that no one is buying the book.
When the highest-profile national newspapers publish stories and editorials about you that are unflattering, describe the reportage as “fake news” made up by people of very low intelligence. Then write a few hundred social media posts claiming that those newspapers are unpopular, staffed by idiots, and will soon go out of business.
Step three: If you lose, win. If you win an election by a few votes, announce that it was a landslide and the will of the people. If you lose an election by, say, 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes, insist that you really won — again, by a landslide. Declare that the process was tainted, the voting machines were defective, the winning candidate really lost, and you have a mountain of proof that you’ll be presenting one of these days.
It’ll also be helpful if you appoint cabinet members who, when asked by Congress who won the election, will be willing to say that while your opponent was legally sworn in to office, he can’t be said to have won the election.
Step four: Be everywhere. Put your name on buildings, monuments, passports, airports and currency — for the good of everyone.
Step five: Whenever possible, scare people. For the despot-in-training, fear is an essential tool. A population that’s constantly looking over its shoulder rarely has time to notice, let alone respond effectively to, the dangers that lie ahead. The specific danger doesn’t matter. Just keep reminding people that immigrants are invaders that, unchecked by masked, armed agents, will destroy “our” heritage; that reading books will turn our children into communists; that Democrats hate America; and that California wants to take over the country.
History shows where this road can lead. Modern despots, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin have weakened or eliminated judicial independence, strangled their countries’ media, denounced academic independence, and eliminated legitimate elections to entrench their own power. Opposition figures have been imprisoned, tortured or killed. At least one American president has repeatedly praised Orban as “a great leader,” called Putin a friend and described Kim as a “terrific person” and a “friend of mine.”
But would-be despots must beware of a potential flaw in the formula. Once you’ve persuaded everyone else to keep looking over their shoulders, don’t forget to look over your own. That’s where the voters are. Ignore them at your peril.
Michael Blitz is professor emeritus and former chair of interdisciplinary studies at the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
