{"id":78240,"date":"2021-07-28T14:29:58","date_gmt":"2021-07-28T18:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=78240"},"modified":"2025-10-10T11:13:43","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:13:43","slug":"carleton-professor-featured-in-netflixs-how-to-become-a-tyrant","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/carleton-professor-featured-in-netflixs-how-to-become-a-tyrant\/","title":{"rendered":"Carleton Professor Featured in Netflix’s How to Become a Tyrant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Carleton Professor Featured in Netflix's How to Become a Tyrant\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Early on, the Netflix series How to Become a Tyrant <\/em>posits that history\u2019s most infamous tyrants followed a similar playbook\u2014a series of tactics used to achieve unimaginable power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a playbook Prof. Waller Newell<\/a> has spent decades studying. He\u2019s the author of two books on tyranny<\/a> for Cambridge University Press and has a new book, Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger, <\/em>due out this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Prof.
Prof. Waller Newell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey probably typed \u2018tyranny\u2019 into Google and popped me up,\u201d jokes Newell, who is a professor of both political science and philosophy. \u201cI was flown to New York in June 2020 to record my segments. Being Netflix, I was quite excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newell is featured prominently in five of the six episodes of the docuseries, which takes a wry \u201chow to\u201d approach to topics such as seizing power, reigning through terror, controlling the truth, creating a new society and ruling forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTyrants do have a kind of megalomaniacal confidence in their own abilities,\u201d says Newell in the first episode. \u201cThey often see themselves as liberators. They are frequently convinced that only they can save the world and make the world a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Making Light of Tyrants<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Newell says the show\u2019s tone reflects a long-standing tradition of poking fun at dictators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou wonder how you could have a humorous attitude about monsters like Hitler and Stalin, but it goes back to Charlie Chaplin\u2019s The Great Dictator<\/em>,\u201d explains Newell.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cTyrants often have such strange outsize personalities and weird character traits. This disarms our fear of them in a way, to be able to ridicule them, and it lessens their capacity to terrify us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Newell studies dictators across human history, from Caesar and Napoleon to Stalin and Mao, and places them in the context of the ancient understanding of tyranny. This includes Plato\u2019s thinking on the honourable way to achieve success by serving the common good rather than exploiting others. But even citing Plato has its limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, all Plato can do to head tyrannical ambition off at the pass is to propose a way to educate young people to prefer the common good over vice,\u201d says Newell. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think he imagines a perfect or permanent solution is possible. These are recurring human types. You can be vigilant and identify them when they emerge.  But they won\u2019t simply fade away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newell sees that vigilance in the making of this series as well: by revealing the playbook of tyrants, we have a lesson in identifying them as we go forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—
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Early on, the Netflix series How to Become a Tyrant posits that history\u2019s most infamous tyrants followed a similar playbook\u2014a series of tactics used to achieve unimaginable power. It\u2019s a playbook Prof. Waller Newell has spent decades studying. He\u2019s the author of two books on tyranny for Cambridge University Press and has a new book, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":78329,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[28],"cu_story_tag":[1921],"class_list":["post-78240","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-community-partnerships","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-public-and-global-affairs"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/78240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/78240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98006,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/78240\/revisions\/98006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=78240"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=78240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}