While all the political scholars keep debating whether Donald Trump is acting like a wannabe dictator or not, his most admiring supporters and his most vocal opponents believe he already is one. Last week, Trump told an Oval Office gathering of his cabinet officers that he really doesn’t want to be a dictator. But that’s not what he said in 2023 before he won his second presidential term. Back then he said he’d be “dictator for just one day.” Since then his musings and actions about being a dictator suggest the single day he has in mind might be longer than just 24 hours.
Harvard professors Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, who wrote the book “How Democracies Die,” before Trump’s first election in 2016 say Trump is now an “authoritarian” who is leading a collapse of America’s democratic values and standards.
“The depth and breadth of Trump’s disregard for civil liberties, political pluralism, the separation of powers and legal constraints of all kinds mark this as an authoritarian regime,” law professor David Pozen of the Columbia University School of Law told the New York Times earlier this year. Writing in the Scientific American, senior editor David Vergano warned about Trump’s “fondness for unqualified ideologues” and another political scholar, Daniel Stockemer, of the University of Ottawa, told Vergano “since Donald Trump’s inauguration, the country has embarked on the slippery slope toward autocracy.”
In a recent Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) poll, half (52%) of the 5,400 respondents agreed with the statement that Trump is “a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited.” The other half (44%) supported Trump and agreed he is a “strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America’s greatness.”
So, maybe Trump doesn’t have to decide if he wants to be a dictator or not since just about everybody else already has decided his choice for him.
But before Donald Trump listens to too much more dictator and imperial presidency talk and encouragement he might want to complete a few history lessons about what happens to dictators. He might not like the composite picture of all those deposed dictators, emperors, czars, self-righteous kings, assorted tyrants and führers in their final days on the gallows, guillotine, firing range or rotting in exile.
None of us ever get out of here alive, but it seems there is a special place for wannabe dictators who seek too much power and deification during their mortal lives. We all know what happened to Julius Caesar when he turned his back briefly on his Roman senators. Caesar is considered history’s first-ever declared Dictator, with a capital ‘D.’ On March 15, in the year 45 A.D., the great Roman emperor was stabbed 23 times by a gang of his one-time supporters. He died instantly after murmuring to his protégé, “Et tu, Brute?”
Caesar’s dead body lay on the spot of his murder for several hours until a few of his slaves retrieved his corpse and took it to his house. The Roman Emperor was supposed to be cremated in a lavish ceremony on the steps of the Senate, but a mob seized his corpse and burned it in a nearby trash pile.
Reading more pages of history, Mr. Trump would find that most other famous dictators also have met equal and unceremonious deaths.
Atilla the Hun (406-453) ravaged central Europe for decades and spread fear among both his conquered lands and his followers. He died at his wedding feast from a nosebleed. Some historical accounts suggest an assassination attempt.
Many of England’s medieval kings died ignoble deaths. King Richard II (1367-1400) was imprisoned and starved to death. Edward II was tortured along with his girlfriend by a vindictive mob that impaled the pair with red-hot pokers stuck up their asses. Perhaps gruesome in a whole other manner, King Henry VIII (1491-1547) suffered from ulcers, gout and gangrene and, in clinical terms, “rotted to death.”
England’s Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) was one of his country’s most important figures as a soldier, statesman and the first Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, following the execution of King Charles I in 1649. Cromwell had died a quiet death in 1658 but his body was dug up two years later by a revenge-minded son of Charles I who subjected Cromwell’s corpse to a posthumous execution.
Russia’s Czar Nicholas II (1868-1918) was assassinated by a firing squad of revolutionist Bolsheviks. But he didn’t die alone. His wife and five daughters were shot and bayonetted next to him and his attending cook and other servants were also killed and their bodies were doused in acid and burned to conceal their identities.
The execution of France’s King Louis XVI (1754-1793) by guillotine during the French Revolution is one of the most chronicled deaths among history’s dictators. Besides Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” there is a collection of Hollywood films that offer various treatments of the king’s be-heading.
Violence begets violence
Even though some of history’s dictators escaped a murder or execution, their ultimate fate was not always so noble.
France’s great emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) died a slow and lonely death from stomach cancer while in exile on the island of Saint Helena. When his body was returned to mainland France for a state burial, thieves breached a funeral home and cutoff and stole his penis. Napoleon’s “member” kept turning up for a few years at clandestine exhibits until it was buried in his Paris crypt with the rest of his remains.
The suicides of Adolph Hitler and his paramour, Eva Braun, are well documented. On April 30, 1945, with Allied Troops amassing near his German headquarters, Hitler took his own life with a pistol in his hideaway bunker and Braun committed suicide by drinking cyanide. Hitler had ordered that his body be burned but his remains were later identified by dental records.
Two days before Hitler’s suicide, an angry mob captured Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini and his girlfriend, Claretta Petacci, who were disguised as peasants attempting to cross the Italian border into Switzerland, near Lake Como. Along with a few of his sympathizers and Petacci, Mussolini was assassinated by machine gun and all the bodies were hung by their heels from a high timber beam in a village square. A later autopsy found four bullets in and near Mussolini’s heart.
Benito Mussolino’s corpse was stolen from an unmarked grave after being displayed in an Italian village plaza and was still hanging the day Hitler committed his own suicide.
Although Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave, his body was found by non-aligned fascists who kept moving his body to new hiding places before Italian officials finally regained possession. By that time, Mussolini’s corpse was missing a leg.
Some of history’s strong men and authoritarians survived into retirement and had unremarkable deaths. China’s Mao Zedong (1893-1976) died after a long infirmary with multiple ailments including three heart attacks, the last proving fatal in 1975. That was six years after he declared the end to his Cultural Revolution. One million celebrants marched by Mao’s embalmed body at the Great Hall of the People. His legacy is conflicted by the millions of Chinese who were starved, persecuted and killed under his regime. But he is also credited with leading China into a new modern century and for expanding the rights of Chinese women and rural populations of the large country.
Cuba’s El Comandante Fidel Castro (1926-2016) died of undisclosed “natural causes” at his residence at the age of 90 after turning power over to his brother Raúl Castro who retired from office in 2021.
Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, 79, and the Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev, 75, both lived past their turbulent authoritarian crusades. Each was given the kind of state funeral all U.S. presidents receive with foreign heads of state in attendance.
Soviet leader and brutal dictator Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) died after a series of lingering illnesses that befell him even before the end of World War II. There’s a rumor in history that the cerebral hemorrhage that finally took his life may have been caused from being poisoned. All the same, Stalin’s body was interred in Lenin’s Mausoleum. A large crowd descended on Moscow for his funeral and 109 people were crushed to death in the massive procession, including some mounted policemen.
Two more recent historical examples of deposed dictators might be more familiar to Trump. In 2011, Libya’s ruthless strongman ruler, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was captured and killed in a street melee by rebels from his own country. His beating and shooting was captured by an eyewitness’ cellphone and broadcast to the world.
A few years later, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003 by U.S. invasion troops while he was hiding in a hole under one his rural hideaways. He was put on trial by a U.S.-led international tribunal for “crimes against humanity.” His hanging on Dec. 30, 2006 was supposed to be private but photos were later leaked to the international press.
Dictator Death Watch
There are a few former dictators still alive today waiting in exile or limbo and awaiting their final fates. Among these is Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who’s 24-year bloody regime was ended in 2024 when he accepted asylum in Russia. He has not made any public announcements or appearances since. He is only 60 years old. Last year his wife, Alma, filed for a divorce in hopes of leaving Moscow and al-Assad behind.
Brazil’s deposed autocratic president Jair Bolsonaro is under “house arrest” for an alleged and attempted coup following his election defeat in 2022. While in office, he visited Trump in Florida at the Mar-a-Lago resort several times. There are repeated rumors that Bolsonaro is waiting for Trump to grant him immunity and rent him a room at his Palm Beach address.
The United States Institute of Leadership and Diplomacy lists 49 current dictators and authoritarian rulers at the head of “Not Free” nations. Some of these nations are very familiar such as Russia, China, North Korea, Hungary, Afghanistan, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Iran and others. The other non-democratic nations, led by less-familiar dictators or military strongmen are places and names we barely know.
Soon, they will be added to the list of dead dictators.
The problem is they do a ton of damage before they die. We can only hope his time comes before he completely destroys our democracy. Pitchforks or cholesteral- whichever comes first.
You really nailed that subject Rollie. Keep up the great research and writing.
The problem is they do a ton of damage before they die. We can only hope his time comes before he completely destroys our democracy. Pitchforks or cholesteral- whichever comes first.