"There was a time when all world leaders were dictators, when all leaders gained power through inheritance or through violence. Even the Athenian democratic period of the seventh to fourth centuries BC would not meet modern standards of universal suffrage. Because three of the major figures during World War II, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin, were vicious tyrants, they defined our current understanding of what a dictator is. In the second half of the twentieth century, democracy spread rapidly around the world and became accepted as an almost universal value that now even dictators feel compelled to placate public opinion by staging phony elections."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
David Wallechinsky, Tyrants: The World's 20 Worst Living Dictators (2006), p. 2
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dictatorship
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Dictatorship
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