Advice for a Dictator


And for Those Who Want to Become One

by Joseph Goebbels

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1. A dictatorship requires three things: a man, an idea and a following ready to live for the man and the idea, and if necessary to die for them. If the man is lacking it is hopeless; if the idea is lacking, it is impossible; if the following is missing, than the dictatorship is only a bad joke.
2. A dictatorship can rule against a parliament when necessary, but never against the people.
3. Sitting on bayonets is uncomfortable.
4. A dictator's first task is to make what he wants popular and to bring the will of the nation in tune with his own will. Only thus will the broad masses support him in the long run and join his ranks.
5. A dictator's highest duty is social justice. If the people sense that the dictator only represents a thin upper class that has nothing to do with them, they will see the dictator as a hateful enemy and quickly overthrown him.
6. Dictatorships will rescue a nation when they know better ways than the previous governmental forms that they are fighting, and when their power is so anchored in the people that they do not depend on weapons, rather on their followers.
7. A dictator does not need to follow the will of the majority. He must however have the ability to use the will of the people.
8. To lead parties and masses is the same as governing a nation. He who ruins a party will lead a nation into the abyss. Political ability is not demonstrated by using treacherous methods to rise to a ministerial chair on the labor of others.
9. Dictatorships must be able to survive on their own spiritual reserves. It will not work if what is good in their ideas comes from their opponents, and what does not come from their opponents is bad.
10. The ability to speak is no shame. It is shameful only when actions do not follow words. To speak well is good. To act bravely is even better. The typical reactionary can neither speak nor act. He has somehow gained power, but has no idea what to do with it.
11. Nothing is more foreign to dictatorial thinking than the bourgeois concept of objectivity. A dictatorship is by its very nature subjective. It takes sides by its nature. Since it is for one thing, it must be against another. If it does not do the latter, it runs the risk of having people doubt its honesty about the first.
12. A dictatorship speaks openly about what it is and what it wants. Nothing is farther from it than to hide behind a facade. It has the courage to act, but also the courage to affirm.
13. Dictatorships that hide behind the law to give themselves an appearance of legality even if their actions disagree, are short-lived. They will collapse of their own incompetence, leaving behind chaos and confusion.
14. Only those who lack the courage to join a party value being above party. When worlds collapse, when foundations shake, when revolutionary fevers spread through peoples and nations, one must join a party, one must be for or against. He who stands between will be torn apart by the contradictions, a victim of his own indecisiveness.
15. It may sound grotesque, but it is true: The nature of a dictator must be clear from his name. One can rule with a name like M�ller or Meier. And the claim to a title must be fought for. It can not be gained by swindle.
16. A true dictator depends on himself. His false counterpart hides behind the rules and depends on legal paragraphs to justify his actions.
17. Everything great is simple and everything simple is great. The little man likes to conceal his insignificance through complexity.
18. The army exists to defend the country against external threats, not to suppress the people in the interests of a thin layer of usurpers. A dictatorship that that cannot defend itself with its own supporters deserves to be displaced.
19. Primo de Rivera [the Spanish dictator who lost power in 1930] fell because his power rested on guns, but he earned only hatred and scorn from the people.
20. Mussolini's work is unshakable, for he is his people's idol. He gave back to Italy what has always been the surest and best foundation of a state: Confidence.
: rms � �

: An Enemy Within

: FrontPageMagazine.com | September 19, 2001

: REPRESENTATIVE BARBARA LEE, Democrat of Berkeley, was the only member of Congress who refused to defend her country under attack. The Los Angeles Times calls Barbara Lee a "liberal" and compares her to "anti-war" dissenters of the past, most notably Jeanette Rankin who cast the lone vote in the U.S. Congress against America�s entry into the Second World War and said after Pearl Harbor, "As a woman I can�t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else." We are at war again, and it�s time to call things by their right names.

: Barbara Lee is not an anti-war activist, she is an anti-American communist who supports America�s enemies and has actively collaborated with them in their war against America.

: I met Barbara Lee when she was working in city politics in Oakland. I met her in the penthouse headquarters of Huey Newton, the infamous "Minister of Defense" for the Black Panther Party. Newton was a gangster at war with America and Barbara Lee was his undercover agent in local government.

: Barbara Lee later became a staffer in the office of Democrat congressman Ron Dellums. In this capacity she committed an act of betrayal that I am unable to describe as treason only because she was never prosecuted for it. At the time, Ron Dellums was the head of the House Sub-committee on Military Installations. In this capacity, he had top security clearance and carried on a one-man campaign to thwart the foreign policy of the United States in regard to the Communist dictatorship of Grenada.

: U.S. security officials had identified the Communist dictatorship as a threat because of the presence of large numbers of Soviet bloc advisers and their ongoing construction of an airport that could be used for Soviet military planes. As the ranking Democrat member of the House Armed Services Committee, Dellums went to Grenada to conduct his own fact-finding tour. On his return he testified before the House Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs that "based on my personal observations, discussion and analysis of the new international airport under construction in Grenada, it is my conclusion that this project is specifically now and has always been for the purpose of economic development and is not for military use�. It is my thought that it is absurd, patronizing and totally unwarranted for the United States Government to charge that this airport poses a military threat to the United States� national security."

: What legislators did not know at the time was that Dellums had previously submitted his report on the airport to the Communist dictator of Grenada for his prior approval, and subject to any changes he or his military advisers chose to make. In other words, Dellums acted as an agent of the Communist enemy in abetting his hostile designs against the United States. His emissary in this act of betrayal was Barbara Lee.

: We know this from government documents retrieved by US marines after Grenada was liberated by U.S. forces. One document was a love-letter from Dellums� chief of staff, Carlottia Scott (recent political issues director of the Demcoratic National Committee) to the Grenadian dictator himself, Maurice Bishop. In the letter Carlottia Scott wrote: "Ron [Dellums] has become truly committed to Grenada, and has some positive political thinking to share with you�. He�s really hooked on you and Grenada and doesn�t want anything to happen to building the Revolution and making it strong. He really admires you as a person and even more so as a leader with courage and foresight, principles and integrity�. The only other person that I know of that he expresses such admiration for is Fidel."

: Another document liberated by the marines contained the minutes of a Politburo meeting attended by the Communist dictator and his military command. "Barbara Lee is here presently and has brought with her a report on the international airport that was done by Ron Dellums. They have requested that we look at the document and suggest any changes we deem necessary. They will be willing to make the changes."

: If this is not treason, what is?