Mona Eltahawy Quotes

He [Rafael Trujillo] had his torture chambers. He had his political assassinations. But he kept law and order, cleaned the place up, made it sanitary, built public works, and he didn’t bother the United States. So that was fine with us.

Africa has more dictators per capita than any other continent.

Capitalism was reasonably content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet

…In certain parts of Latin America, the seizure of the vast majority of the wealth by an oligarchy of owners bereft of social consciousness, the practical absence or the shortcomings of a rule of law, military dictators making a mockery of elementary human rights, the corruption of certain powerful officials, the savage practices of some foreign capital interests constitute factors which nourish a passion for revolt among those who thus consider themselves the powerless victims of a new colonialism in the technological, financial, monetary, or economic order.

Nigeria first entered...'the dismal tunnel' on January 15, 1966, when the military overthrew all the institutions of a democratically elected government... If there is light at the end of this tunnel, it is imperceptible to anyone not paid to see it.

In the Middle East there are two methods of control: mass repression and mass bribery. In Syria they use mass repression; in Saudi Arabia, mass bribery. In Bahrain, a bit of both.

I visited Libya in September 1996 for the 27th anniversary of the 'revolution' - a military coup that a 27-year-old Gadhafi led to topple the monarchy and since which he has ruled. Some were optimistic that Gadhafi's 'revolution' could herald a new Libya, but it didn't take long for his brutality to stamp out any such hopes.

When I was at university in the Fifties, Latin America was full of dictators. Trujillo was the emblematic figure because, of course, of his cruelty, corruption, extravagance, and theatricalities.

Mubarak was adept, as were many other U.S.-backed dictators, at playing the sane middle to the 'lunatics with beards' he so often used as bogeymen to guarantee the support of foreign allies.

The autocracies of the Arab world have been as economically destructive as they've been politically repressive.

There are, of course, all sorts of other unpleasant regimes outside the walls as well - the military dictators of Latin America and the apartheid regime of South Africa.

We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy.

It's time to bury the unreal, failed 'realism' of those who have long thought that dictators brought stability.

The raids on Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute, the Adenauer Foundation, and other groups helping Egyptians move toward respect for democratic politics and human rights were of a piece with the practices of Hosni Mubarak - only bolder and more repressive.

History reminds us that dictators and despots arise during times of severe economic crisis.

By the late 1970s, repression and economic chaos were causing increasing unrest throughout Latin America. Army strongmen were forced to cede power in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

Fascism in Uruguay did not begin just with the military coup of 1973, but years before, even when there was still a government with a constitution and parliament.

Dictators are interesting, no?

Dictators, unlike Democrats, depend on a small coterie to sustain their power. These backers, generally drawn from the military, the senior civil service, and family or clan members, have a synergistic relationship with their dictator. The dictator delivers opportunities for them to become rich, and they protect him from being overthrown.

Repressive regimes do not endure change willingly - and Venezuela is no exception.

Personalist regimes mute factional differences the most .... Dictators usually retain the loyalty of elites through some combination of coercion, personal favors, and material rewards. Elites are frequently rotated or jailed to avoid factionalism. The military is usually a depersonalized instrument for the dictator's power, holding no sense of independent institutional identity. Divisions between so-called hard-liners and soft-liners are virtually non-existent...

Those strutting, heroic figures who destroyed Spanish rule were, it seemed, unable themselves to rule for any significant period of time, or to build lasting institutions. Worse, the cult of personality that grew up around them served as a precedent for the two most serious evils that were to afflict Latin America until well into the late twentieth century – popular dictatorship and caudillismo, military rule – which alternated in many countries, and even sometimes merged, with doubly tragic results. Latin America’s underdevelopment since independence, particularly as compared with the United States, has been largely ascribed to such misgovernment.

Nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.

When a dictatorship controls the political life of a country, responsible opposition cannot develop, and dissent is driven underground and toward the extreme. And to draw attention away from their social and economic failures, dictators place blame on other countries and other races, and stir the hatred that leads to violence. This status quo of despotism and anger cannot be ignored or appeased, kept in a box or bought off.