How to Become a Tyrant

How to Become a Tyrant is a Netflix docu-series narrated by Peter Dinklage. It is partly based on the 2011 non-fiction book The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics.

It was followed by another series using the same format, also narrated by Dinklage, called How to Become a Cult Leader, which was released on 28 July 2023.

On 14 November 2023, How to Become a Mob Boss was released.

Plot
The narrator states that everybody wants absolute power to transform society to their liking and proceeds to explain how such power can be obtained and sustained. The docu-series proceeds to analyze biographies of historical dictators Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin, Muammar Gaddafi and the Kim family.

Cast

 * Peter Dinklage as narrator
 * Waller Newell as commentator

Production
The series was executive produced by David Ginsberg, Jake Laufer, Jonas Bell Pasht, Peter Dinklage, and Jonah Bekhor. The series was released on Netflix on 9 July 2021. The British Board of Film Classification issued a '15' certificate for the series.

Reception
The series garnered criticism, especially for being centered only in socialist and fascist totalitarian governments, and for ignoring all the dictators and tyrants supported and enforced by the US, who leaned towards capitalism and neoliberalism, like Pinochet, Videla or Stroessner. Also, Jim Shannon objected that the series mostly ignored Mao Zedong.