Summary
Matthew Sweet on Chaplin's 1941 film and rising populism today with guests including Francesca Santoro L'hoir who acted alongside Chaplin as a child plus Ece Temelkuran, Peter Pomerantsev and Frank Dikotter.
Dutch Historian Frank Dikotter, who teaches in China, has published books on The Cultural Revolution, Mao's Famine and most recently How to Be a Dictator: the Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century which looks at Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Ceausescu, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Kim Il Sung and Mengistu Haile Mariam
The Turkish journalist, novelist and poet Ece Temelkuran is the author of How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship
Peter Pomerantsev's books include Nothing is True and Everything is Possible and This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality. You can hear Peter taking part in our Free Thinking discussion about George Orwell's novel 1984 if you look up the collection of Landmarks of Culture on the Free Thinking website or use this link https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005nrl
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's |
| 0:27.5 | out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:37.8 | Hello, I'm Matthew Sweet and thank you very much for downloading this Arts and Ideas podcast. |
| 0:42.9 | We're going to be talking about dictators, dictatorship, and authoritarian, so I'm going to say very sternly to you. |
| 0:49.8 | We'll be right back after this message. |
| 0:52.9 | Hello, I'm Donald McLeod, and I want to tell you about the composer of the week podcast. |
| 0:58.1 | Each week I uncover the human stories behind the men and women who created our greatest |
| 1:02.9 | classical music. |
| 1:04.4 | Did you know that Mozart once made an Austrian count so furious he actually booted the composer |
| 1:09.4 | up the backside, or that Tchaikovsky's family censored his diaries to hide the fact that he was gay. |
| 1:15.9 | Ever hear how J.S. Bach drew his sword on a belligerent bassoonist. |
| 1:20.8 | Discover new stories and great music every week by subscribing to Composer of the Week |
| 1:25.9 | wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:27.6 | In September 1923, a dictator came to power in Germany. His name was Dr Otto Gessler. He had been |
| 1:36.9 | the Minister of War, but President Abert appointed him to this role, dictator of the Reich, |
| 1:43.5 | for a special task, to restore public security |
| 1:46.9 | by any means necessary. We don't remember Dr. Gessler, but we do remember the name of the man |
| 1:53.2 | he was brought in to counteract, Adolf Hitler. That word dictator came to define the politics |
| 2:00.3 | of the 1930s. It meant Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, |
... |
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