United against the aristocratic tyrants.

That's nothing! Defeat the tyrants. Thrash the Feringhees!

The apple cart the tyrants are riding will be overturned.

The grip of the aristocratic tyrants is on all things living...

Everywhere you looked, people were excising hated autocrats. Here, at long last, was Poland s long awaited popular uprising, revenge for December 1980, when Jaruzelski declared martial law, banned Solidarity, and threw its leaders in jail.

And swear to fight to the death against our oppressors!

But keeping Islamism at bay is not a reason to support dictators.

Although there are a lot of warlords, murderers, and dictators in the world, the perversity of Kony's crimes made him first on the court's list.

In the end, an adviser to authoritarian leaders cannot escape the dilemma.

How sad it is suddenly to discover... that we've been dictators in our lives... to ourselves and others.

longest serving dictators a murderer with American blood on his hands.

Realism, in the sense of balancing power by appeasing dictators, has its limits.

Medieval court jesters were often the only ones who could speak truth to despotic kings.

Those attacks on freedom of religion in countries which ousted their dictators, have raised questions among netizens.

When East Germans protested against their Communist autocrats in 1989, they were not assured of success either.

The Assads, like other authoritarian Arab leaders, kept a lid on internal violence and their own citizens aspirations.

With the simplest of words, Zhu was attempting to awaken a nation, and, for China s dictators, nothing is more subversive or terrifying than the word choice.

The West s blind support for autocratic Arab rulers has reduced all hope of peaceful change.

Many autocratic rulers in Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Belarus, and elsewhere still lead the old fashioned way.

That this should be so has of course much to do with America s traditional policy of sustaining the Arab world s pro Western dictators.

Then there is the long tradition of the court jester with license to criticize the despot by sweetening his barbs with jokes.

But this principle can never have been intended to shield from the outside world dictators who massacre their own people.

It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained.

Recent history is replete with alarming examples of dictators and would be dictators who refuse to recognize when their time has run out.

Bombs aimed at foreign dictators or their security apparatus almost invariably kill individuals far from the corridors of power.

The script is so well known by now among the world s would be dictators that it can take less than a week to lock down a country.

Countries that have fallen into the grip of autocratic leaders for example, Argentina and Turkey are also increasingly at a disadvantage.

Dictators everywhere silence journalists in the name of national security by charging those who would investigate their regimes with treason, subversion, or espionage.

Parties lose ground against the caudillist adventures of people like Lopez Obrador in Mexico and Chavez in Venezuela, and congresses are assured only of public antipathy.

Death, it seems, is always particularly difficult for autocrats to manage, even when they succeed in dying of natural causes.

For example, over the past 15 years, the progress of international justice has made the world less secure for dictators and those who trample on human rights.

On the question of debt, we are of course very sympathetic to countries whose debt may have escalated to uncontrolled proportions through their despotic leaders.

According to his opponents, Morales is reproducing the tradition of caudillismo, concentrating power in his hands and turning government institutions into mere formalities.

But America and the West did, at key turning points, realize that times had changed so much that these dictators had outlived their usefulness.

This perspective plays directly into the hands of authoritarian rulers like Erdoğan, who can leverage the perceived Islamophobia of foreign powers to mobilize their political base.

Several Arab dictators who had held power for decades have already been ousted or forced to announce that they will retire.

Any attempts at engagement by Western politicians, such as Biden s recent trip, are automatically met with doubt and criticism for cozying up to dictators.

Then, for some unknown reason, it could make its assistance to Africa conditional on fraternal ties with the worst African dictators.

They are used to dealing with autocrats in Cairo, Damascus, and Amman, and now fear the consequences of an Arab foreign policy that genuinely responds to the voice of the people.

BENGHAZI Middle Eastern autocrats routinely warn their people of rivers of blood, Western occupation, poverty, chaos, and Al Qaeda if their regimes are toppled.

While dictators associated with military juntas were challenged overnight, the Arab Spring never came to the region s conservative monarchies.

Pulling away from dictators without trying to take credit for or hijack the revolt was exactly what was required.

On the other side are the modern minded, those who hated the old oppression by corrupt dictators and despise the new oppression by religious fanatics.

The US, for its part, did not abandon authoritarian allies such as Egypt s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia s Zine el Abidine Ben Ali immediately.

Brutal dictators go unpunished because their interests are protected by large powers with stakes in their natural resources.