GBST 373
A Global History of Mass Dictatorship Fall 2024
Division II D Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed HIST 377

What if the majority supports dictatorship? Is it dictatorship or democracy? How far is the contemporary American democracy from Alexis Tocqueville’s observation of America as the ‘tyranny through masses’? What’s the dividing line between democracy and dictatorship? How could the communist regime use the metaphor of ‘people’s democracy’ to justify the proletarian dictatorship? How distant is Mao Zedong’s ‘dictatorship by the masses’ from the plebiscitary democracy? How different is the French Jacobin’s ‘Sovereign dictatorship’ from the Fascist’s ‘new politics’ based on popular sovereignty? How different is Jacobin’s ‘totalitarian democracy (Jacob Talmon)’ from the Cold War paradigm of totalitarianism? ‘Mass dictatorship’ as a historical oxymoron is a hypothetical answer to those questions. This course is designed to encourage students to respond independently to those questions. Putting comparatively diverse dictatorships, including fascism, Nazism, Bolshevism, Maoism, developmental dictatorships, and (neo-)populisms in a global historical perspective, this seminar course would raise doubt about the conventional binary of democracy and dictatorship and problematize the Western democracy. This course is motivated by “how to democratize contemporary democracy.” As a participatory observer of the American presidential election 2024, we will investigate a global history of mass dictatorship with a critical gaze.