Your Dictatorship's Mandatory Reading List

[whitelye]

My last poll seemed to generate the same comments over and over again. It seems most people would either like to be in a position of no political power at all (communism and anarchy) or in a position of total and utter domination over their fellow man. I totally sympathize, but here is my follow up question for all of you would be Kim Jong Il's:

If you were the absolute ruler of a society, what would you and your massive balls demand that everybody read and watch? Put more simply, what does society need to see, hear, and read in order to be better? (or worse, depending on how you like to run your world)

 

[implodingMan]

Read: War and Peace. That'll show all those illiterate buggers.

Watch: Planet Earth (that BBC documentary series). Epic and educational.

 

[RebelRising]

Ironically, a lot of my recommendations would be dystopian/anti-establishmentarianism literature.

-The Giver
-Farenheit 451
-1984
-The Commedia
-Shakespeare's Entire Works
-Everything by Bill Bryson
-Everything by Eva Ibbotson
-The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud
-The Lord of the Rings by Tolkein
-A Series of Unfortunate Events by lemony Snicket
-Antigone by Sophocles
-Some Clive Barker here, Stephen King there...

I won't say that Harry Potter isn't fun to read, but It's hardly worth the extra enforcements and executions.

 

[Calobi]

Whatever they want to. Freedom of what to read would be very important to me. An occupied (not in the military sense) community is a happy community.

 

[RebelRising]

Face the wall, dissenter!

 

[Blind0bserver]

Personally, I'd consider going in the complete different direction with this and ban any kind of reading altogether. If all the little blighters are illiterate, it'll be harder for them to rise up against me.

Of course, they'll all be a pack of morons, which would make them doing my bidding a little harder, but no plan is perfect...

EDIT: Sun Tsu's "The Art of War" should be required reading for the military of any fascist state.

 

[Labyrinth]

See, one way to keep in power would be to render your entire populace illiterate and unable to think for themselves (See: 1984, Southern USA, Cambodia.) But anyway. My list.

-1984
-Brave New World
-Mein Kampf
-The Communist Manifesto
-Das Kapital
-Pratchett
-The Long Walk To Freedom
-Long Hard Road Out Of Hell
-The Bone People
-The Crucible

I would then sit back and watch the Revolution stir...

 

[whitelye]

Ironically, a lot of my recommendations would be dystopian/anti-establishmentarianism literature.

-The Giver
-Farenheit 451
-1984
-The Commedia
-Shakespeare's Entire Works
-Everything by Bill Bryson
-Everything by Eva Ibbotson
-The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud
-The Lord of the Rings by Tolkein
-A Series of Unfortunate Events by lemony Snicket
-Antigone by Sophocles
-Some Clive Barker here, Stephen King there...

I won't say that Harry Potter isn't fun to read, but It's hardly worth the extra enforcements and executions.

Shakespeare's entire works would be quite the task for any one person. That on top of this list would have you cutting off heads left and right. And up and down too.

 

[RebelRising]

Ironically, a lot of my recommendations would be dystopian/anti-establishmentarianism literature.

-The Giver
-Farenheit 451
-1984
-The Commedia
-Shakespeare's Entire Works
-Everything by Bill Bryson
-Everything by Eva Ibbotson
-The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud
-The Lord of the Rings by Tolkein
-A Series of Unfortunate Events by lemony Snicket
-Antigone by Sophocles
-Some Clive Barker here, Stephen King there...

I won't say that Harry Potter isn't fun to read, but It's hardly worth the extra enforcements and executions.

Shakespeare's entire works would be quite the task for any one person. That on top of this list would have you cutting off heads left and right. And up and down too.

So...what? Where's the problem?

 

[Imitation Saccharin]

Read:

The Memoirs Of The Last Guy Who Rebelled: a horrific tale of torture, suffering and death.

10 times.

 

[Galletea]

Only the propaganda I feed them. Knowledge is a dangerous thing and I don't want any revolutions. Teaching them anything would be like saying "overthrow me, come on, power to the masses and all that"

 

[Jobz]

-Any and all things by Chuck Palahniuk and Chuck Klosterman.
-At least four of Shakespear's works, one of which must be As You Like It.
-The entire collected works of Edgar Allen Poe.
-Military field guides (We have to prepared for the intervention of Democratic nations)
-Mein Kampf (Well, he was the world's most infamous dictator.)
-At least five of Friedrich Nietzsche's works. Must include Beyond Good & Evil and Human, All Too Human

That's it. They can watch whatever the hell they want. I'm not that much of a douche.

 

[InsanityBaronOfAtrocity]

One book.

"Glorious Dictator and the Joy he brings us"

 

[hamster mk 4]

Ender's Game edited to remove Peter's power play. To let them know that doing well in war games is important and that even children must serve the greater good.

Brave New World taught with a different empisis. 1000 repititions = 1 truth and orgies are good.

Grapes of Wrath to let the people know how bad people have it in other countries and how fortunate they are to live under my benovelent rule.

My own biography about overthrowing the previous evil government.

 

[LadyZephyr]

I learned everything I need to know about the universe from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, so everyone will be forced to read that.

 

[Sporadic]

All of tolkiens work, including that of his son. The lord of the rings is the one Trilogy I believe every single person in the world should have the privilage of reading.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Read : Good Omens
Watch : Connections with James Burke
Listen : The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill on Sea.
Smell : Bacon on freshly baked Bread.
Play : The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Feel : A purring cat.
See : The full moon on a hill overlooking the sea with a loved one.
Taste : Freshly squeezed orange juice.

I'm looking for a Dictatorial Utopia.

 

[Lukeje]

Read: War and Peace. That'll show all those illiterate buggers.

So you want everyone to be able to read Russian? Or do you mean a translation into English of War and Peace?