How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Idi Amin's Uganda
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Find and follow What on Earth every Saturday wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to Ideas, I'm Nala Ayed, and welcome to the second in our five-part series, How to Defeat Authoritarianism. It's a series of conversations recorded at the Stratford Festival in Ontario in summer 2026, each exploring the rise and fall of a pivotal authoritarian regime from recent history. The new man in charge of the Uganda government is 45-year-old Major General Idi Amin, commander of the Uganda Armed Forces.
Today, we look for lessons from the dictatorial rule of Uganda's Idi Amin. He is not a man who has had any great intellectual training. Here is how the CBC introduced listeners to Amin in 1972 with Anthony Hughes, editor of Africa magazine. He is not a he is not a statesman, he is a a bluff, hearty Army sergeant major, and he's not used to dealing with the complexities of political affairs and of diplomatic affairs.
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