Revolutionary Monsters

Five Men Who Turned Liberation into Tyranny

By: Donald Critchlow

Narrated by: Chris Lutkin

All sparked movements in the name of liberating their people from their oppressors - capitalists, foreign imperialists, or dictators in their own country. These revolutionaries rallied the masses in the name of freedom, only to become more tyrannical than those they replaced.

Much has been written about the anatomy of revolution from Edmund Burke to Crane Brinton Crane, Franz Fanon, and contemporary theorists of revolution found in the modern academy. Yet what is missing is a dissection of the revolutionary minds that destroyed the old for the creation of a more harmful new. Revolutionary Monsters presents a collective biography of five modern-day revolutionaries who came into power calling for the liberation of the people only to end up killing millions of people in the name of revolution: Lenin (Russia), Mao (China), Castro (Cuba), Mugabe (Zimbabwe), and Khomeini (Iran). Revolutionary Monsters explores basic questions about the revolutionary personality and examines how these revolutionaries came to envision themselves as prophets of a new age.

©2021 Donald Critchlow (P)2021 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Should be required reading in High School

This book explains how apocalyptic leaders arise usually from privileged upbringing to lead the underclasses to foolishly and violently overthrow imperfect governments , only to bring mass death and destruction to the whole of imperfect-able humanity.

Seems biased. And not particularly engaging

There's not any storytelling to keep you engaged. Just a semi-interesting listing of facts. But it seems somewhat biased against socialism and communism in the general sense. I got to wondering how much of the story could I actually trust and how much is the author throwing in his personal thoughts.