- 7 weeks ago
From dictators to revolutionaries, some individuals have single-handedly dismantled entire political systems. Join us as we examine the most consequential government overthrows orchestrated by one person's ambition and action. These historical figures didn't just change leadership – they fundamentally transformed nations and altered the course of history through revolution, coup, or calculated power grabs.
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00:00There can be no doubt about the massive historical impact of Lenin.
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the times throughout history
00:10that one person's actions brought down a government.
00:13By early 1949, Mao commanded a formidable fighting force.
00:19Number 10. Julius Caesar, Roman Republic.
00:22Men, we have two choices. We can be slaughtered by the army Pompey is amassing against us.
00:33Or we can fight for our lives, just as we've done every day for eight years.
00:39Caesar's bid for personal power ended the Roman Republic as a functioning constitutional order.
00:45Crossing the Rubicon in 49 BCE triggered civil war.
00:48Victories over Pompey and the senatorial coalition let him centralize authority.
00:54Caesar's on his way to Rome.
00:57How far is he?
00:59Four days from here.
01:00That's impossible.
01:02I heard it from Bibulus himself.
01:04Caesar has passed the Rubicon.
01:11We must leave Rome.
01:13We cannot defend it without troops.
01:14He stacked the Senate with loyalists, pushed aside the assemblies, controlled magistracies,
01:20and accumulated extraordinary powers before being named Dictator Perpetuo in 44 BCE.
01:26There has been decreed by the new Senate that the title of dictator is bestowed upon Gaius Julius Caesar.
01:39This decreet, there will be 50 days of thanksgiving in his honor,
01:45is given the courts and elected consul for life.
01:49Reforms like the Julian Calendar served statecraft while tightening his grip.
01:54His assassination did not restore a res publica.
01:57Instead, it opened the door to another round of civil wars and, ultimately, the era of the Principate.
02:03The result was irreversible.
02:05The Republic's checks and rotating offices gave way to a permanent, personal regime
02:10that set the template for Roman imperial rule.
02:12You treat me as a king, but I assure you that is one role I shall never adopt.
02:21For I am Caesar, and only Caesar.
02:25It is for this crown alone that I conquered gold.
02:29Number 9.
02:30Muammar Gaddafi, Libya.
02:32He was born in a Bedouin tent, came to power in a coup, and for more than 40 years,
02:37Muammar Gaddafi has stood as one of the most bizarre characters on the world stage.
02:41But while his team of virgin female bodyguards and shifting political allegiances
02:46gave an eccentric mystique, Gaddafi ruled Libya like any other tyrant.
02:51A 27-year-old captain toppled King Idris in 1969,
02:55scrapped the 1951 constitution, and dissolved parliament,
02:59the Revolutionary Command Council ruled by Fiat.
03:03He went on to invent a new political philosophy,
03:05Jamahariya, a strange mix of socialism, nationalism, Islam, and his own ideas.
03:12In reality, he was just another brutal dictator.
03:16In 1977, Gaddafi proclaimed the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahariya,
03:22replacing ministries and a legislature with basic people's congresses
03:26and people's committees that pretended to be direct democracy,
03:30while revolutionary committees enforced loyalty and silenced dissent.
03:34The Libyan People's Court was for the people in name only,
03:38and the Green Book functioned as a pseudo-constitution.
03:41He remains utterly unconvinced that there is an uprising against him.
03:46No demonstration at all in the streets.
03:48No, no one against us.
03:50Against me for what?
03:51Because I am not prison.
03:52But, but, but then...
03:53They love me, all my people with me.
03:55They love me all.
03:56But if they do love me...
03:57They will die to protect me and my people.
04:01The result was a hollowed-out state,
04:04a system designed to be ungovernable without him.
04:07When his regime fell in 2011, Libya didn't transition, it fractured,
04:11proving how thoroughly he had tanked the government he replaced.
04:15The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh and then erased the Cambodian state
04:43on principle.
04:44Cities were emptied, markets and money abolished,
04:48ministries dissolved, religion and schooling banned.
04:51Civil servants, professionals, and perceived old society elements
04:55were purged or worked to death.
04:57Security centers like S-21 institutionalized torture and execution.
05:02One day, in the afternoon, the Khmer Rouge cadre took my husband.
05:06They bit him and they killed him.
05:08They said that he's of the enemy.
05:10I cried and I asked him not to beat him, please.
05:13But he said no, because he's the enemy.
05:15So he killed him in front of my two children.
05:17Under the banner of Year Zero,
05:19the regime reorganized the country into agrarian communes
05:23that answered only upward to Pol Pot himself.
05:26The toll was catastrophic.
05:27As many as two million dead and no functioning institutions left to inherit.
05:32Vietnam's 1978 intervention toppled democratic Campuchia,
05:36but the damage was done.
05:38Pol Pot didn't capture a government so much as liquidate one.
05:41According to the prince, Pol Pot will eventually be taken out of the jungle
05:45and brought here to the capital.
05:48He will then become the one under lock and key inside prison
05:51as he awaits trial by an international court charged with genocide.
05:55Terry Lloyd, ITN, Phnom Penh.
05:58Number seven, Augusto Pinochet, Chile.
06:01Chile's national stadium stands an empty reminder to the coup ten years ago
06:05which overthrew Chile's last democratically elected president, Salvador Allende.
06:09Thousands of intellectuals, students, politicians were incarcerated and tortured here.
06:15No one knows how many of them died.
06:17Diplomats at the time estimated 4,000.
06:20On September 11th, 1973,
06:22Pinochet led the armed forces in toppling President Salvador Allende.
06:26La moneda was bombed, Congress dissolved,
06:29and the 1925 Constitution suspended.
06:31Pinochet's junta created the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional
06:35or National Intelligence Directorate to detain, torture, disappear, and exile opponents
06:41while censoring media and criminalizing dissent.
06:44Deprived of even the most basic expression of democratic rights for the last 15 years,
06:49they gathered in Santiago today in their tens of thousands.
06:53It was the culmination of the presidential referendum campaign.
06:56Moderate Christian Democrats, Socialists, and Communists,
06:59marching together.
07:01The flags of 17 different political parties,
07:04making up the command for the no.
07:05Pinochet centralized power in his own hands and subsequently rewired the state.
07:11The 1980 Constitution entrenched military tutelage,
07:14extended his rule, and shielded the regime with an amnesty decree.
07:18A group of Chilean economists,
07:20branded the Chicago Boys for having studied at the University of Chicago,
07:24deepened the regime's reliance on repression.
07:27A 1988 plebiscite cut Pinochet's rule short,
07:30forcing a transition in 1990.
07:32Chileans going to the polls for the first time in 20 years,
07:36and for so many of the 7 million voters,
07:38the first time they have been asked to decide,
07:40in the old-fashioned democratic way,
07:42the kind of government they want and the man they want to lead it.
07:46He is 71-year-old Patricia Elwin,
07:49a Christian Democrat representing a 17-party coalition of the center and left.
07:53Number 6, Benito Mussolini, Italy.
07:56The October 1922 March on Rome coerced King Victor Emmanuel III
08:14into appointing Mussolini Prime Minister,
08:16giving a minority party executive power.
08:18He then dismantled Italy's liberal state by law,
08:22not debate.
08:23The Acerbo Law of 1923 rigged elections to hand him two-thirds of seats.
08:28After the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti was murdered in 1924,
08:34Mussolini used the crisis to consolidate rule.
08:36One year later, a new electoral law was forced upon the Italian people
08:40that guaranteed the fascist party an automatic two-thirds majority in parliament from that moment on.
08:45Il Duce had cut off from the people any future hope of democratic government.
08:49He outlawed opposition parties,
08:51crushed a free press,
08:53neutered unions,
08:54and replaced elected local councils with regime appointees.
08:58By 1926, Italy was a one-party dictatorship.
09:02The latter in packs and corporatist reforms followed,
09:05but the essential fact was already set.
09:07Parliamentary Italy had been legally erased
09:10and replaced by the first durable fascist state.
09:27Number 5.
09:29Oliver Cromwell, the Protectorate.
09:31Why don't we all go down to the pub or something?
09:33Guards!
09:34What now?
09:34Pubs are banned.
09:35They are sinful.
09:36Fine, fine.
09:37Why don't we all go to the theater?
09:39Guards!
09:40Let me guess.
09:40Ban.
09:41Yes, it's sinful.
09:42All right, all right.
09:44Why don't we all go to have a festive kickabout in the park?
09:46Guards!
09:47Oh, watch.
09:48You can't ban sports.
09:49It's sinful!
09:50After the army's purge of parliament,
09:52Cromwell drove the trial and execution of Charles I,
09:56abolished the monarchy and House of Lords,
09:58and proclaimed a kingless commonwealth.
10:00When the rump showed reluctance,
10:02he literally shut it down,
10:03replacing it with the short-lived bare-bones parliament.
10:07Cromwell believed that the rump parliament were rushing through a government bill
10:12that would allow for open, free, uncontrolled elections
10:17that would return a perhaps pro-royalist or at least anti-army parliament,
10:22and he didn't want that.
10:23He wanted a parliament, but it had to be a controlled parliament.
10:25He then imposed the Instruments of Government,
10:28England's first written constitution,
10:30creating the Protectorate with himself as Lord Protector.
10:34Backed by the new model army,
10:35he ruled by ordinances, censored the press,
10:38and deployed the major generals as regional military governors.
10:42Although some of his supporters were willing to, you know, support him to be a monarch,
10:47there was just not enough support across the whole political spectrum.
10:51In particular, a number of the generals were genuinely unhappy
10:55with the idea of a revival of monarchy.
10:58Conquests in Ireland and Scotland crushed resistance.
11:01Parties and traditional Czechs were gone.
11:04Restoration came after his death,
11:05but for a decade, it felt like the old order had been wiped from the history books.
11:10Why don't we all go to church?
11:11I mean, church isn't sinful, is it?
11:14No, of course not.
11:15Well, then let's all go to church.
11:17Guard! Seize them!
11:19It's against the law to go to church on Christmas Day.
11:22Take these sinners to prison.
11:24What?
11:26Wait!
11:27Yes?
11:30Happy Christmas.
11:31Number 4. Mao Zedong, China.
11:34The Red Leader's blueprint for conquest,
11:36protracted guerrilla war, united front,
11:39elimination of all opposition, has accomplished its aims.
11:43The Chinese Communist Party's decisive win in the civil war against the nationalists
11:47ended the Republic of China's rule on the mainland
11:50and replaced it with a one-party Lenist state,
11:53centered on the CCP and its chairman.
11:56The Great Leap Forward wrecked administrative capacity
11:58and triggered mass famine,
12:00after which Mao reasserted personal supremacy
12:03with the decade-long Cultural Revolution in 1966.
12:06Hong Kong, Britain's island colony,
12:08clinging to the flank of Red China.
12:10Here, the flow of refugees from the mainland
12:12is an indicator of the Chinese people's mood.
12:15The influx of nearly a million in ten years
12:17at an undiminished rate
12:18points to continuing discontent on the mainland.
12:21Party and state organs were put on ice,
12:23courts and ministries sidelined,
12:25schools and universities shut,
12:27and governance routed through Red Guards,
12:30revolutionary committees,
12:31and ultimately, the People's Liberation Army.
12:34Mao didn't just overthrow a government in 1949,
12:37he dismantled one from within.
12:38There will be a torrential tide of opposition
12:41to the United States and her allies.
12:43And the philosophy of Mao Zedong concludes,
12:46the nations of the free world
12:48can be divided up and defeated.
12:51This, today, is Communist China's new and global manifesto,
12:56militant and menacing.
12:58Number three, Rahula Khomeini, Iran.
13:01Ayatollah Khomeini emerged from his small suburban house
13:05looking as impassive as ever,
13:07even on the day he's been waiting for
13:09during 15 years of exile.
13:12His followers were more expressive.
13:18There's always a handful of the faithful around him here.
13:22On the 1st of February, 1979,
13:24Khomeini toppled the Pavali monarchy
13:26and scrapped Iran's 1906 constitutional order.
13:29A referendum in March abolished the throne.
13:32By December, a new constitution entrenched
13:35a supreme leader above elected offices,
13:37a guardian council to vet laws and candidates,
13:40and an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
13:42to protect the regime.
13:44The Ayatollah, frail at the age of 78,
13:47has symbolized the most militant opposition to the Shah.
13:50He's now nominated what he calls
13:52the Revolutionary Islamic Council inside Iran.
13:56And ultimately, he wants to turn the country back
13:58to a much stricter Muslim life.
14:00Parallel bodies overrode the provisional government
14:03and purged the old elite.
14:05The U.S. embassy seizure in November 1979
14:08crushed moderates and unified power around Khomeini.
14:12Some 60 Americans,
14:14including our fellow citizen,
14:15whom you just saw, bound and blindfolded,
14:18are now beginning their sixth day of captivity
14:20inside the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
14:23It's Friday morning there now.
14:25But throughout this night in Washington,
14:27officials will continue their search
14:28for some way to negotiate the hostages' freedom.
14:32That search was not successful today.
14:34Parties were banned or broken,
14:36minorities and regional autonomists were suppressed,
14:38and universities were shuttered
14:40during the 1980-83 Cultural Revolution.
14:44The Shah's centralized monarchy
14:46was replaced by a relatively stable clerical state,
14:49whose unelected institutions,
14:51overseen closely by the supreme leader,
14:53still define Iran's politics.
14:55As the Ayatollah made clear this morning,
14:58the Shah leaving is only the start.
15:07The departure of the Shah is not the final victory,
15:12but it is the preface to our victory.
15:16Number two, Vladimir Lenin, Russia.
15:20Lenin used the term,
15:21the dictatorship of the proletariat,
15:23which he derived from Karl Marx.
15:27And Marx didn't necessarily mean
15:30that it would be a dictatorship as we know it,
15:33but Lenin did.
15:36Lenin meant literally that a dictatorship
15:38would be, should be, a dictatorship.
15:41The October Revolution of 1917
15:44toppled the short-lived Russian provisional government,
15:47and authority shifted to the Bolshevik Party
15:49and Lenin's secret police, the Cheka.
15:51When voters returned an unfriendly legislature,
15:54he dissolved the Constituate Assembly
15:56the following January,
15:57then ruled freely by decree.
15:59Villages started to rule themselves.
16:04Towns and cities started to rule themselves.
16:06The place was awash with revolutions.
16:09And what happened in October 1917
16:12was that finally a party came to power
16:16that was going to pull all of these revolutions together.
16:19And that was the genius of Lenin.
16:21The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
16:23pulled Russia out of World War I at immense cost,
16:26consolidating Bolshevik control.
16:28War communism and the Red Terror
16:30crushed opposition
16:31and centralized the economy under party and police.
16:35We have to retreat now.
16:36He called it a retreat.
16:37Instead of trying to build socialism right away,
16:40which we can't do,
16:41we're going to build state capitalism.
16:43We're going to open up markets.
16:45We're going to have a private industry.
16:47If we don't make some kind of compromise,
16:50alliance with the peasantry,
16:51they will overthrow us.
16:53They are the majority.
16:53By 1921,
16:55the ban on factions guaranteed internal unity,
16:58and Lenin's new economic policy
17:00was more market-oriented,
17:02but without loosening political monopoly.
17:04Lenin died in 1924,
17:06but the resulting power vacuum
17:08led directly to the rise of Joseph Stalin.
17:11Lenin founded the one-party state.
17:14Lenin passed on the doctrine
17:15that terror should be used,
17:18and dictatorship also,
17:20to consolidate the revolutionary state.
17:23Now, that's not Stalinism,
17:25that's Leninism.
17:27And that was a legacy
17:28that Lenin bequeathed to Stalin.
17:31Before we continue,
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17:47Number 1.
17:49Adolf Hitler, Germany.
17:50This is the will of God.
17:52Now it is obvious
17:53why I think it is my duty to the nation
17:55to save the German people
17:57from the danger of communism.
17:59He didn't inherit a democracy.
18:00He throttled it.
18:02Appointed chancellor in January 1933,
18:05Hitler exploited the Reichstag fire
18:07to gut civil liberties
18:08and enact mass arrests.
18:10And then,
18:11the Enabling Act
18:12transferred lawmaking to his cabinet
18:14under SA and SS intimidation.
18:16Parliament became decor.
18:18Gleichaltung,
18:19the process of, quote,
18:21Nazification,
18:22did the rest.
18:23Parties were silenced.
18:24Unions smashed and replaced
18:26by the German labor front.
18:27And Dachau opened
18:28for political prisoners.
18:30Completely ignoring the fact
18:31that most people
18:32who left Germany
18:33had done so to get away
18:34from things like Hitler,
18:36he sprang his pet theory
18:37that every person
18:39of German blood,
18:40no matter where he lived,
18:42belonged to the Nazi Reich.
18:44The Night of the Long Knives
18:45in the summer of 1934
18:47announced murder
18:48as state policy
18:49and eliminated internal rivals.
18:51Hitler fused the offices
18:52of president and chancellor
18:54into Führer
18:55and bound army oaths
18:56to himself.
18:57The Weimar Constitution
18:58was obliterated
19:00and in its place
19:00stood a police state
19:02engineered for industrialized
19:04atrocity.
19:05According to the Nazis,
19:07the German was a special creature
19:08who remained forever German.
19:11To the sixth and seventh generation
19:13and must take his orders
19:14from Berlin.
19:15Which historical moment
19:16on our list shocked you the most?
19:18Are there any we missed?
19:19Be sure to let us know
19:20in the comments below.
19:22They took over by virtue
19:23of their organizing ability,
19:25their agitational ability,
19:26and the power
19:27of their political platform,
19:29which was very appealing.
19:30Land, bread, and peace.
19:32It was very simple,
19:33but it represented
19:34the aspirations
19:36of the mass
19:37of the common people
19:38in Russia in 1917.
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