OPINION:
What’s it like to be the son or daughter of a dictator? That depends. It can be great while the going is good. You have tremendous privilege and are a prince or princess in your country. But when the going is bad, it can be very bad, indeed.
Few are the dictators’ children who escape imprisonment, exile, murder or some other unwanted fate.
There are sons who succeed their father as dictator. North Korea is now on its third Kim, the grandson of the founding dictator, Kim Il-sung. Syria is ruled by a second Assad, Bashar, son of Hafez. In Haiti, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier succeeded “Papa Doc,” Francois.
There are sons who might well have succeeded their father as dictator, if the old man had been able to hang on to power. Nicu Ceausescu might have succeeded Nicolae in Romania. One of the Gadhafi children almost certainly would have succeeded Moammar in Libya. In Central Africa, the “Emperor” Bokassa had anointed a successor prince. But the emperor-dictator fell when the prince was five.
If you are a dictator’s daughter, you are ruled out for succession — even if you are well qualified, so to speak. Marie-Denise Duvalier, Papa Doc’s eldest, was a smart cookie with a great taste for power. She even served as a near-proxy dictator when her father was ill. But he decided to pass power to his one boy, Baby Doc — who was not suited at all to dictatorship.
In Syria, Hafez Assad’s eldest child, Bushra, might have become dictator. But she was of the wrong sex. Same with Kim Sul-song, one of Kim Jong-il’s, in North Korea.
Some of the daughters have an almost unimaginable experience: Their father, whom they love, executes their husband, whom they also love. This happened to Edda Mussolini in Italy. It also happened to two of Saddam Hussein’s daughters, in Iraq. It almost happened to Marie-Denise Duvalier. Later, Papa Doc regretted very much that he had not killed this son-in-law.
Some of the sons are brutes, goons and enforcers. This applies to several of Gadhafi’s boys. (He had seven.) It certainly applies to Saddam Hussein’s two, Uday and Qusay. In Zaire, the dictator Mobutu had a son who was so bad that he was actually nicknamed “Saddam Hussein.”
Among the sons and daughters are people we could describe as normal — surprisingly, refreshingly normal. Valentin Ceausescu is a physicist who lives quietly in Bucharest. He is completely unlike his late brother, Nicu, who was monstrous — a rapist, marauder and killer. Where does that leave us on the nature-nurture question?
While most of the children are loyal, some have doubts, and express them. Mao’s eldest son, Anying, expressed doubts about the cult of personality around his father. He was made to write a self-criticism. Later, he was killed in the Korean War, working for Kim Il-sung’s Communists. Zoia Ceausescu was so disgusted with her father’s regime at one point, that she refused to be known by her family name. “Call me ’Mademoiselle,’ ” she said.
Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, defected from the Soviet Union to the United States in 1967. She told her story in three memoirs, which make fascinating reading. One of Fidel Castro’s daughters, Alina Fernandez, defected to the United States in 1993. She wrote a book of brutal honesty, becoming, in effect, a Cuban Svetlana.
Jaffar Amin is a highly interesting case — a split personality, if you will. He is the son of Idi Amin, the late dictator of Uganda. Idi Amin had 60 — yes, 60 —children. In some moments, Jaffar is an apologist for his father’s regime, a whitewasher of crimes. In other moments, he is aware that something terrible took place. He leads reconciliation efforts in Uganda.
Loyalty is a virtue, and it’s natural to be loyal to your parents. But what if your father is, awkwardly, a mass murderer and despot? JFK said, “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.” Similarly, family loyalty may ask too much.
Most of these children live in denial, to one degree or another. They cannot quite face up to the truth about their father or his dictatorship. They are enveloped in propaganda, in lies.
On the poster for “Jersey Boys,” the show about early rock ’n’ roll, there is a tag line: “Everybody remembers it how they need to.” The same is true of these men and women, these sons and daughters. They are remembering how they need to, probably to keep from going mad (and many are mad enough as it is).
Really, we can’t blame them. Or envy them.
• Jay Nordlinger is a senior editor of National Review and the author of “Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators” (Encounter Books, 2015).
Please read our comment policy before commenting.