“Remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.”

Guy Fawkes tried to blow the King and Parliament sky-high in 1605. Four centuries later, a knife-wielding avenger in a Fawkes mask detonates London’s Old Bailey while Tchaikovsky blares. That’s the opening of V for Vendetta, the graphic-novel-turned-movie that every blue-check anarchist quotes when he wants to feel dangerous without leaving Starbucks. In another future London, Big Brother’s telescreen glows in Airstrip One, watching Winston Smith scrawl “Down with Big Brother” in a diary he knows will get him vaporized.

V for Vendetta and 1984. The two sacred texts of left-wing dystopia.

Both stories are slick, both are quotable, and both are—there is no better word for it —cartoons. Not because the cinematography is garish (though the Wachowskis did lean hard into slo-mo capes), but because their villains are evil the way Saturday-morning bad guys are evil: they want to rule the world because ruling the world is neat. No further explanation required. The High Chancellor in V and the Party in 1984 don’t pocket a dime. They don’t yacht in the Maldives. They don’t even have Swiss bank accounts. They just love boots stomping faces—forever.

Real tyrants, by contrast, love boots only insofar as boots keep the tribute flowing. If you think Joe Stalin lived in a shabby apartment shared with another family, you’re clueless. He lived in opulence while his subjects starved, at a country villa in Sochi during the summer. The Maduro family is Venezuela’s richest. Ditto for all the real tyrants of history going all the way back to antiquity.

Read the rest at Tom’s Substack…

Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?