Book Review – 'Iron Fists,' by Steven Heller – Review – NYTimes.com

Three of Heller’s dictators considered themselves artists and eagerly participated in marketing their brands. Mao fancied himself a poet and master calligrapher; Mussolini wrote a pulp novel and portrayed himself as a hypermasculine sex symbol. Hitler was an aspiring architect and avid watercolorist before adopting what Heller calls his “sociopolitical art project.” The Führer sought to control all aspects of the Nazi brand, from the swastika “logo” to his own image, with mustache but without glasses. Heller argues that Mao with his “Mona Lisa smile” and Lenin with his proletarian cap functioned in much the same way as “trade characters” like Joe Camel or the Geico gecko, putting “a friendly face on an otherwise inanimate (or sometimes inhumane) product.” Like modern corporate competitors, these leaders borrowed freely from one another, with Hitler taking the straight-armed Roman salute from Mussolini and Mao adopting Socialist Realism from the Soviets.

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