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> It’s a tricky question because she and Kim Jong-un are not dictators by title, it’s the shorthand we and the we use to describe them.

This can't be the standard for whether we call someone a dictator. Similarly Stalin held no government title through the 1930s. Would you say it's hard to say whether he was a dictator because he was officially just a party secretary?

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My favorite version of this was Deng Xiaoping who by the end of his rule had only one title - Honorary Chairman of the Chinese Contract Bridge Association.

Warning: this is in my mental list of "things to good to check" so it may or may not be true.

I phrased my comment in hopes of avoiding an argument about definitions. It seems like a tedious quibble.

Check out the three dictators I linked. That’s interesting!

The way you phrased it reads very much like you started an argument about definitions.

I think requiring the title of dictator is not how the term is being used these days, on our side of the late Roman republic. It's more of a duck-typing situation now.

I think it's safe to assume the original comment meant it that way.

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