This film, Despotism (1946), was part of a post-WWII civics curriculum for American high schools. It uses a sliding scale to show how societies move from democracy to despotism, through tactics like information control.
Despotism refers to a system where power is concentrated in the hands of a single ruler or a small group.
This still happens in the present day, so I suppose old habits never die.
Worth a watch. π―