The main problem with past dictatorships—aside from the fact that they were dictatorships, of course!—were that they blamed the wrong people for society’s ills. Hitler blamed the Jews. Stalin blamed the capitalists. Pinochet blamed the leftists. In each case, they targeted the wrong scapegoat. None of those people were responsible for their society’s downfall. The real people ultimately responsible—the ones who have always been responsible—were stupid people.
I believe Ayn Rand had a point when she explained how the real divide in society is not between rich and poor, black and white, or Jew and gentile, but rather between the makers and the takers. On one hand, you have the very few exceptional individuals of intelligence and creativity who contribute to society and civilization at large; but on the other hand, you have the ignorant masses who contribute nothing yet leech off of the contributions of the exceptional few—or at worst, try to prevent the exceptional few from making such progress at all. As such, if a dictator truly wanted to go after the real scourge plaguing society, they would target the ignorant masses.
Now, am I advocating for a new dictatorship dedicated to the extermination of stupid people? Of course not. That would be grossly inhumane! But if such an effort were to be made to rid society of stupid people—ignorant dullards susceptible to irrational regressive nonsense such as “vaccines cause autism” or “GMOs cause cancer” or “the earth is flat” or “'mansplaining' and 'manspreading' are legitimate terms”, all which impedes social and scientific progress—would not such an effort ultimately benefit society in the long run?