George Orwell both built a dictatorship and fought it. He helped suppress Burma, became a Communist, took a bullet, became a DemSoc and reinvented himself as a crusader against totalitarianism, starting by filing denunciations with the British Foreign Office's propaganda dept.
Orwell was incredible.
However, as an idealistic young man, even he was initially captured by communism. Until he saw it firsthand in the Spanish civil war, he didn’t realize he was fighting for the bad guys.