ABOUT DICTATORS AND TYRANTS

A dictatorship is often the result of a great reaction forced by a political or socioeconomic crisis.

(*The article is referenced from the episode “Seize Power” (S1:E1) of the Netflix series “How to Become a Tyrant”.)

If you take a look through the stages of mankind’s history, you’ll see that the desire for freedom is not something that ties with our existence, it only appears following oppression. A man can’t desire freedom when he’s already free. For the majority of the time, humans live in a society of stable order, and while it does bring assurance, every now and then it could also be used to maintain oppression. In an oppressing society, the control falls in the hand of a group of people or, sometimes, just a single person. And every now and then we would see the society merrily celebrating the enthronement of a tyrant, a dictator, or a monarch. For millennia, human society has been so willingly putting the rein on themselves so these autocratic rulers could ride them. In other words, in various parts of history, humans used to really enjoy these rulers and find it completely fine to put themselves under their rules.

1. But first, who were these tyrants?

Cambridge Dictionary defines a “tyrant” as “a ruler who has unlimited power over other people, and uses it unfairly and cruelly” [1]. Originating from the Ancient Greek word “tyrannos”, this term refers to rulers who kept all power to themselves and ruled their people by means of terror. Not so many modern people would welcome the idea of being ruled by a tyrant/dictator. On the other hand, both these terms have their own complicated histories. In both Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, the people tended to love the tyrants rather than fearing them, and also deemed dictatorships as a necessity. In the Roman Republic, a dictator didn’t hack and slash their way to the throne, but instead was enthroned by perfectly legal means. Throughout the 500-year existence of the Roman Republic from 509 B.C. to 27 B.C., tens of dictators were elected to cope up with national crises. The abuse of power rarely happened, and many of these dictators were such great leaders they were considered national heroes. Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus was one of the most admired dictators of the Roman Republic. He was elected as a suffect consul in 460 B.C. and as a dictator for 2 terms in the years of 458 & 439 B.C. Due to his selfless devotion to the Republic through its crises and also his stepping down from the peak of power, Cincinnatus became a legend of a dictator — a “good tyrant”, aka a benevolent dictator [2]. But cases like Cincinnatus accounted only for the minority of the tyrants in history, it is for a good reason that both the terms “dictator” and “tyrant’’ automatically spell “evil” to the modern world.

In today’s society, the terms “dictator” and “tyrant’’ refer to the same thing and are more or less interchangeably used. However, a dictator doesn’t necessarily always rule by cruelty and oppression, despite how they’re all dangerously close to becoming tyrants. A dictator is a ruler with total power over a country, who sets up his authoritarian rules via either legit or rigged election, or even a coup d’etat; having obtained the power he would take steps to terminate election and civil freedom, issue state of emergency, oppress political opponents, set up a cult of personality in order to maintain his power and influence. This tendency is what turns dictators into tyrants, as most of them would become evilly authoritarian and oppress the people’s human rights. Plato was the first and the most influential among the great thinkers in identifying problems with authoritarianism. In his work “The Republic” written in 380 D.C. Plato argued that democratic nations were doomed to fall into the hands of authoritarianism [3]. He believed that the ways of the democratic government had created a class of people who lived a lavish, undisciplined lifestyle, rendering them easily charmed by politicians who were naturally excellent conversationalists and narrators.

Plato showed some strong distaste for democracy, perhaps because of the Athenian democracy that was sentenced to death by his master Socrates. Plato also believed that politicians preferred to bewitch the public with unhealthy promises, rather than fostering sustainable benefits for the community. In the early 20th century, the German sociologist Max Weber coined the concept of “charismatic authority”, which was “a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman” [4]. Leaders and politicians to possess this charisma are seen by their supporters as prophets in times of chaos. Living in a dark and difficult time, most people would easily get charmed by someone who dares to stand up, pick up the challenge and tell them “I’ll save the world”. A rising tyrant always has to them a unique halo, that makes them seem powerful enough to carry the weight of the community and every individual. And the supporters are convinced that this person is capable of miracles, he could change the course of life as well as the face of society. They become devoted personality cultists, revering that chosen one as an exceptional leader, a hero, or a savior. So, turns out, the community often has some very real love for the tyrant prior to the point he shows the true color. It might even be safe to say that we humans are suckers for people of some power and charisma.

2. A hero to some, a tyrant to others

A dictatorship is often the result of a great reaction forced by a political or socioeconomic crisis. And the totalitarian delusion that everyone should be gathered together in one singular mass like a social class, a race, a nation, or a party — would be created. This phenomenon is paired with an insurgency of unstable individuals that get disconnected from their own social group and cultural standard, rendering them easily influenced and manipulable. The masses, and similarly, the crowd, consist of these people; they are easily sympathetic to the call of an individual who proposes the creation of a brand new ideology. There’s no such thing as a tyrant without followers. Before turning into a dictator or a tyrant, they must first become a leader capable of charming and leading the crowd, meaning that they must have the following going on:

- Emerging from the dust of a disaster, such as an economic crisis, a famine or a war, with a commoner’s background, with one (or a few) miraculous, supernatural omens in their rise to popularity.

- Having great charisma thanks to their massive, virtually megalomania confidence.

- Making declarations and spreading ideologies.

- Being sympathetic, putting himself in the shoes of plebeians, calling for everyone to unite to fight the mutual enemy.

This formula creates the image of a great leader that the people can believe and support, in the midst of the nation’s darkest times. And from that born the people like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong-il, Idi Amin, etc. They — some of the greatest leaders the world had ever seen — were also the cruelest, most bloodthirsty dictators ever recorded in history. The state of the world had been turned around multiple times in the hands of these men, and in doing so they had murdered so many they totally fitted to be called tyrants. But then the question is, why do we humans love our tyrants, like how the people of Nazi Germany worshiped Hitler?

From a general perspective, just like what Voegelin said about Gnosticism, which we have cited in our previous articles: when individuals realize that the reality they pursuit are “their own reality and problems” that’s disconnected from the traditional reality, they will become ‘conscious of their own incompleteness, and realize that there are many paths outside of the one they are taking’. And with that, they have fallen into the state of alienation) from society, for example, like when a citizen of Europe can no longer justify or appreciate his traditional European norms, causing him to think that the world is in chaos and there has to be a way to see through all that chaos and find the truth — A desire for enlightenment. This desire for an alternate truth shall urge him to make everyone else see the political reality that he sees, in order to create a heaven on Earth for those who were enlightened. A thing in common between authoritarian dictatorships is that they always promise the founding of heaven on Earth, instead of one in the afterlife like gospel by any religion.

From an individual perspective, despite having become outdated, but the records of Freud in the early 20th century does provide a viewpoint contemporary of his time that’s worth citing: Freud lived in a country of Germany that was plunging further and further into Antisemitism while making way for the rise of the Nazi Party. These records, while cannot constitute a predictive scientific theory, are still of value as they give us a look and commentary on what was going on in Germany in the early 20th century. In his book “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” written in 1921 [5] — Sigmund Freud argued that the people charmed by a dictatorial leader tended to idealize him, before submitting to him by morphing their own ego to his role model.

First, the leader shall be idealized as a role model without flaws, a symbol of heroism with unlimited charisma. The tyrants are often convinced that they are exceptions, the ones chosen by gods for a glorious purpose. Official history records of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea claimed that when Kim Jong-il was born, the mountainous region of Paektu witnessed a double rainbow and the rise of a new star [6]. The Haitian dictator — Francois Duvalier, in the U.S. President John F Kennedy, instead of sending a condolence message, had claimed the responsibility for the assassination, saying that he stabbed 2,222 times on a JFK voodoo doll in that morning (22 was what Duvalier thought to be a lucky number) [7]. Prior to WWI, Hitler remained completely unnoticed, as a weirdo who couldn’t establish any intimate relationship, filled with hatefulness and stigma. Becoming temporarily blind from a mustard gas attack in 1918, Hitler claimed that it was his second time of becoming blind when he received the news that the war was over with Germany being the loser. This mental shock had sowed within him a sense of bitterness that was the seed of his ideology. In utter despair, Hitler was convinced that Germany’s loss in the war was the result of the backstabs from Jewish leaders and Marxists. This belief of Hitler was so powerful he became convinced that he was on a fateful mission to bring his country to greatness. And this fanatic confidence was common for every dictator. They see themselves as the world’s savior, and this confidence is so powerful it sways even the masses to become the dictator’s followers, who idealize his image even further to make him a flawless hero.

Second, the followers would replace their own superego with the image of the dictator, as argued by Sigmund Freud. Basically, the superego is the conscious part of a person’s self, aka their moral standard/conscience. Once their superego became one with the dictator’s image, his will would become theirs as if they were one and the same. And it was also the mechanism that helped the dictator to unify the public’s minds, as well as to hijack them by spreading fear and anger. In an unstable society, there would always be plenty of hateful people, and hence the need to find someone to be blamed. This is where the dictator’s genius showed; they saw the hatred of their people and stepped into the spotlight claiming that they would be the one to resolve this state of loss. By manipulating the masses ’ psychology and funneling their hatred, which initially originated from fear, toward a specific target, the dictator pointed out a mutual enemy of the community and said that he himself would lead the people to take down this source of evil.

The treaty of Versailles signed in 1919 had forced Germany to face an economic depression, with galloping inflation and massive reparations to be paid to the winners [8], causing the German people to feel oppressed and humiliated. After WWI, Hitler returned to his hometown without any qualifications or occupation prospects, so he chose to remain in the army, under a reconnaissance unit. In July 1919, in an undercover mission in a conference of the German Workers’ Party (DAP), Hitler, with his uncontrollable hatred and anger, broke his own cover to step up and preach his conspiracy theory that the Jews were behind the country’s stepping down from greatness, and proposed an ideology that rejected both capitalism and Marxism. Despite how a lot of his ideas were utter nonsense, Hitler managed to scratch the crowd on the right spot and pointed out a specific enemy for the entire people of Germany that previously remained unidentified [9]. Completely captured by his speech, the DAP made Hitler their member and, not so long later, one of their leaders. From then, Hitler showed some ever greater elaboration and craziness in his speeches, pressing forward the necessity to eradicate the Jews and the great humiliation and injustice to Germany that needed to be corrected. DAP later changed their name to what we know it as today — the National Socialist German Workers’ Party — under the control of a hateful Hitler and numerous fanatic followers. Success in spreading fear and anger was also the perfect way to unify the unconnected individuals into a mass of people sharing the same great pain, looking up to one same heroic leader. They listened, had their heart spoken by the leader, and were promised of and led way to heaven on earth; and it’s inevitable that everyone would fall in love with the person who brought them all that. In a similar fashion, Saddam Hussein in 1966 had initiated a movement to challenge the reign of the Ba’ath Party in Syria in response to Marxism’s taking over of Iraq, causing the party to snap into halves [10]. The Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, in his highlighting the importance of radical nationalism against the British Empire, had passed the order to force all Asians without nationality registration to leave the country in 1972 [11].

A dictator would constantly preach this idea: “I am you. You are me, We are one”. By doing so, they implanted in the followers the idea that this leader was one of them, and was sharing their emotion and ideology. Once having reached the ultimate state of singularity with the crowd, the dictator would make his moves to expand his influence even further. The image of Hitler always appearing in the military uniform had become a common scene, giving the community the idea that a war was necessary and the people should get ready for one. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini always reminded the audience in all of his speeches of his origin as a son of a blacksmith — an ordinary worker. In his editorial in 1919, Mao Zedong wrote the follows: “The world is ours. Society is ours. If we don’t speak for ourselves, then who will? If we don’t act for ourselves, then who will?” [12]. These messages made a great difference and showed visible effectiveness in tightening his bond with the crowd of followers. Hitler, coming to realize the power of visuality, had in 1920 created for his ideology a symbol — a red flag with a black Swastika in a white circle in the center — which, by no doubt, was one of the most powerful symbols to ever be created. The Swastika symbolizes the race of Aryan — the supreme race according to Hitler’s belief, that was destined to rule the world, as suggested by the Social Darwinism theory) [13]. In his work “Mein Kampf” written in 1923 — which was considered a manifesto of Hitler, there was this part saying: “This flag had to be a symbol of our own struggle, highly effective as a poster. In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of the idea of creative work, which as such always has been and always will be anti-Semitic” [14]. By utilizing the flag, the uniform, television and propaganda publications, the symbol made its way into the subconscious of the people of Germany. To bear this symbol on oneself equated to being a part of something greater, a person who served and was willing to sacrifice for the country. This wasn’t submission, but unity with one’s entire people. And the people were then unified, just like how the leader wanted them to be.

There’s yet another causational relationship in the followers’ merging their superego with the image of the dictator, that is: When they identify themselves as a part of the movement, they also find for themselves a new community spirit. This sense of being unified as one is an absolutely crucial component for a dictatorship. It allows the leader to propagate the idea that individuals have to overlook their own well being in order to serve the greater good. Their lives and blood does not belong to themselves, but to the race/community as a whole, and by sacrificing it, they will become immortal along with the nation. The idea, if taken at face value, highly resembles that of religions, as it introduces concepts like afterlife immortality, reincarnation in a supernatural realm and, before all that, the relinquishment of self. And in the same fashion, a dictatorial political system highly resembles a monotheistic religion — albeit the latter is less dangerous because it worships a supernatural being rather than a real and existing human who could consciously make use of the power the crowd granted them with. Humans are easily vulnerable to forces of nature like plagues, natural disasters or even fellow humans. Freud believed that as they realized the helplessness of themselves, humans were brought back to the state of helplessness they experienced during childhood when they had to depend on adults’ care. So the followers’ solution to fight off this sense of helplessness was to cling to the delusion that they are protected by an all-powerful being, who would lead them to the heavenly realm. The implication in politics was that a dictatorship, after fear of the time was spread within the community, they’d wound up more easily attracted by the dictator’s cult of personality with all the promises, comforts and glorious purposes it brought. Just like how Goebbels — the man who later became the Reich Minister of Propaganda, worshiped Hitler and dedicated all his loyalty until his last moment in the bunker.

The psychoanalyst Roger Money-Kyrle had attended many of the electoral campaign visits and public speaking events of Hitler and Goebbels. In the article, “The Psychology of Propaganda” published in 1941, he said “The speeches themselves were not particularly impressive. But the crowd was unforgettable. The people seemed gradually to lose their individuality and to become fused into a not very intelligent but immensely powerful monster — that was under the complete control of the figure on the rostrum”. The notes made in this article also pointed out a process that had constantly repeated itself in any of these events, that is, the audiences were always in a state of paranoid anxiety, which Hitler fully took advantage of in his political onslaught. “For 10 minutes we heard of the sufferings of Germany since the war. The monster seemed to indulge in an orgy of self-pity. Then for the next 10 minutes came the most terrific fulminations against Jews and Social-democrats as the sole authors of these sufferings. Self-pity gave place to hate; the monster seemed on the point of becoming homicidal. But the note was changed once more; and this time we heard for ten minutes about the growth of the Nazi party, and how from small beginnings it had now become an overpowering force. Hitler ended, on a passionate appeal for all Germans to unite” [15]. A speech of Hitler would typically take the audience through 3 stages:

- Inspiring in the audiences the sentiment of helplessness and depression, and following it with a hint of a miraculous solution.

- Naming a minority group as the culprit for this state of distress.

- Appealing for unity, promising true heaven. And this true heaven would be solely made for true German nationals, for the Nazi Germany members.

And the rest of this story was history. Adolf Hitler slaughtered 6 million Jews and brought Germany and the rest of the world into WW2 — one of the bloodiest wars in mankind’s history with total casualties of 28 million [16]. Joseph Stalin during his purge had ordered the imprisonment of 19 million Soviet people, 7 million of whom died in the gulags [17]. Benito Mussolini, the close alliance of Hitler got overthrown and had his corpse hanged in the city of Milan. The failure of Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” campaign had indirectly caused the deaths by starvation of 45 million Chinese [18]. Saddam Hussein was convicted by the Iraqi court for crimes against humanity and was executed in 2006. Not many out of these leaders of dictatorship that once shook the world met a good ending for themselves, nor were the world led to a great end when those people got their hands on the power.

So do keep in mind that there is no tyrant without followers. And it’s humans’ mindless zealotry that creates tyrants.

Always, always keep that in mind.

___________

References:

[1] Cambridge Dictionary, “tyrant,” @CambridgeWords, Sep-2021. [Online]. Available: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/.../dicti.../english/tyrant. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

‌[2] “Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus | Biography & Facts | Britannica,” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2021 [Online]. Available: https://www.britannica.com/.../Lucius-Quinctius-Cincinnatus. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

‌[3] “The Republic, by Plato,” Gutenberg.org, 2016. [Online]. Available: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

‌[4] J. E. San, “ORIENTATIONS OF MAX WEBER’S CONCEPT OF CHARISMA,” The Centennial Review, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 270–285, 1967 [Online]. Available: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23738015. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

‌[5] S. Freud, “Group psychology and the analysis of the ego (1921). Editor’s note. (1955),” PsycEXTRA Dataset, doi: 10.1037/e417472005–429. [Online]. Available: http://freudians.org/.../2014/09/Freud_Group_Psychology.pdf

‌[6] “Kim Jong Il | Biography & Facts | Britannica,” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2021 [Online]. Available: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kim-Jong-Il. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

[7] All About History Team, “Papa Doc Duvalier: The Voodoo President who killed Kennedy | All About History,” Historyanswers.co.uk, 02-Mar-2015. [Online]. Available: https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/.../papa-doc-duvalier.../. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

‌[8] “Treaty of Versailles | Definition, Summary, Terms, & Facts | Britannica,” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2021 [Online]. Available: https://www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-of-Versailles-1919. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

‌[9] R. H. Phelps, “Hitler and the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei,” The American Historical Review, vol. 68, no. 4, pp. 974–986, 1963, doi: 10.2307/1847259. [Online]. Available: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1847259. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

‌[10] Biography, “Saddam Hussein,” Biography, 28-Apr-2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.biography.com/dictator/saddam-hussein. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

[11] H. Bhagat and M. Mamdani, “Rise and Fall of Idi Amin,” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 18, no. 38, pp. 1614–1616, 1983 [Online]. Available: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4372504. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

[12] “Mao Zedong | Biography & Facts | Britannica,” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2021 [Online]. Available: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mao-Zedong. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

‌[13] R. Weikart, “The Role of Darwinism in Nazi Racial Thought,” German Studies Review, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 537–556, 2013, doi: 10.1353/gsr.2013.0106.

‌[14] J. J. BARNES, P. P. BARNES, and A. E. CAREY, “An English Translation of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ Printed in Germany, ca. 1940,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 80, no. 3, pp. 374–377, 1986 [Online]. Available: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24303851. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

‌[15] pdfonlines.club, “The Collected Papers Of Roger Money-Kyrle (The Harris Meltzer Trust Series) Books | PDF Book Onlines,” Pdfonlines.club, 2015. [Online]. Available: https://pdfonlines.club/.../25688216.the-collected-papers.... [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

‌[16] “World War II — Costs of the war | Britannica,” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2021 [Online]. Available: https://www.britannica.com/.../World-War-II/Costs-of-the-war. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

‌[17] “Joseph Stalin — Role in World War II | Britannica,” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2021 [Online]. Available: https://www.britannica.com/.../Josep.../Role-in-World-War-II. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

‌[18] “Mao’s Great Leap Forward ‘killed 45 million in four years,’” The Independent, 23-Oct-2011 [Online]. Available: https://www.independent.co.uk/.../mao-s-great-leap.... [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]

Further reading: “How to become a tyrant,” Netflix.com, 09-Jul-2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.netflix.com/vn/title/80989772. [Accessed: 02-Sep-2021]