Manuel Suárez Mier
Dogmas lead to ideological schisms, for there will always be exegeses opposed to the official version, as the history of applied socialism shows.
The Dutch historian Frank Dikötter has just finished an essential book in these times when aspiring autocrats are sprouting like mushrooms all over the world.[1] It is an analysis of the cult of personality of eight dictators who occupied stellar and bloodthirsty places in the history of their countries.
The cult of personality of the dictator varies in each case. Still, it has elements in common that the author deciphers for Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim-Il-Sung, founder of his dynasty in North Korea, Duvalier in Haiti, Ceausescu in Romania, and Mengistu in Ethiopia.
No dictator can rule by fear and violence alone, for the tyrant who achieves acclaim by creating the illusion of great popular support lasts longer than the one who seizes power for the sake of it. Hundreds of millions were forced into enthusiasm while being pushed down the path of slavery.
Orwell taught us that INGSOC – an acronym for English socialism, the ideology of The Party in his dystopia 1984 – has no creed and that it only exists what it claims to exist now, which can change at any moment. Dikötter says that the dictatorships of the 20th century lacked an ideological core and were just the leader’s whims.
For example, Nazism had no coherent doctrine and was an assortment of anti-Semitism, nationalism, neo-paganism, etc. Still, its essence is encapsulated in the saying, “The Führer Is Always Right.” The National Socialist-German Workers Party called itself Hitler’s Movement.
Italian Fascism was equally vacuous, and its slogan was analogous to that of Nazism. Mussolini claimed that “we do not believe in dogmatic programs, in rigid schemes that are incapable of containing and challenging a complex, uncertain and constantly transforming reality.” Is that called pragmatism?
The author points out that the absence of ideology is more complex in communist regimes because of their links to Marxism. However, they are closer to Lenin’s “revolutionary vanguard,” which was inspired by Marx’s texts. Dogmas lead to ideological schisms since there will always be exegeses opposed to the official version, as the history of applied socialism shows.
That is why, lacking any substance, personality cults are more reliable, so dictators corrupted the dogma and adapted it as they pleased, in such a way that Marxism became what the dictator wanted. The author shows the similarities and differences in each case.
There will be the occasion to review this excellent text in detail, but it seems valuable today to cite the link of the dictators with the Deity: the Nazis used Christian symbols, and Hitler declared himself the executor of Providence; Mussolini and Ceausescu posed as semi-Gods, in the Roman manner; Stalin encouraged the deification of Lenin; when Kim died, the regime declared him “alive for eternity” and rules in his grandson.
More of the Cult of Personality
The excessive admiration of the leader’s followers thrives on his ubiquity.
I continue with the review of Frank Dikötter’s fascinating book I started last week on the widespread adoration aroused by all authoritarian leaders, illustrated by eight prominent twentieth-century dictators.
The common denominator he finds is that the cult of personality created by the authoritarian leader is not built to convince or persuade but to “sow confusion, destroy common sense, impose blind obedience, isolate individuals and crush their dignity.”
The unbridled admiration of the leader’s followers is nourished by his ubiquity, as he is constantly in front of “his” people in the media, with implausible frequency, smiling, scolding, accusing, or giving lessons on everything from cooking recipes to moral and economic classes.
Behind these images are toxic smear campaigns against his “adversaries,” who are initially blamed for any crime, almost always fabricated, and suffer exile or jail, but as the leader’s dominance over the powers and autonomous entities consolidates, they tend to become lethal.
Without the scrutiny and checks and balances provided by pluralistic congresses, an independent judiciary, and a press free of pressure, many often die as a result of dictatorial madness, such as Stalin’s collectivist campaign (6 million), Mao’s Great Leap Forward (between 18 and 56 million) and his Cultural Revolution (2 million). Colophon: “the greater the misery, the louder the propaganda.”
Another recurring theme in the text is the corruption of the leader’s language and that of his servile sycophants. Scînteia, a newspaper sympathetic to the regime of Romanian dictator Ceausescu, compared him to “Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Pericles, Napoleon, Peter the Great, and Lincoln.”
The tyrants studied by the author display a pronounced histrionic skill as they find themselves acting every time they appear before a microphone and in their endless and well-choreographed “people’s baths,” and are capable of faking all emotions, from comedy and disillusionment to unbridled fury.
In doing so, they also resort to rewriting history in ways that support their political narrative. The case of “Papa Doc” Duvalier in Haiti is paradigmatic: he liked to disguise himself as the spirit of Voodoo, with a black frock coat, top hat, and dark glasses, like the houngans of that cult.
Dikötter concludes that the warlords he examines achieved success as effectively as it was disturbing by encouraging the cult of their personality with a mixture of demagoguery, rigged historical accounts, carefully staged public events, deceptive and constant propaganda, and by hiding their true persona behind a curtain of self-invented legends.
It is alarming that this fascinating tale of the last century has just been published, and barely in the second decade of the current century, there is already enough material for a sequel, with sapphic leaders who aspire to emulate those tyrants.
[1] How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century, Bloomsbury Press, 2019.
*These columns were originally published in Spanish on October 4 and October 11, 2019, in Excélsior.