BOOKS: HOW TO BE A DICTATOR
Frank Dikötter is the historian of China whose three volume People’s History documented and made the world aware of the violence and suffering caused by Maoism in the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. In his new book, he has included four European, two Asian, one African and one Latin American dictator out of the many dictators in the 20th century that he could have selected. He has naturally included Mao Zedong in this collection, along with other usual suspects, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Kim Il Sung. Less well-known, but equally effective as dictators in their time, were his other choices, Duvalier, Ceausescu and Mengistu. The book makes for fascinating reading, with tidbits and anecdotes to keep the grim story interesting.
Dikötter’s strength is the steady accumulation of facts to ultimately produce a damning portrait. He does not clutter the picture or dilute its effect with theory, even though the period immediately after World War II saw considerable work by Hannah Arendt, Erich Fromm and others on the psychological, social and other factors that made authoritarianism of the Hitlerian type possible.
These personality cults exhibit several features in common and seem to follow a common trajectory. They all conflate the person of the leader with the nation, use ultra-nationalism or xenophobia, use race and ethnicity to identify an enemy such as the Jews or Muslims, and present the leader as simple, spartan and hardworking, devoted only to his people. Hitler was a vegetarian, non-smoker and teetotaller, who was portrayed as kind to animals and fond of children, with history and architecture as his hobbies. As his contemporary biographer, Emil Ludwig, remarked, “All that Hitler lacked, the Germans were persuaded to imagine by his disciple Goebbels.” The purpose of all this propaganda was, of course, to raise the leader to heights of adulation and build his aura of invincibility.
But the other side of the coin of the benign image was the systematic use of violence, not just against political opponents or social outcasts, but against all opponents, and of the systematic use of fear and intimidation to silence all dissent in the media and population. As Dikötter says, ‘There is no cult without fear. At the height of the twentieth century, hundreds of millions of people across the globe had no choice but to acquiesce in the glorification of their leaders, who backed up their rule with the threat of violence.’ And yet, when the time came, that fear evaporated rapidly and the entire edifice of dictatorship collapsed. Dikötter doesn’t think that today’s authoritarian leaders match 20th century dictators in the extent of their personality cults or their dictatorships. He sees what they do as political theatre—repulsive, narcissistic and even sinister—but not a cult. ‘In the first stage of a cult, a leader needs to have enough clout to abase his opponents and force them to salute him in public,’ he says. By that standard, it seems to me we are at either the first or second stage of dictatorship and personality cults in several countries today. Dikötter sees real reason for hope in the fact that dictators who choose a cult of personality tend to drift off into a world of their own, confirmed in their delusions by the followers that surround them. They end up making all major decisions on their own. They see enemies everywhere, at home and abroad. Hubris takes over. ‘In the end, the biggest threat to dictators comes not just from the people, but from themselves.” If that is a comforting thought, it is cold comfort, as the disasters that these dictators visited on their people attest. In hindsight, it is almost as though people want to believe the lies the dictator tells them, and need a leader as saviour no matter how obvious his weaknesses and failings are to the rational. This is a book well worth reading for its lessons and its contemporary resonances in our politics of hate, ultranationalism and personality cult. It is striking how much these dictators had in common, how their methods are still being used, how they all ultimately failed after great initial success, and how the price of their failure was paid by their people and country. There is a warning for us all here.
IT’S ALMOST AS IF PEOPLE NEED A LEADER AS SAVIOUR DESPITE HIS OBVIOUS WEAKNESSES