Tyrannical absolutists and extremists have plagued the history of mankind from the earliest of times. From Genghis Khan to uncle Saddam, from Cromwell to Thatcher there have been established, distinct patterns of dictatorship:
From the earliest societies there was always one individual who called the shots.
Dictatorship is a testimony of the theory of evolution. Dominance of the fittest and the most daring is the essence of any autocracy. Absolute democracy will never work. It has the habit of packing it in at the most crucial moments of decision-making and cranking out the most ridiculous vanity such as the GM foods fiasco. There can be no joint command. Only the word of a single person counts. And it is due to the absolute power given to an individual that dictatorships sometimes gain the dimension of a profound incomprehensibility. The Holocaust is the best example of this unfathomable dimension. Millions purged for no coherent reason or justification. The biggest terror of modern history was born out of the mad whim of just one man. Absolute power warps the mind. To understand the mentality of such a tyrant would be like trying to see the world from the point of view of a schizophrenic. Power for power’s sake, with an ambition to play God and in the frenzy of dominance with all human feeling and reasoning fled, such a man is dangerous to accommodate in the world. Modern equivalent to these whims of warped minds would be the millennium dome and/or the star-wars missile defence system.
Dictators have often used the pretext of a political belief system to come to power. The fascists used the oppression of the treaty of Versailles, the Bolsheviks used the oppression of the bourgeoisie and the French bourgeoisie used the oppression of the aristocracy to each reach their goals. The oppressed almost always end up being the oppressors. A favourite theme which is used by the oppressed desperately striving to be the oppressor is “freedom.” Bolshevism freed the peasants and workers from the tyrannical grip of the Tsarist Russia. Nazism freed the German people from the unjustness of the treaty of Versailles. Indeed the people have been freed. Masses of the oppressed have been freed into gulags, collective farms, and NHS hospitals. Therefore it can be safely said that there is never freedom under dictatorship.
One pattern that has incidentally existed through the history of dictatorship (and is indeed also a philosophical pattern) is that of tragic greatness, followed by feeble heirs. To quote Marx:” Every giant… presupposes a dwarf, every genius a hidebound philistine, and every storm at see – mud, and as soon as the first disappear, the latter begin, sit down at the table, sprawling out their long legs arrogantly
The first are too great for this world, and so they are thrown out. But the latter strike root in it and remain, as one may see from the facts, for champagne leaves a lingering repulsive after-taste, Caesar the hero leaves behind him the play-acting Octavianus, Emperor Napoleon the bourgeois king Louis Philippe…” Comrade Stalin is followed sometime onwards by the idiot Gorbachev, and Margaret Thatcher is replaced by John Major.
Finally, another always-present feature of totalitarianism is propaganda. Skilful propaganda in the totalitarian state always appeal to the emotions of people rather than their reason. Whether it be communism/socialism (Lenin, Mao, Che and Roosevelt) or Fascism (Hitler, Mussolini and the Pope). The propaganda machine of the dictatorship utilises what Aldous Huxley in “a brave new world revisited” called “herd poisoning”. Subject to sudden excesses of rage, enthusiasm or panic, the “crowd” is the ideal victim for the propagandist. The masses, already well primed on herd poisoning, is at the mercy of the orator. An orator who knows his business (such as Hitler) can do whatever he likes with the crowd. Perhaps the reason that there were a surprisingly high proportion of intellectuals in Siberian labour camps is because of their critical habit of mind that makes them resistant to the kind of propaganda which works so well on the majority. Propaganda is almost always consistently dogmatic. All statements are made without qualification and there are never any grey areas. The subhuman mindlessness and the moral imbecility of the masses is where the demagogue makes his appeal.
Harry Potter, Pokemon, On-Digital and the dubious ingredients of Sunny Delight are all disguised mediums of mind control. Brain washed and intoxicated, youths will grow up and in turn rise to do the bidding of our sophisticated, invisible and formless modern dictatorship. The invisible hand is still very much present. Its unyielding stranglehold upon its willing victims is pushing capitalism towards cancerous corruption. This global dictatorship has outlived and outclassed the likes of the Third Reich and the USSR. Today, this ancient tyranny has taken on a new guise. It hides behind the convenient practice of democracy. Indeed governments do change, but this dictatorship remains eternal. Its labour gulags are equipped with the latest PentiumIII’s; the inmates have mobile phones, and its propaganda machine injects poison into the minds of people with a newborn subtlety and sophistication. We are all keen and eager slaves of this regime. Like fools we do not feel its oppression, yet each and every one of us have been enslaved from birth to death. Like programmed robots we rise and do as our taskmaster bids; and like philistines we stubbornly sweat and toil to drive its giant machinery, yet we feel fulfilled from our fruitless labour. Each morning we rise up and salute our shapeless Fuhrer with religious zealousness. In a successful capitalist social order we need no tyrant, for we are our own oppressors. We have no need for a secret police, as money guarantees our obedience. And we may never break free of its tyrannical grip, as there is no opposition.
Our worldwide dictatorship looks promising.
