Think Again: Dictators

Arab autocrats may be tottering, 
but the world's tyrants aren't all quaking in their steel-toed boots.

BY GRAEME ROBERTSON | MAY/JUNE 2011

"Personality cults are crazy."

Crazy like a fox. Do North Koreans really believe that Kim Jong Il can change the weather based on his mood? Do Libyans think Qaddafi's Green Book is a brilliant work of political philosophy? Do Turkmen really think that the Ruhnama, the religious text authored by their late post-Soviet dictator -- and self-styled spiritual leader -- Saparmurat Niyazov, is a sacred scripture on par with the Quran and the Bible?

Probably not, but for the dictators' purposes, they don't have to. As political scientist Xavier Márquez has argued, personality cults are as strategic as they are narcissistic. Part of the problem that dictators' would-be opponents face is figuring out who else opposes the leader; compelling the populace to publicly embrace preposterous myths makes that harder still. Official mythmaking is also a means of enforcing discipline within the regime. Stalin -- the progenitor of the modern dictator personality cult -- understood well that his self-mythologizing would be too much for some of his old comrades to swallow; Lenin, after all, had specifically warned against it. But those who might have objected were swiftly dispatched. For the apparatchiks who remained, submitting to the cult was humiliating -- and humiliation is a powerful tool for controlling potential rivals.

But personality cults, like most authoritarian technologies, have their drawbacks. The bigger the cult, the bigger the challenge of succession. Heirs to the throne really have just two options: dismantle the cult or go one better. The former is perilous; in the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev's famous 1956 secret speech -- the posthumous critique of Stalin that gave us the term "personality cult" -- was, after all, secret, deemed too explosive for the Soviet public. Today, North Korea's ruling Kim family illustrates the hazards of the alternative: Now that the official newspapers have already reported that the current Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, has mastered teleportation, what's his son and newly designated heir, Kim Jong Un, supposed to do for an encore?

 SUBJECTS: DEMOCRACY, ARAB WORLD
 

Graeme Robertson is assistant professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes.

ZUFADHLI

10:45 PM ET

April 24, 2011

dictator rise after another

It only concerns me that after a regime fall, is there another regime will arise?

As you can see in Iraq, after Saddam Hussein fall, the country is still in chaos because of the International interfere...

Well I guess that somebody need to take action to make sure that any regime will fall at the hands of the people...

 

JEAN KAPENDA

10:31 AM ET

April 25, 2011

When the Mobcracy (not Democracy) Was King!

The "mobcracy" (not democracy) is a criminal institution requiring, like any other underworld endeavor, a complex organizational and logistic support level to carry out organized crime for a longer period of time, no matter if it's in Uganda, Rwanda, the Congo, Libya, Cameroon, Gabon, etc. All starts with a triggering event: coup d'état, shooting down another dictator's airplane, guerrilla warfare, assassination of another tyrant, fraudulent elections, succession by a sort of African "Kim Jong Un", etc, and the rise of the mobcracy (please never call it “democracy”) with professional criminals running and using the state to conduct large-scale criminal activities. One such creature of the underworld once forced me, a 13-year old lad then, to sing praises for him every day before starting classes back there in the Congo, which he named Zaire. He was a mobster and, ironically his parents named him Mobutu, a mobster who lived up to his name before passing away some 14 years ago. Although we may simply call him “a former human being”, his followers are numbered by thousands and have transformed the Congo into a mafia-run nation, where local gangsters and criminals from neighboring countries (Rwanda and Uganda) have found ways to plunder Congo’s riches with the United Nations watching and merely issuing reports on those criminal activities! Make no mistake: the mobcracy is not only limited to the Congo, it’s everywhere in Africa. It has gotten the financial resources and the hard power (security forces, docile justice systems, and enslaved and corrupt parliaments) to perpetrate its criminal activities on the continent for some time into the future.

 

JACKTOM

2:03 AM ET

May 1, 2011

Wow, I can't believe tjhat in

Wow, I can't believe tjhat in the U.S. NGO Freedom House report Colombia and Venezuela are both listed as partial free.

I mean, Colombia is a democracy and Venezuela is a dictatorship...

The Colombian president is very diplomatic while Chavez rambles on and on and on just about anything that he feels disturbs him. At the same time he nationalises everything he feels like. That said, I wonder why he's not in the list of "dictators that keep hanging on"

make rap beats

 

ARTURBARRERA

12:26 AM ET

May 11, 2011

mobocracy

* According to the Founding Fathers, the term "the people" means, of course, the electorate, in a republic.

** In a democracy the term "the people" means, popular or "mobocracy" (the mob as a ruling class). A large or disorderly crowd. The lower classes of a community. Rule by the mob.

For me also: People, I mean the poor innocent citizens of good faith, to the rich and middle class with the same qualities and virtues. The mob or populacho (in Spanish): I am referring to anarchy like majority-silly with or without virtues, the mass, the Mafía, the freeloaders, riots, idiots, to a disorderly crowd of people, the ordinary people, crowd around someone or into somewhere in a unruly way, all of them as the ruling class. Rule by the mob. A large or disorderly crowd. Someone who is inclined to destructive or unbridled action.
Note Freeloader is a person who takes advantage of others' generosity without giving anything in return.

 

ARTURBARRERA

10:37 AM ET

May 12, 2011

Mob

Flash Mobs http://goo.gl/QxKUd

 

SHELLC0DE

4:33 PM ET

April 25, 2011

i'm glad

That here is the U.S. we are free from these evil dictators. Life would be so different. Stacy Hanson at Best Cookbooks

 

DSCHEERS

7:15 PM ET

April 25, 2011

Internet as a way of spreading pamphlets

The speed with which pamplets are spread, greatly contributes to the "success" of a revolution. Even simple copy machines over printing machines make a great difference. Imagine the effects of eMail, Twitter, Instant Messaging (both by computer and on cell phones) on the amount of people you can reach in almost zero like time.

Additionally, it is much safer to use a computer and the internet to spread propaganda than using a a printing press. While having a printing press means needing space, supplies (like paper and ink) and a distribution system -all of which can be used to track down the revolutionaries- emails, Twitter and instant messages leave no hysical trail to or from the author and a simple laptop or home computer can do the work. Just as like in the old days when printing presses were hidden, it's easy to hide the origin of an email through the use of a free anonymous proxy, and again, it's easier too. To top if all off, it's a lot more normal for someone to have a PC then to have a printing press...

Danny
Andropausia Sintomas

 

DSCHEERS

7:40 PM ET

April 25, 2011

Venezuela vs Colombia

Wow, I can't believe tjhat in the U.S. NGO Freedom House report Colombia and Venezuela are both listed as partial free.

I mean, Colombia is a democracy and Venezuela is a dictatorship...

The Colombian president is very diplomatic while Chavez rambles on and on and on just about anything that he feels disturbs him. At the same time he nationalises everything he feels like. That said, I wonder why he's not in the list of "dictators that keep hanging on"

Danny
Andropausia Sintomas

 

GAFFNEYH

2:24 PM ET

April 26, 2011

Dictators

I ran across one totally, completely wrong statement by Graeme Robinson in his article: " In Putin's Russia, for instance, leaders are unable to dial back the massive military expenditures that keep key constituencies quiet but that even their own ministers recognize to be unsustainable." As a close observer of Russian defense efforts since the end of the Cold War (and of the Soviet Union for years before that), including visits to three naval bases, plus being co-author of deep studies of Russian ballistic missile programs and of the Russian Navy, the best thing Putin has done for us all is his almost total neglect of the Russian military. Both their ballistic missile industry and their naval construction industry are going-out-of-business businesses (old, old tooling, workers in their 60s since they can't pay younger people enough, loss of suppliers, etc.) No -- Putin's association is with the big commodities extractors (oil, gas, mining) and metals and chemicals industries (steel, nickel, etc.) That's what the Khodorkovsky affair was all about, and Putin reined all those oligarchs in so long as they stayed out of politics. And Russian ground forces are utterly disintegrating.

 

TANK

11:19 AM ET

May 2, 2011

Six Principles of Global Manipulation

I offer to your attention a film about six priorities of the generalized instruments of management by countries and people of Earth.
Six Principles of Global Manipulation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fF3TQ0lJnU

and:

Anti-Qur'an Strategy of the Bible Project Wheeler-Dealers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1wXgXwj3MI

 

ALEXANDER JAMES

12:22 PM ET

May 14, 2011

Waking up to problems governing

People don't realize how difficult it can be to govern effectively. The Romans experienced this when Caligula was too tyranical to effectively govern and they had to assassinate him.

Basic leaders must be accommodated in any society no matter how autocratic. Americans only know a cursory level because they're busy with life, movie downloads, and our own economy but it is there.

I expect we'll see more unrest and toppling of governments in the next 2 - 3 years.

 

GREGORY M

8:41 AM ET

May 15, 2011

Lucky to be a US citizen

You know it wasn't recently until I figured out just how lucky I and my fellow United States citizens are to be a part of a county that is not headed by a dictator - especially dictators of the dirty kinds; gangs, drug lords, smugglers and other types of worldwide brands and loosely fit names for thugs. I was talking to a customer at work the other day and he was telling ms how much better the living conditions are in the united states and I don't think myself and fellow us citizens realize just how lucky we are; because I don't think a dictatorship helps the conditions of living one bit. So fellow Americans, be proud and appreciate the facts you're a us citizen!

 

EDUKATE

8:43 AM ET

May 18, 2011

I agree <a href="http://www.angrybird.org">angry bird</a>

I agree with Gregory- we are lucky but that should not stop us from caring what happens to those less fortunate than us. The world is changing and these countries ruled by despots are now finding their voices and voting with their feet and we should be encouraging this in every way we can.

 

ICEZY

9:31 AM ET

May 22, 2011

The Colombian president

The Colombian president is very diplomatic while Chavez rambles on and on and on just about anything that he feels disturbs him. eBooks Resale Rights At the same time he nationalises everything he feels like. That said, I wonder why he's not in the list of "dictators that keep hanging on"