By Amb. Anthony Mukwita
Sunday: How to become a Tyrant
I flipped the TV channels this morning and landed on my current favourite docu-series yet again—´How to Become a Tyrant, a must watch folks.
This time around they are discussing how Tyrants or authoritarian rulers use the ´torture tactic´ to continue a strong hold on their nations of kingdoms.
Saddam Hussein for instance tortured one of his former officials to near death, brought his wife and daughters in his jail cell and warned him that would order prison guards to rape his wife and daughters in his presence if he did not confess to betraying the Great Leader. Horrific but true.
Sometimes torture came into use, electric shocks, or sleep deprivation during Cambodia’s tyrannical ruler Pol Pot, but torture, nevertheless always came.
You punish your enemies enough to ´not kill them´ they must know you are the boss.
In modern days, studies show that killing or subjecting people to physical torture has pretty much ended as human rights awareness rises.
These days despots use tactics such as holding enemies in jail for long periods without trial, arrest as many enemies as possible and sometimes use money.
Deprive enemies of their hard-earned money so they tow your line because after all, a hungry man is a subservient man.
He who controls the truth
The truth is rather inconvenient for Tyrants according to the Play Book in my fav doc series.
For Tyrants to rule, they often must create their own history and control the future like Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin completely re-invented himself.
Stalin was born Loseb Besarionis Jughashvili in 1872and died of a massive haemorrhage stroke in 1953 aged 74.
His new chosen name Stalin means ´Steel´ in Russian, he is known as the father of photoshop, long before photoshopping was even invented, a story for another page.
Like Stalin, German´s Adolf Hitler erased the past of Japan´s victory all over German to rebuild a new cult following. He is perhaps the best-known Tyrant, millions mostly Jews died on his watch before he finally fell at the Battle of Berlin, killed himself and was burnt to ashes after being doused in petrol, identified only through his dental remains.
Destroy God First.
As a Tyrant, you don’t really like competition, so you take away things that ´destruct´ people’s attention from you like religion or God.
Its important to take God out of the equation and create your own story like Stalin did with ´Marxism and Lenninsm´in the Play book, including creating new folk heroes that are not necessarily religious leaders like Jesus Christ or God.
“When you replace the church with the state, your truth becomes divine” according to the Tyrant Play Book.
The Colonel Muammar Ghaddafi
Muamar Ghaddafi especially was a master at tyranny, travelling to foreign countries and sleeping in a Bedouin tent as a way of showing the ordinary people he was a man of the people.
He ruled the oil rich desert nation for 42 years until he was captured, sodomised with a bayonet, and brutally shot to death, so bad, even Amnesty International (AI) was disgusted.
He succeeded to dominate by restricting the rights of his enemies, punishing them constantly and cowing them into submission. No one was spared but he was reported to be hugely loved like most dictators are idolised their subjects.
Oh, by the way, Tyrants must have a ´great´ project or catch phrase to remain in office and immortal. The Great Wall, or bridge.
Hitler built the Auto Bahn Ghaddafi, created a river in the middle of the desert and wrote the Green Book, the Libyan ´bible. ´
According to the Play Book, Tyrants are often seen as ´omnipotent´ by those that idolise them. Omnipotent means they are powerful and flawless, like deities. No one must disagree with them.
For this reason, they manipulate states institution to meet their ends at all costs.
The way Tyrants end up
In Uganda, Dictator Id Amin killed Anglican Bishop Janani Luwum in 1977 for refusing to tone down in political rhetoric, Amin instead faked a car accident again.
Around the same time Amin killed two American journalists that had travelled to Uganda to interview the expelled Indians.
After having them shot dead in cold blood, Amin had their car rolled over a cliff to make it look like an accident.
Amin died in exile at a hospital in Jedda when wife number four and other family members unplugged the life support system.
Adolf Hitler died aged 56 years in 1945 after shooting himself, German forces doused him in petrol and gutted him.
Why do ordinary Citizen’s gel around Tyrants?
German sociologist Max Weber, one of the founders of sociology, developed the concept of ‘charismatic authority’ – 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´, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities’ according to studies.
´Charismatic leaders´ in your society or neighbourhood, inspire ´devotion, and are regarded as prophetic figures by their followers´ according to Weber.
Weber’s insights deepen Plato’s sketchy account. ´The rising tyrant has a special, almost magical aura. His followers believe that he can work miracles and transform their lives. ´
But how does this happen? What is it that induces otherwise rational people to yield to adopt such dangerously unrealistic views? To explain it, we need to dig deeper.
In Vienna, Sigmund Freud was thinking like Weber around the same time.
Freud argued that those who are attracted to authoritarian leaders idealise them. The leader is seen as an ´exemplary, heroic human being shorn of every serious flaw. ´
Its all in The Play Book if you flip the channel right on your Netflix. There´s almost without exception the end of Tyrants in this documentary, badly.
Source: ´How to Become a Tyrant´—a Netflix docu-series.
Amb. AM 06.11.22.