The Jewish Power Blog: The Fears of the Powerful

From Pharaoh to Ahab to Ahasuerus to Herod to Macbeth, it seems that the more power one amasses, the more one is beset by the fear of losing it.  Plato pointed this out:

Then it is the truth, though some may deny it, that the real tyrant is really enslaved to cringings and servitudes beyond compare, a flatterer of the basest men, and that, so far from finding even the least satisfaction for his desires, he is in need of most things, and is a poor man in very truth, as is apparent if one knows how to observe a soul in its entirety; and throughout his life he teems with terrors and is full of convulsions and pains, if in fact he resembles the condition of the city which he rules; and he is like it, is he not?… (Plato, Republic 9.579d-e)

That is, a polity in which a tyrant or a ruling group employs coercive power (or the threat thereof) to rule without “the consent of the governed” is in constant danger that the citizenry will assert their power of agency, undermining the power of the rulers by activism, violent rebellion, even martyrdom.  Tyrants always live in fear that their subjects’ power of agency will trump their coercive power.

There are a number of ways that rulers can prepare for – or respond to – their fears:

• by amassing ever more coercive power: fortified bunkers, secret police, prisons
• by sowing division and discord among the population to diminish their power to act in concert
• by having the police violently disperse protests
• by censoring or shutting down venues and media where critical voices are heard
• by blocking funding or in other ways interfering with opposition groups’ activities
• by undermining government institutions tasked with limiting or critiquing the rulers’ power (e.g., courts, professional civil service)
• by creating technical obstacles in order to diminish the electoral power of potential opponents
• by characterizing critics and dissenters as defeatists, supporters of terrorism, traitors, enemies of the people, enemies of the state, self-hating… in order to delegitimize their views
• by “providing” a scapegoat to deflect the population’s resistance and redirect it against not the rulers, but against a group even more powerless than the general population.

A particularly poignant story illustrating this dynamic is the account in Jeremiah 37-8:  The prophet Jeremiah has been prophesying continuously that the Babylonians are destined to conquer Judah, as God’s instrument of punishment for the Judeans’ failure to uphold the covenant.  Resistance is futile, he proclaims, and indeed blasphemous; repentance is called for, not armed rebellion against the conquerors.  The ruling Judean nobles see this prophesy as traitorous defeatism, fearing that it will undermine the nation’s resolve to achieve total victory (38:4), so they have the prophet arrested and thrown into a muddy pit.  King Zedekiah first has Jeremiah discreetly moved to a normal prison where conditions are less brutal; and then sends for him in secret and asks to hear his prophecy.  Jeremiah speaks:

If you surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, your life will be spared and the city will not be burned down… But if you do not surrender…  the city will be delivered into the hands of the Chaldeans, who will burn it down, and you will not escape. (Jer. 38:17-18)

As the king sends Jeremiah back to prison, he warns: “Don’t let anyone know about this conversation, or you will die.” (38:24)  Tragically, the king is powerless against the coalition of nobles committed to violent opposition to the Babylonians, and Jeremiah’s prophecy is soon fulfilled.  A powerless king; a fearful ruling coalition; and a fearless prophet – who is also, it seems, powerless:

I thought, “I will not mention Him,

No more will I speak His name” –

But [His word] was like a raging fire in my heart,

Shut up in my bones;

I could not hold it in, I was helpless…  (Jer. 20:9)

Which brings us back to the question: If the powerful are afraid of the powerless, are they really powerful?  But if the powerful are actually powerless, then what is power, anyway?