Tyranny and the art of controlling people
Tyrants control people either by incarcerating their bodies or controlling their minds. Physical control involves brute force, while mental control is more subtle and involves techniques for heightening suggestibility by repeatedly exposing the people to slogans, images and narratives proclaiming the virtues of the tyrant and the vices of those earmarked as enemies, and instilling fear if they should deviate from the tyrant’s script. Truth plays no part in this exercise.
The twentieth century was dominated by two tyrannies, fascism and communism, with more in common in their methods of controlling people than their fanatical hatred of each other’s ideologies would suggest. In September 1939, Hitler and Stalin, enemies at opposite ends of the political spectrum, shocked the world by signing a pact which allowed their countries a free run in the carve-up of Poland. The Nazi beast and the Soviet monster had deemed it expedient to bury their ideological differences in the interests of furthering their expansionist aims.
The cartoonist David Low marked the occasion with a memorable cartoon. The two mass murderers are shown bowing to each other in mock deference. At their feet lies the body of an unidentified soldier. Hitler is saying, “The scum of the earth, I believe?” And Stalin sneers back, “The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?”
Nearly eighty years on, the Times cartoonist, Morten Morland, depicted two more tyrants facing each other. In this cartoon, Donald Trump, in his first incarnation as President of the US, is greeting the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, with “The short, fat, maniac rocket man, I believe?” And the latter responds with, “The old, mentally deranged dotard, I presume?” At their feet lies, not the body of a man, but a nuclear missile, half buried in the sand.
Of the unsavoury quartet depicted in these two cartoons, perhaps the least well-known is the North Korean. In 2011 he inherited a dynasty founded by his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, who, in the aftermath of the Korean War, put in place the iron-clad communist regime which still exists today.
In 1950, Kim Il Sung made a catastrophic blunder. He had failed to realise that by invading South Korea he would be taking on the power of the United States. Consequently, his war of conquest ended ignominiously, and in order to steer blame away from himself he adopted ruthless tactics – seizing control of the media, stamping out all traces of dissent and proclaiming himself saviour of his country.
The North Korean people today are controlled by strictly imposed routines governing every moment of their waking lives. There is no freedom of debate and no creative thinking. There is only orchestrated adulation of the leader. The slightest departure from conformity amounts to treason. Consequently, North Korea today is a wasteland ruled by fear and paranoia. Sung succeeded in isolating his people from the outside world by controlling them, and now his grandson, inheritor of the first communist family dynasty in history, struts the stage, brandishing nuclear arms like a child playing with matches.
The only other member of the cartoon quartet still in play is Donald Trump, an amateur tyrant by comparison with his counterparts in Russia and Asia, but only because the United States still retains a democratic framework which hems him in. Trump’s exhibitionistic cavortings have thrown the world into disarray, but it is consoling to reflect that his instability bodes ill for his future. It is increasingly difficult to maintain a tyrannical posture when one cannot isolate one’s own people from democratic influences.
Where is Israel in all of this? Through the cacophony of dissent in the country, the voice of democracy can still be heard, but Netanyahu, Israel’s short-sighted and battered leader, is trailing sycophantically in his hero’s wake and showing all the features of an emerging tyrant. The Israeli people, tired, traumatised and internationally vilified (including by a minority of foolish Jews), are in the front line of a battle against a third tyranny, that of Islamic fundamentalism. And a fourth tyranny, epitomised by Jewish Settler extremism, but puny in comparison with the worldwide influence of Jihadi power, is further impeding the the survival of democracy in Israel.
Tyrants come and go, like Ozymandias of Egypt, but tyranny will always be with us. Those of us in so-called safe regions of the world must constantly be on the lookout for attempts by would be tyrants to control us, whether driven by religion or politics.
