Secret police, concentration camps, spies, torture… The dictators of the 20th century built their regimes of terror with bricks of violence, but that was not enough, they also developed the cult of personality, which became a more than useful tool to control everything, absolutely everything”.
Frank Dikötter, Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong, has studied in depth the phenomenon of the cult of great tyrants, which translated into the omnipresence in the daily lives of citizens of leaders such as Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il-sung or Duvalier.
Dictadores is the result of this research, which also includes Hitler, Ceau?escu and Mengistu. An essential book to know the history of the 20th century in which Dikötter traces the biography of the eight autocrats who sowed terror in their countries, massacred opponents and, in all cases, led the people to economic ruin.
“The cult of personality was more effective than sowing the streets with policemen, because the population loved or feared the leader so much that no one dared to leave the prison. People could denounce a neighbor, a friend and even a family member in order not to betray the great man, to maintain adherence to the father, the Führer, the Duce, the Supreme Leader…” explains Dikötter from Hong Kong in a video conference interview with La Vanguardia.
The radio, the press, photography, the cinema, the great exhibitions… all the innovations that were implemented at the beginning of the 20th century were put at the service of dictators. “Mussolini developed the gift of omnipresence, he used secret funds for academic artists, painters, photographers, sculptors or writers to join the cause. His public appearances were choreographed, he turned his birthplace into a place of pilgrimage, he received thousands of letters and gifts every day…”.
He was a pioneer in the art of cultivating the cult of personality, because “dictators learned from each other”. “The goal of every dictator was, after coming to power, to stay in power, and for that it was very useful for them to see how other similar regimes worked. Hitler saw Mussolini and decided to do the same, because he knew it was the way to retain absolute power.”
But Hitler was not content to imitate. He went further. After reaching the German chancellery in 1933, “terror and propaganda advanced in unison”. “His portrait adorned all the offices, his words were everywhere, his quotes and slogans were published. Mein Kampf became a holy book with sales that skyrocketed, his voice sounded constantly, children were indoctrinated in schools to worship the leader who had come out of nowhere to save the people. Hitler even established a greeting that honored his person.
How did Hitler manage to match Germany itself? “He acted, he rehearsed his speeches, he offered a false sense of security to those who dealt with him. He was a master of disguise, who hid his personality behind the image of a modest, gentle and simple man”.
“The dictators of the 20th century were actors, great actors, who used acting skills to their advantage to stay in power,” Dikötter points out. They had other characteristics in common: “Chaplin painted Hitler as a bigot, but neither he nor the rest of the dictators were fools, because if they were, they wouldn’t have been able to stay on top for so long. They did share a personality trait, they didn’t care what might happen to other people. They were also manipulators and knew how to get information and how to use it,” he adds.
This kind of intelligence did not necessarily translate into wisdom. Some were “very ignorant, like Nicolae Ceau?escu”, who ruled Romania with a heavy hand between 1967 and 1989. “Ceau?escu, who was a cobbler’s apprentice, was in prison for political offenses in 1936. The rest of the prisoners he made fun of their lack of culture, whining and regional accent”. Even so, over time he came to “publish two volumes of his speeches that achieved great success and presented himself to the Romanians as a child prodigy who had been born in poverty”.
Constructing a sweetened biography and writing a must-read book are other effective personality cult strategies. Kim Il-sung, supreme leader of North Korea between 1948 and 1994 and creator of a dynasty of dictators that still endures with his grandson Kim Jong-un, managed to turn himself into a “living legend” . “He rewrote the past and in 1956 inaugurated a revolutionary museum in Pyongyang where he erased the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China from history. It was 5,000 square meters dedicated to the anti-Japanese activities of Kim Il-sung himself”.
The Korean dictator created a new ideology, Juche thought. He had learned something from one of his former mentors, Mao Zedong, who was at the head of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to 1976, who sought to “consecrate himself as a theoretician” and force the people to “study their thinking”. “Mao’s works, essays, poems, lectures, musings and slogans were published in millions of copies. In addition, newspapers and magazines gave wide circulation to his [supposed] wisdom”.
But Mao also used other tactics to pay for the cult of personality: “His portrait appeared one day at the main gate of the Forbidden City and then in schools, factories, offices…everywhere. It was compulsory to sing anthems such as Mao is our sun and twice a year meticulously choreographed parades were held”. The Chinese Supreme Leader knew how to use the people’s veneration of his person to intensify the terror regime, as he “forced people to give proof of devotion by denouncing colleagues, friends, neighbors and relatives”.
He had learned this from Stalin, who cultivated “the image of a simple man who reluctantly accepted the adoration of millions of people” and parapeted in “a benign smile”, despite having deployed a regime of terror. Stalin became the father through omnipresence, since “he was everywhere, from public parks or electric lights to postage stamps or the toponyms of streets and cities.”
Duvalier, a Haitian doctor who came to power by attacking the elite and championing the cause of the poor villagers, used esotericism to build the cult of personality, a weapon that Mussolini had already tried. Duvalier used voodoo to perpetuate himself in power. “Duvalier presented himself as a superior black considered a ‘Living Sun’ by blacks all over the world”. Like his colleagues, he established a society of terror that ended up terrifying him: “He led a reclusive life. He was taken in his own palace.”
Franco, Tito, Sukarno, Castro… the list of dictators is very long and there are still tyrants in the world such as Maduro or Putin, but Dikötter is convinced that regimes as bloodthirsty as the ones he portrays in Dictators “will not be repeated, because even if democracy may be retreating in some places, history shows that this kind of regimes so common in the 20th century are in decline today”.
