Keeping An Eye on Dictators and Would-Be Dictators
Why a sudden interest in dictators in the United States? We have never been ruled by a king or dictator. This has always been, for 248 years, a government of the people. What has created a public anxiety about dictators?
The United States Supreme Court has ruled by a 6 – 3 vote that the president of the U.S. has immunity from criminal prosecution. While the detailed meaning of the ruling remains to be determined, the public opinion has galvanized around discussions of a possible dictatorship.
I trust American historians to tell us the truth about our past, our present, and our future. Yale history professor Timothy Synder has written recently about tyranny and tyrants. He offered twenty lessons from the 20th century – lessons designed to help us avoid a tyrant in the White House. He explained history is the place to turn when our political order seems imperiled.
And that is our situation. We are imperiled. In the view of Synder and many other American historians, we face threats to our democracy. There are people who feel so powerless they no longer partake in what we call democratic society. This indicates our nation is in trouble.
Synder offers us a guide to investigating how tyrants and dictators come to power in other places. We may learn from the experience of others how to avoid tyranny in America.
The American people can be on watch for any would-be dictator like the people of the Gulf Coast watching the tropics for the development of hurricanes. The good news is we have all the resources we need to help us be alert, on guard, and prepared to stop a dictator at “would be” and never allow him to become the dictator.
If you have seen one dictator, you have seen them all. There is always a dictator somewhere at the center of political power. Make a list: Silvio Berlusconi, Viktor Orban, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Rodrigo Duterte, Nicolas Maduro, Vladimir Putin, and Recep T. Erdogan, but the names don’t matter.
One day, in our nation’s future, a rational president who speaks in complete sentences may arise with a vision of how to take total control of the people. This president will be more than a demagogue, more than an off-the-rails nativist, racist, and spiteful person. He or she will grasp the levers of governmental power and expand what we know as the “imperial presidency” to absolute and total control.
Rhetorical scholar Kenneth Burke showed us in 1939 that history affords us more than enough examples of rulers who have “swung a great people in [their] wake.” Let us pay attention to these dictatorial ones. Let us try to discover “what kind of medicine [these] medicine-men have concocted, that we may know, with greater accuracy, exactly what to guard against,” if we are to avoid the tragedy of having a dictator over America.
How to Recognize a Dictator in Advance
Dictators are heedless, self-centered, uncaring people.
Any name will do, because they all act in the same heedless, uncaring, selfish, violent self-sufficiency. The psalmist could have been talking of a dictator in the first of the psalms: “This is the manner of the heedless who stand otherwise” from all other humans. This is the “way of the twisted,” sitting in the “seat of the scornful.” The heedless ones “are like chaff scattered by the wind endlessly driven, they cannot occupy their place and so can never be seen or embraced.” “The way of heedlessness is oblivion.”
A dictator never lacks confidence.
He prefers to put “his cards face up on the table,” and for that bit of overconfidence we should be grateful. He expresses his sense of power. He makes bold declarations of what he can do. He will make outlandish claims: “I’m the smartest man in the world.” “I am smarter than the generals.” “I know more about everything than everyone.” “I am the only one who can save the nation.”
Dictators reject multiple points of view.
All critics, dissenters and question askers are liars, incompetent, sick, or crazy. There’s only one “worldview” or “Christian worldview.” Those who dissent are first shamed, then marginalized, then demonized, then excluded, then exterminated.
The dictator advances his own claims against those of his subjects.
Everything is about the dictator’s desires and not the needs of the people. Dictators are a tricky lot. They enslave the people, even their own supporters. In Genesis 47:25 the people are grateful to be cheap labor for the dictator: “‘You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be slaves to Pharaoh.’”
Dictators use profane, aggressive, angry, transgressive dark rhetoric.
“Russians will no longer be second class citizens,” Putin said. “Russia can rise from its knees and fight back as it should.” Putin told the world he would make Russia great again. He alone (not institutions, not the elites, not universities, not the military) would be the champion of the nation. He told television viewers he would “rub out the bandits in the outhouse.” He has now been the “elected” and “democratic” leader of Russia for 20 years.
Putin, for example, gave speeches about the Motherland as “a man’s affair.” He offered speeches to women rejecting public debates on the grounds he did not need to engage in public debates on which was better “Tampax or Snickers.” He told voters not to make “a sweet, syrupy image” of him.
Dictators also employ the rhetoric of nativism to show they are chosen by the people. In the world of the dictator, there are insiders and outsiders. The nation is defined by casting out elites, minorities (sexual, ethnic, religious, and political). The elites are feminized and “sissified.” Only “real people” are considered true citizens. The Others are the disenfranchised groups, and they are painted as dangerous enemies (they are ready to rape and maim and murder the real people and especially the women of the real people).
When Erdogan of Turkey faced the nation-wide Gezi Park protests in 2013, he said, “What do you expect? Am I supposed to bend over before a couple of wanderers and ask them kindly to stop protesting? If you think that I am tough, sorry, but Tayyip Erdogan won’t change!” The metaphor of “phallic power” was Erdogan’s deliberate choice. He would never be the one to bend over (assume a non-dominant sexual position).
Braggadocio afflicts politicians of all stripes, but dictators carry it to another level. Dictators regularly claim to accomplish missions no other politician or group can. They take credit for every victory; blame others for any defeat or setback. If a leader brags constantly about his physical power, his intellectual acuity, and his spiritual power he is in the dictator lane.
Dictators allow zero dissent.
The irony of these tough leaders: they have thin skins. They can’t handle criticism. Political opponents are jailed or killed. During President Vladimir Putin’s rule several of his vocal critics have died or been sentenced to lengthy jail terms. Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny is just one of many Kremlin critics to have fallen foul of the government under President Vladimir Putin’s rule. Navalny was jailed in early 2021 and died in a Russian prison. He was supposedly recovering from a near-fatal poisoning attack in a remote prison colony in the Arctic Circle.
Erdogan tolerates no dissent in Turkey. Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and a leading figure of the opposite on People’s Republican Party (CHP) and a popular politician who consistently polls higher than Mr. Erdogan, was convicted on a charge of insulting election officials during his contentious 2019 election campaign. He was given a 31-month prison sentence.
Philanthropist and activist Osman Kavala, 65, has been in prison since 2017 on charges of attempting to overthrow the government and financing mass protests in 2013.
According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), 38 journalists are behind bars and dozens have fled abroad, including the former chief editor of the left-wing Cumhuriyet Daily, Can Dundar.
Is there a would-be dictator in our nation’s future? Is there a young person growing up in the Midwest dreaming of being like Putin or Erdogan? I, like the prophet Habakkuk, I will stand at my watch-post, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me.”
America has never been ruled by king, dictator, or president-for-life. And by knowing what to look for with any would-be dictators with designs on our democracy, we will know how to stop them in advance.
Even if you belong to MAGA, even if you love Trump, remember you are an American. We are allergic to kings, tyrants, and dictators.
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