Do You Want to Be Led by a Dictator?

Abstract

There was much jubilation after Peter was elected president. People were overjoyed to finally have a new face, rather than a member of the old guard, leading the country. The new president had presented a vision for the future of that gave them hope. But as time passed, things didn’t turn out as expected. The combination of position and disposition (that is, Peter’s personality) turned out to be a very toxic brew. The power that came with the position of president seemed to have gone to Peter’s head, having a strange effect on him. Not that the new president changed his behaviour immediately. It was a process that happened very subtly.

Every dictator is an enemy of freedom, an opponent of law.

—Demosthenes

It was one of the greatest errors in evaluating dictatorship to say that the dictator forces himself on society against its own will. In reality, every dictator in history was nothing but the accentuation of already existing state ideas which he had only to exaggerate in order to gain power.

—Wilhelm Reich