Could Dictators Like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini Emerge Today?

[The_Second_Stone]

There are plenty out there today, as others have pointed out. And history is littered with tyrants. Hitler mechanized it and applied his general bloodthirstiness on a scale only matched by Stalin, Mao and maybe Ghengis Khan.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Celyn

UKIP in the UK, and the Tory party pandering to them rather, is a bit worrying. Then again, I hope they are really just a bad joke.

While I severely dislike the UKIP’s “Little Englander” Europhobic mentality, they hardly are equivalent to fascism much less National Socialism (unlike the BNP). They are more like the American Tea Party than anything else.

@mlees

Quetion: Could Putin become one in Russia?

I don’t know enough about the recent goings on in that country. (My interests have always been with the 1930’s and '40s.)

I’ve thought there are some parallels between the Weimar Republic and post-1991 Russia, however it is evident that Putin isn’t Hitler but rather a Hindenburg-Gustav Strasseman hybrid, who as long as he maintains grips on power will prevent the rise of either the Reds or the ultra-nationalists.

[Nava]

@tralfamidor

Our country is the only nation on earth that purports to believe in democratic values to the extent that we’re willing to expend blood and treasure to support them, and even we have been doing a piss-poor job of that lately (for example, we still trade with China). The government of the future is a single individual, maintaining his hold on the populace through technologically driven surveillance and terror (thanks, Google!).

You’re those guys who are happy to expend blood and treasure to install tin-pot dictators, or to support anybody who you think is on your side, but who will also expend blood and treasure un-installing democratically-elected presidents who aren’t on your side.

@ITR_champion

In fact, the USA, which has always been known as a very religious nation, created democracy and then exported it to the rest of the world.

Dude, whatever you’ve been drinking, have it checked, because it may contain methanol.

[Mijin]

@ITR_champion

I think ralph was interested in discussing whether dictators could re-emerge in prosperous, western countries. Obviously there are dictators in third-world $%&#holes, but even there we see far fewer than a generation ago.

Fine, but it seems weird to me to ignore, say, Pol Pot wiping out 2 million of his own people.

Also note that for some definitions of “prosperous” we need to strike Stalin off the list as industrialization had barely started in the Soviet Union.
From that example we can see that one scenario is a dictator takes over a poor but large country, and remains at the helm as it becomes an economic force. I don’t see any reason why this cannot happen again.

[puddleglum]

It could happen again just not in the same way. Russia and Venezuala are two templates of what could happen. In Venezuala Chavez was elected and then changed the constitution so he could have more power. He uses the power of the state to control the media. The compliant media doesn’t report on the harrassment of the political opposition. The weakened opposition finds it harder to win elections and harder to complain about elections being stolen. Given enough time it is easy to imagine Chavez becoming a dictator.

[heathen_earthling]

@puddleglum

In Venezuala Chavez was elected and then changed the constitution so he could have more power. He uses the power of the state to control the media. The compliant media doesn’t report on the harrassment of the political opposition. The weakened opposition finds it harder to win elections and harder to complain about elections being stolen. Given enough time it is easy to imagine Chavez becoming a dictator.

He died earlier this year.

[Lust4Life]

@Quartz

Look to Africa and Central and South America, particularly Venezuela for counter-examples. Chavez comes immediately to mind, and there are any number of African warlords trying to make it to the big time.

Plus N.Korea, Iran…

[tralfamidor]

@ITR_champion

You’re argument is flawed for several reasons. You claim that believing in religion is a sing of being dumb, but it’s not. You claim that education ought to make people less religious, but in fact there’s a consistent positive correlation between education and religiosity. You claim that dictatorship and religion are fellow travelers. In fact, the USA, which has always been known as a very religious nation, created democracy and then exported it to the rest of the world.

Sorry, but belief in something, to the extent that that something is taken as factual, when there is no evidence whatsoever for that something’s existence, is indeed a sign of cognitive deficit, whether that something is the Man in the Sky, fairies and witches, or that because red hasn’t come up on the roulette wheel for twelve spins, that it is now “due.”

Obviously, you are religious and view my equation of religiosity with stupidity as insulting, but your (quite understandable) defensive reaction, together with our inherent bias to defend our beliefs simply because we do so for no better reason than those beliefs are “ours”. When we evolve as a species, we’ll be able to view even our own beliefs objectively, and discard those that do not merit retention.

I would dispute your contention that education correlates with religiosity, except negatively; some of the most irreligious people I’ve ever known were also the most educated, and some of the most fervent believers, profoundly ignorant. And yes, that is based on my own personal experience, but your “cite” from a kill-Richard-Dawkins website doesn’t exactly seem like an objective source, either.

Re the USA: we didn’t invent democracy. Read your history books; it was invented over twenty centuries ago. Furthermore, we don’t have a democracy now, but rather, a republic. The fact that the US is heavily religious is, in fact, somewhat of an aberration, in that most modern liberal democracies/republics are not.

The relation of religion to dictatorship is that dictatorships are, in fact, welcomed by many people because they provide the same sorts of comforts and reassurances that religion does, including absolutism, the lack of any need for personal responsibility, security (illusory or otherwise), and certainty (illusory or otherwise). It’s no accident that Chairman Mao presented himself as a demigod and a ubiquitous visual icon (he even had a Holy Bible–the Little Red Book). You can see a modern equivalent in the omnipresent scowling visage of the Ayatollah in Iran. Authoritarianism survives and thrives in this world because many people like being told what to think and do. Not all of us like the fact that we had to grow up, after all.

[handsomeharry]

@heathen_earthling

He died earlier this year.

OK, it may take a bit longer…