Most governments, from what I can tell, survive because the inhabitants internalize the teachings and beliefs of those in power. In the US for example alot of people support the idea of human rights, science, civil rights, etc. and the government supports these things. If the US government became the Taliban tonight there’d be rioting, terrorism, civil wars, etc tomorrow. In North Korea most people feel the leader is close to god, as did the people in Japan up until 60 years ago. There is a sense of legitimacy and ‘rightness’ about government structure and doctrine. There was a sense of this from what I saw in Iraq where people at first didn’t feel like any leader other than Saddam was a valid leader, it’s the same as if Kim Jong Il conquered the US tomorrow he wouldn’t be the ‘valid’ leader the same way leaders who win elections are.
Have there been cultures run strictly by fear where the people not only didn’t internalize the teachings of the culture/government, but had a totally different set of values? An example would be conquered France under Hitler, the values and agendas of the conquered people was totally at odds with government doctrine, this naturally led to terrorism to remove the government. If democratic institutions are not in place people will resort to violence to change the government if they feel it does not represent them and cannot be changed through peaceful means. But have there been successful instances of governments subjugating people who despised what the government stood for strictly through fear or did all of these governments fall from things like terrorism and civil war? It seems like the only time governments succeed is when the people view the government as legitimate and in sync with their internal values.
Most of the dictatorships on the planet exist through fear, including North Korea. If the people loved their leader so much, they wouldn’t have to put up walls around the country and shoot people trying to leave.
If North Korea ever falls, I predict the whole myth of the population loving their leader will vanish overnight. The people loved Caucescu too - right until they stopped fearing him. Then they hung his body from a streetlight.
The Soviet Union would be another example. The best description of that population was cynical. The people were resigned to omnipresent government and controls, and had seen enough examples of people being dragged away in the night or starved that they simply kept their heads down, did what they had to do to survive, and tried to eake out whatever happiness they could in that miserable wreck of a country.
The ‘adoration’ of the North Korean despots could be compared to the cult of Stalin. Which certainly didn’t disappear overnight - and he is still fondly regarded in some quarters (I think there’s a recent thread about this somewhere). So no, we can’t be sure that the North Korean population are on the brink of freedom of thought.
Fear has held a great many despotic governments together… but not neccessarily fear of despotic governments, exactly. In fact, relatively few regimes last long by terrorizing their own populace; most of them survive by instilling fear from something else - either fear of an outside enemy, or fear of chaos. The latter is especially potent, as a great many people - maybe the majority of people - will put up with quite a lot of oppression, if the alternative is civil war.
Human beings may want freedom, but suspect they want stability even more.
There is also the question of legitimacy. Those governments are considered legitimate by the people who live there. A country like France which was conquered by the Nazis is an example of a government which the people felt was not legimitate. And North Korea and the USSR were considered legitimate governments, plus I think the people mostly had the same values as the government (communism, nationalism, etc).
An example of a non legitimate government that was not in sync with the values of the people it governed would be if north korea overthrew the US government and established a North Korean style rule here. Or Nazi Germany taking over France. Have governments like that which are considered non-legimitate by the people and not in sync with their values and which as a result must run strictly on terror and fear actually survived.
I could imagine that the Mongol Empire was run as a tight operation… not much dissent !
Reading the OP I remember the idea that Hitler invading the USSR united it more and gave Moscow power. Basically Hitler did what decades of secret police and repression didn’t manage… to unite the Soviet Republics. So an external enemy once more can make a “functional and effective” society. The USSR was very effective through most of the cold war.
Forgot to mention… every society has a modicum of fear to keep people in line… after all do you respect the law or you don’t want the cops to get you ?
Society, religion and morals all keep us afraid of being ostracized or ridiculed too. Fear isn’t only about violence.
I wonder if Elizabethan England would be a good candidate? There seems to have been a significan amount of head rolling involved in the upper reaches of political power in those days.
Then how about the german principalities shortly after the reformation? There were many accusations of herrisy, and examples of Catholic populatons being at odds with protestant rulers, and vice versa.
Also, “rule by fear” in the classic Machiavellian sense refers not to having society structured completely around generalized fear, but of instilling fear in those who could do something to threaten the regime.
The generality of a population can be conditioned into an attitude of “well, if I’m doing nothing against the Exalted One, I have nothing to worry about”, which is different from feeling you live in fear every day of your life. In any case, a society where the populace actually felt they’re being abusively persecuted for no good reason doesn’t seem a candidate for long-term stability to me.
Saudi Arabia - until terrorism started unraveling it.
And, I would argue, the United Arab Emirates does a remarkable job. It’s a very open, safe, and nice place. Lots of development (especially in Dubai). Tons and tons of foreigners. (Expatriots outnumber locals by quite a bit.) But people obey the laws because they fear the consequences: arrest and/or deportation. It is quite the atuocracy. What the Sheikhs say is, literally, the law. One cannot squirm one’s way out. And the government is not afraid to use its muscle.
In Pakistan, whenever the army is in charge there is relatively more security and stability, because the army can do a lot that an elected government can’t. After all, an elected government will have to answer for its actions, whereas the army answers to no one. People fear the wrath of the army more than the wrath of corrupt and corruptable politicians.
With the UAE, the people really did love and respect - I would go so far to say adore - the late President, Sheikh Zayed. I only lived here during his rule for three years, and in that time I grew to admire him to the point of love as well. He was an exception in every way, a truly oustanding member of the human race.
His son Khalifa, the current president, is apparently greatly loved by the people as well, though he is not so well known or respected (yet) among expats. That said, we were expecting more of a figurehead, but he appears to be wiser and more active than anticipated.
Either way, I don’t think one could say that the UAE is run through fear. It is a system that works through tribal loyalty and love. There are coups, and there are rebellions, and plots (speaking of the tribal sheikhdoms in general throughout the Gulf). But it really wouldn’t be fair to say that people behave here through fear. I think - the local population at least - thrive on the immense support and respect they get from the government/rulers (and yes - the scale of largesse is only possible because oil) - but definitely not fear.
Regarding expats: for me, it’s more about behaving (as well as I can!) because I am a guest in someone else’s country. And also because most expatriates are economic migrants, they are in another country to work and earn money, not break the law. In the same way that most working people in more liberal countries are essentially “law abiding” - it’s just common sense, upbringing, and a question of priorities.
The United States is ruled by fear. We aren’t so much afraid of violence in an immediate sense, but we are afraid in the remote sense. People don’t do drugs because of the harsh drug laws. The USA Patriot act scares a lot of people who don’t really understand it, and many who do. I work with an activist organization afraid to put up a public message board because they don’t want the organizers to be arrested for something that gets said by some overzealous individual. I know lots of people who are wary every time a cop car drives by, including myself. Upper Middle Class white kids know that they can get away with a lot more than poor minorities, and they exploit that all the time. We’re taught to fear other groups that are not like ourselves. Everything that doesn’t agree with the values of the current administration is “eroding our values”. We’re taught to be afraid of bags left alone on the subway. We’re told that our voices aren’t going to be heard if we do speak up, and then we have the whispered rumors that Malcolm X and Bob Marley were killed by the CIA. We hear the stories about the CIA running mind control experiments like MK Ultra back in the sixties. We’re afraid of a resurgence of McArthyism style backlash. We aren’t allowed to show genitalia on television. We’re told that certain average every day things that human beings do as a matter of just being an animal, are vile and disgusting. We’re taught that we have to look a certain way or we are ugly. We’re taught that only certain exceptional beings are capable of creativity while being told otherwise. If you aren’t at the top then you are a slave. The rich are out to get you. The poor hate you if you are wealthier than they are. You aren’t worth as much if your car isn’t as good. We are afraid to download music. We’re afraid of viruses. We’re afraid to enter into some new contract that could benefit us because we’re worried about our ability to read the fine print properly. We’re worried about getting sued for something stupid. We close parks at night, and don’t allow homeless people to sleep in them. We’re afraid that being homeless is the end of the world. We’re afraid that if we give up our ability to drive an Escalade, that we’ll eventually be forced to ride bicycles. We’re afraid of communism. We’re afraid of ‘Satanism’ even though it’s the national religion. We’re afraid of foreigners. We’re afraid of outsourcing. We’re afraid of boredom. We’re afraid of the Men in Black who know everything we say, and can take us from our homes and erase our identities any time they want.
There are a lot of social factors that go into the control over society that is exerted, that aren’t necessarily written down as law, but that doesn’t mean they are not exploited by forces in control, and not everyone who is in power is in a government position.
America is most certainly a culture ruled by fear, a heavy amount of it, no less than North Korea or the USSR, it’s just that we aren’t afraid of imminent bodily harm, but there are many forces compounded that can diminish our quality of life that are used to control us on an every day basis. Just because we don’t have an old style dictatorial regime that’s an easy target to point a finger at doesn’t mean we are any less ruled by fear.
The rule of law in and of itself is based upon fear. If we don’t have clearly defined rules, well then people might just walk all over us. Now that we have laws we need to have judges and cops to take care of that. Now we’re afraid that those judges and cops have more power in society than we do.
Good old fashioned fear and paranoia. There sure is a lot of it these days.
If the OP meant the overt, upfront blatant application of “official” terror, with no attempt to pretend different, how about Pol Pot, Idi Amin, etc? They were pretty good at it in their time.
I think if you want to strictly limit the definition of fear like you have Wesley then not many governments can be found to match.
But if you just use fear generally, then many many governments through the past ruled through fear, or at least used fear to rule. It is rare for any government to be based on onesingle source of power.
The monarchs of the past had legitimacy flowing from the church, from their rights as tacit owners of most of the land, from their control over the military, from the idea that people owed allegiance to them, to the fact that people were killed if they failed in the former.
Many of these methods incorporate fear. Mess with the King and you mess with God and your place in heaven, that’s a form of ruling through fear, fear of eternal damnation.
Rebel against the monarchy and they’ll take your land, they’ll starve you. They’ll crush you with the military, they’ll hang you as a traitor.
How about society at all. Society is about fear. It is a fear that the familial structure is not enough to bind us to the rest of our species, that some codified and rigid system had to be created in order to protect us from that which we feared.
I think a better question is, “Would society exist at all without the rule of fear?”
By defining every society as being ‘ruled by fear’, you totally whitewash the distinction between a free society and a tyranny. This is not helpful. It’s just a form of relativism that blurs distinctions rather than making them understandable.
