I mean seriously, how does 1 man get to rule and oppress an entire nation? Are the people so brainwashed and lazy 2 do anything about it? This is something I always wondered
Well for starters, a dictator generally has the armed forces on his side, or at least its leadership. That helps. Well, that plus some kind of intelligence apparatus or secret service to keep people in line.
Additionally, even the worst dictators often play nice with at least one segment of the general population.
Because most people prefer some form of government - *any *form of government - over no government at all. They want to get up in the morning, go to work, and have ordinary, normal lives, and if they think a dictator will guarantee this, they’ll support him.
Yup.
Most people are sheep.
Once you control the information (they need to be told they are happy) and the sheepherders (army & Secret service) it’s easy sailing.
Biggest threat then is that outside forces somehow convince enough of your sheep that they shouldn’t be happy.
In the abstract:
People form groups. Groups often have leaders. Or arguably, the more successful groups often have leaders; because it’s good to at least have a clear direction, plus all the psychological factors of rallying round a charismatic and popular individual.
If a land is completely lawless, groups will inevitably compete, and the more successful groups may cause lesser groups to fragment or be absorbed. Eventually more people in a land may belong to a particular group than all the others put together.
But in practice: dictatorships usually form when the head of the armed forces stages a coup. Armies instill loyalty to one’s superiors, so they will follow orders, meanwhile civilians can’t really do much against the army.
Most dictators don’t start out as dictators. They start out as revolutionaries - usually idealistic, usually coming to power on a wave of popular support while they declare their intent to sweep away the corruption of the old regime. They usually mean it too - at the time.
The journey from selfless young idealist to selfish old reactionary(*) is usually gradual, so gradual that it’s only evident in retrospect.
Read Orwell’s Animal Farm - it’ll tell you all you need to know.
(*) Add “murderous”, “thieving”, “nepotistic”, etc as appropriate.
A non-insignificant factor is that dictatorships are often supported and propped up by foreign interests - be it in the form of intelligence/advisors ; military materiel, training or even direct intervention ; or plain old flinging money at them. It’s much more convenient to have one bought up presidentissimo-for-life in one’s pocket than a fickle democracy.
Its simplistic thinking like the above which got the Iraq mess.
Dictators,like elected people and monarchs rule by consent. Only “consent” here means that enough people are able to tolerate you enough not to throw you out by the ear. How a Dictator achieves that varies according to the situation, the country the individual. So while control or at least acquiescent of the coercive apparatus of a state are essential (as is the case anywhere else but other things as well. Bribery, cajoling, making just enough improvements, helping to maintain order between factitious portions of the population and the appropriate employment of force if and when necessary. Propaganda helps and actually accomplishing or having been perceived to have so done helps even better. Everyone now knows that Saddam kept a lid on sectarian and ethnic tensions in Iraq (as did Tito in Yugoslavia), but that fact was known to many Iraqis and observers before the war and was one of the reason Iraqis did not try that hard to overthrow him; getting rid of him could (and did) release a pandora’s box full of issues.
Very true.
Or, if not support him, at least keep their mouths shut about politics, like the Iraqis under Hussein used to do (for well-founded fear of secret-police informers). Come to think of it, throughout history, most human beings living in civilized societies could get in trouble for talking politics. What we now call a “dictatorship” is something that at any time in the 19th Century or earlier would have been called simply a “government.”
The more power you have the easier it is to increase your power. This provides a feedback loop so that eventually you have all the power there is.
Overthrowing a dictator is a collective action problem. Lets say a mob of 100 people is trying to kill me. I have a gun with 3 bullets in it and the mob is unarmed. If I tell the mob I will shoot the first 3 people who come at me, I can usually survive. This is because even if one person steps ups and tries to come at me I can kill him and stay alive so he has wasted his life. Thus no one wants to be one of the first two people.
If one person speaks against a dictator they can be easily imprisoned or killed and nothing will have changed. Thus no one speaks against the dictator unless there are enough people doing so to affect change. Dictators employ secret police to spy on the population and everyone knows this. This keeps people from trusting enough people to organize against the dictator and also allows the dictator to stop opposition groups while they are still too small to be a real threat. This goes all the way to the top, dictators organize their governments so that there is no one group big enough to challenge them. They keep the police, the army, and the secret police all seperate so they would have to work together to seize power. Then they play the factions against one another.
my plan is 2 wait until 2025 & then cash in all the extra letters I’ve been saving by using numbers instead in my rambling internet posts.
then I’ll b ready 2 take over.
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