So, there’s Esoteric Hitlerism: The extra-ultra-super-duper-kooky belief, held by people like Savitri Devi and Miguel Serrano, that Hitler was no mere politician - but in fact a supernatural being, an avatar or a god, the last incarnation of Kali, etc., etc., etc.
Off the top of my head, I can only think of one other secular political figure who has inspired similar claims of divinity: Haile Selassie, considered a divine being within Rastafarianism.
Now, of course plenty of politicians claim divine guidance (if not divine origins), for any number of reasons, but what I find extra interesting about these two cases is that the supernatural claims here seem to have originated not from the politicians themselves – who were, in both cases, more or less secular* – but from their followers and their admirers.
Are there further examples of secular politicians raised to the status of living gods by their followers? Were there those in olden days who believed Napoleon to be a manifestation of the Holy Spirit? Who considered the kaiser an emanation of Wotan, or Eisenhower the second coming of John the Baptist (making Nixon Jesus, I s’ppose)? Are there, today, Mexicans who worship Vicente Fox as Quetzalcoatl, or Chinese reds who in Mao Zedong see an incarnation of Mahakala?
*) Selassie, as I understand it, consistently denied his own divinity – while Hitler, for all his goings-on about providence this and providence that, seems to have had very little interest in religion.
What makes you think other traditional religious figures like Jesus don’t count here? Many of Jesus’s early followers didn’t believe he was divine, it was Paul the apostle would spread most of those claims.
The “Nikal Seyn” cult in northwest Pakistan and Afghanistan, inspired by the British colonial Brigadier-General John Nicholson, apparently persisted into the late 20th century according to some sources.
The cult of personality surrounding North Korea’s Kim Il-sung (and, to a certain extent, his son and grandson) certainly seems to entail some aspects of claims of divinity, though that is almost undoubtedly coming from the top down, rather than being generated spontaneously by devoted citizens.
Follow-up: A fascinating though outdated and bigoted account of reputed deifications of British colonial and other prominent figures, including Nicholson, by nineteenth- and twentieth-century members of various Hindu sects is given here.
As in many non-monotheistic religions, though, it can be a bit difficult to tell the difference between beatification and deification, i.e., regarding the cult figure as some kind of venerated saint as opposed to an actual deity. The Gandhi Mandir [temple] in Orissa, India seems to be pretty clearly a worship site devoted to the late Mahatma Gandhi, but again, it’s hard to pin down a definite boundary between human and divine in this conception.
A bit of a hijack, but an Indian guru who was written up in last week’s New York Times Magazine is quite a businesswoman. Her name is Mata Amritanandamayi, but she goes by the name Amma. Her village (Amritapuri) has a university, a well regarded medical school, extensive hotel facilities, an unsurprisingly ornate temple and well run city services. She is said to perform the usual miracles. Amma’s Multifaceted Empire, Built on Hugs - The New York Times
That sounds plausibe, from all that I’ve read of cargo-cult societies. Was not the same also true of the Hawaiian view of Captain Cook, back in the day?
And I can’t believe the OP referred to Savitri Devi! I’d never heard of her before in my life until three days ago, and now I see her mentioned again - twice in one week!
Not a politician (I see not all of the above are) but: I doubt that John the Baptist would’ve considered himself divine, regardless of what he thought about his relative. But now he is still the central religious figure in Mandaeism
Cargo cults also have John Frum, but we’re not sure who he actually was originally.
She wrote a very good book on animal immortality around 1948, published in London. It had many flattering references to the fuhrer.
As far as Napoleon goes, very definitely many of his later followers, pace Béranger, worshipped him and appeared to veer into a dangerous and cuckoo belief in his divinity. Some British clergyman, on the other hand, around 1817 published a satirical work proving that he had never existed and was merely a collection of myths ( e.g. sun-god etc. ). As with most of these people ( cf, the Divine Cabell’s examination of the legacy of Dom Manuel, wherein his old companions cannot recognise the man they knew in the present icon ), the further away from Napoleon the further away from reality these people got.
Which reached a peak in the 1890s, coming up to the comforting centenary of his exploits. ( Although after the collapse of the 2nd Empire, movements such as Boulangism already clutched at the coat-tails of the little bastard, as shown in Herbert Gorman’s excellent novel on the affaire ).
There was also a website devoted to the identification of Jesus Christ with Julius Caesar: it appeared to be genuine.
Nah, not really. I’m no expert, and am happy to be corrected on this point, but if I’m not mistaken the tradition of seeing the tennō as a divine being goes waaaay back, and was almost certainly actively encouraged and promoted by the authorities, not to mention the tennō himself, until fairly recently. (1945, right?)
I’m more interested in secular pols who make no claims of divinity whatsoever, and who are still considered divine beings by (some of) their followers.
Hitler’s one, Selassie’s another - and as I’ve learned in this thread, so are for example Prince Philip and that John Nicholson character!
Not really interested in opening up that old can of worms. What, exactly, Jesus believed himself to be, or claimed to be, or was believed by the writers/compilers of the New Testament to be - well, it’s been discussed with some fervor for the last two thousand years or so, and we’re probably not going to settle the matter in this thread.
Hehe, how delightfully odd! Interesting to see, too, that the whole “zomg Jezus nevver ekxisted cuz he’s jost a symboll of the sunn god lol” canard was already so well-established by 1817 that it could be used for parody and satire!
I was objecting to secular. He’s a political figure because of his connection to the British Monarchy and the British monarchy is a religious institution. Liz’s title is “Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith”
(he is a “political figure”, you can be a political figure even if you aren’t an elected official).
And use of the word “sheeple.”