Dictators have a few things in common with T. rex, the king of dinosaurs. Both dominate their sphere of influence through brute force. Both assert supremacy by instilling fear. Even trees trembled when T. rex approached. Likewise, small nations shudder when they see the dictators’ advancing army, airpower or armada. Fear is an effective, time-and-cost-saving mechanism for entrenching dominance. It reduces resistance from victims and rivals.
As in jungle, so, too, in oceans and cities. It is apt to liken tyrants to this dinosaur. After all, T. rex stands for Tyrannosaurus rex, Greek-Latin for tyrant lizard king. Homo Sapiens’ T. rex have armed and harmed our civilisation for centuries. The 20th century alone had dozens of them—Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Gaddafi, Idi Amin, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Chiang Kai-Shek, North Korea’s Kim dynasts and many more.
Through blizzards of lies, distortions and false accusations, dictators ascend to power. Truth is their enemy. Bark matches bite as they doggedly control the truth, or “narrative” as it is called now. Homicide becomes self-defence, murder is suicide, inflation the invention of political opponents. Hitler provided the best tip for mass-media messaging and public manipulation: “Propaganda must be limited to a few points and repeated endlessly.” Controlled truth controls people’s minds. Meanwhile, truth-seekers disappear or die. The sinister African dictator Idi Amin proclaimed, “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.”
Image: Shutterstock
Dictators thrive in tough times because happy people don’t seek saviours. If the situation is not bad enough, autocrats invent trouble until reality catches up. Changing times, uncertainty and misfortune make people fearful. They crave a strong leader who can make them feel safe again. Historically, grievances and calamities result from war, oppression, colonialism, cultural domination and national humiliation by imperialists, inequality, inflation and disease. From this womb of misery, dictators are born.
But tyrants seldom deliver. One reason is, as philosopher Hannah Arendt argued, they appoint “crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity guarantees their loyalty”. These minions gouge institutions, crush the dictator’s enemies, blunder and plunder national resources. Curiously, even after they gain all the levers of power, dictators seem uninterested in using them to improve people’s lives. It reflects a nagging fear: who needs a dictator when life is good. Psychologists say despotism is a pathology of four traits—narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism. This explains why dictators don’t promise happiness. They promise revenge. They don’t just exploit misfortune, they nurture it so that bad times don’t end.
But they do, unless they worsen. Yet, dictators and dinosaurs are anachronisms. T. rex had giant skulls and huge, heavy tails. Its massive, deadly jaws crushed its prey’s entire skeleton, while its propulsive tail uprooted vegetation and smashed animals. But they had dwarf forelimbs. Lacking in fine-motor skills, these ridiculously puny appendages could hardly grasp or grapple. Symbolic. Giants with limited dexterity, T. rex and tyrants combine brute strength with structural weakness. In this contradiction lie their seeds of destruction. Their power to dominate is impressive, but less so is their capacity to adapt—which as Darwin said, is the key to survival. Thus, dictators, ecosystems and creatures collapse.
But an asteroid made dinosaurs extinct before evolution did. Implosion or invasion ends dictatorships. Until then, dictators avoid celestial and citizens’ rocks, luxuriate in heavily guarded, gilded mansions, enjoy pomp and pageantry, seize neighbours’ territories, receive supplicants bearing gifts, praise and entreaties. There are no forever dictators, but the end of one doesn’t signal the extinction of this vile sub-species. Unlike T. rex, dictators still roam the earth.
Pratap is an author and journalist.