wayweird

What the hell is a cult of personality? Is it something like that group of nut jobs that followed Thulsa Doom in the movie Conan?

Don’t worry about answering. I’ll just Google it.

Mmm…says here that a cult of personality occurs when a nation’s leader uses mass media to create a heroic public image through unquestioning flattery and praise. A cult of personality is similar to general hero worship, except that it is created specifically for political leaders. However, the term may be applied by analogy to refer to veneration of religious or non-political leaders.

Ok. It looks like I came pretty close with that Thulsa Doom analogy. I was just curious because I saw that on this day in 1956 Nikita Khrushchev surprised the delegates at the 20^th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union with a speech that denounced the cult of personality surrounding Joseph Stalin.

Yeah, looks like Stalin had his very own cult of personality going there, and that makes sense because Wikipedia says that cults of personality are often found in dictatorships. Stalin was one of the top three dictators back in the day, right? He certainly deserved a cult of personality as good as or better than Hitler’s or Mussolini’s. What’s the point of being a dictator if no one glorifies you?

At the very least a cult of personality provides a leader with a god-like and infallible image. His portraits are hung in homes and public buildings - and they had better not be hung crooked. Some real special dictators who owned deluxe cults of personality even had giant images of themselves painted on the walls of buildings along with their own special slogans. Hitler’s slogan was “One People, One Reich, One Leader.” Another dictator back in the ‘80’s  loved “Lead, Coach, Teach, Learn”.

The best part about having a cult of personality is that artists and poets are legally required to produce only works that flatter the leader, which means no political cartoons that lampoon or misrepresent are allowed.

Dictators need to come across as Messiahs because their regimes usually seek to radically transform society according to (supposedly) revolutionary new ideas, and that’s a tough job. It makes change a hell of a lot easier if the leader comes to be treated as a benevolent super-hero “guide” for the nation.

Come to think of it…didn’t Obama say he wanted his rule to be transformative? Hmmm. And you never hear the mass media saying anything bad about him, in fact they love him. And that slogan - what was it? “Change we can believe in!” and “Yes, we can!” Wow - that last one’s almost as good as “Seig Heil!”

 Kind of looks like we have a cult of personality building around Obama. But don’t worry. We’re safe. We don’t have to hang his picture at home yet, and there are no big posters with his mug on any walls - yet.

But hang on. Lookie here:

Hundreds of Chicagoans who visited the auto show at McCormick Place snapped up special commemorative Obama license plates at 50 dollars a pair. The plates feature a large picture of Obama and read Illinois salutes President Barack Obama.
David Drucker with the Illinois Secretary of State’s office says a thousand drivers bought the temporary plates during the ten days of the auto show.

Drucker says, “This is what is called a special event plate which means that it’s not a permanent license plate. Rather it’s good for a 60-day period which will expire on April 17th.”

Phew! He had me worried there for a minute. Wouldn’t it be horrible if these things were mandatory and you had to stare at them everywhere you drove in Illinois? That would be even worse than having Obama’s face plastered on the walls of every government building in the state.

So I reckon we’re safe from any Obama cult of personality. Besides, a cult of personality doesn’t have to be associated with a dictatorship. Democracies can have them as well. Former Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos led a large personality cult, and many of his supporters still revere him in a manner that is nearly on a religious level. And Argentina’s Juan and Eva Peron were cult figures too.
See. We’ll be fine.

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