What is Lebanon suffering from today?
The Cult of Personality.
Worshipping ONE man for certain things he has said or done.
Europe did face this problem 50 years ago with Hitler, Mussolini, and others. Democracies can be manipulated by such demagogue leaders. Indeed, Hitler was democratically elected and many Germans worshipped him. They stopped asking questions!
The true solution that Europe found is not to follow one man but a whole group. A group brings diversity of leaders, gurus and opinions like the board of a company. Diversity prevents the stubbornness, the selfishness and insanity of one man to lead the pack of sheep into the abyss. The Lebanese people should say NO to any leader who appears too strong. We need weak leaders but strong groups. At least for a start, until a healthier democracy is established.
Wikipedia has a nice introduction at Cult of personality.
A quote by Karl Marx:
"From my antipathy to any cult of the individual, I never made public during the existence of the [1st] International the numerous addresses from various countries which recognized my merits and which annoyed me.... Engels and I first joined the secret society of Communists on the condition that everything making for superstitious worship of authority would be deleted from its statute."
NO to Gods, NO to kings and NO to demagogues.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
"...and NO to demagogues."
Are you a demagogue happy arab?
I agree with the anarchistic theme of this post and so would As'ad. He is not some authoritarian strongman alpha male by any stretch of the imagination.
So are YOU a demagogue Happy arab?
As'ad is a professor and he is supposed to profess i.e.(to admit openly). That doesn't make you a demagogue.
Definition of demagogue according to the Merriam-Webster:
1 : a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power
2 : a leader championing the cause of the common people in ancient times
So no I am not a demogogue since I am not a leader.
Examples of demagogues are Hitler, Bush, Aoun and Nasrallah. They are leaders who gain a lot of popularity for some weird agenda: their agenda sounds strange and you can't tell why but at the same time you feel magnetically attracted to their ideas. Because they focus on people's emotions.
Post a Comment