The Cult of Personality

www.morningsun.org

One of the most fascinating aspects of studying the Communist regimes of Stalin and Mao is analyzing the ‘Cult of Personality’. According to Wikipedia, “A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image.” This definition is interesting, because it suggests that the cult of personality isn’t limited to Communism, but in fact can apply in any form of government or society. I’ve always thought of the cult of personality as a strictly Communist ‘strategy’, but as recently as the 2008 presidential election, we witnessed a democratic leader employ it to an extent. I don’t mean to criticize President Obama for effective campaign artwork, but I think it’s reasonable to say that a lesser form of cult of personality was at work. Before I continue equating President Obama’s campaign artwork to Mao Zedong’s propaganda, it’s important to state that Mao took it to a different extreme, as can be seen from ‘The Last Banquet’ above. But in both men’s cases, we can witness how powerful the cult of personality can be. Although difficult to observe, due to the nation’s seclusion from the rest of the world, the ‘Peoples Republic’ of North Korea embodies Mao’s legacy in the cult. Few people truly understand what goes on in North Korea, and even fewer have been there and escaped, but nevertheless, a National Geographic documentary made about the nation has always fascinated me. In the documentary, a National Geographic film crew is allowed in the country with an eye doctor from Nepal for 10 days. During these 10 days, the group is escorted constantly by several government agents as they capture fleeting clips of one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of our time. The eye doctor performs hundreds of surgeries on blind people, and just before the crew leaves the country, all of the patients gather in one hall to remove their eye patches. One by one, the patients remove their eye-patches and look around, and one by one, they crowd around the picture of Kim Jong-il, their great leader, to thank him for his generosity and for ‘his invention’ which saved them from their blindness. (Skip to about 43:02 for this scene in the documentary)
As one watches such a documentary, the thought almost certainly crosses one’s mind, are these people genuine, or are they acting out of fear? I think the answer is that they are acting out of fear, because for these people, fear has become reality. Acting out of fear is acting genuinely.
As I said, I used to think of the Cult of Personality as a political strategy, only employed by Communist regimes, but now I think of it more as a phenomena: a natural occurrence. From an evolutionary standpoint, humans always tend to find something or someone to idolize. It is also an extremely powerful force which can rally hundreds of millions to carry out the agenda of one man. The cult of personality is a natural phenomena, and it will thrive as long as there are leaders in existence who wish to utilize its power over us.