The social science of political cults and their leaders

This chapter argues that leader personality cults are typically produced by a specific set of mechanisms of flattery inflation. It describes how loyalty signaling, emotional amplification, and direct production mechanisms can combine, under specific circumstances, to transform ordinary flattery into full-blown practices of ruler worship. And it argues for attending to the specific conditions that make possible the operation of these mechanisms, showing how patronage relationships in particular provide fertile ground for the emergence of personality cults. Moreover, the chapter argues that both ancient and modern leader cults depend on similar mechanisms, despite clear differences in context and function. 

False, hypocritical praise has long been thought to be a problem for powerful rulers, as the testimony of political moralists and advisors to princes in both the East and the West indicates. Clearheaded rulers have long understood its dangers; a ruler who cannot see through the praises of sycophants is at risk of losing power, since flattery is not credible as a signal of their loyalty. Yet many ruler “courts”, both ancient and modern, appear to be prone to flattery. Indeed, in some cases flattery of the ruler becomes so widespread and excessive that scholars speak of “cults of personality.” 

In many cases, such flattery does not remain confined to elite figures in the media or in the ruler’s immediate court, but gives rise to widespread ritual practices of ruler worship, genuine “cults” of the leader that demand the participation of many different social groups to recognize the leader’s exalted status. The cults of Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mao in China, the Kim family in North Korea, Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler in Germany are the most well-known of these, but such phenomena can be found elsewhere as well, including in comparatively open political contexts like the Venezuela of Hugo Chávez. These forms of flattery seem sometimes humorous or bizarre. Yet they are puzzling, disproportionate to the achievements or charisma of their object: who could possibly believe that Hafiz al-Assad was indeed Syria’s premier pharmacist, and what could possibly be the point of publicizing this ridiculous claim? -- Xavier Márquez, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ; The mechanisms of cult production; In Kirill Postoutenko, Darin Stephanov (Ed.), Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation-States and Beyond: Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics (pp. 21-45), 2020

An opinion piece by Paul Krugman opines on how current social science sees the basis for the rise of a personality cult leader. We all know what this is about. Krugman writes:

“The Mechanisms of Cult Production” compares the behavior of political elites across a wide range of dictatorial regimes, from Caligula’s Rome to the Kim family’s North Korea, and finds striking similarities. Despite vast differences in culture and material circumstances, elites in all such regimes engage in pretty much the same behavior, especially what the paper dubs “loyalty signaling” and “flattery inflation.”

Signaling is a concept originally drawn from economics; it says that people sometimes engage in costly, seemingly pointless behavior as a way to prove that they have attributes others value. For example, new hires at investment banks may work insanely long hours, not because the extra hours are actually productive, but to demonstrate their commitment to feeding the money machine.

In the context of dictatorial regimes, signaling typically involves making absurd claims on behalf of the Leader and his agenda, often including “nauseating displays of loyalty.” If the claims are obvious nonsense and destructive in their effects, if making those claims humiliates the person who makes them, these are features, not bugs. I mean, how does the Leader know if you’re truly loyal unless you’re willing to demonstrate your loyalty by inflicting harm both on others and on your own reputation?

And once this kind of signaling becomes the norm, those trying to prove their loyalty have to go to ever greater extremes to differentiate themselves from the pack. Hence “flattery inflation”: The Leader isn’t just brave and wise, he’s a perfect physical specimen, a brilliant health expert, a Nobel-level economic analyst, and more. The fact that he’s obviously none of these things only enhances the effectiveness of the flattery as a demonstration of loyalty.

Does all of this sound familiar? Of course it does, at least to anyone who has been tracking Fox News or the utterances of political figures like Lindsey Graham or Kevin McCarthy.

Many people, myself included, have declared for years that the G.O.P. is no longer a normal political party. It doesn’t look anything like, say, Dwight Eisenhower’s Republican Party or Germany’s Christian Democrats. But it bears a growing resemblance to the ruling parties of autocratic regimes.

The only unusual thing about the G.O.P.’s wholesale adoption of the Leader Principle is that the party doesn’t have a monopoly on power; ....

Unfortunately, all this loyalty signaling is putting the whole nation at risk. In fact, it will almost surely kill large numbers of Americans in the next few months.

But politics is nonetheless clearly a key factor: Republican politicians and Republican-oriented influencers have driven much of the opposition to Covid-19 vaccines, in some cases engaging in what amounts to outright sabotage. And there is a stunning negative correlation between Trump’s share of a county’s vote in 2020 and its current vaccination rate.

That is, hostility to vaccines has become a form of loyalty signaling.

Seeing the ex-president as a cult leader and the fascist GOP as key the cult leader enabler mostly fits with historical precedent. The FGOP and most rank and file followers likely see and rationalize this differently in public. Some believe he was chosen by God to do God's work as they see it. One can only wonder what they think and say privately. If it is about the same as their public pronouncements, this country is in deep trouble at least until the cult leader dies or becomes fully incapacitated.