I wrote a full blurb about this on another post a while back that I’m too lazy to go find right now, but it bears repeating that one of the major brainworms in western chauvinists is this idea that authoritarianism is real and that somehow one or a few people can impose their will on everyone else in a society with no buy-in from anyone lower on the ladder. This magical thinking that if we just got rid of Kim Jong Un or Putin then everything in those countries would simply revert to the vacuum state of liberal democracy is built into their worldview and has to be beaten out of it to make them realize that individual persons don’t control the flow of history, systems do.
Media reinforces that all the time; the trope of the dystopian future authoritarian state crumbling the moment our plucky freedom fighters off the all-powerful leader is everywhere.
This honestly makes me think then if this is more a projection of the staples of fascism, i.e. great figures toppled leading to the dissolution/ideals of the state or at least impacts willpower.
I wrote a full blurb about this on another post a while back that I’m too lazy to go find right now, but it bears repeating that one of the major brainworms in western chauvinists is this idea that authoritarianism is real and that somehow one or a few people can impose their will on everyone else in a society with no buy-in from anyone lower on the ladder. This magical thinking that if we just got rid of Kim Jong Un or Putin then everything in those countries would simply revert to the vacuum state of liberal democracy is built into their worldview and has to be beaten out of it to make them realize that individual persons don’t control the flow of history, systems do.
Media reinforces that all the time; the trope of the dystopian future authoritarian state crumbling the moment our plucky freedom fighters off the all-powerful leader is everywhere.
This honestly makes me think then if this is more a projection of the staples of fascism, i.e. great figures toppled leading to the dissolution/ideals of the state or at least impacts willpower.