A reminder: there is more than one sort of tyrant.
Not all aspiring tyrants are motivated by a conscious ideology. Yes, the most famous tyrants of the century behind us rose with the aid of a superficially attractive ideology – socialism, in every case – but history goes back more than a single century. The smaller tyrannies of Renaissance Italy were entirely a matter of a powerful family imposing itself on a whole city by force of arms. The tyranny of Calvinist Geneva was religious in origin. There are others aplenty, but those examples should suffice to make the point.
Today’s would-be tyrants – WBTs, for convenience –trumpet their chosen “shield ideology” – again, nearly always socialism – while downplaying to the point of inaudibility what its implementation would entail. Anyone who points out the ugly consequences is denounced aloud and hunted by the WBT’s thugs. This pattern is easily observable today in many parts of the world, America included.
The point here is not to trouble overly about whatever ideology the demagogue is promoting. Watch what he and his allegiants do. The methods they use in their quest for power are the giveaway.
This recent essay at American Thinker cites W. Cleon Skousen’s famous book The Naked Communist and notes the connections between Communist methods and those of today’s Left. The connections are plain as the print in which Skousen describes them. Yet it is not necessarily the case that the Communist ideology lies behind the aspirations of today’s WBTs. If they were to be charged so, they could probably defend themselves adequately. The charge they cannot refute is that they want unchallenged power over us.
That charge is well supported by the obviousness of the WBT’s major tactics: the systematic suppression of communications among those who oppose them, and the disarming of anyone who might rise against them once they’re in power.
Don’t assume you know a demagogue’s motives ab initio. Reason “backward:” from his tactics to his strategy, thence to his objectives, and thereafter to his motives. In the usual case, his ultimate motive, above and beyond all other considerations, will be power.
“Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” – George Orwell, 1984
Verbum sat sapienti.
