“…Such rhetorical extravagance seems to be a common feature of all cults of personality. Mussolini was called a ‘social archangel,’ an ‘envoy of God,’ and a ‘man of Providence’ (Falasca-Zamponi, 1997: 65–66). Hitler was revered as ‘the greatest German of all times,’‘the best imaginable expert in every specialized field,’ and ‘the highest synthesis of his race’ (Waite, 1977: 82–83).…”
Section: Cults Of Personalitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…As Service (2005: 545) notes, ‘History, politics, economics, geography, linguistics and even chemistry, physics and genetics were said to be inadequately studied unless they incorporated his guiding ideas.’ Similarly, during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it was claimed that Mao Zedong Thought produced cures for illnesses such as cancer and deafness (Leese, 2011). Mussolini was said to be able to stop the flow of lava and make rain fall (Falasca-Zamponetti, 1997). Kim Jong-il was credited with the ability to control the weather and teleport from place to place.…”
Section: Cults Of Personalitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Yet compared with many of the other personality cults that arose in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the cult surrounding Niyazov was almost subdued. 1 More extravagant cults of personality include those devoted to Italy’s Benito Mussolini (Falasca-Zamponi, 1997; Gentile, 1996, 2006), Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler (Kershaw, 1987, 1998; Vondung, 1971), the Soviet Union’s Vladimir Lenin (Ennker, 1997; Tumarkin, 1983) and Joseph Stalin (Davies, 1997; Gill, 1990; Plamper, 2012; Tucker, 1979), and China’s Mao Zedong (Leese, 2011; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, 2006). 2…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Personality cults have primarily attracted scholarly attention from social historians who have studied cult practices and products (e.g., Bonnell, 1997; Dikötter, 2019; Falasca-Zamponi, 1997; Kalder, 2018; Plamper, 2012). With some notable exceptions (Bush et al, 2016; Huang, 2015a; Márquez, 2013; Shih, 2008; Wedeen, 1998, 1999), cults of personality have received little systematic attention in the political science literature.…”
We offer a novel rational explanation for cults of personality. Participation in a cult of personality is psychologically costly whenever it involves preference falsification, with the costs varying across individuals. We highlight two characteristics associated with lower individual costs of preference falsification: (i) loyalty to the regime and (ii) unscrupulousness. Different characteristics might serve the regime better in different roles. Using a simple formal screening model, we demonstrate that one’s participation in a cult of personality improves the dictator’s personnel decisions under a wide variety of circumstances. Decisions are most improved when subordinates’ characteristics that better enable cult participation are correspondingly valued by dictators. Dictators who can manipulate the costs that cult participants pay find it easiest to ensure that correspondence. Our model also highlights the importance to dictators of not believing their own propaganda, and their need to offer increasingly extreme acts of cult participation as old acts become normalized.
“…Such rhetorical extravagance seems to be a common feature of all cults of personality. Mussolini was called a ‘social archangel,’ an ‘envoy of God,’ and a ‘man of Providence’ (Falasca-Zamponi, 1997: 65–66). Hitler was revered as ‘the greatest German of all times,’‘the best imaginable expert in every specialized field,’ and ‘the highest synthesis of his race’ (Waite, 1977: 82–83).…”
Section: Cults Of Personalitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…As Service (2005: 545) notes, ‘History, politics, economics, geography, linguistics and even chemistry, physics and genetics were said to be inadequately studied unless they incorporated his guiding ideas.’ Similarly, during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it was claimed that Mao Zedong Thought produced cures for illnesses such as cancer and deafness (Leese, 2011). Mussolini was said to be able to stop the flow of lava and make rain fall (Falasca-Zamponetti, 1997). Kim Jong-il was credited with the ability to control the weather and teleport from place to place.…”
Section: Cults Of Personalitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Yet compared with many of the other personality cults that arose in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the cult surrounding Niyazov was almost subdued. 1 More extravagant cults of personality include those devoted to Italy’s Benito Mussolini (Falasca-Zamponi, 1997; Gentile, 1996, 2006), Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler (Kershaw, 1987, 1998; Vondung, 1971), the Soviet Union’s Vladimir Lenin (Ennker, 1997; Tumarkin, 1983) and Joseph Stalin (Davies, 1997; Gill, 1990; Plamper, 2012; Tucker, 1979), and China’s Mao Zedong (Leese, 2011; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, 2006). 2…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Personality cults have primarily attracted scholarly attention from social historians who have studied cult practices and products (e.g., Bonnell, 1997; Dikötter, 2019; Falasca-Zamponi, 1997; Kalder, 2018; Plamper, 2012). With some notable exceptions (Bush et al, 2016; Huang, 2015a; Márquez, 2013; Shih, 2008; Wedeen, 1998, 1999), cults of personality have received little systematic attention in the political science literature.…”
We offer a novel rational explanation for cults of personality. Participation in a cult of personality is psychologically costly whenever it involves preference falsification, with the costs varying across individuals. We highlight two characteristics associated with lower individual costs of preference falsification: (i) loyalty to the regime and (ii) unscrupulousness. Different characteristics might serve the regime better in different roles. Using a simple formal screening model, we demonstrate that one’s participation in a cult of personality improves the dictator’s personnel decisions under a wide variety of circumstances. Decisions are most improved when subordinates’ characteristics that better enable cult participation are correspondingly valued by dictators. Dictators who can manipulate the costs that cult participants pay find it easiest to ensure that correspondence. Our model also highlights the importance to dictators of not believing their own propaganda, and their need to offer increasingly extreme acts of cult participation as old acts become normalized.
“…Military propagandists recognised the contradictions within their representations of Balkan Slavs either as uniformly hostile savages responding only to force or as innocent victims of communism in need of charity, and of Italian soldiers either as unfeeling standard-bearers of a warrior race or as compassionate and generous members of a Christian fraternity. Falling back on concepts of Italy’s superior Latin civilisation, an article in La Tradotta feebly claimed that Italian soldiers were ‘sufficiently great and civilised and strong in arms to feed an innocent child, and to destroy without mercy and to the last man those who prove themselves enemies of Rome.’ 32 The war artist, Avondo – a professional illustrator who had produced anti-bourgeois propaganda for the regime in the 1930s (Falasca-Zamponi 1997, 112) – attempted to combine Fascist themes of racial superiority, masculinity, anti-communism, and imperial romanità with those of Catholic charity in his drawing of a larger-than-life soldier, with hammer and sickle under his boot, handing bread to a scrawny, ill-clothed, and wide-eyed boy (Figure 6). Figure 6Avondo, ‘Il fante italiano in Balcania’, La Tradotta del Fronte Giulio , 29 November 1942, 1.…”
This paper examines intersections and divergences between Catholic universalism and Fascist ethno-nationalism in the pages ofLa Tradotta del Fronte Giulio, a satirical weekly newspaper for Italian military personnel in occupied Yugoslavia during the Second World War. Military propagandists appealed to grassroots Catholicism to motivate demoralised Italian soldiers in the last year of war against the communist-led Yugoslav partisan movement. Their use of Catholic themes revealed overlapping values but also apparent incongruities between Christianity, Fascism, and Italian military culture that had been evident throughout theventennio. While Catholic anti-communism blended relatively seamlessly with nationalist-Fascist anti-Slavism to depict the partisan enemy as a dehumanised Other, the use of conventional piety and Christian humanitarianism in the army’s propaganda contradicted Fascist and military concepts of the ideal Italian ‘new man’. In the process, military propagandists sowed the seeds for thebrava gentemyth that dominated postwar memory and national identity in Italy.
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