By Yona Nonglang
Whether Charisma is defined as grace and divine bestowal, or personal magnetism and charm that causes people to feel attracted and excited by someone, or a qualifier for personas with a penchant for authoritarianism, it is that conspicuous human trait that has the capacity to either build or destroy.
As a result, this gift that can inspire enthusiasm and popular loyalty comes along with extraordinary contradictions and vulnerabilities. Exceedingly covetable an attribute, it is susceptible to a great deal of mismanaging and misreading. Those who can’t handle their self-generated compelling charm with grace and accountability end up making unpleasant spectacles of themselves as they cling on to positions of responsibilities, the demands of which are, clearly, beyond their level of competency. Is it any wonder that some public figures are subjected to frequent lampooning because they just can’t live up to the hype?
Is it also because high office aspirants in the form of abrasive, barefaced power-hungry demagogues have been unduly ascribed with charisma because they can stir up people’s emotions with their bluster? It’s not an uncommon thing to witness such haranguers pushing their way into platforms where they can unleash their vulgar display of ignorance as they spew their chauvinistic garbage. And, since it’s in the nature of the existing social and mass media businesses to favor sensationalism, some outlets seem to have gotten into the habit of unconscionably lionizing benighted Machiavellians with excessive aspirations.
In order to sustain their charmed circle and to keep their deluded supporters’ continuing blind loyalty intact, these connivers are forever on a mission to create, as Roger Cohen observes in one of his essays, “big lies (that) produce big fears that produce big yearnings for big strongmen.”
We’ve all been subjected to the hubristic exhibitionism of such characters. Agenda loaded grandstanders that they are, they’re never shy of sputtering their sanctimonious platitudes from just about every accessible public platform in their bid to confuse the naïve and to win over to their side the gullible. The way things are, if the self-proclaimed messiahs do not do the dirty work themselves, there are always the misguided, the sycophants and the vested interests who don’t mind propping up their ‘chosen ones’ for their own selfish reasons. In such cases, hardly anyone bothers to consider the whys and wherefores of anything said or done because everybody’s too busy pushing forward their respective agenda.
It’s a real tragedy, this whole travesty. Under such circumstances, the frustrated masses, ever hopeful for the arrival of a new knight in shining armour who will rescue them from the sad state of impoverishment, backwardness and exploitation are often the ones who pay the price. Like the little ones of Hamelin who were beguiled by the hypnotic tunes of the avenging pied piper, as he led them to their scene of execution, the deluded disenchanted, usually, are the most vulnerable targets of these manipulators’ most cruel deceptions.
People who can be misled by big lies can be pushed to do irrational things. Their blind loyalty renders them willing to even die or kill for the ones they’ve sold their allegiance to. No longer capable of thinking independently, they end up taking their Svengalis’ words as gospel truth and elevate such kinds of people to the status of saviours. Why would they bother to question their heroes’ credibility? Even if they’ve suffered the consequences of their mendacity, fanatical loyalists would still rise to the defense of their supermen to the needless bitter end.
We all know how Hitler influenced the mind and imagination of his fellow countrymen into embracing his racially prejudiced ideology. Personally suffering from the delusion that he was the übermench who could spearhead the mythical Aryan race domination, he went on to dupe a majority of his fellow Germans to fall for his, to rephrase Roger Cohen, ‘big lie that produced big fears that produced their big yearning for a strongman like him.’
Clearly, many of the Germans of Hitler’s time didn’t have it in them to critically and appropriately respond to their Führer’s disturbing notion of racial superiority. The rest of the world could have been spared the pain and loss it had to go through if only they hadn’t propped him the way they did. As for the courageous minority that dared organise the resistance against that brutal regime, it was either the concentration camps or the bullets of the Nazi firing squad for punishment.
Bigotry, indeed, had the upper hand, and the consequences were catastrophic and demoralising for both Germany and the rest of humanity. It took World War II, the deadliest and most devastating conflict in history, to finally make the Germans of that time acknowledge their complicity in that bloodthirsty quest of their unhinged mass murderer and his ruthless underlings.
Similarly, in our generation, those who choose to ignore the siren call of racial superiority are not only accused of being turncoats, but also of being jealous of their power lusting madmen who are “blessed” with the gift of oratory and charm. That, however, shouldn’t take anybody by surprise. History tends to repeat itself when people are incapable of appreciating its object lessons.
(The author writes on Religion, Social Issues and Current Affairs. Two of her novels, TEILANG and THE WAY AS THEY SEE IT, are available online as e-books).