Why Dictators Write

June 2, 2018 10:58 AM

Why Dictators Write

Authoritarian leaders have long aspired to this godlike union of word and action. A dictator does not deal in facts and reason, but rather in the brute force that makes his word law, that turns each and every utterance into concrete action, unencumbered by anything but his own will. It’s there in the very term itself: dictator, one who dictates, one who merely has to speak in order to bring about change, so strong is the bond between proclamation and action.

That dream echoes through a line like this: “The Word is the most sacred gift God gave to human beings”—a line that comes not from the Bible or the Quran, but from a book that appeared in every mosque, library, and government building in Turkmenistan: The Rukhnama. Written by Turkmenbashi, the dictator who ruled the country from 1985 until his death in 2006, The Rukhnama is among the most bizarre of literary productions: It grew initially out of a need to gather up old folk traditions of Turkmenistan in a hope to reestablish its identity in the waning days of the Soviet Union, but grew into a remarkable testament of the ego and delusion of its author.

Constructing an elaborate cult of personality, Turkmenbashi banned gold teeth, lip syncing, ballet, opera, the circus, and smoking. He renamed January after himself and renamed bread after his mother. And he renamed September after his great book, stating that any one who read it start to finish three times would be guaranteed entrance to Heaven.

posted by y2karl (6 comments total)

Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All
posted by Nelson at 11:16 AM on June 2, 2018 [6 favorites]

Good book reading it now: The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy
posted by robbyrobs at 1:30 PM on June 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Sounds interesting, but this makes me suspicious:

Homeric in its crudity, in its liberating simplicity, [Mein Kampf] transcends epochs and borders, attaining a perverse immortality by its sheer, unrelenting evil.

I have no idea what he intends by "Homeric," but Homer is neither crude nor simple.
posted by languagehat at 5:19 PM on June 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

I just ran off to the local branch library and grabbed this book. Only a few pages in, and it’s really good, though as the author says, “it is a book about some of the worst books ever written, and so was excruciatingly painful to research.” Thanks for making this book known on the blue!
posted by njohnson23 at 5:53 PM on June 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

It's interesting that there's a bit of a distinction between dictators with some literary reading in their youth who used rhetorical skills in their rise to power, and others who turned to writing as a pastime later in their careers. Laurie Anderson once mentioned in an interview similarities between artists and politicians, both create a vision using emotional cues.
posted by ovvl at 6:52 PM on June 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

He renamed January after himself and renamed bread after his mother.

I read this somewhere before, and it (particularly the second part) really gets me – it's both completely ridiculous and astonishing at the same time. This site says that “The image of Turkmenbashi’s face is used as the logo of all three state-run TV stations, and is legally required to appear on every clock and watch face as well as on every bottle of Turkmenbashi brand vodka.”

I wonder, though, if the guy went so far as to feel that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone, without causing a fuss.
posted by LeLiLo at 9:56 PM on June 2, 2018 [2 favorites]