Tyranny as a Triumph of Narcissism [View all]

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Tyrannies are three-legged beasts. They encroach upon our world in a steady creep more often than overcome it in a violent takeover, which may be one reason why they are not always easy to spot before it is too late to do much about them. Their necessary components, those three wobbly legs, are: the tyrant, his supporters — the people — and the society at large that provides a ripe ground for the collusion between them. Political scientists call it “the toxic triangle” (Hughes 2017).

The force binding all three is narcissism. It animates the beast while, paradoxically and not, eating it alive, bringing its downfall in due time. This force and its influences that knit the beast into such a powerful and destructive entity remain invisible to us for reasons that are clearly hinted at, but somehow continue to evade our individual and collective comprehension. They make sure we don’t recognize the tyranny’s marching boots, which can be heard from miles and months away, until they show up on our doorstep, and that’s despite the fact that this very same process has repeated itself countless times in history.

We have known who tyrants are and how tyrannies form since antiquity: this knowledge has been supported by the ever-growing tragic evidence of the tyrannies’ effects on humanity. Yet, despite making promises to ourselves and each other to “Never forget,” we seem not to remember and not to know, always with devastating consequences. Our forgetting stems partly from miseducation (Giroux 2014) and partly from denial. It gives us clues to the kind of work — psychological, social, political, and economic — that we must do if we are to avoid self-destruction promised by tyrannies today.

Let’s take a look at tyranny’s components and their interactions.

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[Much more and very good: https://medium.com/@Elamika/tyranny-as-a-triumph-of-narcissism-76b6fec76d0d