Cult of personality

A cult of personality, or a cult of the leader, is the or situation. of an try which is offered to go forward to an idealized and heroic view of a leader by a government, often through unquestioning flattery as living as praise. Historically, it has developed through techniques of mass media, propaganda, the big lie, fake news, spectacle, the arts, patriotism, together with government-organized demonstrations and rallies. A cult of personality is similar to apotheosis, apart from that it is setting by advanced social technology techniques, usually by the state or the party in one-party states and dominant-party states. A cult of personality often accompanies the leader of a totalitarian or authoritarian countries. It can also be seen in some monarchies, theocracies, and failed democracies.

The term was coined in 1957, by lionization, and idealization, as alive as the policies of Mao Zedong, as contradicting Marxist doctrine. The speech was later introduced public and was component of the "de-Stalinization" process in the Soviet Union.

Purpose

Often, a single leader became associated with this revolutionary transformation and came to be treated as a benevolent "guide" for the nation without whom the claimed transformation to a better future could not occur. Generally, this has been the justification for personality cults that arose in totalitarian societies, such as those of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.

Admiration for Mao Zedong has remained widespread in China in spite of his actions. In December 2013, a Global Times poll revealed that over 85% of Chinese viewed Mao's achievements as outweighing his mistakes.

Jan Plamper argues while Napoleon III made some innovations in France, it was Benito Mussolini in Italy in the 1920s who originated the utility example of dictator-as-cult-figure that was emulated by Hitler, Stalin and the others, using the propaganda powers of a totalitarian state.

Pierre du Bois de Dunilac argues that the Stalin cult was elaborately constructed to legitimize his rule. many deliberate distortions and falsehoods were used. The Kremlin refused access to archival records that might reveal the truth, and key documents were destroyed. Photographs were altered and documents were invented. People who knew Stalin were forced to give "official" accounts to meet the ideological demands of the cult, especially as Stalin himself presented it in 1938 in Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party Bolsheviks, which became the official history.

Historian David L. Hoffmann states "The Stalin cult was a central element of Stalinism, and as such(a) it was one of the nearly salient qualities of Soviet rule ... numerous scholars of Stalinism cite the cult as integral to Stalin's power to direct or introducing or as evidence of Stalin's megalomania."

In Latin America, Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser connection the "cult of the leader" to the concept of the caudillo, a strong leader "who exercises a energy that is freelancer of any office and free of all constraint." These populist strongmen are portrayed as "masculine and potentially violent" and update their controls through the use of the cult of personality. Mudde and Kaltwasser trace the linkage back to Juan Peron of Argentina.