How dictators rise, rule and eventually fall

The rise and fall of Viktor Orbán — and what history tells us about the 'leaders' who mistake power for permanence.

Trump has his toadies. Putin has his puppets – and one of them is on the way out.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, a former Communist-hater who ended up throwing in his lot with the Russian dictator, will ignominiously depart office in May after a landslide defeat that few expected, including even the incoming prime minister Peter Magyar.

It was a victory by the people and for the people that triggered jubilation in the streets of Budapest after the aspiring dictator’s disastrous 16-year rule. In the teeth of gerrymandered electorates, blatant vote-buying, a rigged constitution, crony capitalism and corruption of the justice system, Hungarians threw out the worst prime minister in all of Europe.

The defeat of Orban’s Fidesz party was a huge relief for Brussels and a smack in the eye for Trump-type populism. Indeed the current occupant of the White House (the “Worst House”, according to comedians) despatched vice-president JD Vance all the way to Hungary to campaign for Orban. “I love Viktor!”, bellowed Trump into a recording played to a pro-Orban gathering by his top toadie.

It didn’t make any difference. The Hungarians had endured enough.

Hungary, whose economy is roughly the size of Munich’s, is now one of the poorest countries in the EU. Economic growth drags along at 0.4 percent. Unemployment is at a ten-year high. As the New York Times explains, Transparency International rates Hungary as the most corrupt country in the EU, right up (or down) there with Bulgaria. The ousted prime minister’s friends and family control much of the economy. Indeed Orban’s son-in-law has become one of the richest men in the entire country, all from a standing start.

If this sounds familiar, it’s how dictators work. While they milk the country in their own interests, they proclaim their patriotism. (In his last winning election Orban promised a “golden age” for Hungary.) It’s what Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman describes as “grand theft autocracy”. If dictatorship wasn’t so destructive, it would be laughable as a glimpse into the past shows.

Start with statues

Every dictator starts in the same way. First, erect lots of statues to yourself as did Kim Il Sung the grandfather of North Korea’s current despot, Kim Jong Un, because it builds a cult of worship. Even today, after three generations of despotism, wedding couples throw flowers before these bronze monuments to grand theft autocracy. In the same way Syria’s ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad festooned highways and byways with giant-sized posters of his smiling face while bombing his own people.

That’s how the cult of Mao spread through China. Grand masters of art were put to work churning out images of a smiling and avuncular figure. Even though he was probably of average height, the Great Redeemer was shown towering above an adoring multitude while wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat, just like the ordinary peasant he very much wasn’t.

It was all carefully managed. As Jacques Ellul, the late French authority on dictatorships, observed at the onset of Mao’s disastrous Cultural Revolution, the purpose is to swamp the people’s consciousness. “The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment,” he wrote.

Also, it’s not a bad idea to add a few inches to your height. Romania’s despot between 1965 and 1989, Nicolae Ceausescu, suddenly grew about six inches after learning a few things during an official visit to China and North Korea. Before the visit he was just five feet and five inches, not nearly imposing enough, and he ordered a few dozen high-heeled shoes.

Simultaneously, Ceausescu acquired a new title – “Genius of the Carpathians” – along the lines of Kim Il Sung who started out as a mere “Great Leader” but eventually graduated to “Eternal President of the Republic.”

Not to be outdone, Ceausescu’s wife Elena was so impressed by the status of Mao’s actress wife, Jian Qing, that she announced herself as “Mother of the People” and awarded herself a basket of degrees. Official sites immediately proclaimed her as “a scholar of international renown”, a veritable female Einstein.

Personality cults

The master of personality cults was Josef Stalin. In fact Mao learned all he knew about self-deification from the Soviet tyrant. One of his many stooge poets once gushed: “O great Stalin, O leader of the peoples. Thou who broughtest man to birth.. Though who fructifies the earth etc. etc.……” Similarly, Kremlin-paid writers dutifully delivered up novels and short stories with happy socialist endings while painters churned out massive canvases of state banquets, weddings, public meetings and other thrilling events that generally featured Stalin in the most prominent position.

In most personality cults, the message steadily becomes ever more preposterous. Not content with his humble origins, Kim Il-sung gave himself a supernatural birth in a holy mountain, with stars exploding in the heavens, and declared himself a fashion icon (basically a uniform and four-inch heels) whose birthdays were celebrated all around the world.

That’s probably why his son, the current Dear Leader’s late father, was by far the world’s greatest golfer. The pint-sized Kim Il Jong once shot 18 holes in 38 under par, a round that included numerous holes in one. (History does not record who marked his card.) Students of dictatorships will remember that when this particular Kim passed on, the western media ran gleeful headlines about “the death of the world’s greatest golfer”.

Mao also gave himself extra-terrestrial powers; it was students of Maoism who “inspired a million people to subdue a tidal wave”, raise entire cities and generally perform miracles. By the 1970s, before it all went wrong, the old hard-eyed General Mao Zedong had been converted into the smiling Uncle Mao who was said to be 10,000 years old.

Eventually, self-deification breeds a fatal delusion. Mao was completely unprepared when his old comrades turned on him. As Romanians starved from food shortages, Ceausescu had himself photographed inspecting bountiful displays of fruit and vegetables, all made from polystyrene, and demanded that government-run television showed programmes of farms producing huge crops. Not long afterwards, he and his wife would be shot after a summary trial.

More recently, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein genuinely believed his ill-trained and under-equipped troops could defy modern armies. And Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi made jokes about the “fireworks” of NATO aircraft weeks before his own regime fell. Few dictators die of old age.

Meanwhile in the Worst House the current occupant portrays himself variously as a jut-jawed statesman, peace maker, pope and even as Christ, not to mention a great golfer.

If you’re interested in seeing the new articles as soon as they come out, explore my latest writing on SubStack here: https://historyrepeatswithselwyn.substack.com/

Or, if this perspective is of interest and you'd like to chat more, please get in touch