Tuesday 27 August 2024
If the flunkies disappear
Not an unfamiliar angle this, but worth dusting off while the media make a great noise about leaders and leadership. If we take a leader such as Kim Jong Un of North Korea, it is conventional to see him as the supreme leader from whose dizzy heights all important national decisions flow.
This is the simple viewpoint, the viewpoint uniformly preferred by the media, yet it is possible to view Kim as more puppet than leader. A puppet of history, ideology and totalitarian necessity. The whole of North Korean public life is predicated on Kim being a genuinely supreme leader, but it is possible to view him as no more a leader than anyone else.
Suppose we begin by imagining Kim waking up in the morning to a deserted palace, no flunkies, no breakfast, no whatever else he was accustomed to. No guards outside the palace, no limousines and his private swimming pool is empty. Nobody answers the phone and if he wishes to go anywhere he’ll have to walk. There is nothing he can do about it.
Kim as supreme leader merely reflects the behaviour of those people who at all times behave as if he is supreme leader. If they suddenly stop behaving in that way, then just as suddenly he’ll cease to be supreme leader. The behaviour of those around him is engineered, as is his behaviour. Reliably engineered, but engineered.
A most unlikely scenario, but useful as a thought experiment because coups do happen and leaders do become nobodies overnight. It’s a much more complicated way of looking at the leaders we have to contend with in real life though, so we don’t often do it. Or rather the media don’t do it.
The stooge Starmer for example…
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9 comments:
Arguably Biden has shown the way of having what power he had taken away. The Democrat Regency have lined up a new figurehead to present the role of leader to the general public.
DJ - yes they gave the game away, which may turn out to be the real mistake of selecting Harris.
Starmer's position is really odd, because not only must he realise that his role is dependent on others acting as if he is PM, he is probably aware that he is putting on an act. He probably believes only a tiny fraction of what he (or his speechwriters) say, so he probably knows that he isn't the PM any more than Gielgud was Hamlet.
If we all refuse to believe in Starmer will he vanish?
@Sam Vega
I've previously argued that Starmer was a 'nightwatchman' - put in charge 'overnight' to make Labour electable. I suspect it was intended that a New Leader would emerge ready for the next General Election.
However no New Leader emerged so Starmer had to switch from a custodian role to a leadership role and he doesn't know how to do that. One of the consequences is that at the first whiff of power all the latent class warfare believers have felt free to depart from the Manifesto, and I suspect Starmer is only held in place as someone too ineffective to bother with, for now.
Well people like Starmer only have their ideology. If enough people ignore his directives it might bring him down, but I think it would take real right wing organisers to arrange that in practice.
Sam - yes his position is odd. It's tempting to assume he's motivated by the prospect of a congenial career after politics, but he seems to be motivated by ideology as well.
Woodsy - effectively yes, but it would have to be everyone. Sounds tempting.
DJ - he could have been there as an electable nightwatchman. The situation isn't easy to read as he attracted fewer votes than Corbyn, but the party seems to have nobody convincing to replace him.
Tammly - I agree, leadership and charisma seem to be in such short supply that it isn't easy to see where effective opposition could come from apart from the right.
A fine bit of anti-Starmer propaganda:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/08/28/the-unaffordable-winter-fuel-allowance/
dearieme - I have a half-written post on that because it always seemed possible that Starmer and Reeves were suckered into it as a way to damage them from the off. Now it seems even more likely.
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