“The charisma is not the leader of mass supporters, but the leader whose opponents feel cautious to criticize him.”

Mohammad Mustafa, Thamar University

At a personal level, charisma can be a great asset: but mass charisma is more often than not just plain scary.

My first experience of crowds being intoxicated by charisma was in a Canadian rock concert given by ‘The Who’ in 1968. The sight of mob frenzy as they smashed their instruments on the stage was sickening, and I walked out.

The sight of Putin trying to use mass charisma to stir his Russian ‘supporters’ in Moscow’s Luzhynik Stadium last week brought echoes of Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies in the 1920s/1930s. However I suspect that the impact of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s nine-minute video, trending on social media throughout Russia, will be considerably greater.

The use of mass charisma as a tool for controlling people goes back millennia, and remains a major challenge for those of us who believe in individual liberty. So, this week we look at how the technique is used to inject a subconscious herd mentality into humanity and, at a personal level, some of the ways it can be controlled.

German sociologist and political economist Max Weber identified three types of political leadership or domination: tradition, a legal framework of rules, and charisma. His short life, from 1864 to 1920, encompassed a period filled with the melting pot of communism and the rise of Germanic ambition. He is recognised as one of the fathers of sociology along with Comte, Marx and Durkheim.

His focus on charisma, borne out by those Nuremberg rallies just a few years after his death, may have had religious foundations — since most faith traditions, including Christianity, have seen mass charisma at work. You only have to think of the way the crowds called for Jesus’s crucifixion just a few days after his triumphant entry into Jerusalem to witness the power of charisma.

Yet, as we wrote in our commentary on 14 February, the Gospel teaches us that each person has an individual relationship with God, which should not be intermediated.

There is no doubt that religion is one of the tools Putin is using to justify his murderous assault on Ukraine, even though there are hardly any of the ten commandments that he hasn't broken. The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has been pressed by Christian leaders across the world, including the Pope, to condemn the invasion of Ukraine — but nothing has been forthcoming.

Putin no doubt seeks to find some religious justification for his actions in his mind, and this discussion of the roots of the Orthodox Church, in which former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams plays a large part, helps to explain the complex interplay between Ukraine and Moscow, as the Orthodox understanding spread north from what was Constantinople (now Istanbul).

Part of this logic appears to include resisting the decadence of western civilization as Ukraine has moved closer to Europe. Those who would judge others in this way are often quick to defend their actions, but the Christian faith explicitly warns against judgement, calling for us rather to examine our own consciences: that would be a challenge for Putin.

But mass charisma sweeps over all this; logic is easily swept away as the intoxication of the crowd takes over: consider how Hitler was able to sweep the German nation before him in the 1930s. Individual logic, self-discipline, conscience and a lot of courage are the only ways to resist this technique of mass intermediation.

Measured against Weber’s trilogy, charisma is the most dangerous — tradition is easily swept aside in a fast-changing world of technological progress. Meanwhile rules-based bureaucracy falls foul of stagnation, as seen in the European Union. However we must watch carefully to resist the siren call of charisma, which takes control like alcohol or drugs.

The continuing inter-generational renewal of humanity provides a long-term cleansing of the power of mass charisma. Writing in The Times last week, Hugo Rifkind wrote of the generational struggle for Russia’s soul, and that's why it's so important to provide the opportunity for all young people to explore and seek their own fulfilment in life.

And in this respect there is a continuing, although currently eclipsed, process of inter-generational change continuing at present with Covid-19. This week the United States reaches the awful milestone of one million deaths, and the world as a whole is a long way from being free of the virus. It’s ironic that Max Weber died of pneumonia complications after contracting the Spanish flu.

Covid remains a dangerous threat for all those who either can't, or won’t (persuaded by mass charisma?), be vaccinated: even in the UK the daily death toll is still in three figures. In the U.S., the weekly death rate is twenty times higher for those who are unvaccinated compared to those who have been fully vaccinated and ‘boosted’.

It's understandable that Governments are now taking the brakes off Covid protection: they would argue that people have had every opportunity to take advantage of the vaccine, and that economics have to get moving again. So the threat now lies fairly and squarely with the unvaccinated.

As with economics, so also with authoritarian dictators: death will make its mark in the end, and new generations will take on the stewardship of our challenged world. Let's hope they increasingly realise that using mass charisma to dominate others is not the route to a fulfilling life: that humans are not herd animals at heart.

Gavin Oldham OBE

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