The image on television: a military leader who had 'saved' his people from corruption, oppression, and disenfranchisement, visits a drought-stricken area. An old woman sits begging by the roadside. The limousine stops; the great leader alights and gives her cool water to drink, but he holds the bottle. What a visual message!

A flashback to 1940 German youth singing: 'I have a comrade.' Yes, the comrade was the State, the Party. Modern leaders are seen on screen claiming to be the only ones who can save people from whatever crisis they are experiencing. 

Is the world really in crisis? Are we really threatened by so many people? At the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi ideologue Hermann Göring, according to American psychologist Gustave Gilbert, claimed that it was easy to lead any nation to war even if they do not want to: All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, then denounce any opposition as lacking in Patriotism. 

Historian Hannah Arendt, in her seminal work on the Origins of Totalitarianism, describes how aristocrats and populists alike drummed up the proletariat to give resonance to their message, no different from Julius Malema in South Africa raising the fervor of the masses to fight for economic freedom, this thirty years after democracy. Or Donald Trump is calling for America to be Made Great Again. 

That these leaders end up reducing the democratic rights of the people by denouncing any disagreement as 'unpatriotic' is not different from Tsarist Russia, Nazi Germany, or modern Hong Kong, where directly-elected seats on District Councils will henceforth be limited to 'patriots.' Nor is the gerrymandering of electoral districts in the USA different in its final effect. 

Some years ago, I took a road trip from Morocco to South Africa, traveling the length of Africa. Having been brought up to fear Africa, to distrust its people, we encountered little other than friendship and curiosity.

The failure of populist or totalitarian ideologies lies in a simple truth: Fear lasts a week. Anger against someone else lasts maybe a month. But the reaction to this fear, this anger, risk causing in the purported enemy a lifetime of resentment. 

In relations between people in this post-pandemic world, it is advisable to build not on fear and anger but rather on empathy, understanding, and friendship.

And to those willing to serve, we owe it to remember a soldier-poet from the First World War, Wilfred Owen, who  graphically described the glorification of war, ending:

"... My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."

[It is sweet and good to die for the fatherland.]