Are we facing conjoined cults among the oligarchs?

 Geopolitics, as a field of study, does not traditionally embrace, or even permit, formal and detailed and academically disciplined research into the matter of ‘cults’.

Cults are a matter for the police, and fire-fighters, and, until Al Qaeda, were without cross-border extremist moments, for which America certainly was not prepared. Britannica.com says this about cult:

(U)sually small group devoted to a person, idea of philosophy. The term cult is often applied to a religious movement that exists in some degree of tensions with the  dominant religious or cultural inclination of a society…In historiography, there are no negative connotations to the use of the term cult. It is especially common in works on Classical history, as the ancient Mediterranean world was home to a large variety of mystery cultus….Far from existing at tension with the society at large, many Roman cults were heavily integrated into the surrounding society. In Pompeii one of the most lavishly decorated temples was that of the cult of Isis. An inscription records that the individual who paid for the temple’s refurbishment was rewarded with a pension as town councilor, indicating a strong interconnection between the mystery cult and the civic order of the city. Furthermore, one of the most prominent Roman cults was dedicated to the worship of deceased and deified Roman emperors and their deified family members. Imperial cult worship reinforced the power of the dominant political system, and most or all of pre-Christian Roman society had some degree of membership in it….

(Some) scholars have advanced a….definition of the term cult as a religious group with some or all of the following characteristics:

·      a charismatic leader who exercises total control

·      an apocalyptic vision (doomsday cult)

·      isolation from society

·      an emphasis on a transcendent spiritual experience

·      rigid rules governing group members’ behavior

·      the exploitation of members including sexually and financially

Scribbling words from a renowned encyclopedia, including both history and modern definitions will not prove the existence of what appears to this scribe as a new phenomenon on the world stage: state leaders adopting the thought process, the rationale, the methodology and the commandeering of necessary resources of the state in order to birth this new hybrid: not a religious (only a quasi-religious) and not a state (only a narrow despotic, oligarchic, and tyrannical (cult-imitating leader) cult form of governance.

Four names, at least, (there are likely others) spring to mind: Putin, Netanyahu, Trump and Kim Jung Un. There is, at least from this perch, a quasi-religious zeal about the manner and the methods in and by which these leaders exercise power. Whether not they qualify, specifically in detail, as charismatic, at least we know that in their own minds they have no doubt that they do. Do they each have an apocalyptic vision (doomsday cult)? In Netanyahu’s case, he portrays the future existence of Israel as being in jeopardy, if his actions and policies are not adopted and enforced. Putin, too, sees the restoration of the former Soviet Union, whose collapse he considers the greatest tragedy of the 20^th century, to be his so-called apocalyptic vision, at least for all Russian patriots. Trump, clearly the most self-declared charismatic (narcissistic), partly because of the depravation of his mind and also partly because of the arsenal, both military and economic at his disposal, has a different kind of apocalyptic vision: an American drowning in the kind of cash he so enviously sees in Saudi Arabia, with his own power emulating, if not exceeding that of the Saudi Prince (and certainly for life). Although Western media spend less time and space on the North Korean leader, he attempts to portray himself as charismatic, and his people are portrayed as religiously and fanatically devoted to his person and his leadership. His vision, somewhat conjecturally, as a self-declared nuclear power, is that he seeks to implant his rogue nation as worthy of and occupying a seat at the table wherever and whenever the ‘big boys’ meet to strategize on acquiring more power.

Each of the four leaders has succeeded in separating his nation from the community of nations, the ‘society’ for the purposes of this thesis. Separating Israel from the moderate Middle Eastern states, as well as from the moderate members of the Security Council, especially following the savage and criminal onslaught of Gaza, and the announcement of Israel’s ‘take-over’ of Gaza, “to free the people of Gaza” in Netanyahu’s words. Separating Russia from Europe, and many of the world powers, excluding notably India, Iran, China and North Korea, following the illegal, protracted, devastating invasion of Ukraine, the bombing of civilians, hospitals, schools, (just as Netanyahu has done in Gaza), and the relentless pursuit of land and geopolitical reputation for Russia, almost in spite of the sanctions imposed by western nations, sees Russia isolated from the community of world nations, for the foreseeable future.

And then there is Trump and his gargantuan multi-pronged onslaught on the world economy, the world’s military preparedness, the environment, all social service programs in his own country, and his isolation from the major world powers, even if Orban and Putin and Xi Jing Ping still speak with him. Isolation is not only a matter of physical separation; alienation also can be seen in the dismissive approach of the Chair of the European Union, in trade talks with Trump: to his face, all politeness and charm; in the details, virtually nothing surrendered. North Korea’s isolation, except from China, has been a feature of geopolitics for decades, and continues as Kim continues to mount is military and nuclear arsenal.

Treatment of members, from this perspective, focuses on the interior ‘nationals’ who consider each of these men their national leader. Netanyahu has continually denigrated the pleas of the families of hostages, since the October 7^th invasion began. He has consistently argued that he will ‘destroy Hamas’ as if anyone believed that an idea can be destroyed, or even eviscerated as if it were a human organ bound for surgery. Putin’s legacy of the abuse of human rights, and the enforcement of punishment for any who have the courage to oppose him and his regime, fills libraries, as does his total disregard for the loss of human life, if he considers such loss to sustain him in power….Natanyahu’s grip on power, too, has abused the people of Israel generally, wno have sought an end to this revenge war months ago. Reports in the west confirm that his single most obsessive and driving motive, in continuing and enhancing the conflict is to prevent his being charged and convicted and imprisoned of various criminal offences.

As for Trump, of course, we are being fed an hourly, daily, weekly and almost minute-by-minute account of the abuses being inflicted on the people of America, in the guise of enriching the nation, (in order to fill the pockets of the oligarchs whose millions have both elected him and continue to endorse and empower his and his policies. And like Putin, and one conjectures also Kin and Xi,  under Trump, any opposition is rigorously eliminated, without either attention to human rights or compassion or human decency. The method of elimination, for some, may still be somewhat different; yet, elimination, as the former religious ‘excommunications’ accomplished….thereby echoing the religious fanaticism of previous historical cults….

And each of these leaders knows intimately and convincingly, that law enforcement, (and certainly not their own military which they have totally commandeered) can or will stop their cult leadership. Those most deeply indebted and seduced by their role as accomplices in the respective cults will never surrender their ‘fixation’ on and adulation of the leader….all of them subtle slightly different versions of Hitler and Mussolini, having learned that they do not have to wage a world war to climb the mountain top of their obsessive and compulsive need for power.

Trouble is, they are not in any danger of begin deposed…..and that truth is one the world has yet to come to grips with. Slipping out of any criminal charge, or even court deposition, skirting the ravages of savage public opinion, being upheld by a moat filled with sycophantic acolytes, whom they either have bought off or promise to buy off, these men have found a way to ‘thread a needle’ taught by any number of unnamed mentors: Osama ben Laden, Mao, Balsonaro, The Shaw, Mussolini and Hitler, as well as their brain trusts, and defectors and betrayers like Edward VIII.

Neither their own law enforcement nor their military, nor the world’s institutional powers nor their own nation’s public opinion… none of these have effectively laid a hand on their inhumane and indecent and appalling and illegal and immoral and amoral obsessive need for absolute, cult-imitation, absolute control.

Sad!....is this preventable? Can we stop the convergence of these run-away regimes? Is oligarchy about the replace democracy and world order?