Bashar al-Assad fell, after twenty years of a bloody reign succeeding that of his father, who would have preferred the other son, who died in a car accident. Ophthalmo turned tyrant, Bashar el-Assad ended up zombie president of a narco-state under triple protectorate (Russian, Turkish and Iranian), before being exfiltrated towards Moscow and Putin, who now holds his family and his vast stolen fortune between his hands. I then thought of all the autocrats who continue to proliferate throughout the world. Despite the evidence accumulated over the centuries, despite the more rapid dissemination of information, despite the “we knew yet”, there will always be autocrats who will install themselves, by vote or by force, at the head of ‘Weak, bankrupt states, in crisis, sick, desperate… but they will always end up falling miserably. This is perhaps only a small consolation, but enough to hope for the downfall of those who today continue to oppress and murder their population.
The mold of the “perfect” tyrant remains Caligula. The great-grandson of the Emperor Augustus, he ruled through terror and madness between 37 and 41 AD and should never have come to power. It was because Emperor Tiberius conscientiously massacred all his possible descendants that only Caligula remained as successor. The latter, impatient for revenge, ends up suffocating Tiberius under a pillow and taking power. As with Bashar, the first days of the reign were euphoric: Caligula reassured with measured decisions, the people and senators were happy; Bashar promises political liberalization, oppositions and people are happy. But things are going very quickly, very badly. I will spare you the perversions of Caligula, who, between paranoia and megalomania, quickly becomes hated by everyone before being murdered by two of his bodyguards.
Paranoia and megalomania, these are the two breasts that keep the tyrant in power before bringing about his downfall. Paranoia creates a void and maintains terror. Mussolini, Ceausescu, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Franco were all paranoid, convinced that they were the victim of a new conspiracy every morning. By staging public humiliations and executions, they instilled terror. It was Saddam Hussein who, during a meeting of the Baath Party in 1979, purged live, naming the traitors present in the room, those who would be executed a few minutes later. This is the typical Stalinist model of major public trials where, whatever the proximity to power, no one is safe. Obviously, the consequence on the population is profound, the fear palpable, the total paralysis. As they have said in Syria since the reign of Hafez el-Assad: “shhh, the walls have ears”.
Tyrants end badly
Vladimir Putin did nothing else when, in February 2022, a few days before the invasion of Ukraine, he ridiculed and terrorized a high dignitary who was babbling in fear. XI Jinping, during the Communist Party Congress in October 2022, had former President Hu Jintao arrested and expelled live without anyone flinching. Since then he has not reappeared.
Tyrants, by dint of inspiring terror, isolate themselves and no one dares to tell them the truth anymore. Putin was the first to be surprised not to take kyiv in three days, as he knew nothing about the reality of his forces. Same thing for Mussolini who, upon entering the Second World War, discovered that his army was naked.
Tyrants end badly. Mussolini was lynched, his corpse hung upside down by the Milanese, Ceausescu and his wife were executed after a speedy trial worthy of those they had inflicted on the Romanians since 1965, Saddam Hussein was executed with the same speed and Gaddafi lynched. The mausoleum of Hafez el-Assad was gutted by the victorious Islamists of his regime and his coffin burned. Tyrants produce neither glorious corpses nor desirable posterity. Khamenei and Nicolas Maduro, in particular, must be having very bad nights. Hoping that the fall of tyrants does not always prove George Bernard Shaw right: “Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny. They only changed its shoulder.”
Abnousse Shalmani, committed against the obsession with identity, is a writer and journalist
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