How Dictators Keep Control

Discovery News/ THE GIST

• Dictators like the late Kim Jong-Il control people through fear and deprivation.
• Control over information is also key in keeping a tight grip.

Mourners pray in front of the big portrait of late Kim Jong Il and his father Kim Il Sung (unseen) near the Kumsusan Memorial Palace. Corbis/ITAR-TASS

Images of North Korean women (and some men) weeping inconsolably at news of the death of strongman Kim Jong-Il was perhaps not surprising in a country where obedience is expected and much of the society, experts say, followed their "Dear Leader" because it has been in their collective best interest to do so.

But how do dictators like Kim -- or Saddam Hussein, or Hitler or Stalin for that matter -- maintain power over their people?

Psychologists and sociologists who study terrorism say dictators are able to spread fear among their people, and place themselves as their only salvation. Manufacturing an external threat, like Jews to Hitler's Germany, or the entire West for Kim, help keep the society off balance and collectively paranoid as well. 

"Our behavior is still affected by what went on thousands of years ago," LoCicero said. "It's easier to understand why it's adaptive and common for people to bond to powerful leaders. In Darwinian evolution, the people who bonded with the leader survived. That instinct got passed along."

LoCicero has studied terrorist leadership and victims of terrorism from all five continents. She says that in some cultures, it's important to show respect to leaders, whether it's North Korea's Kim family of dictators or just the local schoolteacher.

"It would be embarrassing to a family or individual if they didn't show a great deal of respect," she said.

Dictators are also able to rule with more practical tools, such as fear and control of information, according to Jerrold Post, director of the political psychology program at George Washington University.

Post has studied the personalities of both Hussein and Kim for several decades, and jokes that his field of dictator scholarship may soon be obsolete.

"I've lost a lot of my old friends," he said. "But we still have (Iranian leader Mahmoud) Ahmadenijad."

Post said that in both Iraq and North Korea, dictators tightly controlled the flow of information. That control was upended in the past two years during the "Arab spring" revolts that swept away despots in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and some of the Gulf states, revolts that were encouraged in large part by information spread by cell phones and social media.

"Controlling information and controlling dissent are part of what goes into maintaining a totalitarian state," Post said.

In North Korea, Kim and his policies were responsible for a famine that led to the deaths of 1 to 2 million people, Post said. When food finally arrived, the message from state media was that it was a tribute to his leadership.

Dictators also exploit a well-known instinct for most people to seek protection from a strong leader, according to Alice LoCicero, a Cambridge, Mass.-based clinical psychologist and researcher on leadership and terrorism. More >>