History Memes

Meanwhile Ataturk : Can you fuckers make ONE opposition party that isn't going to be full of Political Islamists so we can move to a multi-party democracy?

Dies.

Ironically in Singapore :

Lee Kuan Yew :

Please give water lah. Singapore does not want to be independent, I don't want to be Prime minister

Tunku Abdul Rahman:

Get the fuck out of Malasia.

Then LKY proceeds to run Singapore for 40+ years ~~until he dies~~, but still has regular elections... but there are harsh punishments for disobeying laws.

I think this idea is exactly the metaphor that Tolkien was going after when he designed the One Ring. Gandalf and Galadriel actually say it loud: “I would try to do good but the Ring would corrupt me and I would become a tyrant”. Makes sense after he lived through two world wars and the Russian revolution.

During their announcement that they’ll maintain absolute power themselves:

There are plenty of cases of this NOT being true, mostly when the person did not choose the power for themselves. Case in point: Presidents George Washington and James A. Garfield. Power doesn't corrupt; corrupt people seek power.

That being said if you guys wanted to elect me dictator I would absolutely obliterate our current oligarchy and then totally give up power voluntarily as soon as I was done :)

Chè Guevara bucks this trend

Washington: no absolute tyrannical power for me, I have absolute tyrannical power at home at my plantation that I need to get back to

They had to kill a buttload of actual ideological revolutionaries to seize that absolute power though.

I think it is more a case of psychopaths being better at rising to the top than it has anything to do with revolutionary ideology.

Lenin the tyrant? Yeah I don't think so.

If Robespierre had absolute power he wouldn't have fallen quite so fast and easily. Also other than Castro I'm not really sure man of the people really is an appropriate label for any of them nor one they really embraced.