How We Birth Tyrants

Power, in its most dangerous form, rarely announces itself. It arrives in the guise of protection, clarity, strength. This is a meditation on how such power takes hold — not just in governments, but in homes, in institutions, in the quiet corners of the human psyche. Names change, banners change, but the pattern remains. If this piece stirs thoughts of a particular time or figure, that is the reader’s to carry. My aim is something broader, older and perhaps more urgent: to understand how we yield, why we follow and what it might take to move forward — with grace, with vision, and with an open, unflinching heart.

How does it happen?

How does a single human being — two lungs, two eyes, one fragile and finite body, like the rest of us — rise to such a height that millions come to bend to his will? How does someone who was once a helpless baby in his mother’s arms become a figure whose words alter destinies, whose whims reconfigure nations, whose moods can tilt the world toward war or peace? How does a single soul, enclothed in a body no different from our own — subject to common colds, frightened by loud noises just as we are—find his way to such outsized, unimaginable power?

It’s not a new question.

We’ve asked it of emperors and warlords, of presidents and prime ministers (some great, some terrible), of messianic cult leaders, terrorist leaders and mob bosses. We’ve asked it of men whose names we remember too well — Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, Sinwar — and those we forget.

We ask it again in every era.

This is not just about politics. Or if it is, it is about the politics beneath politics: the primal theater where power is sought, maintained, and often abused. It can also play out in smaller ways — in personal relationships, in the workplace, in religious and academic institutions and in families.

It begins, I think, with a wound.

Somewhere in the life of every tyrant is a moment — or a series of moments — where love was withheld or warped, where fear first took root. The tyrant is, at his core, a frightened person. He may appear strong, composed, even radiant. But look closer and you will see someone perpetually on edge, a self that cannot bear contradiction, that requires constant reinforcement to keep from collapsing. A person whose malevolence was born of love denied.

The need for control becomes absolute. Chaos must be subdued. Rivals eliminated. Truth made flexible. Attention secured.

It’s a fragile architecture, a house of cards — often built on the willingness to do what others would never think of doing.

This is the secret of how power becomes tyranny: the one who rises in this negative sense is simply more willing to use violence than everyone else. Not just physical violence — though that, too; even murder and torture when deemed necessary — but psychological, emotional, legislative, spiritual violence. Where others hesitate, he advances. Where others reflect, he attacks. Where others are bound by decency, he is bound only by desperate, destructive need.

This is the critical edge. The advantage of extremity.

Most people are, in their hearts, unwilling to harm. They do not want to destroy, humiliate, or terrorize. They want to be left alone. They want to get through the day. They want to be good — or at least, not bad. And so when someone appears who is willing to cross every line, to say the unsayable, to threaten what should not be threatened, many instinctively step aside.

And with each step aside, the path widens for the tyrant.

Tyranny — of any sort, in any sphere — is never built in a day. It is a slow construction—brick by brick, fear by fear. It is rarely obvious at first. It comes cloaked in charm, in confidence, in nostalgia, in calls for aggressive order. It appeals to what is wounded in the collective and the personal.

It says: You are in danger. I will protect you. But first, I must be obeyed.

The press is pressured. The courts are questioned. The enemies multiply. The truth becomes malleable. The entire framework is so gaslit it bursts into flames! And eventually, the system itself is reshaped —  subtly, then forcefully — to accommodate the tyrant’s will.

But the tyrant cannot do this alone. He needs accomplices. He needs the enablers, the rationalizers, the ones who say, “Yes, perhaps he’s gone too far — but look how strong he is.” He needs the public voice who praises him, the functionary who fears irrelevance, the citizen who shrugs and says, “What can one person do?”

He thrives in the silence of the decent.

And he needs, above all, people who have grown weary of truth, wary of nuance, of his own hunger for clarity — even if that clarity is a lie. The “decent” person needs slogans, memes, tropes — also soothing words, saccharine suggestions. His brain, suffused with cortisol, no longer has patience for more than that.

It has happened in so many places and arenas. In so many eras. Yet, the dynamic remains: fear, flattery and the careful dismantling of constraint.

It can happen anywhere.

Even in societies with long-standing traditions. Even in nations with well-drafted constitutions. Even in families whose lives behind closed doors look nothing like what is presented to their neighbors. The mistake is to assume that the system itself will hold — that norms will enforce themselves, that laws will not be bent, that those in power will act in good faith — and if not that, at least act in ways believed to benefit what we think is best for our particular set of mercurial values or immediate desires.

But a just society of any kind is not a machine. It is a living agreement. It requires participation. It requires memory. It requires consensus.

More than anything, it demands courage.

John Adams once wrote that the American Constitution was made for “a moral and religious people” and is “wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” What he meant, I think, is that laws alone cannot save us.

They require character.

They require a populace willing to govern not just others, but themselves.

What happens when that self-governance erodes?

What happens when lies are broadcast with the same force as truth — and sometimes more effectively? What happens when people lose the ability to say what is plainly visible? What happens when entire narratives are constructed not to reflect reality but to overwrite it?

We see it in ways that that are both subtle and overt — not just in the overwrought proclamations of public figures, but in the quiet compliance of institutions. In the hesitant, craven way truth is spoken. In the calculated ways reality is denied.

And yet — and this may be the most important turn — if it is true that a single person, through charisma or cruelty, can lead a society (or a family) to the brink of ruin, isn’t it also possible that a single person can pull it back?

If darkness can be multiplied by one will, why not light?

Yes. I’m aware, this is a kind of messianic wish.

Perhaps it is naïve.

Perhaps it is sacred.

Perhaps it is our only hope.

We know that evil can be enacted by a single determined figure. History has proved this many times. But what if goodness — clear-eyed, courageous, uncompromising goodness — can do the same?

What if the same fragile human frame that carried so much destruction — the two lungs, the one heart — could also carry healing?

This is not about waiting for a hero.

It is about rejecting the lie that goodness is inherently weak, or that wanton violence is the only path to change. It is about recognizing that our capacity to imagine better — to hold fast to morality, as Adams suggested, even when it’s inconvenient — might be the truest form of power there is.

The tyrannical person, after all, is not powerful because he is strong.

He is powerful because others allow him to be.

And just as that allowance can be given, it can also be revoked.

This is where we find our agency — not in grand gestures, but in the refusal to look away, in the insistence on clarity, in the daily courage to speak the truth even when it costs something. Indeed for some, it has cost their lives.

Yes, one person can change the course of history for the worse.

But one person — even just one — might also change it for the good.

And maybe that person is not a politician or a prophet.

Maybe it’s you.

Maybe it’s me.

Maybe it’s anyone who, seeing the shadow, decides to light a lamp and hold it up against the encroaching dark.

Peter Himmelman is a Grammy and Emmy nominated rock and roll performer, songwriter, film composer, visual artist and award-winning author. He has been profiled in Time Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, Tablet, and NPR. His newest book is: “Suspended By No String: A Songwriter’s Refections On Faith, Aliveness, and Wonder” (Regalo Press/Simon and Schuster)