Be careful who you idolise

Jul 11, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – There is a particular sadness, a kind of tragic inevitability, when a nation reflects on its ruined hopes. The buildings may stand, the anthem still sung, the offices still open, but the soul of the country—its energy, its memory, its ability to dream—has been quietly evacuated.

It is easy, almost comforting, to assign blame to the men who ruled badly, to name them as the authors of destruction. But such a verdict, though often correct, is rarely complete. The ruin is not the work of one man. No despot rules alone. He is raised and sustained by the very people who now lament their suffering.

This is a phenomenon that repeats itself, almost ritualistically, in postcolonial societies. A nation, newly freed, discovers that freedom is not enough. It seeks an author, a redeemer, a voice to name its hopes. But instead of cultivating an intelligent politics, it often clutches at a man who says he knows – and acts like he knows it all – who promises what it wants, who embodies its fantasy of strength. It is in this moment that the fatal idol is born.

I have seen this. I have listened to the confessions of hire car drivers and market women and civil servants who speak of past leaders—men who bled their countries dry, who dismantled merit in favour of allegiance, who ruled not with vision but vengeance—with a curious mixture of guilt and nostalgia. They recall how they clapped longest at rallies, how they wore the face of the leader on their shirts, how they whispered of “progress” even as they queued for rice or kerosene or a passport out. When pressed, they say, “We had no choice.” But they did. They always did. And that is the problem.

In societies where the leader is not just elected, but adored—there is no space for scrutiny, no room for dissent. The adoration becomes a kind of sickness. The people become accomplices in their own domination. They mimic the language of their leaders, they repeat slogans, they erase memory. And when the leader falls, as he always does, they rush to disown him. They speak of betrayal, of being misled. But they are not innocent.

Even under dictatorships—perhaps especially under dictatorships—the crowd has power. They may not vote, but their votes matters not. They may not write laws, but they applaud them. They do not merely endure the spectacle of tyranny; they participate in it. They lend it emotion, legitimacy, flesh. And what is worse, many do it not out of fear, but out of longing—for certainty, for identity, for victory over some imagined enemy. They romanticize their own servitude. They mistake loudness for strength and cruelty for vision. They become intoxicated with the idea that they are part of something mighty and unstoppable. And it is in this intoxication that democracy dies.

I remember once a man telling me, “We support him because he is one of us.” He did not care that “he” had bankrupted the Treasury or rigged the elections. What mattered was that the leader stood against on the other side. This is the dark grammar of tribal politics, where loyalty is valued above competence, and where the moral collapse of the leader is seen as a justified price for the preservation of the tribe.

And so, when the reckoning comes—when history opens its thick ledger and begins to count the cost—do not imagine that it will look only at the man at the top. It will also look at those who kept him there. It will ask: Who sang his praises? Who silenced the critics? Who excused the crimes? Who chose comfort over conscience? You will not be able to say, “I was only a cook” or “I was only a clerk” or “I just wanted to keep my job.” The tyranny, like the country, belonged to you.

That is why one must be careful—painfully, almost obsessively careful—about whom one supports. A vote is not just a choice; it is an endorsement, a kind of spiritual intimacy. To follow a man is to invite him into your moral world. And when he fails, he drags your judgment down with him. To idolize a leader is to surrender your capacity to think. And when you can no longer think, you can no longer be free. There are no perfect leaders. Every man has his contradictions. But some men wear their flaws like medals. They make arrogance their philosophy. They lie and smile as they do it. And if you cheer such men—if you wear their slogans, post their photos, shout their name as if it were prayer—then you cannot escape the verdict of history. You helped to make the darkness. You will be remembered in its shadow.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• Idolise, Peeping Tom, Politics, Ruined hopes

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