Dear Editor,
The saying ‘fear is the key’ had to be coined from empirical knowledge I guess. I once read an article by Ian McDonald where he said that during the reign of King Louis XIV the king and a courtier were playing a game of chess. There was disagreement and a heated argument, and the onlookers were frozen in silence, horrified. Then an old and trusted member turned up and the king requested his opinion; without even looking at the chess board he said to the king, “You are wrong, Your Majesty”.
“How can you tell?” responded the furious king.
“If you were right,” replied the man, “these frightened men around you would have been only too eager to tell you so”.
This anecdote is a familiar one which I’m sure many have experienced some time or the other. This is the behaviour of creepy sycophants whom most men in authority like to have around them. What is it that makes men so servile, so they blindly and shamelessly commit beastly acts against their fellow man which in their heart they know to be wrong and not in harmony with their conscience? Are men by nature that weak? Just why do highly intelligent men in positions of authority allow themselves to be so manipulated by the Hitlers, Stalins, Amins, Papa Docs, Somozas, Pol Pots, etc? They worship them like gods when invariably most autocratic rulers are known to be weak and insecure cowards. Then what is it in these men that strikes fear in the hearts of their subordinates?
Machiavelli writing some five hundred years ago wrote that “Men worry less about doing injury to one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared. Fear is strengthened by a dread of punishment which is always effective.” Now this logic is not hard to grasp, as we see it in our daily perambulations and interactions with fellow men. The more humble, cordial and benevolent one is, the more he is likely to be disregarded and dismissed as a simpleton, who can be played for a fool.
Over time I have come to the opinion that ruthless men and dictators are of two types: the bullies who are spooky cowards – a fact that many of their security cover have attested to in confidence; while the other type is the calculating, cold and heartless psychopaths like Adolph Hitler.
History is overflowing with stories where men in power have instilled such fear in others as to make them petrified so they do the weirdest and strangest things. There is no denying that fear has been man’s greatest enemy.
Napoleon is smack on target when he said there are two levers for moving men: “fear and interest”. There is a story about Joseph Stalin who once misplaced his pipe and called up his Commissioner of Police and ordered him to find the culprit who stole it. A little later he found it in his boot, called back the Commissioner and told him to forget it. “But Comrade Leader I have 15 comrades who have all confessed to stealing it,” responded the Commis-sioner.
A woman sits in a ferry-boat crossing the Demerara River, the engine cuts out as a ship is approaching; while slowly the boat starts drifting towards the ship, the woman becomes hysterical and attempts to leap into the river without a thought that she can’t swim, but was restrained ‒ an irrational act caused by fear.
Invariably fear is what causes autocratic rulers to become paranoid, perceive all kinds of threats to their throne, real or imagined, and so carry out all forms of cruel acts and executions. It is not only weakness but absolute fear which accounts for most people, according to columnist Ian McDonald, “consider[ing] it dangerous to confront all powerful authority and lack[ing] the bravery and staunchness of spirit to stand up for what is right against the great weight of a different opinion.”
Fear is indeed the key. On the opening night of a play glorifying Stalin, showering credit on him for every great thing ever done, the playwright sat tense, his eyes fixed on the Comrade Leader. It was only at the end of the play when the dictator stood up with a broad smile on his face that the playwright breathed a sigh of relief and managed to force a smile. That’s fear at work.
But I think that the worst fear is that caused to children, which many of us adults and parents are champions at. A most terrible sight is watching a frightened child shaking, because of the dread we put in them in them for various reasons, especially when we are ‘teaching’ them, and becoming impatient and irritable because they are just not getting some concept which in our judgement is easy. And I stand guilty of this, having at one time became so riled up that my daughter wasn’t responding correctly to what I considered was very simple, I raised my voice and couldn’t see that she was scared and no longer thinking. But then I calmed down and gave her the answer, after which she said to me: “I wanted to say that but I was afraid if I was wrong you would have slapped me.” Believe me, I never forgot that. As a child, I was a victim of such ‘teaching’ and it scared the hell out of me, yet I made the same mistake as an adult without realising it.
Freddie Kissoon once quoted from a book by Jai Narine Singh: “I witnessed Burnham changing Guyana’s constitution as if it were a scrap piece of paper, putting himself in the most omnipotent position…He used his power so shamelessly that it ruined the prestige of the legislature, the judiciary and destroyed the economy. I stood by and felt my blood curdle as I was very closely associated with Burnham…” But what did Jai Narine Singh do? He wrote a book when he was safe and sound, and there were others like him.
It is like a new leader at the helm who now has all the power narrating an unending list of atrocities committed by his predecessor.
Then a voice shouts from the audience, “and where were you all the time?” The leader looks around and menacingly asks, “Who said that?” No one responds, and the leader says, “That is why all those things were done.”
Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe
