What makes a tyrant? From Lars Møller at americanthinker.com:
From Wikimedia Commons: Execution of Louis XVI (Charles Monnet, 1794)
History is replete with revolutionary figures who transformed society through “vision”, “vanity”, and “violence”—a vicious triad covering the strategy of being ideologically uncompromising, outmaneuvering rivals, and eliminating political opposition, respectively.
Maximilien Robespierre and Vladimir Lenin stand out as architects of radical political transformation. Bridging the cultural divide, their leadership styles and psychological profiles show striking similarities. Both men were pedantic ideologues driven by an unshakable belief in their own moral and intellectual superiority.
A comprehensive personality profiling of Robespierre and Lenin requires an analytical framework that transcends ideological taxonomy and historical contingency. While both men operated under conditions of revolutionary crisis, their responses to this strain were neither inevitable nor merely situational. Rather, the extremes of savagery that they authorized, rationalized, and sustained reflect enduring psychological structures that shaped their political conduct. Revolutionary atrocity, in this sense, is best understood, not as an accidental excess of upheaval but as an expressive manifestation of personality under pressure.
“Whenever I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end, they always fail. Think of it: always.”
Mahatma Gandhi