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Quote by Gideon Rachman

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The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy around the World

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Gideon Rachman
Gideon Rachman

Gideon Rachman is a British journalist born in 1963. He is renowned for his work at the Financial Times, where he served as the International Affairs Editor and wrote numerous columns on global politics and economics. Rachman is praised for his in-depth analysis of international relations and geopolitical issues. more

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“Rule of law is the grey area between the two extremes, viz. the moral norm of individual liberty and state coercion. When it is at the former end, it is anarchy; when at the latter, it is totalitarian repressive state. In the real world, every state operates somewhere between these two extremes. Democracies have to place restrictions on individual liberty to prevent a descent into anarchy; dictators have to provide a modicum of individual freedom to prevent desperate rebellion.”

IndividualLibertyAnarchyDictatorshipRepressionCoercionRule Of LawTotalitarianMoral Norm
Author:R. N. Prasher
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“A fascist regime could imprison, despoil, and even kill its inhabitants at will and without limitation. All else pales before that radical transformation in the relation of citizens to public power. It follows almost as an anticlimax that fascist regimes contained no mechanisms by which citizens could choose representatives or otherwise influence policy. Parliaments lost power, elections were replaced by yesno plebiscites and ceremonies of affirmation, and leaders were given almost unlimited dictatorial powers. Fascists claimed that the division and decline of their communities had been caused by electoral politics and especially by the Left’s preparations for class warfare and proletarian dictatorship. Communities so afflicted, the fascists taught, could not be unified by the play of naturally harmonious human interests, as the liberals had believed. They had to be unified by state action, using persuasion and organization if possible, using force if necessary. The job required what the French sociologist Émile Durkheim called “mechanical solidarity” rather than “organic solidarity.” Fascist regimes thus contained multiple agencies for shaping and molding the citizenry into an integrated community of disciplined, hardened fighters. The fascist state was particularly attentive to the formation of youth, jealously attempting to retain a monopoly of this function (a matter that brought fascist regimes and the Catholic Church into frequent conflict).”

FascismSolidarityRule Of LawInculcation
Book:The Anatomy of Fascism
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