“I will kill you like an American Imperialist,” is a popular curse in North Korea. The people there are subjected to a barrage of constant anti-US propaganda in an effort to unify the country, often through hate of the outside world, reports Associated Press.
A South Korean fisherman who was kidnapped and spent 20 years in North Korea said, “It’s a daily fodder in North Korea. The first thing you hear when you wake up for the day is some form of diatribe against the Americans.”
A North Korean who defected in 1994 says, “If you rule a destitute country with a personality cult, you must present the people with something to hate. It’s brainwashing.”
Not unlike totalitarian dictators of the past who promoted cults of personality North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il, known as “Dear One,” reinforces his control through fear and hate.
Like Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini, the original “Axis of Evil,” Kim Jung Il uses the requisite scapegoats, mythology, alleged conspiracies, grandiose pretension and xenophobia, to reinforce his rule.
North Korea, frequently described as a “Stalinist state,” follows that sorry chapter in Russian history closely too. Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions of his countrymen and created an aura of almost supernatural power and mystique about him.
“Stalinism” was by definition personality-driven.
And just like Stalin the “Dear One” largely possesses the minds of his people by controlling all information within his country and virtually any contact with the outside world. Kim Jong Il has carefully crafted a worldview for North Koreans, which effectively excludes any objective accounts of history.
Hopefully, one day North Korea will follow Russian history one more step and eventually pull down the statues of the Stalinist demigods, who have brought that nation decades of needless misery.
But the pressing question now is what has the rest of the world learned from history about dealing with such tyrants?
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