Fear and love are primal reactions — not calculations. Power is an emotional mechanism.
This song from Lion King is a perfect portrayal of how a population of lost, downtrodden people get convinced to gather around a demagogue.
The hyenas are skeptical at first, until Scar promises, “You’ll be rewarded when at last, I’m given my due.”
Then Scar talks about rectifying injustice in the currently established authority.
That’s when the hyenas gather round and begin to literally march to his tune. He’s become their deliverer from the injustice of the system.
The call and response in the second half of the song is where we see Scar and the hyenas share their motivations.
Scar: “Be prepared for the coup of the century. Be prepared for the murkiest scam. Meticulous planning, tenacity spanning decades of denial is simply why I’ll be king undisputed, respected, saluted and seen for the wonder I am. Yes my teeth and ambitions are bared. Be prepared.”
The hyenas: “We’ll have food, lots of food. We repeat, endless meat.” These are hopeful voices rising up from a population that has been facing fear, suffering, and scarcity — or at least, they’ve perceived them.
Then finally, the hyenas echo Scar’s battle cry: “Yes our teeth and ambitions are bared, be prepared.”
Scar’s followers will gladly give him total power — and will even kill for him — because they think he will right the wrongs they’ve suffered under the existing authority structure.
The thing is, the hyenas don’t support Scar because they’re evil.
They’re just scared of what they see as a future that will be less prosperous and more painful than the past, and they feel like Scar’s the only one bold or strong enough to fight for them.
You can replace Scar with several modern politicians, recent dictators who won’t be named, and dangerous historic figures like Robespierre.
Even Julius Caesar claimed his power in a similar fashion, and though he met an untimely end before solidifying his final authority, the republic crumbled in the ensuing conflict and a totalitarian state emerged less than a decade later.
Freedom is fragile.
“If the individual, overwhelmed by the sense of his own puniness and impotence, should feel that his life has lost its meaning . . . then he is already on the road to State slavery and, without knowing or wanting it, has become its proselyte. . . .
Under these circumstances it is small wonder that individual judgement grows increasingly uncertain of itself and that responsibility is collectivized as much as possible, i.e., is shuffled off by the individual and delegated to a corporate body. . . .
The State in particular is turned into a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected. In reality it is only a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it.
Thus the constitutional State drifts into the situation of a primitive form of society, namely the communism of a primitive tribe where everybody is subject to the autocratic rule of a chief or oligarchy.”
— C. G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self
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