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I know history is full of nasty little dictators and their lackeys but have any of them ever been this fucking childish?
Yes. But it’s so much easier to be a child and have that get out to the masses. It would take a lot of effort to doctor a photo and get it published 100 years ago.
Hitler was actually extremely childish as was his entire regime. The similarities are remarkable.
Henry VIII of England was basically what would happen if a pro American football player was a powerful king. He's suspected to have had CTE.
Versailles was basically a cruel experiment on the mental health of trapped nobility and rulers, that involved basically nothing but petty social games for power and prestige, but no options to use them.
Rome had plenty of emperors like this including Caligula and Nero. Nero had a neck beard and unhealthy attachment to his mother. Meanwhile if half of what was written about Elagabulus is true then we have proof of how bad of an idea it is to give absolute power to a horny teenager with neither qualifications nor training.
Speaking of weird mommy issues, Wilhelm I of Prussia/Germany was a weird childish man whose family spat was the first world war. On the other side was Nicolas of Russia who wasn't much better.
Also Ghaddafi was nuts, like in funny and horrifying ways, but definitely never matured after taking power young.
So yeah, I'm conflating kings, emperors, and dictators as all more or less the same, because they kinda are. Julius Caesar took the title of dictator, was assassinated to prevent him from being a king, and was invoked by the emperors. We have a modern tendency to think of dictators as people who came to power through coups or the military, which can lead towards more mature and sane figures, but we still use the term for the hereditary absolute ruler of North Korea (it's a socialism themed monarchy) and we don't use it to describe the huge portion of roman emperors who were generals installed by coup. Additionally, history indicates (to me at least) that you likely have to be a bit nuts and immature to overthrow an established republic, because of the behavior shown by citizens in a destabilizing republic.
I understand the urge to treat this administration as a freak of history, but they're just too similar to the third reich to do so responsibly. And yeah those similarities include immaturity. It seems that a destabilizing republic is best hijacked by the narcissistic, and narcissists who are leaning into their disorder tend towards immaturity because growth often requires painful self reflection.
I don't know about childish but the Khmer Rouge was batshit insane, their way of "governing" was completely unsustainable.