Both Tyranny and Justice Depend on Recognition
About villains, henchmen, dictatorships, and patriotism.
Part of my series on Recognition.
When I was a little kid, I would watch various films and TV shows that had villains and their henchmen and I would wonder about these henchmen. Why were they following this villain’s instructions? Why were they loyal to a bad person who ordered them to do immoral things?
Loyalty is generally considered to be a good and noble trait, such as being loyal to one’s friend and family. A subordinate’s loyalty to a good leader is a moral good. It seems, however, difficult to justify loyalty to a poor leader or a morally corrupt leader.
There is a need for moral discernment — being able to distinguish between moral and immoral leaders — especially because either way, loyalty is a matter of recognition. The henchmen following the villain and the sidekicks following the hero are both practicing recognition.
Recognition is valuing another person or trait a person can possess. You are not a leader unless and until others recognize you as one. You have no authority unless people respect that you have authority. Hegel understood that as the first philosopher of recognition: the master is dependent on the recognition of the servant as being the master.
Villains, both in stories and in real life, are not leaders unless they are recognized by followers as leaders. The same for good leaders. Followers recognize a leader as a leader for various reasons, some noble, others not. People will not follow your instructions unless they think doing so is a good idea. You have to give them an incentive to follow you and your instructions.
One incentive is fear; people follow a leader because of fear of the penalties for disobedience. Machiavelli claimed that it is better for people to fear you than to love you. Fear is an incentive to obey a villainous leader, a truth that gang leaders and dictators have proven. How successful fear is in the long-term is debatable, but before anyone can get to a point where they can control others through fear, they must first achieve enough power to make fear an option. Even the worst dictators did not win power through threats alone. They first gained followers, henchmen, through other incentives.
The Henchmen Hypothesis
What is required for political power? Consider Russia’s current leader, Vladimir Putin. He is a Machiavellian leader who is feared more than loved. But why is he feared? He is, not to be impolite, a small, sick old man who is no physical threat to anyone. Putin rules with an iron hand not because he is a threat to anyone, but because his security forces are. And by security forces, we mean henchmen.
Henchmen are necessary for authoritarian power, and to have henchmen, recognition of the leader is necessary. To a degree, in a totalitarian structure like Putin’s dictatorship, everyone is afraid of everyone else as a potential threat. The Soviet Union was highly adept at inculcating a sense that anyone, anywhere could be an informant. Putin is a product of that lifeworld and he has re-established it in Russia.
Such pervasive fear cannot be maintained without people willing to enact repercussions for disloyalty to Putin’s regime. It is fair to say that Putin is responsible for the oppression in Russia, but only because a large group of henchmen recognize his authority and are willing to inflict the oppression.
That circles back to the question of henchmen that first occurred to me as a kid. Why follow and obey a villain? I think much of it has to do with the idolization of power. Some people are impressed by strength, and some people enjoy being a part of a power structure. Any strongman starts out by being recognized by others as someone with the strength to become the leader of a power structure. Henchmen will join forces with a potential leader if they believe that through assisting that person, they will become part of that power structure. As the strongman gains more followers and thus more power, more and more people will join it who are attracted to power and the lure of being a part of the power structure.
The gang leader or warlord has henchmen who enjoy being part of a group that dominates others. They recognize their leader as one who has power and authority, though mostly, they recognize that leader as someone who gives them what they want: being a part of something powerful.
Recognition, again, is valuing something or someone, including valuing yourself. A very important human need is to feel valued, to feel recognized as a part of something. This is why recognition is essential to social justice. When people are recognized as a part of the community, they are treated as a person deserves, and they feel the positive value of being included in the community. Justice requires the positive recognition of valuing other people as people, of including them.
People have a basic human need for inclusion recognition — to be part of a community, and this can be exploited. Cults and gangs also offer recognition as part of a community, though that community is also defined through its exclusion of others. The promise of belonging is a key recruitment technique for cults and gangs, “you can be one of us if you recognize the authority of the leader.” As long as you recognize the leader as the leader, you receive the social benefits of inclusion recognition. When a leader orders acts of violence against non-members of the gang, some henchmen may enjoy committing those violent acts, but others may go along mainly to retain the benefits of inclusion in the gang.
Inclusion recognition is the social glue that forms and binds communities for good and for ill. It works for social clubs, subcultures, and even nations. Obviously scale and content differ among a bridge club, a street gang, a celebrity’s fan club, and a dictatorship, but the central dynamic of recognition is the same. People want to be a part of a community. They want the recognition that being part of a group brings.
This helps explain why henchmen will follow a villain. In simplest terms — they enjoy it, they receive social and personal benefits from it. Maybe they like the feeling of power that comes from being told to commit violent acts. Most likely, they like the feeling of being part of a power structure — a kind of community. Their loyalty is slightly self-serving.
A dictator like Putin can rule because his power structure benefits the people who follow him. There are financial incentives, to be sure, but there are also the recognition incentives of inclusion recognition among his henchmen in the security services. Again, a leader has no authority unless people recognize that authority. Everyone in Russia could deny Putin recognition and ignore his orders. It is not Putin himself that is the obstacle to disobeying him. The obstacle is his henchmen who receive a sense of self-worth from being henchmen in a power structure.
The Appeal to Patriotism
Recognition being the glue that binds communities also works at a national level. All that has been discussed so far about loyalty and recognition applies to loyalty to one’s country. Pride in where one lives is a natural human sentiment and patriotism is a moral good when it is pride in and loyalty to where one lives. One can have patriotic pride in one’s neighborhood, one’s city, and one’s state or region, but patriotism is mostly thought of in terms of loyalty to one’s country.
It is expected that people would fight to defend their country from invaders. Such self-defense is a moral good and appropriately considered as patriotic. Asking people to defend their homeland is one thing, but patriotism is also used as an appeal to obey one’s country when it launches offensive actions against another country. When the United States invaded Iraq (both times), its citizens were supposed to support the invasion and occupation. People against the invasion of Iraq were accused of a lack of patriotism. The same is the case in Russia today. Citizens are expected to support the invasion of Ukraine. People against the invasion are accused of a lack of patriotism and denied recognition by the country’s power structure.
Putin can clamp down on resistance to the invasion of Ukraine because the power structure has henchmen who will willingly commit acts of repression. Maybe they enjoy roughing up protestors, but more likely, they enjoy the recognition they receive from being part of the power structure. That recognition includes being called patriots for defending the country from so-called subversives.
Recognition also explains why henchmen are willing to follow immoral orders. Of course, a lack of moral discernment is at work, but it is easier to put moral considerations aside when you are recognized as part of a power structure. What is in action is more than just peer pressure, it is the continual positive reinforcement that it is good and proper to obey orders — patriotism and loyalty you know.
Hannah Arendt wrote about blind patriotic obedience in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism. The banality of evil is when recognition from the power structure brings normalcy to otherwise immoral acts. Nazi henchmen like Adolf Eichmann did his job, for which he received recognition. For him, that was enough. He did not think further. He was a henchmen willing to follow orders. Even though those orders came from villains.
Recognition is paradoxically a motivator for both moral and immoral acts. Recognition is what brings people together, affirming them as valued members of a community. But if that community is a power structure that misrecognizes people outside of the community, then it can value henchmen who commit villainous acts, giving them recognition that will encourage them to remain loyalty to the villain leading the power structure of the community. To ensure justice and to reduce injustices, we need to consider the important role that recognition plays in human society and how some social structures can abuse the power of recognition to bring people together into communities.
