Let Us Now Praise Famous Megalomaniacs

 

As someone who is uncomfortable receiving praise, it has always amused me to see how extravagantly modern authoritarian leaders (dictators, captains of industry) expect

their underlings to flatter and applaud them. The dictator’s hunger for lavish panegyrics manifests itself most noticeably in the elaborate titles he (very rarely she) assumes in public. One beauty I recently encountered belonged to Francois Duvalier, chief executive of Haiti from 1957 to 1971: “President for Life, Maximum Chief of the Revolution, Apostle of National Unity, Benefactor of the Poor, Patron of Commerce and Industry, and Electrifier of Souls.” I can’t improve on that, except to suggest that given Duvalier’s murderous reputation, “Electrifier of Souls” may have had an unpleasant double meaning.

 

Sources: Stewart Bell, Bayou of Pigs: The True Story of an Audacious Plot to Turn a Tropical Island into a Criminal Paradise (2008). See also Laurent Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (2012), which argues that Duvalier probably adapted some of his titles from those given to nineteenth-century monarch Henry Christophe, “Uncontestable Leader of the Revolution and Apostle of National Unity” (pp. 323-51, quote 343)