From the moment when the spark is struck that identifies the leader with the masses the dictator feels his strength increase at dizzying speed. Social identification is precisely that discriminatory process that causes the chosen to emerge from the flock of the called. The chosen one emerges transfigured. He loses his individual features and assumes the dream-personality of millions of his fellow citizens. He becomes literally the individualized product of an irresistible collective need…It was Signor Mussolini, true enough, who founded the first Fasci, but then it was Fascism which in turn created the Duce, clothing his rather banal personality with all the virtues, defects and aspirations of the ego-ideal of millions of Italians. If you try to criticize the dictator or to discuss his person or his conduct ‘objectively’ with an ordinary Italian, it’s like saying to a pious old woman in church, ‘My good woman, don’t you see that the statue of Saint Anthony you’re kneeling before has no artistic value and it’s just a vulgar thing made of papier-mache?’ The good woman would scratch your eyes out. If you criticize the leader in the presence of a believer, it is as though you were attacking the sublimated part of his own nature, from which he draws the consolation he needs to endure the hardships of his wretched existence…The strongest tie between the leader and his people is neither ideological nor programmatical nor ethical. ‘If my leader behaves that way, he must have his own good reasons for doing so,’ the fascist or the communist thinks. And since he is convinced that, in his own life, the reason he didn’t have the success he deserved is that he wasn’t clever or unscrupulous enough, he is actually proud that ‘his’ leader is so clever and strong and knows so well how to wipe out his adversaries.
Ignazio Silone, The School for Dictators, 1938, 1963.