VICTOR C. ARIOLE contends that democracy is increasingly being rubbished

Whether man is a social or an irrationally reacting mess of protoplasm, depends on whether his fundamental biological needs are in harmony or in conflict with the institutions which he has created… Hitler promised the subjugation of women to man, abolition of democratic discussion of opinion, abolition of socialist organizations, out of 31 million voters, 17 million, including vocal women, jubilantly carried Hitler to power in March, 1933.

Wilhelm Reich (1967,157-160)

When you read Professor Wole Soyinka’s Isara, it is like narrating the fears of the moment – Hitler. In it, if you want to win an argument drum in the people “the curse already hanging over them like a dark cloud over their roof in form of drought, famine, plagues, even Hitler dropping down from the sky on satanic parachutes”. Today the world is panicking at Trump’s moves and approaches to human relationship and in extension unreliable relationship with US allies, especially the European Union. Like the Isara, it was speculated that such personality – the Big Bad Wolf–could lead to the freedom of Africans and Asians, and it partially did as it started the preparation for independence in the 60s. That is, from 1945 – 1960, events of post-World War II raised naturally the need to destroy colonial and slavery that made Africans look less human in the eyes of their colonial masters.

It was not a freedom driven by democracy as African had no right to vote in places they were once in majority like Brazil and the Caribbeans. It was a freedom occasioned by threat of the colonisers experiencing internal skirmishes – “racial supremacists” aka fascists against “integrationist supremacists aka WASP (West Anglo-Saxon Protestants). The common denominator is “supremacist”, either covert or overt.

The world is at it again; this time alignments as seen in the Europe’s political outlook and that of USA remains: interrogating the extant democratic institutions. True “Uncle Sams and some “Uncle Toms” who feel that their biological needs are in conflict with democracy are muddying the seas. Like it is said, “there is no neurotic individual who does not show a tension in the abdomen”; it could be food, it could be libido.

Those driven by libido – inherent or great energy to dominate others, and those driven by food -immediate energy requirement to remain in existence, are consolidating in their Uncle Sam/Uncle Tom relationship, or in exclusion waiting for energy to escape from frustration or migrate, aka jaapa. Minority could be more rational than the majority but democracy says majority rules and minority is just for hearing purpose, not for action.

France, today, is under minority rule notwithstanding having a President of center-left who emerged in second voting round. Like General Charles de Gaulle would say: “I choose to lie to the electorate than to lie to my nation”. The rational populace of the nation could be in the minority but for the sustainability of the nation when democracy is driven by irrational majority, the leader must continuously read the riot act message to them like proposed in Isara.

Nigeria is led by “minority”, 92 million voters led by 18 million votes. It requires great tact like De Gaulle envisaged so as to keep the country in a sustainable mode. Elections are over, keeping Nigeria alive in the current assault of re-aligned uncle Sam and Uncle Tom requires great tract in satisfying the majority; unfortunately, driven by food-need interest people whose votes possibly never count in the first place but remain Nigerians must be loyal or perish.

Just like it is wrongly playing out in USA where indeed both popular votes and collegiate votes gave it to the Republicans as Uncle Tom democrats preferred the Republicans; and as at now they seem at the receiving end – work losses and return of great libidinal patriarchal mood. Majority turning irrational it seems.   

Just like lawyers say, in capitalist world morality and law are not mutually exclusive. Keep morality out of law they will say. I wonder how irrationality could not be seen in that, just like initial one-party rule in Africa, claiming democracy, admits there is no morality in challenging the founding president by creating multiparty system. Most founding presidents died on the throne or were ousted by the military.

Democracy goes to sleep when a libidinal loaded leader leads. Current events in Rivers State and in east Africa where libidinal loaded Musoveni and Kagame are trying to invade Congo DR and in the World, where Ukrainians and Gazans are turned upside down, are part of forcing Uncle Tom syndrome on weak people or claiming that democracy in Nigeria permits libidinal loaded godfather intervention; one-party one-person democracy in Rwanda and Uganda permits invading Congo DR; and that Russians and Israelis are all for the incursions in Ukraine and Gaza respectively. For sure, alternatives for better resolution of conflicts exist but for show of power, the irrational and acclaimed majority and the libidinal patriarchal leader it puts in place must toe the line of power show.

They, the libidinal loaded leaders, are the modern day Uncle Sam – those with mindset of dominating others by all means including claiming democratic majority as mandate to oppress others. Alice’s AFD in Germany, Marine’s Extreme Right in France and Meloni’s party in Italy are all Hitlerian – like parties; and women are leading them; so, it is not really men’s affairs, the interest in patriarchal system. They are gradually rising to dominance the way Hitler rose to dominance in Germany, from minority position.

Hitler did not just happen to Germany surreptitiously. It took time. In Austria he was a casual labourer admiring painfully or enviously the royalty that make the Aryans respected among the Bavarians, the Jews, the Saxon, the Westphalian, the Romanians, the Bohemians, etc. He was also a lance corporal promoted by a Jewish lieutenant by name Hugo Gutman. His bravado as a soldier earned him respect for political leadership when the time came. He was restless, no doubt, and had a mind of making German “great again” after its First World War humiliation. He was supported, no doubt. However, like the proposition of the man he so much hated, the Jewish Sigmund Freud, Hitler was exhibiting a repressed ego that found expression in expressing hatred for others especially non-Aryans.

The world is at it again, Nigeria’s own Nyesom Wike with Hitlerian moustache knows those to hate. Musoveni and Kagame, in combined assault, feel that the Tshisekedi type of Congolese- the Luba or Kele or Kisangani people are not worth having as neighbours. Netanyahu, not necessarily the Democratic majority in Israel, wants to exterminate non-Jewish Gazans. Putin seems to want to resurrect Joseph Stalin and feels that the likes of Zelensky, not necessarily all Jewish as Zelensky is one of them, must be seen as loyal to the Bolsheviks, not lesser Europeans in the western Europe – yes, the oligarchic brand among the Bolsheviks.

Of course, the father of all, are the “Bolshevik” Republicans in USA who really feel that time has come to reward their likes in Russia for ultimate realignment that must see the eastern flank of Europe better suited as Uncle Tom as US troops now move into Hungary to show that Viktor Orbam is now the leader of Uncle Tom consortium. All in all,  it is rubbishing democracy and democratic institutions in recursive learning approach of artificial intelligence and making a re-adapted or remoulded Hitler real.

Ariole is

Professor of French and Francophone Studies,

University of Lagos

​