Step One: Understand and Manipulate People’s Fears
Fear is an emotional shockwave that travels faster than any fact or figure. It grips societies—even when the threat is more phantom than fact—and renders them vulnerable to anyone confident enough to promise safety. Cunning leaders know this all too well. They deliberately stoke fear, pinpoint a convenient enemy, then offer salvation. It’s a tried-and-true strategy for amassing power. From Adolf Hitler in the 1930s to modern-day strongmen like Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin, weaponizing fear has repeatedly paved the road to control.
This is the first post of ten, where I’ll be looking at the steps that all dictators follow to gain power. Whether you read or skip the historic summaries, please read on for how these steps are being implemented right around us. If you like this series or my other posts, please subscribe to me on Substack. I’m Bill Southworth, with the handle @rottendog.
Viktor Orbán: The Defender of “Christian Europe”
A continent away and a decade earlier, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán struck a similar chord. He warned that refugees, many from war-torn regions, would erode Hungary’s Christian identity. “We do not see these people as refugees. We see them as Muslim invaders,” Orbán declared, reducing a humanitarian crisis to a cultural apocalypse.
His government blanketed billboards with messages like “If you come to Hungary, you must not take the jobs of Hungarians.” Even some Hungarians who felt compassion for the refugees found themselves unsettled by Orbán’s rhetoric, which portrayed foreign cultures as a creeping danger. That apprehension was precisely what he needed; as fear mounted, his Fidesz party further consolidated power, aligning Hungary’s institutions—media, courts, and even educational systems—with the ruling party’s agenda.