The Occupation of the Inner World: A Psychological Anatomy of Dictatorship

Rastinews — The kids, my mother, the phone, the inner life... I'm bored. Let me switch the channel. Time to get angry at a dictator for a while.

I once heard a line in a film: "Bring me the victim." The phrase is not just a tyrant summoning someone to persecute. It also describes how people go looking for a target for their own anger. Most of us find relief by picking out a victim of our own, choosing someone to blame, and redirecting anger that should point upward onto someone below us instead. The anger that should be aimed at real power, at the actual authority, at the mechanism of oppression itself, gets displaced onto whoever is weaker, more defenseless, easier to reach. That way, people stay angry without ever confronting the real source of their anger.

That is why the question of leadership is not only about the person in power; it is also about the anger, fear and sense of justice among the governed. When a society's anger never reaches its real target, those in power breathe easy, while people vent their own frustration by fighting each other instead. Dictators frequently exploit exactly this mechanism: they make the pressure from above invisible and inflame the conflict below. While people are busy being angry at one another, the system that put them in that position quietly absolves itself.

An idealist leader is someone who tries to stay true to a set of principles. The practical demands of politics may force compromises now and then, but those compromises are still justified by reference to the principles being defended. In other words, the means may change, but the end does not. That is what separates, in kind, an idealist leader from one who turns ideals into nothing more than a tool for gaining or holding onto power.

For the idealist leader, principle is a standard that stands above power. For the dictator, principle is a tool put in the service of power. The idealist leader feels bound to test his own actions against the values he claims to hold; the dictator uses those values to justify his actions instead. One is loyal to a principle, the other to power itself. That is why a dictator's real ideology is, more often than not, not the doctrine he claims to defend but power itself.

For the dictator, ideology is a means, not an end. He can invoke religion, nationalism, revolutionary rhetoric or the language of freedom, whichever suits the moment. He might sound like a democrat today, a nationalist tomorrow, and a conservative or a revolutionary the day after. His loyalty belongs to no particular idea — only to power, which is to say, to himself and his own interests. What defines a dictator, then, is not any specific ideology but the absolute nature of his hold on power.

Where the rule of law exists, the law is a higher principle that binds the ruler too. The rule of law means no one stands above it. Under dictatorship, law stops being a constraint on the ruler and becomes a tool he can rewrite whenever he wishes. Law then loses its predictability. People start living not by statute but by the will of the leader. This is where a dictator's true supremacy shows itself: he is not merely above the law, he has turned the law into an extension of his own will. In other words, law and legislation become instruments of oppression.

This looks like the political counterpart of a narcissistic personality structure. For the narcissistic subject, outer reality is not an independent realm that limits his desires; he experiences the outside world as an extension of his own grandiose self. The dictator turns the state into an extension of himself in the same way. The country merges with his person, the state with his self, the people with his own will. "I am the state" is not just a political claim; it is also the expression of a narcissistic structure. When he speaks of the state, the nation or the people, he really means himself. He cannot tolerate the independent existence of anyone else. That is why losing power, for him, is not simply a political defeat but the collapse of his narcissistic self.

That is why a dictator presents everything he does as historical necessity — what he does is what had to be done, there was no other option. What he says today is not true because it is correct; it is true because he said it. Tomorrow, when he says the exact opposite, the same absoluteness still holds. The measure of truth is no longer reality but the leader's will. The most basic law of dictatorship thus turns out, paradoxically, to be lawlessness. There is no fixed legal order, only a single will that can change at any moment.

Dictatorship flattens not only the law but the very way people think. Reality, by its nature, has many causes, many layers, and is often contradictory. Democratic politics has to accept that plurality. Dictatorship, by contrast, treats complexity as a threat, so it reduces many causes to one cause, many meanings to one meaning. Economic crises get blamed on "foreign powers," social opposition on "traitors," international criticism on people who are "jealous of us." The world stops being a complex reality that needs investigating and becomes a simple story explained from a single center.

This is why a "one-man regime" means more than the concentration of political power in a single hand. It also concentrates truth in that same hand. There is one owner of truth, one interpretation of history, one standard of morality, and the authority to decide what is true belongs to the leader alone. Political power thereby turns into moral absolutism.

These traits have historically been attributed to divine sovereignty. The dictator, too, presents himself not as an ordinary political actor but as history's chosen one, an exceptional figure whose fate is identified with that of the nation. In antiquity, many rulers claimed their legitimacy came from the gods, and some were seen as gods themselves or as their representatives on earth. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt are among the clearest examples. A pharaoh was not just a king who ruled the country but a sacred being who upheld the cosmic order. Obeying him was not only a political duty but a religious one.

What's interesting is that even though the figure of the pharaoh is mostly remembered today as a symbol of oppression and tyranny, people can feel not only hatred but also admiration toward such figures of absolute power. This echoes a childhood longing for a strong, all-capable, worry-free parent. Absolute authority produces fear, but it also offers the promise of security. That is why a dictator is not only feared; he can also become an idealized figure, seen as a savior.

At this point, the totalitarian mindset stops being merely a political regime and becomes a way of perceiving the world. Plural meanings give way to a single meaning, critical thought to obedience, dialogue to absolute truths. In the end, dictatorship does away with more than freedom; it also renders reality itself single-voiced, single-colored and single-centered.

Reality is no longer something to be discovered; it becomes something the leader declares. Dictatorship, then, is not just political domination — it is the subjugation of truth, thought and the symbolic order to the will of a single individual. A dictator does not want merely to run the state; he wants to determine how people think, what they believe, and how they perceive reality. This is where totalitarianism reveals its deepest and most dangerous dimension.

Please love your dictator…

There is another important break here. Past fascist dictators aimed to destroy their enemies; what those enemies thought of them, whether they liked or admired them, rarely mattered. For Hitler, it was not decisive how Jews, Roma, homosexuals, or other groups declared enemies of the regime felt about him. He did not want their love, only their disappearance. The enemy was not someone to be persuaded, but an entity to be eliminated. Today's dictatorships add another dimension. The dictator no longer wants only obedience; he wants to be loved. He even expects a kind of approval from the very people he has declared enemies, excluded, humiliated, and erased. He seeks sovereignty not just over bodies, but over minds and emotions. He is not content to determine what people do; he wants to determine what they feel, whom they love, whom they admire, what they believe.

This is why, for today's dictator, it is not enough for the opponent to fall silent; the opponent must secretly admire him, or at least acknowledge his greatness. The dictator becomes preoccupied with whether even his enemy likes him. For narcissistic power, the love of supporters alone is not enough — the resistance of the other must also be broken, and a place seized within his inner world. Here, the dictator's inner circle plays a key role. They paint him constantly in "good" colors. Cruelty becomes resolve, brutality becomes courage, lawlessness becomes necessity, arrogance becomes leadership, aggression becomes strength. So the dictator does not only idealize himself; his circle polishes and sanctifies his image without pause. As evil is painted over with good, naked tyranny begins to look like a historic duty, a national destiny, or an inevitable sacrifice.

This is why occupation is not limited to seizing public spaces, institutions, the press, or the law. What matters most is the occupation of the inner world. What is controlled is not only what people say, but what they feel. The dictator does not settle for controlling a person's outward behavior; he wants to penetrate their conscience, their capacity for admiration, their fear, their guilt, their sense of reality. The other must not merely be defeated; he must be forced to see his own defeat as just, and the dictator's superiority as natural. It is not enough that he submits — he must find meaning in his submission. It is not enough that he falls silent — he must mistake his silence for virtue. It is not enough that he is afraid — he must call his fear respect. Here dictatorship moves beyond raw violence into something more insidious, deeper, a crueler psychological domination. This is partly what lies behind the cases of Osman Kavala, Selahattin Demirtaş, Ekrem İmamoğlu, and others: "Accept me, admit you are defeated, and show my victory before the cameras." The dictator does not merely want to silence his rival; he wants to make the rival's defeat visible, to stamp his own victory onto that man's body, face, voice, and silence. It is not enough for the opponent to be in prison, pushed out of politics, or silenced — even his existence must be turned into a stage that proves the greatness of power. So the matter is not only punishment; it is a desire to expose, to bend, to break, and if possible, to secretly conquer from within. For the dictator, the greatest victory is not simply defeating the enemy, but forcing the enemy to accept defeat. More than that: the enemy must see his own defeat as fair, and the dictator's victory as natural, inevitable, and deserved. Here power seeks to seize not only a person's outer life, but his inner tribunal. It wants to silence the voice that says "I was wronged," and replace it with an inner voice that says "so I must have deserved it." This is where the deepest form of oppression begins: a person is not only crushed from outside, but forced to speak the oppressor's language within himself. The legitimization of the perpetrator's language…

This is why today's dictatorship does not settle for eliminating the opponent alone. It wants to read defeat on the opponent's face, admiration on the supporter's face, and consent on society's face. The photograph taken before the cameras, the stance in the courtroom, the image at the prison gate, the crowd in the square, the applause on television — none of these are merely political events. They are psychological stagings of power. The ritual "Balcony Speech" that follows elections carries several such meanings.

The dictator wants to see his victory not only at the ballot box, in court, or in the square, but inside people's inner world. It is not enough to say "you fear me"; he wants to make people say "we respect you." It is not enough to say "I silenced you"; he wants to produce the feeling "you admitted I was right." So his true desire is not only to hold power, but to rule over people's very sense of reality. At this point, the lie ceases to be merely a tool that hides the truth; it builds a new order that replaces reality itself. When lies are presented as truth again and again, they first blur the truth. People begin to struggle to tell right from wrong. Then the line between lie and truth erodes. After a while, the question is no longer "is this true?" but "did the leader say it?" In a dictatorship, truth is determined not by events themselves, but by how the leader names them. Today defeat can be presented as victory, crisis as success, poverty as sacrifice, repression as security, lawlessness as justice. Words are used not to explain reality, but to seize it. Language ceases to be a vehicle of truth; it becomes the paint of power. This is why, in a dictatorship, it is not only facts that are distorted — the very capacity to reach the truth is destroyed. After a while, a person loses not only what to believe, but what believing itself means. Even when a lie is known to be a lie, no truth can be set against it anymore, because truth is no longer common ground. From this point on, what the dictator says replaces reality. Truth ceases to be something investigated, debated, tested; it becomes something declared. The moment the dictator says "this is it," everyone is expected to act as if no other reality exists. Thus not only the difference between lie and truth, but truth itself disappears.

The darkest side of dictatorship appears here: people are not only forced to believe lies; they are trained to accept the loss of reality itself. Now what stands against the lie is not the truth, but another lie. The world ceases to be a place where right and wrong contend, and becomes a stage where whatever the powerful says is taken as real. This is why, in a dictatorship, the disappearance of the line between truth and lie is not merely an ordinary problem — it is a psychological and political catastrophe.

The occupation of the inner world…

The occupation of the inner world is a form of power that touches a person's most intimate place. The dictator reaches not only the body, but the inner voice. He wants to seize not only the public square, but the tribunal within a person's own self. Because once that inner tribunal falls silent, a person is defeated not only outside, but within. This is what takes dictatorship beyond a mere political regime of repression and turns it into an occupation of the inner world. The relationship between dictator and individual is no longer just one of ruler and ruled; it is also a relationship of psychological exploitation. The dictator demands not only people's behavior, but their emotions. He wants to decide whom they should mourn, what should make them happy, what should anger them, why and whom they should fear. He wants not only their votes, but their admiration. He demands not only their silence, but their inner consent.

When he asks for votes by saying "trust this brother of yours," what is being demanded is not only a vote. What is expected of the voter here is not simply to make a political choice, but to surrender emotionally as well. Trust here ceases to be part of a democratic contract; it becomes a call demanding obedience, allegiance, and unquestioning acceptance. The voter is expected not only to go to the ballot box, but to suspend their own doubt, withdraw their own judgment, and put the leader's will in place of their own. The dictator erases people's opinions and replaces them with his own expectation. Thus occupation, obedience, and submission are also ratified through consent. A person is not only ruled; they are called upon to show that they accept being ruled, even that they want it. This is where the psychological power of dictatorship lies: it presents force as love, fear as trust, submission as loyalty. It wants people not only to say "yes," but to experience that "yes" as if it came from within.

This is why propaganda in contemporary dictatorships does not work only to distort the truth. It also works to produce love, organize admiration, and build emotional attachment. The leader's image, voice, story, victimhood, heroism, and sacrifice are endlessly reproduced. The masses are not just governed this way; they become emotionally bound. The dictator establishes himself not only as head of state, but as a figure lodged in the people's inner world. In this sense, dictatorship goes beyond tyranny imposed from outside; it tries to build a colony inside the human mind. Thoughts, feelings, fears, admirations, and loyalties are occupied. People feel watched not only in public, but inside their own minds. They must monitor even what they think, what they feel, whom they love or do not love. Dictatorship thus exploits not only the individual's freedom, but also their inner space.

This is the most frightening part: the dictator wants not only obedience, but love while obeying. He does not settle for forcing acceptance of his cruelty; he wants that cruelty admired. He expects people not just to fall silent out of fear, but to submit out of love. Today's dictatorship is therefore not only bodily and political domination, but also a form of spiritual occupation.

Narcissism Again?

One of narcissism's clearest traits is an inability to give credit. The narcissist cannot sincerely acknowledge another person's worth, because he lives inside a psychic economy that constantly craves praise and begs for approval. Praising someone else feels, to him, like losing a share of his own. It is as if worth were a limited resource, and any compliment paid to another would be stolen from himself. A society's poverty of appreciation, its stinginess with praise, is tied to this same narcissism. As people struggle to acknowledge each other's work, beauty, achievement, and refinement, social relations increasingly come to rest on jealousy, rivalry, and devaluation.

Far from praising others, the narcissist devalues them. But the issue here is not that the other person is truly worthless. On the contrary, the other's worth threatens the narcissist. He tries to belittle others in order to secure his own sense of superiority. He believes that the smaller the other looks, the bigger and more valuable he himself will appear. For the narcissist, then, praise is not a feeling to be shared but capital to be fought over. Another's success is not something to celebrate but a wound that reminds him of his own lack. Praise, admiration, and appreciation stop being human gestures that circulate between people; he experiences them only as a right owed to himself.

A healthy psyche works the opposite way. A person who is genuinely confident is not afraid to praise someone else's success, because he knows another's light does not extinguish his own; it only multiplies the brightness. For the narcissist, though, giving praise feels like putting his own fragile sense of self at risk.