Cult of Personality

A cult of personality or personality cult arises when a country's leader uses mass media to create a larger-than-life public image through unquestioning flattery and praise.

Personality cults are mostly common in regimes with totalitarian systems of government. (Animal Farm is one of them). The main reason why leaders create a cult of personality is to obtain undying devotion and blind loyalty of the people.

Stalin, Hitler, Lenin, Franco, Marcos, Kim ll-Sung and Kim Jong-ll were leaders who were presented as infallible and god like. For example, portraits of them were hung in public buildings and poems were made to praise them. This is similar to what happened in Animal Farm when Napoleon had portraits of himself pasted on the wall and a poem made for him.

For instance, Stalin created a cult of personality in the Soviet Union around both himself and Lenin. Numerous towns and villages were renamed after him.

There are 4 main ways Stalin’s cult of personality was created:

1) He censored anything that might reflect badly on himself

2) He made use of propaganda - he hung up pictures of himself, built statues, places named after him

3) Word of mouth: Once the people were influenced by him, parents would teach their children that Stalin was ‘the wisest man of the age’ and make them think that Stalin was a great leader, which is also something like brainwashing.

4) History books and photographs were changed to make him the hero of the Revolution, and he did not include Trotsky's name.

His cult of personality reached new levels during the Great Patriotic War, with Stalin's name included in the new Soviet national anthem. Stalin became the focus of literature, poetry, music, paintings and film, exhibiting fawning devotion, crediting Stalin with almost god-like qualities, and suggesting he single-handedly won the Second World War.

This is similar to Animal Farm where Napoleon also had a cult of personality. He "approved of the poem and caused it to be inscribed on the wall of the big farm, at the opposite end from the Seven Commandments." Moreover, the poem was surrounded by a "portrait of Napoleon". Like Stalin, whom the people credited with god-like qualities, "it had become common for the animals to give Napoleon credit for every successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune ". This shows that Napoleon has a cult of personality and uses the mass media to brainwash the common animals.

The mass media can have a very great effect on the common people as it can sort of control the people, hence, leaders often use it.