Masses: Collaborator of Dictatorship?
By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
What differentiates modern dictatorship from pre-modern despotism? Here is an answer: despotism in the past did not need massive backing from below, but today's dictatorship relies on the support of the masses.
For Im Ji-hyun, a history professor at the Hanyang University, the masses have been an ``active collaborator'' _ or at least a ``silent assenter'' _ of dictatorship, rather than a ``victim'' or a ``passive collaborator.''
And this simple assumption became the starting point of the ``mass dictatorship'' project, which the 48-year-old scholar and his colleagues launched in late 2002. In a country often dubbed as a ``colony of theories,'' it was an achievement of originality.
Classical theories on dictatorship largely portray the masses as being persecuted by evil dictators. But the mass dictatorship theory defines the masses as the sympathizer with the dictatorship.
While the theory elevated the ordinary people from the object of suppression and obedience to the level of the subject, it also put some responsibility on them for the past dictatorship.
Collaborator of Dictatorship
In ``Mass Dictatorship 1: Between Coercion & Consent'' in 2004, Im first presented the concept of mass dictatorship in publicized form, creating a stir in academic circles.
He came up with ``Mass Dictatorship 2: Political Religion & Hegemony'' the following year to look into the religious and mystic aspects of the politics that won the public frenzy for the modern dictatorship, adding fuel to the heated debates going on in the country.
Released last month, ``Mass Dictatorship 3: Desire & Illusion in History of Everyday Life'' is the culmination of the works of the professor and his colleagues. They now focus on the process, through which the mass dictatorship system takes roots in the masses.
While the previous two books tried to clarify the mechanism of a mass dictatorship system through the production of the structure of the social consent, the latest volume peeps into the ``history of everyday life'' to examine other aspects.
Im and other co-authors say that the reality of the complex and contradictory lives of the masses cannot be understood properly only through the eyes of power, which sticks to the dichotomy of rule and resistance.
And, for that purpose, about 20 scholars from foreign countries including Alf Ludtke, Peter Lambert, Michael Wildt, Michael Schoenhals, Charles Armstrong and Harald Dehne joined the Hanyang University team led by Im.
History of Everyday Life
Alf Ludtke, a history professor at the University of Erfurt in Germany, describes the everyday life of the masses with the notion ``meandering'' to depict their constant vacillation between resistance and acceptance.
When the Nazis chose the resort city of Vichy as the temporary capital of France in 1940, many hotel owners and other people running hot spring resorts and restaurants in the city hailed the decision.
Some residents even actively provided secret information to the Nazi government on communists and socialists who resisted against the regime. Abundant anonymous letters flooded the government complex over the four years.
Different from the common perception that the Nazis used their secret police to bring the people under strict surveillance, it was everyday reports by the ordinary people that propped up the Nazi dictatorship.
Studies on dictatorship such as Nazism and Fascism over the past decades indicates that voluntary cooperation and consent on the part of the masses was enormous. And it meant a crisis for the concept ``resistant workers,'' a foundation of those who study the history of the people.
Situations were not very different on the Korean Peninsula. Since the division in 1953 after a fratricidal war, ``Great Leader'' Kim Il-sung reigned the Stalinist North until early 1990s and iron-fisted dictator Park Chung-hee ruled the capitalist South until late 1970s.
A sense of embarrassment that German scholars must have felt might not differ from the feeling of South Korean scholars who witness the ``Park Chung-hee Syndrome,'' a nostalgia for the dictatorial era that has recently spread among some people here.
Im has been at the center of criticism from progressive scholars, who claimed that the mass dictatorship concept only justifies dictatorial regimes. But Im and his colleagues argue that they are closing their eyes to the evidence.
``An honest appreciation of the meandering life of the people would create a crack in the hegemony of mass dictatorship that appears to be strong and present a shortcut to an exit out of it,'' Im said. ``So this book is not a completion but a fresh start.''