Autocracy

We are currently in the midst of a whirlwind of changing and even inventing the names of things, changing their gender, being inclusive, feminist or all kinds of nonsense so that nothing is or resembles what it has always been. It seems that those of us who do not follow this fashion are extraterrestrial beings or people more typical of past centuries than of today.  

The Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (RAE) is at pains to warn us actively and passively about this phenomenon, how atypical and rude it is, the harm it does to our rich language and the problems of interpretation or translation that it entails, because Spanish is one of the four most widely spoken and richest languages in the world. 

Despite all this, we insist on reinterpreting or looking for new names, adaptations and strange inventions to define what has existed since antiquity, that which is clearly defined, without ambiguity or giving rise to different interpretations. 

Thus, in this mess and rummaging through the newspaper archives and networks, we can find an infinite number of definitions, names, adjectives and nicknames and even aliases that are used daily in all the media and the aforementioned networks to refer to our illustrious president, 'Antonio' Sánchez, as the Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, publicly called him in a personal slip of the tongue; because it is clear that at the time, he was much more concerned about the deal with Algeria to provide gas to Europe through him, than about the real name of the person he was facing and who did not convince him at all with what he had told him about his unique way of cutting the economic drain due to the price of energy.

I usually resist, on principle and not to waste time, to change or take for good other names for things, facts and behaviours, as it is enough to simply dig a little in my memory to find or remember the true term that best suits the thing or person in question. 

Today I would like to bring up in these pages one that is concise and which, in turn, is also defined in a clear, brief and simple way. I am referring to Autocracy, which comes from the Greek (autokrateia), which the RAE defines as "the form of government in which the will of a single person is the supreme law".

In short, and developing the brief definition of the concept a little further, it can be said that autocracy is nothing more than a system or form of government in which power and decision-making are always centred on a single, exclusive figure or person. 

Moreover, by full conviction and as a general rule, in such a system of government, the ruler who exercises it on a daily basis - whatever the circumstances, facts and relevant legislation - feels that he or she has no obligation or duty to answer for his or her actions to any kind of political, legal, moral and social control or mechanism.  

If he is ever reprimanded for it, he takes it at best as a mere recommendation, it does not change his attitude or lead him to apologise for what happened, nor does it guide his future actions to avoid repeating the same mistake or abuse.  

The autocrat tends to be a person who simply justifies everything; his idea is always the most brilliant, precise and necessary; he is never responsible for it; he is quick to look for other tangible scapegoats or circumstances of any kind as the reason why his calculations, forecasts and certainties are twisted when it is impossible to deny reality; but not because they were wrongly made, but because those external causes that appear unexpectedly and suddenly twist the plan that has been drawn up and adopted. 

It demands submission, followership and blind compliance with its ideas from everyone, its own and strangers, and tends to brand as traitors, blind or selfish politicians those who do not accept and support, even without reading, its precepts, norms or decisions.  

He is a great lover of self-hype, personal staging and exaggeration in all his actions and public interventions in which he generally changes his attitude frequently, threatens, reprimands and even throws in his latest idea, even if it was the result of a thoughtless conclusion while he was speaking in public. 

His acolytes, second-in-command, advisors and ministers who accompany him on his weary walk are often surprised by the witticism of the day or by changes in their boss's thinking. New ideas or changes that they often find out about, even from the press. 

In short, autocracy is defined by the power and supremacy of a single individual over the laws, the opposition, popular sentiment and even the group of "ministers" with whom he or she governs. In such a system or form of action, which is highly deified, the individual who exercises it has the absolute power to annul old or regulate new laws and regulations as he or she sees fit, regardless of the precedents in force on the subject or their transcendence.  

But undoubtedly, the saddest thing of all is that his followers and supporters, like true automatons or zombies, follow his orders with total and blind fanaticism, even though, relatively often, he tends to leave them abandoned as quickly as he changes his own ideas. 

Absolute monarchy and dictatorships are the main historical forms of autocracy. But they are not the only ones; lately they have also been appearing in the guise of full democracies, although in reality they only have the means to seize power by fiercely criticising those who previously held power and promising to be as open and clear as the water from a spring.  

I don't know if this form of government sounds familiar to you, very close and current. It does to me, and I hope that this reflection will help us to stop inventing new concepts and that in the future, everything and everyone will be called what they are or truly represent.

F. Javier Blasco, Colonel (r)