Not so much Hitler in the bunker as Jim Jones in Jonestown
Back from Xarabank and on-a-loop news. Watching Gaddafi address a hysterical crowd from the battlements of his besieged city, I couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t so much the last days of Hitler as the last days of David Koresh of the Branch Davidians in Waco, 1993, or Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978.
There was a definite “it’s all over but we’re going out in a hail of bullets because we’ll never be taken alive” tone to that speech, and no, unless a lot was lost in translation, I don’t think I’m reading too much into it.
“Keep chanting and dancing,” he told his people. “Life is worthless without dignity. Life without people like you is worthless. Life without green flags has no value. Sing, dance and prepare yourselves.”
There won’t be any cauldron of spiked Koolaid in Green Square, but something tells me there will be Waco.
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Inevitably, his ‘shiber shiber, bieb bieb, dar dar, zenga zenga’ speech has entered popular culture.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=165935883456693&oid=124281667585509&comments
It was said here or maybe elsewhere that Gaddafi shows signs of drug abuse.
I know a couple of people diagnosed with various forms of psychosis. To someone who has never observed such conditions the behaviour of such people may be confused with the effects of prolonged drug abuse.
Gaddafi is simply mad.
His condition is not helped by the ass-lickers around him who agree to his every foible and help reinforce his psychotic beliefs. Usually people with psychosis such as schizophrenia are helped by medicines and very importantly by well trained psychiatrists who show them that the ‘reality’ inside their heads is not the reality outside. I suppose a doctor daring to contradict this madman would not practise for long.
Having said all this I am not sure what kind of state Libya will become after this dictator is killed. At least he managed to keep Islamic fundamentalism at bay and ‘governed’ over a country that was as close to secularism as one can get under those situations.
# Dery, Show us your evidence I am a psychiatrist myself and there is not one shred of evidence that Gaddafi is mad or a drug user (two different things – but you’d talking out of your hat aren’t you ?).
No-one who is mentally ill can hang on to power for 42 years, play off the Europeans like he did.
[Daphne – No, he’s just a psychopath. But you must admit the current scenario has qualities of Nero and Tiberius about it.]
Why is he wearing an abacus? Mela m’ghandux calculator?
X’ghamel daqshekk specjali f’hajtu biex ghandu dawk ir-“ribbons of merit” kollha?
Those are the flags of all the countries that licked his butt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChIWJqlJjvM
Dan isbah: muzika u lirika ta Alfred Sant u Raymond Agius
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc4yI20W1Ag&feature=related
Whilst Rome was burning Nero was playing his harp
The parallel comparison of Gaddaffi with Jim Jones seems entirely correct with regard to his type of psychosis and his ultimately destructive course. But I am still amazed that fear or greed should still enthrall Gaddafi’s supporters. The world as they know it is about to end for all of them.
There also were defectors and survivors from Jonestown, those who had the good luck or courage to act.
In the case of Gaddafi’s Libya, once the psychological liberation began with the people’s sense of their own empowerment, and their hope for ultimate victory became real in its evidence and human sacrifice, against the slaughterous rage of their jailor, their course towards liberation and freedom was set in motion.
Eventually, after Gaddafi is gone, there will be plenty of time for post-hoc psychological analysis. The disturbing part, along with the horrors and suffering of the Libyan people, is the fact that Gaddafi had his supporters, or even admirers, from outside Libya.
There seems not to have been the moral equivalent of a U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan from California, as in the Jonestown case, to pursue the cause of justice and freedom on behalf of the Libyan people.
In the aftermath, once Libya has been freed from its tyrant and the system of coercion he created (and we also have allowed for 42 years), the western world will have a large moral debt of reparation for its sins against the Libyan people.
Malta has its own historical legacy in this regard, along with Gaddafi’s long-standing blackmail of the western world over Libya’s oil.
Where in this long history have there been the voices and actions of moral courage raised against the tyrant? There have been legitimate reasons to fear the beast, if not for ourselves, for the potential destruction Gaddafi is still able to inflict upon those around him.
But the world he controls is shrinking fast.
At the very least for now, the world and its individuals must show solidarity with and for the whole of Libya, for those who have freed themselves already, and for those who await their liberation in Tripoli, which is the center of the end to come.
For our moral support is part of the positive equation that will bring an end to the conflict, once Gaddafi is dead (most likely) or brought to justice.
The final conflict and the suffering and human cost ahead are still so very worrying.
This monster knows that his days are numbered and like you, Daphne, I have this feeling that he’ll take a lot of Libyans down with him.
The only thing that could stop this mad man is a military intervention by the west.
The whacko prepares to meet his waco.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
For those who may be interested in examining the parallel between Jim Jones of Jonestown and Gaddafi regarding the Libyan People, I would recomend two sources. There is the authoritative archive: http://www.jonestown.sdsu.edu
Also there is the Natonal Public Radio documentary involving actual tapes from Jonestown, edited and produced as a 2 hour radio program: Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown. It may be found at: http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/jonestown.html