Is Charisma a Chimera?

Where Perception Is Reality

A chimera.

I ran across the following paragraph on page 13 of Ruth Ben-Ghiat's Strongmen (2020). 

"In popular culture, the strongman's brand of charisma is often depicted as a spellbinding force that makes people do his bidding. Yet theorist Max Weber made it clear a century ago that charisma, which he defined as the attribution of 'supernatural, superhuman, or at least especially exceptional powers or qualities' to an 'individual personality,' exists mostly in the eye of the beholder. Most strongmen have uncommon powers of persuasion. Their followers and collaborators are the ones to 'make' their reputations, though, by acknowledging their abilities. This makes the leader's charismatic authority inherently unstable. His aura of specialness can dissipate if public opinion changes, leaving him without any legitimacy, unlike in dynastic and other forms of authority. That is why authoritarian states invest in leader cults and why they increase their use of censorship and repression if the leader's hold on his people starts to disintegrate." (Footnote omitted.) 

The original chimera was a mythical beast who created chaos in a neighborhood on the southwest coast of what is now Turkey. It appears that the chimera could be unpleasantly aggressive to humans and was fond of dining on farmers' livestock. (The ancient writer Apollodorus describes the chimera. Click here for the text in English.)

In modern usage, the word chimera is basically a synonym for illusion. Or, as one dictionary puts it, "a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve."

For more, see Aatish Taseer, "Why the Chimera Is the Monster for Our Uncertain Age," New York Times, February 16, 2023. 

Perhaps, despite his well-advertised charisma, the Former Guy is a chimera. And perhaps, on a deeper level, charisma has always been a chimera.

The chimera pictured above is Etruscan, from about 400 B.C. It is located in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Florence. The photograph is from Wikimedia Commons. 

See also Angry and Ridiculous, On Demagogues, How the Ship Sinks, Little Karl, What the Greeks Knew.