Last year, the government of Burma moved. It just picked up all
its personnel and left Rangoon for a fortified hideout city in the
hills. It was, however, kind enough to leave a note for the press,
explaining that it was moving, and leaving a fax number at which it
could now be reached.
It was a strange decision, and one made for a very strange
reason — even among the odd reasons of totalitarian governments.
Burma is, of course, a very bad sort of place, run by a military
junta which tortures and imprisons those who call for democracy,
and which has been, shall we say, less than energetic in its
efforts to suppress the country’s rampant drug traffic. Burma’s
government may have some sound political reasons for making that
move. But experts also note that they also get policy advice from
fortune tellers, which is where this bizarre idea of relocating the
nation’s capital may have come from. General Ne Win, a past
dictator, is “said to have is once said to have decided to change
the direction of traffic overnight [as a result of a fortune
teller],” according to Burma expert Joseph Silverstein.
While getting national policy advice from the occult sounds
weird, it is, sad to say, not exactly unusual. And the dabblings of
a couple of American first ladies notwithstanding, it is usually
the province of the most evil and repressive dictatorships in the
world.
Liberia’s former president Charles Taylor was recently captured
and will face trials for his war crimes, which are too many and too
horrendous to detail. But the history of Liberia’s brutal civil war
showed that Taylor and his rivals committed many atrocities out of
a voodoo-like belief that they could extract “power” from the
enemies they killed.
While these chiefs were certainly aware of the political power
this fearsome reputation gave them, there is evidence that they
really believed in it. When one of Taylor’s rivals was murdered and
partially eaten, he was found to be wearing several charms to ward
off evil spirits — one, reportedly, inside his rectum. Apparently,
they were not effective. According to some reports (and make of
these what you will) Saddam Hussein, whose mother was a fortune teller and who is said to be
obsessed with the occult, also carries a
magic charm with him for similar reasons.
A little closer to home, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega also
waged a spiritual warfare against his enemies. When American
journalist Frederick Kempe was asking questions around Panama City
to write an incriminating book about Noriega, he received a visit
from Noriega’s personal magician, who tried to buy him off. When
Kempe refused the offer, he received a ghastly voodoogram: a dead
bloody animal placed under his hotel room’s pillow.
Once again, if Noriega exploited this reputation for his
affinity with dark powers for political ends, there is evidence
that he really believed in it. When Panama was overtaken in 1990,
and a manhunt for Noriega ensued, American troops discovered one of
his hideouts featured a bloody voodoo altar.
Finally, it’s worth pointing out that even Hitler really did
seek out occult advice during his rise to power. The degree to
which he did so has been exaggerated by some accounts, but it is
undeniable that Hitler’s rise to power was marked by a willingness
to consult with the occult. In particular, his reliance on a
(Jewish) medium named Erik Hanussen showed Hitler’s capacity for
self-deception:
…if the average Berliner thought Hanussen’s
prognostication absurd, Hitler certainly didn’t. When Hanussen came
to him that cold day in January, the Nazi leader was filled with
dread anticipation, and kept the meeting secret should the results
be negative. Hanussen placed Hitler on a seat in the middle of the
room, examined his hands, counted the bumps on his head and sank
into a mystical trance. The words he spoke filled the Fuhrer with
elation, says Gordon.
“I see victory for you,” Hanussen said. “It cannot be
stopped.”
What does all this mean? As a layman, it is out of my bailiwick to
speak with any authority about whatever spiritual battles might
rage behind these incidents. But as a student of politics, I feel a
bit more confident in diagnosing a worldly root to them. Hitler,
Charles Taylor, Noriega, the Burmese Warlords — all of them were,
or are, obsessed with power, control, and information. The states
they ran (or run) employed spies, violence, and intrigue to gather
information and subjugate their rivals. But for their paranoid
minds, these earthly evils were not enough. They sought out
knowledge and control elsewhere.
Not just ambition, but pride led them into the strange ways they
walked. Their desire for power was so great that it led these
ruthless, calculating men to delude themselves into believing an
illusion — that they were entitled to a special, secret knowledge.
Unsatisfied with the power they seized in this world, they reached
also for the illusory power of the next.
Evil runs to meet people like that. I doubt they had trouble
finding spiritualist con-men who told them what they wanted to
hear, perhaps leavening their parlor tricks with just enough palace
gossip and guesswork to make their services seem valuable. One of
these charlatans, I have heard, showed up in the Garden of Eden,
whispering to Eve that God had lied to her about the fruit of the
tree in the midst of the Garden, and that “in the day ye eat
thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as
gods…”
These rulers who defied their created nature brought nothing but
war and destruction into the world, and with the exception of the
unresolved issue of Burma, they have come to violent or ignominious
ends. Now the free world finds itself at war with another such
violent and unnatural creed: fundamentalist, radical Islam, the
bizarre death-cult which fetishizes suicide bombings and films
grisly ritualized murder videos to sustain its acolytes. Let us
hope it we have the resolve to send al Qaeda’s nightmarish
mesmerists back to the hell from which they came.
