When crowds miss the structure, dictators tear it down

Choi Jin-seok
The author is a Principal of the Saemal Saemomjit School.
There is a phrase in classical Chinese: "The rise and fall of the world rests with ordinary people." It means a nation's fate is shaped by common citizens. But the same citizens can also help destroy it. The "foolish crowd" is not simply a group with little knowledge. It is a group that has given up thinking for itself and does not even realize its intellectual growth has stopped. Its fatal weakness is that it cannot see structure and remains trapped in visible phenomena.

The same difference appears when people look at a house. Someone with a low level of awareness is captivated by flashy lighting and wallpaper. Someone who understands the essence of a house looks instead at the frame and hardware hidden behind the walls. When mold appears on wallpaper, the foolish crowd simply pastes new wallpaper over it. A person with deeper awareness looks for structural defects such as condensation or leaking pipes. Every great force in the world comes not from phenomena but from structure. To be intelligent is to extract the signal of structure from the noise of appearances. The fact that greater wealth goes not to the person who plants and harvests onions but to the one who controls the distribution system also shows the overwhelming power of structure.
History shows how a crowd that cannot see structure damages the pillars of the national house. The Roman Republic is a leading example. After overthrowing a monarchy, Rome built a republic whose essential hardware was the dispersal of power and limits on terms of office. But as small farmers collapsed and inequality deepened, the public grew sick of complex and tedious legal procedures. They longed for a single powerful figure who could satisfy their hunger and quell their anger at once. Julius Caesar emerged in that moment. He distributed land to poor citizens and offered dazzling gladiator games, presenting himself as the people's savior.
But those who destroy most thoroughly do not rush. Caesar did not make the crude mistake of seizing a crown in one move. Using the crowd's fervent applause as his engine, he relied on the dictatorship, an office originally allowed only for six months in a state emergency. The system was supposed to return to normal once the emergency ended. Instead, he gradually extended his term in the name of crisis. In 44 B.C., he became dictator for life and tightened his grip on the republic. Outwardly, he used an existing title, but in substance, he had become an absolute ruler. It was as if a carpenter hired to repair a house had cut away its pillars and turned them into his own chair.
What is striking is that even this destruction of structure proceeded under constitutional forms. The Senate and the popular assemblies still appeared to confer authority. To the foolish crowd, the process looked like a just and orderly reform. But once the system came to depend entirely on one man's goodwill and ability, Rome began to lose the civic pride of the republic and to turn into a vast and corrupt bureaucratic state that entrusted its fate to an emperor's whims.

The collapse of the Weimar Republic, once praised as one of the most democratic systems of modern times, offers an even more refined example of structural destruction. The Weimar Constitution was progressive, but it contained a fatal flaw in Article 48, which granted the president emergency powers. Hitler offered suffering Germans simple promises: a strong Germany and bread. While the public was intoxicated by Nazi agitation and splendid uniforms, he used Article 48 as a stepping stone and passed the Enabling Act, which handed parliament's legislative power to the government. With that, the minimum structures of restraint, including judicial independence and press freedom, evaporated. In the empty space left by the vanished structure, only the will of a deranged leader remained, and that led to one of history's greatest tragedies.
Thos...