Skip to main content

Search from vocabulary

Content language

Concept information

Preferred term

cult of personality  

Definition

  • Cult of personality refers to the common practice among twentieth-century dictatorships of promoting religious types of devotion to their national leader. As described in George Orwell's novel 1984, through skillful use of the mass media and pervasive secret police monitoring, a modern state can create fanatical mass adulation of its leader on a scale not possible in premodern dictatorships. [Source: The Encyclopedia of Political Science; Cult of Personality]

Broader concept

Belongs to group

URI

https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/cult_of_personality

Download this concept: