Politics & Power Quote by Oriana Fallaci

Fallaci’s line lands like a slap because it refuses the comforting distinction between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” rule. She collapses the moral hierarchy we like to build around authority: despots and presidents, generals and “beloved” leaders all end up in the same sentence, flattened into a single category. That rhetorical symmetry is the point. By pairing opposites, she implies that the costume changes but the body underneath stays the same.

The intent is not political nihilism so much as a journalist’s allergy to myth. Fallaci spent her career in proximity to men who believed history needed them personally, and she learned how quickly charm becomes coercion once the cameras leave. The subtext is that power doesn’t merely corrupt; it dehumanizes. Calling it “inhuman” reframes domination as something almost biological or mechanical, a force that uses people as material. “Hateful” is blunt on purpose: she’s rejecting the sophisticated language that often launders authority into “leadership,” “security,” or “destiny.”

Context matters because Fallaci’s skepticism was earned in the 20th century’s parade of strongmen, revolutions, and televised democracies, where liberation rhetoric frequently curdled into new hierarchies. Her phrasing also anticipates a modern media reality: a “beloved leader” can be manufactured, and affection can be weaponized. If there’s cynicism here, it’s targeted and tactical. She isn’t saying every individual in office is monstrous; she’s warning that the structure itself incentivizes cruelty, rewards certainty, and demands obedience. The provocation is meant to keep the reader uncomfortable, because comfort is how power reproduces.