The Breach of Citizens’ Loyalty: A Bitter Message to Governments
In the world of governments and people in the 21st century, many of us are caught by governments and their propaganda not only exploiting the integrity of our brain but also putting their hands in our pockets while risking our collective coexistence with other nations.
It is hard not to feel nauseous, seeing Trump, Khamenei, Netanyahu, Xi Ji Pin, Putin, Kim Jon, Ung, Orban or similar narcissists put themselves on a pedestal all the while betraying us in our highest ideals as people. State apparatuses and politicians are obliged to respect us and give us a guarantee of their loyalty so that we could grant them loyalty as well. But brazen politicians and governments are threatening, sometimes even violating, the very core of our humanness, which lies in loyalty and trust.
In undemocratic systems, it is true that people have no choice or say in the form of rulership they find themselves under and consequently, the degree of loyalty that citizens feel towards their government is questionable and volatile; people are in a position of powerlessness and their loyalty is frankly immaterial to the government. In contrast, loyalty in democratic societies is a privilege which people voluntarily extend to their government and its politicians, based on a sense of reciprocal trust and alignment. But when governments and politicians go rogue, the privilege of trust and loyalty which had been granted by the citizen as a sign of the compact between a people and their government loosens, and may even rupture. Examples of breakdowns of citizen loyalty are not difficult to find these days, and the long-term effects remain to be seen.
In recent months, we witnessed one such massive breach of loyalty from citizens against their own government when hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of people in Iran spied for Israel, enabling Israel to carry out a lethal and destructive military attack against their own country, the Islamic regime. Governing by brute force has kept this regime blind, like so many others before it, and such drastic citizen behavior shows that this regime was (and still is) oblivious to the vital and critical importance of maintaining the respect and loyalty of its citizenry. It is an example of a totalitarian regime transitioning from power neurosis to political psychosis. (see my essay: “Political Psychiatry: from Sanity to Power Neurosis to Political Psychosis” https://secondenlightenment.net/political-psychiatry/). Smart governments detect the cracks in their own wrongdoings and catch the leaks in people’s loyalty towards the government before the whole roof of power falls over their heads, perhaps in the form of a revolution - or in a treacherous siding with the enemy.
The German-American political philosopher Hannah Arendt observed this about totalitarian regimes:“Totalitarian regimes often present a facade of normalcy before their collapse, masking the underlying terror and instability. This ‘normalcy’ can create a sense of complacency, making it difficult for people to recognize the danger until it's too late.” The Islamic Republic is living out Hannah Arendt’s formulation as we speak.
The United States is fast becoming another case study of loyalty gone awry. We sometimes find ourselves caught in an odd way between feeling loyalty while also bearing insults, and in the US the loyalty of citizens is being taken for granted, and the insults are on the rise. The government is supposed to be the gatekeeper of reciprocal loyalty, yet it treats its people to lies and insults often, whether lying about the Iraq war and countless other perjuries, to the recent undignified mass firings of government employees after their years of dedication and work for the establishment. There is no specific data available about the overall level of people’s loyalty to the government in the US, but examples abound of situations where citizens’ loyalty is being tossed aside, severely tested, undermined, or taken for granted. In one symbol of such suspicion growing within an institution, in mid-July 2025 the F.B.I. started giving polygraph tests to its agents to assess their loyalty to the F.B.I. and its director. (see New York Times article: “The F.B.I. is Using Polygraphs to Test Officials’ Loyalty”, July 11, 2025).
There is genuine loyalty, and then there is manufactured loyalty. We are well aware that government propaganda machines can manufacture a false sense of loyalty. In the 1920s, Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, came to the US. He introduced his uncle’s psychoanalytical approach to the American marketing and advertising realm, influencing consumerism campaigns such as the one designed to promote women’s smoking. Bernays did his ‘magic’ by tapping into the subconscious mind of the people, believing that the temptations of the subconscious defeat the rational mind. It worked, and his expertise evolved; he brought advertising into political campaigns and worked for the C.I.A. and the Office of War Information, among other such clients focusing on molding public opinion and engineering consent (see the 2002 BBC documentary: “The Century of the Self”). He went from promoting cigarettes to promoting government and selling war. Eventually known as the ‘father of public relations,’ Bernays tapped into tribal thinking, using psychoanalytical techniques to manufacture patriotism and a blind love for the flag, even in those Americans who faced neglect or mistreatment by the government. Such manufactured loyalty is hard to miss in political campaigns, which seem more like an advertisement for the candidates than welfare for the nation. The tribal nature of political messages takes over a genuine and trustworthy accord between citizens and government leaders.
Although it is an undemocratic system, in the same vein of ‘saying one thing and doing another,’ a group of Polit bureau rulers in China preach egalitarianism and communism on one hand and yet exploit the lives of 1.5 billion people on the other, without giving them the freedom they deserve. People’s loyalty is traded for basic needs such as schools, clinics, sanitation and affordable consumer products; Chinese political elites thus exonerate themselves from the responsibility of electoral and democratic governance. Loyalty is expected under the seductive national propaganda about China’s economic and technological miracles and global superiority, but it is not genuine and durable. For eons of human civilization, people have welcomed handouts in exchange for their loyalty, but this manufactured and superficial loyalty does not come from the heart. One cannot buy unlimited and timeless loyalty.
Another case of manufactured loyalty is the over scenario of Israel. In the political and human catastrophe of WWII and the Holocaust, an Israeli identity and loyalty was created. Modern, wealthy and educated Jews from various Western and advanced countries emigrated to Israel, and gave their allegiance to a common identity and to a land that ancient Hebrews considered ‘their’ promised land. And yet, in his book The Invention of Jewish People (Hebrew edition 2008, English translation 2009), the Israeli scholar Shlomo Sand postulates that the invention of Jewish identity as “one people” was undertaken by the Europeans who extracted material from mythical sources connecting all Jews to a “holy” land – despite the disconnected and dissimilar backgrounds of the people who came there. This invention of Jewish identity has manufactured some kind of biblical loyalty to the land and nation. No matter how costly and dangerous it has become in the 21st century, or how flawed the argument, every citizen has had to abide by and be faithful to this narrative. Today’s politics of war and archaic religious claims do not seduce the Israelis who are secular thinkers, atheists, and orthodox Jews, the many who do not agree with the Zionist ideology, not to mention those who oppose the tenuous policy of Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinian state.
The government machinery is not so sure that the vague ideas of Hebrew traditions and biblical myths will continue to satisfy the younger generations who want to feel they are living under an umbrella of peace, not under missiles. The issue today is no longer about a threat against Judaism and Jewish people; it’s about a focus on land, weapons, domination and expansionism that is supported by the manufactured loyalty to a fabricated collective identity. Israel, and the world, cannot afford to have a population whose loyalty is divided between having a peaceful nation and a nation that engages in a confusing agenda of manipulation and expansion.
Self-intoxicated, power-hungry rulers and regimes ignore the issue of their citizens’ loyalty at great cost to their own and the nation’s stability and security. The degradation of the loyalty of the citizens is so insidious that blind rulers and governments may not detect or understand it - until the people indignantly revoke the privilege of their loyalty, to unknown outcomes.
In chapter 17 of the 2600-year-old Chinese text the Dao De Ching, a concise booklet of political and philosophical commentary, author Laozi offers four pithy categorizations of loyalty relationships between governments and their rulers, starting with the most elevated rulers and governments and ending with the lowest, basest type:
The supreme rulers are barely known by their subjects.
The lesser are loved and praised.
The even lesser are feared.
The least are despised.
True, or “supreme” governments are not overbearing, nor are they at war. There is a joint interplay of respect, trust and dynamic collaboration between the people and their government. There is dynamic cooperation, no matter how imperfect the system. Citizens receive their fair share of the government’s income in the form of public healthcare, housing, etc., supporting their ability to live a decent life in the society, and as a result there is a reciprocal sense of loyalty from the general citizens as they do their part, paying their taxes willingly, and without trying to cheat the government.
The downgraded, “lesser” version is when people are obliged to venerate their leaders and feel they must always love and praise and never criticize. They worship their national flag. They threaten anyone who does not profess such love of country, and sometimes eventually even kill for their ‘beloved’ land and their so-called freedom.
“Even lesser” are the states where people fear their police, the politicians, the secret services and the justice system, and feel a near-constant sense of alarm. They can hardly relax and feel afraid of the government which should in fact be there to protect and support them.
And “the least”, the lowest of regimes and dictators, are those where not only do people feel no loyalty, they despise the government and its rulers. Such a breach of loyalty between a regime and its people is inevitably doomed to face irreversible consequences, such as what we have witnessed/are witnessing in Iran and elsewhere in our modern and ancient sociopolitical histories.
We can ask ourselves right now: which one of these descriptions would we each apply to our own governments, today?
To all governments and rulers of today, we advise: Do not undervalue the loyalty of your citizens. Show respect for all human rights and all human life. Make it possible for your citizens to live a decent, dignified and empowered life. Ensure for your people healthcare, housing and a fair share of wealth. And, most of all: do not be deceived by the deceptive façade of ‘normalcy.’
Mostafa Vaziri, MD, PhD
July 13, 2025