Despotism Justifies the Means: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."''|'''{{spoiler|O'Brien}}''', |''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four (Literature)|Nineteen Eighty Four]]''}}

Whether it is to eliminate the competition or to dissuade any future rebellion, you find that [[Take Over the World|World Domination]] is hard to achieve without crossing the [[Moral Event Horizon]], sometimes just because [[Evil Is Easy]]. Now, the world might turn out to be a better place with you running the show, but just to be clear -- thatclear—that's not why you are trying to do it. Nope -- youNope—you sacrificed your friends and family, your fellow countrymen (and theirs), and perhaps most of humanity in the name of social advancement. It might turn out to be a [[Crapsack World]] -- but—but hey, ''c'est la vie''.

== Anime &and Manga ==

* [[Complete Monster|Madara]] [[Magnificent Bastard|Uchiha]], theone currentof the [[Big Bad]]s of ''[[Naruto]]'', will occasionally try to say that his [[InstrumentalityAssimilation Plot|goal]] is for [[Utopia Justifies the Means|the greater good of the world]], but he freely admits that his actions are for an entirely selfish [[A God Am I|cause]] to anyone that he isn't trying to [[More Than Mind Control|manipulate]]. {{spoiler|Since he was exposed as not actually being Madara, he has started to claim that [[Utopia Justifies the Means]] really is his goal after all. Presumably, the selfish reasons belonged to the ''real'' Madara, who came up with the [[Evil Plan]] originally.}}

** His main motivation here was never actually power, though--backthough—back when he had truly selfish motives, he usually focused on true immortality, to replace the limited Time Lord kind. He messes with Earth like that partly because it's fun, but mostly because ''it will hurt the Doctor.'' 'Look, Theta! I can break your toys! Cry!'

* In ''[[Bio Shock 1BioShock]]'', for all Andrew Ryan's rhetoric about freedom, he certainly ended up resorting to a lot of totalitarian tactics. Up to and including political murder, kidnapping and slavery, and [[Mind Control]]. It's a pretty serious case of in-story [[Motive Decay]].

** In ''[[Bio ShockBioShock 2]]'' we discover that he was also quite willing to subvert his economic views just as willingly to keep his powerbase from crumbling.

* [[StarcraftStarCraft|Arcturus Mengsk]] let the Zerg kill an entire planet's poulation so he could create his ''Terran Dominion''.

* In ''[[Sinfest]]'', [https://web.archive.org/web/20130806043626/http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2281 Monique declares she will do this.]