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]]''}}

 

 

And some villains just want to take over.

** Most Disney villains are like this, actually. [[The Little Mermaid (Disney)|Ursula/Morgana]] and [[Aladdin (Disney)|Jafar]], for example, care nothing less than becoming ruler, and have absolutely no qualms of backstabbing their current ruler, murdering people (or [[Fate Worse Than Death|worse]], in the case of Ursula), or killing anyone in their way.

* The only thing Prince Charming did with Far Far Away once conquering it in ''[[Shrek (Animation)|Shrek]] the Third'' was force everybody to watch a musical he wrote and starred in about what a great person he thought he was. Perhaps if his mother was still around he would have been able to come up with some kind of government policy.

 

 

* Not to mention ''[[Macbeth]]'', a loyal general that murders the King to replace him.

* And the title character of ''[[Richard III]]'' (in ''Shakespeare,'' no matter what you think of his [[Real Life]] counterpart) kills a great many people in order to become King of England, but is at a loss for what to do once he gets there (other than killing ''more'' people so he can ''stay'' there).

* [[The Lord of the Rings|Sauron]] started out motivated by [[Utopia Justifies the Means]], but while his goal was always to create order, by the time the novel takes place he's suffered [[Motive Decay]] so that his fundamental goal was to perpetuate his own power. He did not, however, fall as far as the ''original'' Dark Lord, Morgoth, who went completely into [[Dystopia Justifies the Means]]- while cruelty was a tool for Sauron, it became an end itself for his master.

 

 

== Western Animation ==

** [[T He]] Fire Lord between, Azulon, who presided over the chronological bulk of the century war, is never given any motivations. His role in the story is to be cold and unpleasant and to die, and ''that's'' in a flashback. Mind, Sozin suffered pretty stiff [[Motive Decay]], but it was still from "unite the world and share the blessings of our Golden Age with everyone" to "conquer the fucking world whether my abandoning turncoat of a superpowered best friend likes it or not, no matter what it takes."

*** The actual ruling part was never the issue for him, and anything besides conquering may have gotten a little vague by the time he was actually free to make his ultimate move.