{"id":43136,"date":"2023-05-24T14:13:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-24T14:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com"},"modified":"2024-12-02T18:26:05","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T18:26:05","slug":"the-secret-history-and-strange-future-of-charisma","status":"publish","type":"wpm-article","link":"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/the-secret-history-and-strange-future-of-charisma","title":{"rendered":"The Secret History And Strange Future Of Charisma"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 1929, one of Germany\u2019s national newspapers ran a picture story featuring globally influential people who, the headline proclaimed, \u201chave become legends.\u201d It included the former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin and India\u2019s anti-colonialist leader Mahatma Gandhi. Alongside them was a picture of a long-since-forgotten German poet. His name was Stefan George, but to those under his influence he was known as \u201cMaster.\u201d<\/p><div>\n    <iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"noa-web-audio-player\"\n            style=\"border: none\"\n            src=\"https:\/\/embed-player.newsoveraudio.com\/v4?key=n0e13g&#038;id=https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/the-secret-history-and-strange-future-of-charisma\/&#038;bgColor=F3F3F3&#038;color=6D6D6D&#038;progressBgColor=F7F7F7&#038;progressBorderColor=6D6D6D&#038;playColor=F3F3F3&#038;titleColor=383D3D&#038;timeColor=6D6D6D&#038;speedColor=6D6D6D&#038;noaLinkColor=6D6D6D&#038;noaLinkHighlightColor=039BE5\"\n            width=\"100%\" height=\"110px\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><p>George was 61 years old that year, had no fixed abode and very little was known of his personal life and past. But that didn\u2019t matter to his followers; to them he was something more than human: \u201ca cosmic ego,\u201d \u201ca mind brooding upon its own being.\u201d Against the backdrop of Weimar Germany \u2014 traumatized by postwar humiliation and the collapse of faith in traditional political and cultural institutions \u2014 George preached an alternate reality through books of poetry. His words swam in oceans of irrationalism: of pagan gods, ancient destinies and a \u201cspiritual empire\u201d he called \u201cSecret Germany\u201d bubbling beneath the surface of normal life. In essence, George dreamed of that terribly persistent political fantasy: a future inspired by the past. He wanted to make Germany great again.<\/p><p>George dazzled Germans on all sides of the political spectrum (although many, with regret, would later distance themselves). Walter Benjamin loitered for hours around the parks of Heidelberg that he knew the poet frequented, hoping to catch sight of him. \u201cI am converting to Stefan George,\u201d wrote a young Bertolt Brecht in his diary. The economist Kurt Singer declared in a letter to the philosopher Martin Buber: \u201cNo man today embodies the divine more purely and creatively than George.\u201d<\/p><p>Max Weber, one of the founding fathers of sociology, met Stefan George in 1910 and immediately became curious. He didn\u2019t buy George\u2019s message \u2014 he felt he served \u201cother gods\u201d \u2014 but was fascinated by the bizarre hold he seemed to have over his followers. At a conference in Frankfurt, he described the \u201ccult\u201d that was growing around him as a \u201cmodern religious sect\u201d that was united by what he described as \u201cartistic world feelings.\u201d In June that year, he wrote a letter to one of his students in which he described George as having \u201cthe traits of true greatness with others that almost verge on the grotesque,\u201d and rekindled a particularly rare word to capture what he was witnessing: charisma.<\/p><p>At the time, charisma was an obscure religious concept used mostly in the depths of Christian theology. It had featured almost 2,000 years earlier in the New Testament writings of Paul to describe figures like Jesus and Moses who\u2019d been imbued with God\u2019s power or grace. Paul had borrowed it from the Ancient Greek word \u201ccharis,\u201d which more generally denoted someone blessed with the gift of grace. Weber thought charisma shouldn\u2019t be restricted to the early days of Christianity, but rather was a concept that explained a far wider social phenomenon, and he would use it more than a thousand times in his writings. He saw charisma echoing throughout culture and politics, past and present, and especially loudly in the life of Stefan George.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;I knew: This man is doing me violence \u2014 but I was no longer strong enough. I kissed the hand he offered and with choking voice uttered: \u2018Master, what shall I do?\u2019&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n          <footer class=\"quote__author\">\u2014 Ernst Gl\u00f6ckner<\/footer>\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/43136\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"I knew: This man is doing me violence \u2014 but I was no longer strong enough. I kissed the hand he offered and with choking voice uttered: \u2018Master, what shall I do?\u2019\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>It certainly helped that George was striking to look at: eerily tall with pale blueish-white skin and a strong, bony face. His sunken eyes held deep blue irises and his hair, a big white mop, was always combed backward. He often dressed in long priest-like frock coats, and not one photo ever shows him smiling. At dimly lit and exclusive readings, he recited his poems in a chant-like style with a deep and commanding voice. He despised the democracy of Weimar Germany, cursed the rationality and soullessness of modernity and blamed capitalism for the destruction of social and private life. Instead, years before Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power, he foresaw a violent reckoning that would result in the rise of a messianic \u201cfuhrer\u201d and a \u201cnew reich.\u201d<\/p><p>Many were immediately entranced by George, others unnerved. As the Notre Dame historian Robert Norton described in his book \u201cSecret Germany,\u201d Ernst Bertram was left haunted by their meeting \u2014 \u201ca werewolf!\u201d he wrote. Bertram\u2019s partner, Ernst Gl\u00f6ckner, on the other hand, described his first encounter with George as \u201cterrible, indescribable, blissful, vile \u2026 with many fine shivers of happiness, with as many glances into an infinite abyss.\u201d Reflecting on how he was overcome by George\u2019s force of personality, Gl\u00f6ckner wrote: \u201cI knew: This man is doing me violence \u2014 but I was no longer strong enough. I kissed the hand he offered and with choking voice uttered: \u2018Master, what shall I do?\u2019\u201d<\/p><p>As German democracy began to crumble under the pressure of rebellions and hyperinflation, George\u2019s prophecy increased in potency. He became a craze among the educated youth, and a select few were chosen to join his inner circle of \u201cdisciples.\u201d The George-Kreis or George Circle, as it came to be known, included eminent writers, poets and historians like Friedrich Gundolf, Ernst Kantorowicz, Max Kommerell, Ernst Morwitz and Friedrich Wolters; aristocrats like brothers Berthold, Alexander and Claus von Stauffenberg; and the pharmaceutical tycoon Robert Boehringer. These were some of the country\u2019s most intellectually gifted young men. They were always young men, and attractive too \u2014 partly due to George\u2019s misogynistic views, his homosexuality and his valorization of the male-bonding culture of Ancient Greece.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Between 1916 and 1934, the George Circle published 18 books, many of which became national bestsellers. Most of them were carefully selected historical biographies of Germanic figures like Kaiser Frederick II, Goethe, Nietzsche and Leibniz, as well as others that George believed were part of the same spiritual empire: Shakespeare, Napoleon and Caesar. The books ditched the usual objectivity of historical biographies of the era in favor of scintillating depictions and ideological mythmaking. Their not-so-secret intention was to sculpt the future by peddling a revision of Germany&#8217;s history as one in which salvation and meaning were delivered to the people by the actions of heroic individuals.<\/p><p>In 1928, he published his final book of poetry, \u201cDas Neue Reich\u201d (\u201cThe New Reich,\u201d) and its vision established him as some kind of oracle for the German far-right. Hitler and Heinrich Himmler pored over George Circle books, and Hermann G\u00f6ring gave one as a present to Benito Mussolini. At book burnings, George\u2019s work was cited as an example of literature worth holding onto; there was even talk of making him a poet laureate.&nbsp;<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;Their not-so-secret intention was to sculpt the future by peddling a revision of Germany&#8217;s history as one in which salvation and meaning were delivered to the people by the actions of heroic individuals.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/43136\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"Their not-so-secret intention was to sculpt the future by peddling a revision of Germany's history as one in which salvation and meaning were delivered to the people by the actions of heroic individuals.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>Weber had died in 1920, before George truly reached the height of his powers (and before the wave of totalitarian dictatorships that would define much of the century), but he\u2019d already seen enough to fatten his theory of charisma. At times of crisis, confusion and complexity, Weber thought, our faith in traditional and rational institutions collapses and we look for salvation and redemption in the irrational allure of certain individuals. These individuals break from the ordinary and challenge existing norms and values. Followers of charismatic figures come to view them as \u201cextraordinary,\u201d \u201csuperhuman\u201d or even \u201csupernatural\u201d and thrust them to positions of power on a passionate wave of emotion.&nbsp;<\/p><p>In Weber\u2019s mind, this kind of charismatic power wasn\u2019t just evidenced by accounts of history \u2014 of religions and societies formed around prophets, saints, shamans, war heroes, revolutionaries and radicals. It was also echoed in the very stories we tell ourselves \u2014 in the tales of mythical heroes like Achilles and C\u00fa Chulainn.&nbsp;<\/p><p>These charismatic explosions were usually short-lived and unstable \u2014 \u201cevery hour of its existence brings it nearer to this end,\u201d wrote Weber \u2014 but the most potent ones could build worlds and leave behind a legacy of new traditions and values that then became enshrined in more traditional structures of power. In essence, Weber believed, all forms of power started and ended with charisma; it drove the volcanic eruptions of social upheaval. In this theory, he felt he\u2019d uncovered \u201cthe creative revolutionary force\u201d of history.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Weber was not the first to think like this. Similar ideas had been floating around at least as far back as the mid-1700s, when the Scottish philosopher David Hume had written that in the battle between reason and passion, the latter would always win. And it murmured in the 1800s in Thomas Carlyle\u2019s \u201cGreat Man Theory\u201d and in Nietzsche\u2019s idea of the \u201c\u00dcbermensch.\u201d But none would have quite the global impact of Weber, whose work on charisma would set it on a trajectory to leap the fence of religious studies and become one of the most overused yet least understood words in the English language.<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><p>Come the spring of 1968, the New York Times columnist Russell Baker was declaring that \u201cthe big thing in politics these days is charisma, pronounced \u2018karizma,\u2019\u201d and that all the Kennedys had it. Since then, charisma has been used to explain everything from Marilyn Monroe to anticolonial uprisings, New Age gurus and corporate CEOs. When the Sunni jihadist preacher Anwar al-Awlaki \u2014 whose YouTube videos were linked to numerous terrorist attacks around the world \u2014 was executed by drone strike by the Obama administration in 2011, some observers <a href=\"https:\/\/english.alarabiya.net\/articles\/2011%2F10%2F03%2F169908\">suggested<\/a> that his main threat had been his \u201ccharismatic character.\u201d<\/p><p>Today, a Google Ngram of its usage in American English shows it to be still on a steep upward trend. And not just in American English: Charisma has migrated to Chinese in its Western pronunciation, to Japanese as \u201ckarisuma\u201d and to Spanish, French and Italian as \u201ccarisma,\u201d \u201ccharisme\u201d and \u201ccarisma\u201d respectively. The wholesale migration of the word in exact or close to its original form suggests that no equivalent previously existed in those languages to express its magnetic and mysterious quality. On TikTok, charisma has become a viral term; shortened to \u201crizz\u201d or \u201cunspoken rizz,\u201d it refers to a person\u2019s wordless ability to seduce a love interest with body gestures and facial expressions alone. The hashtag #rizz has over 13 billion views.&nbsp;<\/p><p>A word survives and thrives because it continues to quench an explanatory thirst; it meets a need or desire. And any word carefully examined will reveal itself to be a wormhole \u2014 an ongoing exchange between the past and the present. The prevalence of charisma implies a widespread belief in the power of it, and also in the ability of extraordinary individuals to change history. Weber\u2019s terms still echo: Something magical and dangerous, something unfathomable, is afoot when charisma is present. \u201cThe pertinent question,\u201d pondered the cultural theorist John Potts, \u201cis not whether charisma actually exists, but why it exists.\u201d<\/p><p>Most of us will have experienced the allure of a charismatic individual in our lives. Few have experienced the feeling of <em>being<\/em> charismatic, where your desires, beliefs and actions are having a disproportionately powerful influence on those around you. But when people try to break down how it feels to experience it, they veer into cryptic comparisons. &#8220;When she [Elizabeth Holmes] speaks to you, she makes you feel like you are the most important person in her world in that moment,\u201d Tyler Shultz, a whistleblower who worked at Theranos, told CBS News. \u201cShe almost has this reality distortion field around her that people can just get sucked into.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p><p>About a meeting with Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky wrote: \u201cI can not express in words what I felt rather than thought at that moment; in my soul there was joy and fear, and then everything blended in one happy thought: \u2018I am not an orphan on the earth, so long as this man lives on it.\u2019\u201d Reflecting on her rare experiences of charisma across 25 years of interviewing notable figures, the newspaper columnist Maggie Alderson wrote: \u201cI still don\u2019t understand what creates the effect. \u2026 If not fame, beauty, power, wealth and glory then what? It must be innate. I find that quite thrilling.\u201d<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;Something magical and dangerous, something unfathomable, is afoot when charisma is present.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/43136\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"Something magical and dangerous, something unfathomable, is afoot when charisma is present.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>It certainly seems to be a subjective and circumstantial spell: a \u201cprophet\u201d to some is a \u201cwerewolf\u201d to others. Not all young men and boys are drawn toward the \u201ccharisma\u201d of the misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate; not all financiers and experts who encountered Holmes and Theranos were convinced to invest in a technology that turned out to not exist. \u201cWe tend to think of charisma in a sinister register \u2014 a kind of regressive thing, where people are being affirmed in their prejudices,\u201d the University of Chicago anthropologist William Mazzarella explained to me. \u201cYielding is the problem from this point of view. It\u2019s viewed as submitting to domination, being taken for a ride and not being the master of your own destiny. But then there&#8217;s also the sense of yielding as being selfless and participating in something greater than yourself. It&#8217;s the thing that allows us to be our most magnificent as human beings.\u201d<\/p><p>As Mazzarella reminded me, people also use charisma to talk about the most admired and inspiring figures in their lives and the charismatic teachers they&#8217;ve had. \u201cThere the implication is that this person helped me to become myself or transcend myself in a way that I wouldn&#8217;t otherwise have been able to do,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s interesting about charisma: It touches the darkest fundamentals of human impulses while having the capacity to point to our highest potentials. Charisma has these two faces, and it&#8217;s the fact that we seem to not be able to have one without the other that is so uncanny and disturbing. Inspiring charismatic figures can become exploitative, manipulative or violent. Violence gives way to liberation, or liberation gives way to violence. The problem is not just that we have a hard time telling the good charisma from the bad charisma, but that one has a way of flipping into the other.\u201d<\/p><p>Weber believed that whether we thought of ourselves as explicitly religious or not, humans had a fundamental need for mysticism. As the modern world was becoming increasingly secular, industrialized and rationalized \u2014 in his now famous term, \u201cdisenchanted\u201d \u2014 and more faith was placed in a demystified scientific worldview rather than in gods or shamans, the irrational and mystical appeal of charismatic power wouldn\u2019t just fade away; we would crave it even more.&nbsp;<\/p><p>This is perhaps most evident in our political realm, where a longing for charisma prevails, and a lack of it is frequently commented on. In the U.K.\u2019s left-leaning newspaper The Guardian this year, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2023\/jan\/06\/keir-starmer-tony-blair-reform-new-labour-90s\">Andy Beckett<\/a> bemoaned the Labor leader Keir Starmer\u2019s lack of \u201cmessianic qualities\u201d \u2014 unlike Tony Blair, he wrote, \u201cStarmer can\u2019t use personal charisma.\u201d Meanwhile in America\u2019s conservative magazine National Review, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/does-desantis-have-to-beat-trump-on-the-debate-stage\/\">Nate Hochman<\/a> wrote that while Ron DeSantis might be focused and competent, Donald Trump \u201cbeats him in raw charisma.\u201d In fact, wrote the American historian <a href=\"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/2020\/08\/17\/what-donald-trump-and-george-washington-have-in-common\/\">David Bell<\/a>, \u201cTrump\u2019s base [is] tied to him by one of the most remarkable charismatic relationships in American history.\u201d Last month, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2023\/04\/tucker-carlson-fox-news-rupert-murdoch\">Vanity Fair<\/a> reported a theory that Tucker Carlson\u2019s departure from Fox News was linked to Rupert Murdoch\u2019s distaste for Carlson\u2019s \u201cmessianism\u201d and Murdoch\u2019s ex-fianc\u00e9e\u2019s belief that Carlson was \u201ca messenger from God.\u201d<\/p><p>\u201cI\u2019m convinced that the way we frame political discussions has far more of an impact on politics than we realize,\u201d explained Tom Wright, a cultural historian at the University of Sussex. \u201cIf one of the terms of debate is that some people have a gift and others don&#8217;t, then that conditions the way we reflect on the political process and the kind of leadership we want, the kind of disruption that&#8217;s possible, the kind of people that can and don&#8217;t enter politics.\u201d A good example of this was a 2007 campaign slogan for Gordon Brown in the U.K.: \u201cNot flash, just Gordon.\u201d The goal was to communicate that his blatant lack of charisma shouldn\u2019t detract from his trustworthy competence as a political leader. Brown would go on to lose his first and only general election to the charismatic David Cameron.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;That\u2019s what\u2019s interesting about charisma: It touches the darkest fundamentals of human impulses while having the capacity to point to our highest potentials.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n          <footer class=\"quote__author\">\u2014 William Mazzarella<\/footer>\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/43136\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"That\u2019s what\u2019s interesting about charisma: It touches the darkest fundamentals of human impulses while having the capacity to point to our highest potentials.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>A scientifically sound or generally agreed-upon definition of charisma remains elusive even after all these years of investigation. Across sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, history and theater studies, academics have wrestled with how exactly to explain, refine and apply it, as well as identify where it is located: in the powerful traits of a leader or in the susceptible minds of a follower or perhaps somewhere between the two, like a magnetic field.&nbsp;<\/p><p>The Cambridge Dictionary reports that charisma is \u201ca special power that some people have naturally,\u201d but this association with individual influence is criticized as just another tedious expression of the Great Man Theory and overlooks much interconnected complexity. In her book, \u201cCharisma and the Fictions of Black Leaders,\u201d Erica Edwards argued that this view has \u201cprivileged charismatic leaders, from Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr., over the arduous, undocumented efforts of ordinary women, men and children to remake their social reality.\u201d This uncritical faith in charisma as a motor of history, she wrote, \u201cignores its limits as a model for social movements while showing us just how powerful a narrative force it is.\u201d<\/p><p>As Wright explained to me, Weber himself would disagree with the individualized modern understanding of charisma. \u201cHe was actually using it in a far more sophisticated way,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t about the power of the individual \u2014 it was about the reflection of that power by the audience, about whether they receive it. He saw it as a process of interaction. And he was as fascinated by crowds as he was by individuals.\u201d In Weber\u2019s words: \u201cWhat is alone important is how the [charismatic] individual is actually <em>regarded<\/em> by those subject to charismatic authority, by his \u2018followers\u2019 or \u2018disciples.\u2019 \u2026 It is <em>recognition<\/em> on the part of those subject to authority which is decisive for the validity of charisma.\u201d<\/p><p>Charisma then, like love or beauty, may be in the eye of the beholder: intoxicating love and belief, enacted on a mass scale, during particular historical circumstances. Along these lines, the late American political scientist Cedric Robinson believed charisma to be a \u201cpsychosocial force\u201d that symbolized the ultimate power of the people: the expression of the masses being focused into one chosen individual. Such an individual, he argued, is totally subordinate in the relationship: They must enact the will of the people or their charismatic appeal will vanish. \u201cIt is, in truth, the charismatic figure who has been selected by social circumstance, psychodynamic peculiarities and tradition, and not his followers by him.\u201d\n          <div class=\"eos-subscribe-push\">\n            \n            <a target=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=MiddleCTA&utm_medium=website\" href=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=MiddleCTA&utm_medium=website\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">Read Noema in print.<\/a>\n            \n          <\/div>\n        <\/p><p>Charisma, he wrote, \u201cbecomes the most pure form of a people&#8217;s authority over themselves.\u201d The charismatic leader, for better or worse, could be understood as a mere mirror or a charming marionette \u2014 the \u201ccollective projection of the charismatic mass, a projection out of its anguish, its myths, its visions, its history and its culture, in short its tradition and its oppression.\u201d The reason they seem to read the minds of their followers is because they are the chosen embodiment of the group mind. In the leader they see themselves.&nbsp;<\/p><p>As the Dutch socialist Pieter Jelles Troelstra once wrote, \u201cAt some point during my speeches, there often came a moment when I wondered who is speaking now, they or myself?\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><p>\u201cI\u2019d pretty much adamantly say that most of the research done [on charisma] until the last 10 years has been utterly useless,\u201d said John Antonakis, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of Lausanne. \u201cIt&#8217;s just been extremely hypothetical \u2014 not really putting our fingers on what it is and then not being able to define it in a way where we can experimentally manipulate the behavior and do real scientific field experiments.\u201d Antonakis isn\u2019t a sociologist, historian or cultural theorist; he\u2019s a psychologist and scholar of leadership with a background in math and statistics. He doesn\u2019t believe charisma is a slippery concept at all. \u201cI focus on what I believe to be the core elements of charisma,\u201d he told me. \u201cHow one speaks, what one says and how one says it.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p><p>For over a decade, Antonakis has been experimenting with ways to break charisma down into its composite parts, therefore making it measurable and teachable. He believes it can be the great leveler in a world obsessed with physical appearance. His resulting definition is that charisma is \u201cvalues-based, symbolic and emotion-laden leader signaling.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><p>Along with a team of researchers, he boiled it all down to 12 \u201ccharismatic leadership tactics,\u201d or CLTs for short. The CLTs include nine verbal techniques \u2014 like the use of metaphors, anecdotes, contrasts and rhetorical questions \u2014 as well as three nonverbal ones like facial expressions and gestures. Anyone trained in these CLTs, he said, can become more \u201cinfluential, trustworthy and leaderlike in the eyes of others.\u201d He and his team developed an artificial intelligence algorithm, which they trained on almost 100 TED talks, that can identify the charismatic quality of speeches. The algorithm is called \u201cDeep Charisma\u201d but Antonakis calls it his \u201ccharismometer.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><p>In one experiment, they used the algorithm to show that a higher prevalence of CLTs in a TED talk correlated with higher YouTube views and higher ratings of inspiration reported by test subjects. Charisma, in other words, can equate to internet virality. We shared screens on our Zoom call and he opened up Deep Charisma for me to see. \u201cThink of a famous speech and let\u2019s put it in the machine,\u201d he said. Having just started Malcolm X\u2019s autobiography, I asked him to put in X\u2019s 1964 speech \u201cThe Ballot or the Bullet.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;Harder to explain is the allure of unconventional individuals who can draw us in against all rationality for a myriad of complex reasons, subconscious desires and historical circumstances.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/43136\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"Harder to explain is the allure of unconventional individuals who can draw us in against all rationality for a myriad of complex reasons, subconscious desires and historical circumstances.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>\u201cAh, this is already fantastic,\u201d said Antonakis. \u201cIt&#8217;s already a metaphor.\u201d He pasted a transcript into Deep Charisma and numbers began to fill the screen. Within a minute, we had a final score: 350. \u201cThat\u2019s a very high score,\u201d he told me. \u201cYou cannot fool my charismometer.\u201d<\/p><p>Out of interest, I asked him if we could try putting in a speech created by ChatGPT, so he asked it to write one in the style of Winston Churchill. \u201cMy fellow citizens,\u201d it began, \u201cwe stand here today at a pivotal moment in history.\u201d He pasted the finished speech into Deep Charisma, and it began to analyze. \u201cSo now we&#8217;re using one artificial network to generate a speech and another one to code it for charisma,\u201d he said. It conjured a calculation. \u201cOh shit,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s very good.\u201d I asked him to test it again, but this time by asking ChatGPT to just write a \u201ccharismatic speech.\u201d I wanted to see if it actually could determine what charisma was rather than simply emulating the style of a known charismatic speaker. A score appeared. \u201cYeah, this is average,\u201d said Antonakis.<\/p><p>I admired his scientific formulation of charisma and the possibility of democratizing something that was previously thought to be innate and ineffable. But I couldn&#8217;t help but feel that to make charisma measurable, he&#8217;d had to redefine it,&nbsp;and in that process something integral to the phenomenon had been lost. Deep Charisma can identify the persuasive and uplifting habits of gifted orators and the characteristics of rousing speeches, but perhaps harder to explain is the allure of unconventional individuals who can draw us in against all rationality for a myriad of complex reasons, subconscious desires and historical circumstances.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p><p>I thought about John de Ruiter, the shoemaker from rural Canada who started a religious movement in the 1980s that became a multimillion-dollar spiritual organization with thousands of followers. De Ruiter, who was recently charged with sexually assaulting several women, developed a charisma not through what he said or how he said it, but what he didn\u2019t say: His sermons were just long periods of complete silence, during which he stared at his followers for hours. Or the fact that Trump\u2019s speeches, when read as transcripts, are often rambling and incoherent rather than great works of rhetoric and metaphor. The CLTs don\u2019t seem to touch the deeper mystique. Deep Charisma, Antonakis told me, rated Trump as distinctly average. \u201cHe\u2019s not that charismatic,\u201d he said. Millions of Americans, I think, would disagree.<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;Human relationships with technology have always been implicitly spiritual.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/43136\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"Human relationships with technology have always been implicitly spiritual.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>The CLTs are adept at pushing human buttons that will make us feel engaged, inspired and impressed. For that reason, it\u2019s no surprise that Antonakis\u2019 work has been picked up by researchers working on artificial intelligence. Last December, a group of computer scientists published a paper titled \u201cComputational Charisma \u2014 A Brick by Brick Blueprint for Building Charismatic Artificial Intelligence.\u201d The abstract for the paper begins: \u201cCharisma is considered as one\u2019s ability to attract and potentially influence others. Clearly, there can be considerable interest from an artificial intelligence\u2019s perspective to provide it with such skill,\u201d before concluding with the provocation: \u201cWill tomorrow\u2019s influencers be artificial?\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><p>Bj\u00f6rn Schuller, a professor of artificial intelligence at Imperial College London and the lead author of the paper, told me the most exciting avenue of this research is the voice. \u201cWe\u2019re a long way from seeing and accepting visually rendered agents, but we don\u2019t have those issues with the voice anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can render a voice from a few seconds of your voice and make a piece of audio that sounds just like you. So if people are just interacting with a voice interface, we\u2019re less worried about the uncanny valley.\u201d The aim is to create a charming and persuasive AI entity you could call up and converse with. \u201cIf you have a virtual doctor or mental health therapist, then a charismatic one would probably reach you better,\u201d explained Schuller. \u201cIn other words, in human-computer interaction, it gives AI a huge leap forward in terms of acceptance and \u2026 I wouldn&#8217;t want to say obedience, but \u2026\u201d<\/p><p>Once an AI is perfecting this form of charisma through endless reinforcement and imitation learning, Schuller believes it could become far better at it than humans. \u201cWe lose our charisma now and then, because we have our temperament and only so much effort is available,\u201d he said. &#8220;But an AI would have no problem controlling expression, tone of voice and linguistics all at the same time. Add that to the fact it\u2019s constantly learning about your likes and dislikes.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cAt some point,\u201d he concluded, \u201conce the AI has established new approaches and achieved success with it, it might become charismatic in ways that humans haven&#8217;t even thought about. We might end up picking up charismatic behavior that has originated from an AI.\u201d<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><p>The Eurocentric version of how Weber conceptualized charisma is that he took it from Christianity and transformed it into a theory for understanding Western culture and politics. In truth, it was also founded on numerous non-Western spiritual concepts that he\u2019d discovered via the anthropological works of his day. In one of the less-quoted paragraphs of his 1920 book \u201cThe Sociology of Religion,\u201d Weber wrote that his nascent formulation of charisma was inspired by mana (Polynesian), maga (Zoroastrian, and from which we get our word magic) and orenda (Native American). \u201cIn this moment,\u201d Wright wrote in a research paper exploring this particular passage, \u201cwe see our modern political vocabulary taking shape before our eyes.\u201d<\/p><p>Native American beliefs were of particular interest to Weber. On his only visit to America in 1904, he turned down an invitation from Theodore Roosevelt to visit the White House and headed to the Oklahoma plains in search of what remained of Indigenous communities there. Orenda is an Iroquois term for a spiritual energy that flows through everything in varying degrees of potency. Like charisma, possessors of orenda are said to be able to channel it to exert their will. \u201cA shaman,\u201d wrote the Native American scholar J.N.B. Hewitt, \u201cis one whose orenda is great.\u201d But unlike the Western use of charisma, orenda was said to be accessible to everything, animate and inanimate, from humans to animals and trees to stones. Even the weather could be said to have orenda. \u201cA brewing storm,\u201d wrote Hewitt, is said to be \u201cpreparing its orenda.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><p>This diffuse element of orenda \u2014 the idea that it could be imbued in anything at all \u2014 has prefigured a more recent evolution in the Western conceptualization of charisma: that it is more than human. Archaeologists have begun to apply it to the powerful and active social role that certain objects have played throughout history. In environmentalism, Jamie Lorimer of Oxford University has written that charismatic species like lions and elephants \u201cdominate the mediascapes that frame popular sensibilities toward wildlife\u201d and feature \u201cdisproportionately in the databases and designations that perform conservation.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p><p>Compelling explorations of nonhuman charisma have also come from research on modern technology. Human relationships with technology have always been implicitly spiritual. In the 18th century, clockmakers became a metaphor for God and clockwork for the universe. Airplanes were described as \u201cwinged gospels.\u201d The original iPhone was heralded, both seriously and mockingly, as \u201cthe Jesus phone.\u201d As each new popular technology paints its own vision of a better world, we seek in these objects a sort of redemption, salvation or transcendence. Some deliver miracles, some just appear to, and others fail catastrophically.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Today, something we view as exciting, terrifying and revolutionary, and have endowed with the ability to know our deepest beliefs, prejudices and desires, is not a populist politician, an internet influencer or a religious leader. It\u2019s an algorithm.&nbsp;<\/p><!-- Quote Block Template -->\n\n<figure class=\"quote\">\n\n  <blockquote class=\"quote__container\">\n\n    <div class=\"quote__text\">\n      &#8220;The idea that charisma could be imbued in anything at all has prefigured a more recent evolution in the Western conceptualization of charisma: that it is more than human.&#8221;    <\/div>\n\n    \n    <div class=\"quote__social-media\">\n      <div\n        class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_35 a2a_default_style\"\n        data-a2a-url=\"https:\/\/www.noemamag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wpm-article\/43136\"\n        data-a2a-title='\"The idea that charisma could be imbued in anything at all has prefigured a more recent evolution in the Western conceptualization of charisma: that it is more than human.\"'\n      >\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n        <a class=\"a2a_button_email\"><\/a>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/blockquote>\n<\/figure><p>These technologies now have the power to act in the world, to know things and to make things happen. In many instances, their impact is mundane: They arrange news feeds, suggest clothes to buy and calculate credit scores. But as we interact more and more with them on an increasingly intimate level, in the way we would ordinarily with other humans, we develop the capacity to form charismatic bonds.&nbsp;<\/p><p>It\u2019s now fairly colloquial for someone to remark that they \u201cfeel seen\u201d by algorithms and chatbots. In a 2022 study of people who had formed deep and long-term friendships with the AI-powered program Replika, participants reported that they viewed it as \u201ca part of themselves or as a mirror.\u201d On apps like TikTok, more than any other social media platform, the user experience is almost entirely driven by an intimate relationship with the algorithm. Users are fed a stream of videos not from friends or chosen creators, but mostly from accounts they don\u2019t follow and haven\u2019t interacted with. The algorithm wants users to spend more time on the platform, and so through a series of computational procedures, it draws them down a rabbit hole built from mathematical inferences of their passions and desires.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Like crowds who feel a charismatic leader somehow understands their individual anguish and aspirations, many users of TikTok experience a computational process as akin to mind-reading. People speak of eerie revelations in which the curation of videos in their personal feed has triggered them to reconsider their sexuality (\u201cTikTok&#8217;s algorithms knew I was bi before I did. I&#8217;m not the only one.\u201d), radicalize their politics (\u201cFrom transphobia to Ted Kaczynski: How TikTok&#8217;s algorithm enables far-right self-radicalization\u201d), or reassess their mental health (\u201cHow do I go about bringing this up to my doctor? Because I feel like TikTok says I have ADHD will be laughed at.\u201d)<\/p><p>Users are drawn to the algorithm on an emotional level, wrote Holly Avella, a professor in communication at Rutgers University, not because its gaze is genuinely insightful but because the impression of feeling seen is intoxicating. This, she wrote, works to create \u201ccult-like\u201d beliefs \u201cabout algorithms\u2019 access to the unconscious self. \u2026 A sort of metaphysical understanding.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p><p>The inability to understand quite how sophisticated algorithms exert their will on us (largely because such information is intentionally clouded), while nonetheless perceiving their power enables them to become an authority in our lives. As the psychologist Donald McIntosh explained almost half a century ago, \u201cThe outstanding quality of charisma is its enormous power, resting on the intensity and strength of the forces which lie unconscious in every human psyche. \u2026 The ability to tap these forces lies behind everything that is creative and constructive in human action, but also behind the terrible destructiveness of which humans are capable. \u2026 In the social and political realm, there is no power to match that of the leader who is able to evoke and harness the unconscious resources of his followers.\u201d<\/p><p>In an increasingly complex and divided society, in which partisanship has hindered the prospect of cooperation on everything from human rights to the climate crisis, the thirst for a charismatic leader or artificial intelligence that can move the masses in one direction is as seductive as it has ever been. But whether such a charismatic phenomenon would lead to good or bad, liberation or violence, salvation or destruction, is a conundrum that remains at the core of this two-faced phenomenon. \u201cThe false Messiah is as old as the hope for the true Messiah,\u201d wrote Franz Rosenzweig. \u201cHe is the changing form of this changeless hope.\u201d<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-custom-separator-continuous-line\"\/><p>By 1933, Hitler had risen to power and the violent and bloody cataclysm Stefan George had beckoned was alive on the streets. His dream of a Secret Germany that would rise to the surface and destroy the old order was afoot. And yet he stayed remarkably quiet and ambiguous. He took a long vacation to Switzerland, which some described as voluntary exile, and died there without ever explicitly revealing whether or not he supported the Nazi Party. At his funeral, younger followers were seen giving salutes, much to the horror of his Jewish followers. Walter Benjamin, now a critic of George, had fled to the Spanish island of Ibiza, from where he wrote in a letter to his friend Gershom Scholem: \u201c[I]f ever God has punished a prophet by fulfilling his prophecy, then that is the case with George.&#8221;<\/p><p>The German army officer Claus von Stauffenberg was one of the many devoted George disciples who eventually joined the Nazi movement, and he took part in the invasion of Poland in 1939. But as he became aware of the atrocities being committed, he chose to join the German Resistance in an attempt to close the Pandora\u2019s box that the George Circle had helped to open.&nbsp;<\/p><p>On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg walked into a briefing meeting attended by Hitler, shook him by the hand, placed a briefcase (filled with explosives) under the solid oak conference table, and then left the room to take a call. When the bomb exploded, it killed three officers and a stenographer, but Hitler survived, having been shielded from the blast by one of the table legs.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Just after midnight that night, Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators were lined up against a wall, illuminated by the glaring headlights of a truck, and assassinated by firing squad. Before he was shot, he shouted his last words. &#8220;Es lebe das heilige Deutschland!&#8221; (&#8220;Long live our sacred Germany!&#8221;) is typically what historians think he said. But some witnesses <a href=\"https:\/\/www.focus.de\/kultur\/medien\/das-geheime-deutschland-20-juli-1944_id_1832941.html\">disagree<\/a>, having heard &#8220;Es lebe unser geheimes Deutschland!&#8221; (&#8220;Long live our secret Germany!&#8221;)<\/p>\n          <div class=\"eos-subscribe-push\">\n          \n            <a target=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=BottomCTA&utm_medium=website\" href=\"https:\/\/shop.noemamag.com\/?utm_source=BottomCTA&utm_medium=website\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">Enjoy the read? Subscribe to get the best of Noema.<\/a>\n            \n          <\/div>\n        ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1931,"featured_media":43137,"template":"","wpm-article-type":[4],"wpm-article-topic":[23,20],"wpm-article-tag":[],"class_list":["post-43136","wpm-article","type-wpm-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","wpm-article-type-feature","wpm-article-topic-philosophy-culture","wpm-article-topic-technology-and-the-human"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.0 (Yoast SEO v25.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Secret History And Strange Future Of Charisma<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A look at the history and psychology of how charisma has influenced people, politics and technology.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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