List of cults of personality

This is a list of regimes of countries as well as a list of individual leaders around the world which have been described as having created a cult of personality by the media or academia. A cult of personality uses various techniques, including mass media, propaganda, the arts, patriotism, and government-organized demonstrations and rallies to create a heroic image of a leader, often inviting worshipful behavior through uncritical flattery and praise. Nur Muhammad Taraki of the ruling People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan served as President of Afghanistan from 1978 to 1979, when he told people to refer to him with titles such as the "Great Leader" and hung his portrait all across the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. In the 1990s, Uzbek warlord general Abdul Rashid Dostum, who controlled most of northern Afghanistan, created a similar cult of personality in the region. The long time ruler of Communist Albania, Enver Hoxha, had what the OECD called "an overwhelming cult of personality and an ultra-centralized, authoritarian form of decision-making". Hoxha was widely portrayed as a genius who commented on virtually all facets of life from culture to economics to military matters. Statues of him were erected in cities. Textbooks were required to include quotations of his about their particular subjects. The ruling party of the time, the Party of Labour of Albania, granted him honorific titles such as Supreme Comrade, Sole Force and Great Teacher. When Hoxha died in 1985, Ramiz Alia took power. Robert D. McFadden of The New York Times wrote that Alia's policies of liberalization were "too little, too late", and the country descended into civil war. Alia served one year in prison for corruption, but the anarchy prevented further charges from being filed against the former Communist regime. Peronism Juan Perón, elected three times as President of Argentina, and his second wife, Eva "Evita" Perón, were immensely popular among many of the Argentine people, and to this day they are still considered icons by the leading Justicialist Party.