How to Build a Personality Cult in 30 Days

A personality cult is a really efficient way to smush authority into a single, recognizable figure like yourself. It can replace institutions with imagery, substitutes competence with PRESENCE, and ensures that everything in the society loops back to the leader. Here are some simple ways to achieve this goal in only 30 days.

Your first objective is to become visually unavoidable. Start with A LOT of official portraits or similar like large and aggressively lit depictions of yourself. They must be hung in government offices first (people won’t fuss as much), then expand to schools, gas stations, grocery stores, public restrooms, everywhere. The goal is volume.

You can add text to these images where appropriate. Use simple phrases that you can come up with quickly:

• THE PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS CHOOSE

• STABILITY THROUGH OUR LEADERSHIP

• HE SEES EVERYTHING AND THE PEOPLE WILL IT

All of this creates an atmosphere. By the end of Week 1, a citizen should encounter your face no fewer than 5 times during a normal day.

In Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, the visual layer was very heavy and it popped. He was pictured everywhere often in sunglasses, military dress, or theatrical robes. Think highways, government buildings, storefronts, and desert outposts. Portraits weren’t consistent, which was the point. He appeared as soldier, roaming Bedouin, philosopher, and revolutionary simultaneously. The saturation worked well and he achieved a mystical aura in my opinion. Movement meant unavoidable exposure to his face, which made him permanent.

Rename everything. ALL OF IT. Begin with infrastructure (have fun with naming):

• Central Square → Supreme Victory Square

• Port Authority → The People’s Port Authority

• Highway → Highway of the Magnificent Revolution and Riches for the People

Schools, hospitals, and government agencies should be on your list. If a building exists, it should either already be named after you or in the process of becoming so.

Also don’t forget the money. Currency is a priority change and your face needs to be on it. Get your face on the money if you can. Might be hard to mint new currency though.

Mobutu Sese Seko executed one of the cleanest renaming operations on record. He renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Zaire, the Congo River into the Zaire River, and even himself his own name from Joseph-Désiré Mobutu to MOBUTU SESE SEKO KUKU NGBENDU WA ZA BANGA, which roughly translates to:

“the all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake”

Mobutu had an “Authenticité” campaign to bring back the Congolese culture. Citizens were required to adopt African names, and Western dress was not cool with the regime. The population was basically re-coded through Mobutu’s mind.

Now the people need to participate with these changes you have made. Install radios in all public spaces and crank the volume to 11. Broadcasts should be short, always sort of vague, and frequent. You never announce anything specific.

“CITIZENS ARE ENCOURAGED TO MAINTAIN A POSTURE OF INDUSTRIOUSNESS BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 7AM AND 9PM.”

Schools should begin morning recitations. Make the kids repeat:

“WE THANK THE (INSERT YOUR NAME) FOR GUIDANCE AND STABILITY”

Children will normalize repetition faster than adults.

Distribute small items:

• Stickers with your face

• Pins with your face

• Calendar prints that include you in different places every month

• Official stamps with your likeness

None of these need to be high quality. They just need to exist everywhere. At the same time, introduce minor rituals:

• Standing when your name is mentioned at official events

• Opening meetings with a reference to your “vision”

• Closing documents with your signature printed larger than necessary

By the end of Week 3, you should no longer be a distant figure. You should feel like an ambient tableside lamp in all places.

In Cuba under Fidel Castro, his regime was less about imagery and more about presence through voice and ritual. Castro’s speeches sometimes ran for hours. They were broadcasted everywhere across radio and television, filling public and private space alike. Schools, workplaces, and local committees regularly echoed revolutionary slogans and references to his leadership. His absence from daily life was rare. Even without seeing him, you were hearing him. The system ensured that ordinary routines remained anchored to his ongoing narration of the state.

Now you transition from leader to inevitability. You need a state biography. Commission stories and great epics:

• Early life anecdotes (real or improved)

• Tales of personal sacrifice

• Accounts of decisive intervention during “uncertain times”

Accuracy is optional but consistency is not. Stick to your story.

Statues should begin going up. They do not need to be good. Slightly distorted or oversized statues often perform better because they suggest scale and maybe your riches.

Introduce titles for yourself:

• Custodian of the Nation

• Guardian of Stability

• Architect of Renewal

Encourage others to use them first. Adoption is more powerful when it appears voluntary.

Finally, begin referencing the future:

• “The Leader’s Next Phase”

• “The Long Plan”

• “Generational Stability”

This implies duration. Duration implies inevitability.

Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenbashi) went right into myth-building in Turkmenistan. He authored a quasi-spiritual text that became required reading in schools and even a component of driving tests. Months of the year were renamed after himself and his family. A golden statue of him in Ashgabat was engineered to rotate and always face the sun.

The objective was embedding his identity in governance, education, and the physical environment of his country itself.

If you implement these ideas into your own regime over 30 days you will have good results. A successful personality cultist does not convince the population they are extraordinary. They remove the need for comparison entirely. A few core tenets:

• Clarity weakens mystique.

• A mediocre slogan repeated 10,000 times will outperform a good one used once.

• It is better to have five different portraits than none at all.

• Loyalists, broadcasters, and minor officials should carry the tone.

YOU ARE THE STATE.