There are many different ways a conversation on figureheads, heroes, and leaders in activism can go, it fits into broader issues with centralisation and hierarchies in movements. But specifically the role that potential messiahs play in our movements is one that unfortunately warrants a degree of caution especially in this post-COINTELPRO world.
A messiah is biblically regarded as the promised deliverer of the Jewish nation; generally it implies that someone is the leader or savior of a particular group or cause. The combined and separate aspects of a them being saviors, pinpointed leaders, and deliverers by faith are what make me focus on the "messiah" figures (well the deciding factor in me using that term is actually rooted in an infamous government document I bring up further down). Important to note though is it is my own belief that we all have people we look up to and not because of some grand sign; we are humans after all and I doubt significantly large droves of us will ever be able to rid ourselves of the urge to admire someone for their actions. It is the overreliance on a single person as a savior that puts groups at risk. And as the messiah is so commonly mentioned in religious texts, the obsession with political figures becomes downright religious. People can go from being organisers to shoved down our throats in attempted hero worship; and perhaps the most infuriating part of that is most of the time the people that feed off this are politicians, grifters, and gatekeepers who love to use this to their benefit. Then what if we in turn end up relying on false prophets? This worship can have people believing that they must trust and follow actors leading us right back into the system, where what awaits us is a perpetual hamster wheel of "action" that we run on convinced that we're doing something despite reality.
How many more times can these concepts be found being weaponised against the people? One example would be the dreaded White Savior, wherein white people must take it upon themselves to deliver every oppressed culture to liberation with an attitude completely in line with Rudyard Kipling as he wrote "The White Man's Burden." This concept has annoyingly penetrated activism to the point where the White Savior Complex is a term becoming more and more popularised among grassroots organisers because our worth is only defined in terms of how much we follow these white saviors. This in turn spawns whole issues of gatekeeping and policing within activism. For instance in a cause such as Palestinian liberation, the White Savior Complex rampant in some NGOs leads people to turn their focus away from Palestinians fighting a genocidal Zionist occupation on the ground to more "sophisticated" characters who built their image off of a de-clawed form of resistance. It happens in the environmental movement as well, because how many people looked to the World Economic Forum manufactured Greta Thunberg image as the ultimate force of nature, completely ignoring indigenous activists resisting the building of oil pipelines, or young activists in the Pacific who are a part of the unfortunately small opposition to deep-sea mining?
Not only is the need for a messiah pushed upon activists through ways like the one described, it is immediately turned against us shall we lose said leader. The idea that a movement is worthless without a leader is beyond outdated, especially considering large numbers of ogranisers, point people, and activists exist and display the traits of leaders and heroes every day without being regarded as messiahs of a movement. The collective traits of passion, courage, intellect, empathy, wit, etc. I've alone seen from activists around and on the ground easily trump those of a single messiah.
It's much easier to "neutralise" a single person than it is a large collective, and one of the ways in which this is done is through co-option of the messiah, allowing them and them only to be assimilated into the system in hopes that that will extinguish some of the fire of the activists. Figures such as Angela Davis went from being revolutionary to shilling for the Democrats because it was an election year. And then their status is weaponised against us as a frustratingly easy way to pigeonhole an entire group of people into one school of thought, or try to. How many activists were gaslighted into supporting a segregationist because Davis, Noam Chomsky, Bernie Sanders, or someone else with their status said so? There is this weaponised concept that everyone in a group must follow the perceived messiah at all times, even in thought. An individual might not even have someone they regard as a messiah, but if there is a perceived leader of their cause then they might fall victim to the "guilt by association" nonsense.
Perhaps the more tragic part of why we can't have messiahs is because the powers that be know what they can be capable of, and move to kill them. As the saying goes, you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain; so if you are not co-opted you will be killed or locked away. It's a grim reality that any activist faces really, but the target on your back becomes bigger the more you can galvanise the people.
There are few things that gave me more of a grim realisation about how the powers that be act when threatened than this excerpt from a letter detailing some of the goals of the FBI's COINTELPRO. Almost all the names mentioned in this memo were killed at the hands of the state, and it's clear that there are some names not mentioned who were still killed because they were a potential messiah, such as the young Fred Hampton. This memo is why I use the term messiah so much, because it's directly named by the empires tools as what they aim to prevent. The unfortunate fact is that the powers that be want to kill our heroes, and every time they see a potential messiah they move to act against that. And to twist the knife in our backs, propagandists then manufacture an image of our fallen messiah that resembles nothing close to them in an attempt to pacify activists further. Western politicians feigned support for Nelson Mandela upon his death, using the occasion to facetiously posture their values to the people despite their own governments supporting Apartheid South Africa while he was in prison. Fred Hampton is being turned into a Hollywood star because of a movie told from the rat's point of view. It is infuriating, but our fallen heroes become whitewashed and co-opted even in death. I do believe however that something like straight up co-option is in effect more today, because of a conglomerate of deathly efficient propaganda mechanisms, constant surveillance, and the allure of security from assimilation. But the deadliness of the empire outright killing leaders in movements can't be ruled out.
Messiahs are capable of organising and energising people for a cause, this is what makes them dangerous to the powers that be. But because of a possible over-reliance on them and the ability to more easily contain one person having heroes is weaponised against us. It sucks to say but after decades of individual messiahs being killed, co-opted, and weaponised against us we can't keep asking for them or hoping they come along. What makes spirit bombs so powerful isn't Goku, but all the energy from various people that goes into them. That's pretty much my weeb way of saying there's always been so much power in the collective that if we need something hero-like to galvanise us, we can always look there first.
This article is part of a series I'm doing on ways in which movements are delegitimised and factors which contribute to their eventual inability to enact meaningful change or action. You can read the previous part of this here if you wish: @zeroeclipsee/the-strategic-nullification-of-any-good-movement-expect-it-co-option-through-commodification