here are moments when the world feels unbearably burdensome. One looks at the map of modern democratic nations that speak endlessly of liberty, rights, conscience and human dignity and wonders how these same societies keep electing leaders who take them into wars. This has happened in America, in Britain, in Australia and in India. These societies take pride in their democratic maturity, yet repeatedly empower governments whose decisions leave distant lands, and sometimes their own communities, in ruins. When these wars fall upon poorer nations, when villages burn and families scatter, the public response in powerful states is often a silence so thick it feels like a moral eclipse. It was this silence that led the political scientist RJ Rummel to coin the word democide, the murder of a person or people by a government.

Why does this keep happening? Why do electorates bring to power those who lead them into conflict? Why does the suffering of millions fail to palpitate the democratic heart? Psychology, more than politics, offers some answers.

Freud believed that beneath the polished surface of civilisation lies Thanatos, the death drive, an ancient instinct pulling human beings toward aggression and destruction. Civilisation, in his view, is a fragile dam holding back a river of latent violence. Democracies do not abolish this instinct. They redirect it. War becomes a distant theatre where aggression can be expressed without personal guilt. The citizens do not kill; the state kills on their behalf. The moral injury is thus outsourced and the individual remains intact. Leaders who project strength, certainty and vindictive resolve are popular because they embody a fantasy - the fantasy of violence without consequence.

Wilhelm Reich, in his study of the Mass Psychology of Fascism, argued that authoritarian politics thrives on repressed emotions such as fear, frustration and unspoken rage. When societies suppress individuality, creativity and emotional expression, the result is a population that becomes rigid, obedient and easily manipulated. Reich believed that people with repressed lives seek release through collective aggression; that authoritarian leaders channel private frustrations into public hatred; and that war becomes a socially acceptable outlet for personal rage. Support for militaristic leaders is, therefore, not purely ideological. It is psychological catharsis disguised as patriotism.

Erich Fromm deepened this analysis with his argument that modern individuals often find freedom overwhelming. Freedom brings responsibility, uncertainty and anxiety. Many people respond by surrendering their autonomy to powerful leaders who promise order, clarity and direction. Warmongers thrive in this psychological landscape. They offer simple narratives in a complex world. They offer certainty and oversimplified solutions to complex issues. They offer obedience as a relief from responsibility. Supporting aggressive leaders becomes not an embrace of violence but an escape from the burden of thinking, choosing and morally accounting for the world.

Reich and Fromm were both neo-freudians. However, Freud’s shadow is only the beginning. Theodor Adorno showed that many people, even in free societies, carry a deep longing for strong, commanding figures. This longing is born from fear; from childhood anxieties; from the desire for a protector who can make the world feel orderly and safe. When government leaders speak with certainty - when they promise protection or revenge, something inside the frightened voter relaxes. War, once wrapped in the language of duty or honour, becomes a kind of emotional medicine. It soothes the fear of decline. It calms the panic. It gives people the illusion that someone powerful is finally in control. Voting becomes less a rational choice and more a reflex shaped by old wounds.

War becomes a distant theatre where aggression can be expressed without personal guilt. The citizens do not kill; the state kills on their behalf. The moral injury is outsourced; the individual remains intact.

Henri Tajfel adds another layer to this quiet tragedy. Human beings crave belonging. We want to feel part of a group that is noble, moral and superior. When leaders divide the world into us and them - when they paint foreign nations as dangerous or inferior, many people feel a sudden rise in their own worth. War becomes a performance of identity, a way of proving loyalty to the group. The people on the other side, far away and unfamiliar, slowly fade into abstraction. Their suffering becomes distant; their deaths become numbers; their humanity becomes blurred. This is how entire populations can watch a war unfold and feel almost nothing.

This dehumanisation appears openly in political rhetoric. In one widely reported instance, a leader described attacking people as ‘fun.’ In another, an American general was quoted as saying the military does not count the bodies of non-combatant Iraqis. Such remarks, whatever their context, expose a chilling truth. Some human beings are not worthy of statistics. They can be erased altogether. The moral thinking has fully collapsed; once it does, cruelty flows without restraint; violence becomes effortless; and empathy becomes irrelevant.

Albert Bandura explained how ordinary people disengage morally from violence committed in their name. Euphemistic descriptions such as civilising mission, embedded journalist, friendly fire or collateral damage numbs empathy and changes perspectives. Responsibility is diffused across institutions. The enemy is dehumanised. Citizens tell themselves that their leaders know best; that the world is a dangerous place; that violence is unfortunate but necessary. Apathy becomes not a failure of empathy but a socially sanctioned state.

Paul Slovic’s work on psychic numbing shows that empathy shrinks as the number of victims grows: one wounded child can break our hearts; a million dead becomes a statistic. The human mind simply cannot carry the weight of mass death. When wars unfold far from home, when the victims speak unfamiliar languages and live in distant landscapes, emotional distance hardens into moral distance. Their suffering becomes easier to ignore. Their humanity becomes easier to forget.

Taken together, these theories reveal a world drifting toward updated imperial structures, where thinking is altered, visions are engineered, biases are manufactured and empathy has ceased. It is a world perpetually at war with no imaginable end. As Western societies revive imperial thinking; as military alliances harden; gun culture normalizes; political rage intensifies; minorities are scapegoated; and racism resurges, the psychological soil becomes even more fertile for leaders who promise strength through aggression. More anger, fear and numbness is thus cultivated in these societies. Violence becomes a cultural reflex. Foreign policy becomes a distant abstraction. The suffering of others becomes background noise.

This is why voters continue to elect leaders who move swiftly from ballot to bullet. Fear makes strongmen appealing. Identity politics makes aggression feel righteous. Euphemistic language hides the reality of violence. Media narratives frame wars as necessary or inevitable. Emotional exhaustion dulls empathy. The burden of freedom pushes many to surrender their moral agency to those who promise certainty. All of these factors are on rise, particularly in the West, but they will not stop there.

We have already seen the price of this surrender in Iraq’s shattered hospitals; Libya’s broken state; Palestine’s unending grief and Afghanistan’s generations of orphaned children. Now the black rain is over Iran. These are not distant tragedies. They are warnings. They are the future that awaits all peoples when powerful nations lose their capacity to feel.

The writer is a principal clinical psychologist in Ireland. He can be contacted [email protected]