The leader–savior myth

From the “Hitler Myth” to Contemporary Master Frames

In twentieth-century political history, few narrative constructions have been studied as closely as the one woven by the Third Reich around Adolf Hitler. Historians would later name it the Hitler Myth: the elevation of a ruler who not only governed Germany but purported to embody it. This myth worked as a salvation tale; an exceptional hero confronting internal and external threats, promising restored order, pride, and future.

In the present, when contemporary governments, including that of President Gustavo Petro in Colombia, to observe how certain master frames (rebirth, order, grievance) continue to organize public conversation.

The aim here is not to equate regimes or purposes, but to analyze the narrative logic that turns politics into epic and the presidential figure into the central character of a binary plot: salvation versus threat.

In its classic configuration, the leader-savior myth simplifies democratic plurality. The multiplicity of interests, institutions, and procedures becomes a saga with two moral poles.

The Nation, imagined as a wounded body, calls for the intervention of an extraordinary figure who, by force of will and clarity, restores a lost course. In interwar Germany, that dramaturgy fed on defeat, economic crisis, and national resentment.

Propaganda elevated Hitler to a near extra-historical plane: a mediator who, above ministries and norms, returned dignity and unity. The narrative consequence was immediate: conflicts ceased to be negotiations among parties and became tests of fidelity to the leader’s project.

This symbolic shift was institutionalized in the Führerprinzip, the leadership principle that subordinated hierarchies and laws to the Führer’s will. It was not merely an organizational doctrine; it was a regime of meaning. The “word of the leader” became norm, shortcut, and compass; the official narrative did not follow from law; law bent to the narrative.

In such a setting, citizens no longer audited their representatives; they repeatedly confirmed a vision handed down from above, as if popular validation meant entering the script rather than correcting or moderating it.

In today’s democratic environments, where pluralism persists and checks and balances operate, the operational translation of that old principle neither adopts nor can adopt the totalizing forms of the past. Yet echoes appear in the struggle over master frames.

Rebirth, order, and grievance are three keys that, combined, produce effective stories: they promise a horizon (rebirth), guarantee rules (order), and mobilize moral energy (grievance).

President Gustavo Petro’s government, like other contemporary leaderships across the ideological spectrum has drawn on these keys to give symbolic coherence to its project.

The notion of “change” fits into a promise of rebirth; the call for “total peace” and the reform of state apparatuses appeal to a reconfigured order; the denunciation of historical exclusions and elite capture activates a repertoire of grievance. These are not exclusive to any ideology; they belong to the modern political toolkit that competes to fix the emotional grammar of the public sphere.

A critical analysis, should not confuse the identification of these frames with the accusation of accomplished authoritarianism. Precisely because legislatures, courts, media, and an active citizenry exist, governmental narratives encounter counterpoints, irony, and resistance.

Yet the economy of the story matters: when the presidential figure appears as a redemptive axis—the subject who names problems, assigns responsibility, and announces solutions—public conversation risks sliding into binary drama.

In that script, technical nuance loses appeal to moral identities; institutional adversaries become antagonists of the nation; and the success of public policy is measured less by indicators than by its fit within the epic of promised rebirth.

Assessing the coherence and centrality of the master frames helps distinguish vigorous democratic leadership from mythic drift. Three minimal tests guide that distinction:

Plurality test. If the official story admits autonomous voices and recognizes the legitimacy of dissent, the myth is contained. If it homogenizes the country around a single voice and disqualifies disagreement as betrayal or blindness, the myth advances.
Institutional test. When the leader submits to rules and courts, accepts limits, and corrects course in light of technical evaluation, the narrative of order anchors in the rule of law. When presidential words seek to substitute for procedures, the temptation of a Führerprinzip returns as a rhetorical shadow.
Empirical test. Promises of rebirth and justice should land in policies with verifiable metrics. When epic substitutes for evaluation, grievance remains as perpetual fuel and order as deferred promise.

In Colombia, the deployment of symbols, slogans, and spokespersons to articulate “change” has had the merit of centering long-postponed issues—inequality, neglected regions, energy transition, territorial peace. Yet the mobilizing power of these frames also demands an ethic of narrative moderation.

The history of the Third Reich reminds that mythologizing the leader is not a mere rhetorical excess; it is a political technology that reshapes reality to a will, neutralizes complexity, and recasts citizens as chorus.

Democracy, by contrast, thrives when power recognizes limits, language tolerates ambivalence, and solutions compete on evidence.

The heroic story will continue to tempt any government seeking to imprint meaning on its action. The task is not to renounce leadership, indispensable for prioritizing, coordinating, and persuading, but to prevent the presidential figure from absorbing the nation as a single character.

Keeping the stage open, with robust institutions, inquisitive media, and demanding citizens, is the best safeguard against the slide of the leader-savior myth into its most dangerous version. The historical lesson does not dictate simplistic equivalences or alarmism, but it does provide a compass: whenever the leader’s word aspires to be both norm and master narrative, the rule of law must remind that, in democracy, no voice fully embodies the nation, and no myth replaces the proof of facts.

Editorial note (ethical): This essay analyzes identity construction in a criminal regime to foster critical thinking in communication and marketing. Any practical application must exclude tactics that violate truth, human dignity, and the law.