ABSTRACT
The term 'personality cult' is used today interchangeably with 'cult of personality' and it is often employed in a rather broad, undefined way. Rees highlights the ancient roots of leader cults, but following Gerhard Ritter he establishes a direct link between the emergence of modern leader cults and twentieth-century revolutionary regimes that badly needed to reinforce their symbolic legitimation due to an alleged low ideological and programmatic consensus. Emilio Gentile, analysing Italian Fascism, points out that the twentieth century could in fact be defined as 'the period in which politics was made sacred', with special reference to the totalitarian movements of its first half. It was the secularization of society that created the preconditions for the emergence of modern personality cults, which are qualitatively different from the cult of rulers in pre-modern eras precisely because of their being perceived by those who do not subscribe to them as 'abnormal'.
