On Thursday, 9 October 2025, the University of Siedlce in Poland hosted an international conference entitled “Human Rights in not only Democratic Societies” as part of its project under the EU’s Jean Monnet Program.
T
he panel, which was dedicated to human rights in the light of political philosophy, also featured a lecture by Prof. Dr Matjaž Jager, a researcher at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, entitled “Manufacturing obedience in a repressive political regime from outside and from within.”
In his lecture, he addressed the age-old question of obedience to authority through a conceptual division into obedience due to external coercion and obedience due to internal conviction. He showed how authority typically relies on both of these mechanisms. The example of fascism of the first half of the 20th century reveals how authority can seize its subjects (and especially its ardent followers) even at the level of libidinal economy, which goes deeper than ideological arguments, is linked to the person of the leader, and is similar to the effects of hypnotic love.
