Andrew Lobaczewski - Political Ponerology - A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes

then called “transpersonification”. They came from all social

groups, including aristocratic and fervently religious families,

and caused a break in our student solidarity to the order of

some 6 %. The remaining majority suffered varying degrees of

personality disintegration which gave rise to individual search-

ing for the values necessary to find ourselves again; the results

were varied and sometimes creative.

Even then, we had no doubts as to the pathological nature of

this “transpersonification” process, which ran similar but not

identical in all cases. The duration of the results of this phe-

nomenon also varied. Some of these people later became zeal-

ots. Others later took advantage of various circumstances to

withdraw and re-establish their lost links to the society of nor-

mal people. They were replaced. The only constant value of the

new social system was the magic number of 6 %.

We tried to evaluate the talent level of those colleagues who

had succumbed to this personality-transformation process, and

reached the conclusion that, on average, it was slightly lower

than the average of the student population. Their lesser resis-

tance obviously resided in other bio-psychological features

which were most probably qualitatively heterogeneous.

I found that I had to study subjects bordering on psychology

and psychopathology in order to answer the questions arising

from our observations; scientific neglect in these areas proved

an obstacle difficult to overcome. At the same time, someone

guided by special knowledge apparently vacated the libraries of

anything we could have found on the topic; books were in-

dexed, but not physically present.

36

INTRODUCTION

Analyzing these occurrences now in hindsight, we could say

that the “professor” was dangling bait over our heads, based on

specific psychological knowledge. He knew in advance that he

would fish out amenable individuals, and even how to do it, but

the limited numbers disappointed him. The transpersonification

process generally took hold only when an individual’s instinc-

tive substratum was marked by pallor or certain deficits. To a

lesser extent, it also worked among people who manifested

other deficiencies in which the state provoked within them was

partially impermanent, being largely the result of psychopatho-

logical induction.

This knowledge about the existence of susceptible individu-

als and how to work on them will continue being a tool for

world conquest as long as it remains the secret of such “profes-

sors”. When it becomes skillfully popularized science, it will

help nations to develop immunity. But none of us knew this at

the time.

Nevertheless, we must admit that in demonstrating the

properties of this process to us in such a way as to force us into

in-depth experience, the professor helped us understand the

nature of the phenomenon in a larger scope than many a true

scientific researcher participating in this work in other less

direct ways.

~~~

As a youth, I read a book about a naturalist wandering

through the Amazon-basin wilderness. At some moment a

small animal fell from a tree onto the nape of his neck, clawing

his skin painfully and sucking his blood. The biologist cau-

tiously removed it -- without anger, since that was its form of

feeding -- and proceeded to study it carefully. This story stub-

bornly stuck in my mind during those very difficult times when

a vampire fell onto our necks, sucking the blood of an unhappy

nation.

Maintaining the attitude of a naturalist, while attempting to

track the nature of macrosocial phenomenon in spite of all ad-

versity, insures a certain intellectual distance and better psy-

chological hygiene in the face of horrors that might otherwise

be difficult to contemplate. Such an attitude also slightly in-

creases the feeling of safety and furnishes an insight that this

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

37

very method may help find a certain creative solution. This

requires strict control of the natural, moralizing reflexes of

revulsion, and other painful emotions that the phenomenon

provokes in any normal person when it deprives him of his joy

of life and personal safety, ruining his own future and that of

his nation. Scientific curiosity therefore becomes a loyal ally

during such times.

~~~

Hopefully, my readers will forgive me for recounting here a

youthful reminiscence that will lead us directly into the subject.

My uncle, a very lonely man, would visit our house periodi-

cally. He had survived the great Soviet Revolution in the

depths of Russia, where he had been shipped out by the Czarist

police. For over a year he wandered from Siberia to Poland.

Whenever he met with an armed group during his travels, he

quickly tried to determine which ideology they represented,

white or red, and thereupon skillfully pretended to profess it.

Had his ruse been unsuccessful, he would have had his head

blown off as a suspected enemy sympathizer. It was safest to

have a gun and belong to a gang. So he would wander and war

alongside either group, usually only until he found an opportu-

nity to desert westward toward his native Poland, a country

which had just regained its freedom.

When he finally reached his beloved homeland again, he

managed to finish his long-interrupted law studies, to become a

decent person, and to achieve a responsible position. However,

he was never able to liberate himself from his nightmarish

memories . Women were frightened by his stories of the bad old

days and thought it would make no sense to bring a new life

into an uncertain future. Thus, he never started a family. Per-

haps he would have been unable to relate to his loved ones

properly.

This uncle of mine would recapture his past by telling the

children in my family stories about what he had seen, experi-

enced and taken part in; our young imaginations were unable to

come to terms with any of it. Nightmarish terror shuddered in

our bones. We would think of questions: why did people lose

all their humanity, what was the reason for all this? Some sort

38

INTRODUCTION

of apprehensive premonition choked its way into our young

minds; unfortunately, it was to come true in the future.

~~~

If a collection were to be made of all those books which de-

scribe the horrors of wars, the cruelties of revolutions, and the

bloody deeds of political leaders and their systems, many read-

ers would avoid such a library. Ancient works would be placed

alongside books by contemporary historians and reporters. The

documentary treatises on German extermination and concentra-

tion camps, and of the extermination of the Jewish Nation,

furnish approximate statistical data and describe the well-

organized “labor” of the destruction of human life, using a

properly calm language, and providing a concrete basis for the

acknowledgement of the nature of evil.

The autobiography of Rudolf Hoess, the commander of

camps in Oswiecim ( Auschwitz ) and Brzezinka ( Birkenau ), is a

classic example of how an intelligent psychopathic individual

with a deficit of human emotion thinks and feels.

Foremost among these would be books written by witnesses

to criminal insanity such as Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at