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

instinctive substratum is different from that of the majority of the human

population? Such a person is not able to feel like a normal person, or to un-

derstand a person bearing a normal instinctive endowment. [It is important]

to try to understand the psychopath, and have some pity for them [as you

would have pity for a crocodile and its right to exist in nature]. Limiting the

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ogy liberating a social class or a nation from injustice may thus

seem to them to be friendly; unfortunately it also gives rise to

unrealistic hopes that they themselves will be liberated as well.

The pathological motivations which appeared in a union at the

time it begins to be affected by the ponerogenic process strikes

them as familiar and hope-inspiring. They therefore insinuate

themselves into such a movement preaching revolution and war

against that unfair world so foreign to them.

They initially perform subordinate functions in such a

movement and execute the leaders’ orders, especially whenever

something needs to be done which inspires revulsion in oth-

ers.94 Their evident zealotry and cynicism gives rise to criticism

role of psychopaths in ponerogenesis, particularly in the case of the tragedies

they cause women, thus reducing their numbers, is the real aim.

“Take as well in your consideration that in the whole pool of pathological

factors taking part in ponrogenezis all kinds of psychopathies make up some-

thing less than half. The other pathologic conditions, usually not hereditary,

make up more than other half. Stalin was not a psychopath. He was a case of

frontal characteropathy due to the damage of frontal centers (10A&B) caused

be a disease he suffered as a newborn. This produces dramaticaly dangerous

characters.” [Editor’s note.]

94 Here, we cannot help but think of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Donald

Rumsfeld, protégés of the neocon philosopher, Leo Strauss. Strauss evi-

dences typical schizoidal doctrinaire characteristics.

“Like Plato, Strauss believed that the supreme political ideal is the rule of the

wise. But the rule of the wise is unattainable in the real world. Now, accord-

ing to the conventional wisdom, Plato realised this, and settled for the rule of

law. But Strauss did not endorse this solution entirely. Nor did he think that it

was Plato's real solution - Strauss pointed to the ‘nocturnal council’ in Plato's

Laws to illustrate his point.

“The real Platonic solution as understood by Strauss is the covert rule of the

wise. This covert rule is facilitated by the overwhelming stupidity of the

gentlemen. The more gullible and unperceptive they are, the easier it is for

the wise to control and manipulate them. [...]

“For Strauss, the rule of the wise is not about classic conservative values like

order, stability, justice, or respect for authority. The rule of the wise is in-

tended as an antidote to modernity. Modernity is the age in which the vulgar

many have triumphed. It is the age in which they have come closest to having

exactly what their hearts desire - wealth, pleasure, and endless entertainment.

But in getting just what they desire, they have unwittingly been reduced to

beasts.

“Nowhere is this state of affairs more advanced than in America. And the

global reach of American culture threatens to trivialise life and turn it into

entertainment. This was [a] terrifying [...] spectre for Strauss. […]

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PATHOCRACY

on the part of the union’s more reasonable members, but it also

earns the respect of some its more extreme revolutionaries.

They thus find protection among those people who earlier

played a role in the movement’s ponerization, and repay the

favor with compliments or by making things easier for them.

Thus they climb up the organizational ladder, gain influence,

and almost involuntarily bend the contents of the entire group

to their own way of experiencing reality and to the goals de-

rived from their deviant nature. A mysterious disease is already

raging inside the union. The adherents of the original ideology

feel ever more constricted by powers they do not understand;

they start fighting with demons and making mistakes.

If such a movement triumphs by revolutionary means and in

the name of freedom, the welfare of the people, and social jus-

tice, this only brings about further transformation of a govern-

mental system thus created into a macrosocial pathological

phenomenon. Within this system, the common man is blamed

for not having been born a psychopath, and is considered good

for nothing except hard work, fighting and dying to protect a

system of government he can neither sufficiently comprehend

nor ever consider to be his own.

An ever-strengthening network of psychopathic and related

individuals gradually starts to dominate, overshadowing the

others. Characteropathic individuals who played an essential

“[Strauss was] convinced that liberal economics would turn life into enter-

tainment and destroy politics.[...] [Strauss] thought that man's humanity

depended on his willingness to rush naked into battle and headlong to his

death. Only perpetual war can overturn the modern project, with its emphasis

on self-preservation and ‘creature comforts.’ Life can be politicised once

more, and man’s humanity can be restored.

“This terrifying vision fits perfectly well with the desire for honour and glory

that the neo-conservative gentlemen covet. It also fits very well with the

religious sensibilities of gentlemen. The combination of religion and nation-

alism is the elixir that Strauss advocates as the way to turn natural, relaxed,

hedonistic men into devout nationalists willing to fight and die for their God

and country.

“I never imagined when I wrote my first book on Strauss that the unscrupu-

lous elite that he elevates would ever come so close to political power, nor

that the ominous tyranny of the wise would ever come so close to being

realised in the political life of a great nation like the United States. But fear is

the greatest ally of tyranny.” (Shadia Drury, professor of political theory at

the University of Regina in Saskatchewan). [Editor’s note.]

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role in ponerizing the movement and preparing for revolution,

are also eliminated. Adherents of the revolutionary ideology

are unscrupulously “pushed into a counter-revolutionary posi-

tion”. They are now condemned for “moral” reasons in the

name of new criteria whose paramoralistic essence they are not

in a position to comprehend. Violent negative selection of the

original group now ensues. The inspirational role of essential

psychopathy is now also consolidated; it remains characteristic

for the entire future of this macrosocial pathological phenome-

non.

In spite of these transformations, the pathological block of

the revolutionary movement remains a minority, a fact which

cannot be changed by propaganda pronouncements about the

moral majority adhering to the new, more glorious version of

the ideology. The rejected majority and the very forces which

naively created such power to begin with, start mobilizing

against the block of psychopaths who have taken over. Ruth-

less confrontation with these forces is seen by the psychopathic

block as the only way to safeguard the long-term survival of