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

happens if the network of understanding among psychopaths

achieves power in leadership positions with international expo-

sure? This can happen, especially during the later phases of the

phenomenon. Goaded by their character, such deviant people

thirst for just that even though it ultimately conflicts with their

own life interest, and so they are removed by the less patho-

logical, more logical wing of the ruling apparatus. Such devi-

ants do not understand that a catastrophe would otherwise en-

sue. Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or bur-

ied deep in the ground along with the human body whose death

they are causing.

If the many managerial positions are assumed by individu-

als deprived of sufficient abilities to feel and understand the

majority of other people, and who also exhibit deficiencies in

technical imagination and practical skills - (faculties indispen-

sable for governing economic and political matters) - this then

results in an exceptionally serious crisis in all areas, both

within the country in question and with regard to international

relations. Within, the situation becomes unbearable even for

those citizens who were able to feather their nest into a rela-

tively comfortable modus vivendi. Outside, other societies start

to feel the pathological quality of the phenomenon quite dis-

tinctly. Such a state of affairs cannot last long. One must then

be prepared for ever more rapid changes, and also behave with

great circumspection.

Pathocracy is a disease of great social movements followed

by entire societies, nations, and empires. In the course of hu-

man history, it has affected social, political, and religious

movements, as well as the accompanying ideologies, character-

istic for the time and the ethnological conditions, and turned

them into caricatures of themselves. This occurs as a result of

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the activities of similar etiological factors in this phenomenon,

namely the participation of pathological agents in a pathody-

namically similar process. That explains why all the pathocra-

cies of the world are and have been so similar in their essential

properties. Contemporaneous ones easily find a common lan-

guage, even if the ideologies nourishing them and protecting

their pathological contents from exposure differ widely.

Identifying these phenomena through history and properly

qualifying them according to their true nature and contents, not

according to the ideology in question, which succumbed to the

characteristic process of caricaturization, is a job for historians.

However, it must be understood that the primary ideology was

undoubtedly socially dynamic and contained creative elements,

otherwise it would have been incapable of nurturing and pro-

tecting the pathocratic phenomenon from recognition and criti-

cism for very long. It would also have been incapable of fur-

nishing the pathological caricature with the tools for imple-

menting its expansionist goals on the outside.

Defining the moment at which a movement has been trans-

formed into something we can call a pathocracy as a result of

the ponerogenic process is a matter of convention. The process

is temporally cumulative and reaches a point of no return at

some particular moment. Eventually, however, internal con-

frontation with the adherents of the original ideology occurs,

thus finally affixing the seal of the pathocratic character of the

phenomenon. Naziism most certainly passed this point of no

return, but was prevented from all-out confrontation with the

adherents of the original ideology because the Allied armies

smashed its entire military might.

Pathocracy and Its Ideology

It should be noted that a great ideology with mesmerizing

values can also easily deprive people of the capacity for self-

critical control over their behavior. The adherents of such ideas

tend to lose sight of the fact that the means used, not just the

end, will be decisive for the result of their activities. Whenever

they reach for overly radical methods of action, still convinced

that they are serving their idea, they are not aware that their

goal has already changed. The principle “the end justifies the

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means” opens the door to a different kind of person for whom a

great idea is useful for purposes of liberating themselves from

the uncomfortable pressure of normal human custom. Every

great ideology thus contains danger, especially for small minds.

Therefore, every great social movement and its ideology can

become a host upon which some pathocracy initiates its para-

sitic life.

The ideology in question may have been marked by deficits

in truth and moral criteria from the very outset, or by the ef-

fects of activities by pathological factors. The original, very

high-minded idea, may also have succumbed to early contami-

nation characteristic of a particular time and social circum-

stance. If such an ideology is infiltrated by foreign, local cul-

tural material which, being heterogeneous, destroys the original

coherent structure of the idea, the actual value may become so

enfeebled that it loses some of its attractiveness for reasonable

people. Once weakened, however, the sociological structure

can succumb to further degeneration, including the activation

of pathological factors, until it has become transformed into its

caricature: the name is the same, but the contents are different.

Differentiating the essence of the pathological phenomenon

from its contemporary ideological host is thus a basic and nec-

essary task, both for scientific-theoretical purposes and for

finding practical solutions for the problems derived from the

existence of the above-mentioned macrosocial phenomena.

If, in order to designate a pathological phenomenon, we ac-

cept the name furnished by the ideology of a social movement

which succumbed to degenerative processes, we lose any abil-

ity to understand or evaluate that ideology and its original con-

tents or to effect proper classification of the phenomenon, per

se. This error is not semantic; it is the keystone of all other

comprehension errors regarding such phenomena, rendering us

intellectually helpless, and depriving us of our capacity for

purposeful, practical action.

This error is based upon compatible propaganda elements of

incompatible social systems. This has, unfortunately, become

much too common and is reminiscent of the very first clumsy

attempts to classify mental diseases according to the systems of

delusions manifested by the patients. Even today, people who

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have not received training in this field will consider a sick per-

son who manifests sexual delusions to be crazy in this area, or

someone with religious delusions to be a “religious maniac”.

The author has even encountered a patient who insisted that he

had become the object of cold and hot rays (paresthesia) on the

basis of a special agreement concluded by the U.S.A. and the

U.S.S.R.

As early as the end of the nineteenth century, famous pio-

neers of contemporary psychiatry correctly distinguished be-

tween the disease and the patient’s system of delusions. A dis-

ease has its own etiological causes, whether determined or not,

and its own pathodynamics and symptomatics which distin-

guish its nature. Various delusional systems can become mani-

fest within the same disease, and similar systems can appear in

various diseases. The delusions, which have sometimes become

so systemic that they convey the impression of an actual story,

originate in the patient’s nature and intelligence, especially in

the imaginations of the environment within which he grew up.

These can be disease-induced caricaturizations of his former

political and social convictions. After all, every mental illness

has its particular style of deforming human minds, producing

nuanced but characteristic differences known for some time to

psychiatrists, and which help them render a diagnosis.

Thus deformed, the world of former fantasies is put to work

for a different purpose: concealing the dramatic state of the

disease from one’s own consciousness and from public opinion

for as long as possible. An experienced psychiatrist does not

attempt premature disillusionment of such a delusional system;

that would provoke the patient’s suicidal tendencies. The doc-

tor’s main object of interest remains the disease he is trying to

cure. There is usually insufficient time to discuss a patient’s

delusions with him unless it becomes necessary for reasons of

the safety of said patient and other people. Once the disease has

been cured, however, psychotherapeutic assistance in reinte-

grating the patient into the world of normal thought is defi-

nitely indicated.

If we effect a sufficiently penetrating analysis of the phe-

nomenon of pathocracy and its relationship to its ideology, we

are faced with a clear analogy to the above described relation-

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203

ship now familiar to all psychiatrists. Some differences will

appear later in the form of details and statistical data, which

can be interpreted both as a function of the above-mentioned

characteristic style of caricaturizing an ideology, pathocracy

effects, and as a result of the macrosocial character of the phe-

nomenon.

As a counterpart of disease, pathocracy has its own etiologi-

cal factors which make it potentially present in every society,

no matter how healthy. It also has its own pathodynamic proc-

esses which are differentiated as a function of whether the

pathocracy in question was born in that particular country

(primary pathocracy), was artificially infected in the country by

some other system of the kind, or was imposed by force.

We have already sketched above the ponerogenesis and

course of such a macrosocial phenomenon in its primary form,

intentionally refraining from mentioning any particular ideol-

ogy. We shall soon address the other two courses mentioned

above.

The ideology of pathocracy is created by caricaturizing the

original ideology of a social movement in a manner character-

istic of that particular pathological phenomenon. The above-

mentioned hysteroidal states of societies also deform the con-

temporary ideologies of the times in question, using a style

characteristic for them. Just as doctors are interested in disease,

the author has become primarily interested in the pathocratic

phenomenon and the analysis thereof. In a similar manner, the

primary concern of those people who have assumed responsi-

bility for the fate of nations should be curing the world of this

heretofore mysterious disease. The proper time will come for

critical and analytical attitudes toward ideologies which have

become the “delusional systems” of such phenomena during

historical times. We should at present focus our attention upon

the very essence of the macrosocial pathological phenomena.

Understanding the nature of a disease is basic to any search

for the proper methods of treatment. The same applies by anal-

ogy with regard to that macrosocial pathological phenomenon,

especially since, in the latter case, mere understanding of the

nature of the disease starts curing human minds and souls.

Throughout the entire process, reasoning approximated to the

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style elaborated by medicine is the proper method which leads

to untangling the contemporary Gordian knot.

A pathocracy’s ideology changes its function, just as occurs

with a mentally ill person’s delusional system. It stops being a

human conviction outlining methods of action and takes on

other duties which are not openly defined. It becomes a dis-

guising story concealing the new reality from people’s critical

consciousness, both inside and outside one’s nation. The first

function – a conviction outlining methods of action - soon be-

comes ineffective for two reasons: on the one hand, reality

exposes the methods of action as unworkable; on the other

hand, the masses of common people notice the contemptuous

attitude toward the ideology represented by the pathocrats

themselves. For that reason, the main operational theater for the

ideology consists of nations remaining outside the immediate

ambit of the pathocracy, since that world tends to continue

believing in ideologies. The ideology thus becomes the instru-

ment for external action to a degree even greater than in the

above-mentioned relationship between the disease and its delu-

sional system.

Psychopaths are conscious of being different from normal

people. That is why the “political system” inspired by their

nature is able to conceal this awareness of being different. They

wear a personal mask of sanity and know how to create a mac-

rosocial mask of the same dissimulating nature. When we ob-

serve the role of ideology in this macrosocial phenomenon,

quite conscious of the existence of this specific awareness of

the psychopath, we can then understand why ideology is rele-

gated to a tool-like role: something useful in dealing with those

other naive people and nations. Pathocrats must nevertheless

appreciate the function of ideology as being something essen-

tial in any ponerogenic group, especially in the macrosocial

phenomenon which is their “homeland”. This factor of aware-

ness simultaneously constitutes a certain qualitative difference