Author: Govert Schuller

On Trump: US Lying Its Way to War (again)?

 

The recent January 29, 2017 missile test by Iran is not in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions as many members of congress and certain media claim. The 2015 Iran nuclear agreement has no binding provisions about missile tests. Before the day of implementation of the agreement on January 2016 the Iranians were bound by UN Resolution 1929 (2010) which did forbid the development of missiles and the conducting of tests. But this resolution was rescinded in the 2015 nuclear deal as embodied in UN Resolution 2231 (2015) and a quite different phrasing now covers Iranian missile tests.

Whether congressmen and the White House know this and deliberately lie is an important question as their allegations and reaction with sanctions is a definite step towards conflict and the world will have to be extremely vigilant that the US is not creating conditions again to go to war on false premises. 

There are democratic senators siding now with the White House and they will have to be challenged. On February 2 a bi-partisan group of twenty-two senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee signed a letter to the White House making the claim that,

If it is confirmed that Iran tested a ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon, Iran will have again violated both the letter and spirit of its obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015) not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.[1]

The Democratic Senators signing the letter were Ben Cardin (Md.), Tim Kaine (Va.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Chris Coons (Del.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Robert Menendez (N.J.), Bob Casey (Penn.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), and Ron Wyden (Ore.).

That the senators are in error can be established by contrasting the paragraphs in the two relevant UN resolutions covering Iranian missile tests.

UN Resolution 1929 (2010), article 9 (p. 5), spells it out as follows:

[The Security Council] Decides that Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology, and that States shall take all necessary measures to prevent the transfer of technology or technical assistance to Iran related to such activities.[2]

UN Resolution 2231 (2015) in Annex B (p. 99):

Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology, until the date eight years after the JCPOA Adoption Day or until the date on which the IAEA submits a report confirming the Broader Conclusion, whichever is earlier.[3]

Nuclear non-proliferation expert Daniel Joyner recently pointed out that the legally binding, prohibitive language of Resolution 1929–“Iran shall not undertake”– had changed to the “invitational yet legally nonbinding phrase” of Resolution 2231–“Iran is called upon”.[4]

His conclusion of the analysis of 2231 is that,

Iran’s ballistic missile tests cannot accurately be said to violate UN Security Council resolutions.  The most that could be said about them is that they are not in harmony with the UN Security Council’s legally nonbinding exhortation in Resolution 2231.

Fortunately many media and experts are on board with this analysis and see the Trump administration as dealing in dangerous “threat inflation” and “an eagerness to stir up tensions with Iran over relatively innocuous issues”.[7] Members of congress will have to be challenged on these points and further research into the ideological, political and commercial forces resulting in these incorrect and dangerous positions will have to be engaged in.

According to Joseph Kishore in  a WSWS article, the bi-partisan playbook, if you will, by which the Iranian problem is perceived in Washington is formulated by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.[6] Iran is an immanent strategic threat to the economic world order as it holds a unique geostrategic position in the middle east directly adjacent to very important shipping lanes and is developing missile capacities which could hit Israel, Egypt and other US allies.[5]

But assessing Iran as a military threat and dissatisfaction with the nuclear deal are not sufficient reasons to engage in  making false allegations about the legality of its missile tests and some verbal sable rattling by the White House. As being defensive and diplomatic might be the wiser attitude here, the US becoming aggressive and mendacious will compel people to question underlying motivations, which might well be for the west to solidify its hegemonic position in the middle east for the sake of global corporate interests, i.e. imperialism.

Or, as Kishore stated, “The initial actions of the Trump administration make clear that the US is preparing a major escalation of military aggression in Central Asia and the Middle East. Fifteen years of the “war on terror” under Bush and Obama—including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the bombing of Libya, the US-backed civil war in Syria, and the Saudi bombardment of Yemen—have killed over one million people. American imperialism, however, has failed to secure its aim of establishing unrivaled domination over the oil-rich region. Now, under Trump, a new and even bloodier chapter is opening”.[6]

Is the US driven by classic imperialist motives and the aim is economic advantage, or is it driven by opposed civilizational dynamics aiming at subjugation as presidential strategic advisor Steve Bannon seems to think? Or is the latter merely a rationalization for the former?

Originally posted on Facebook, February  5, 2017.

[1]. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Cardin, Corker Lead 20 Bipartisan Colleagues in Iran Letter to President Trump“. Press Release. 2 Feb 2017.

[2]. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1929 (2010).

[3]. United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015).

[4]. Joyner, Daniel. “Iran’s Ballistic Missile Launches Do Not Violate UN Security Council Resolutions“. 11 Mar 2016. Arms Control Law. Blog.

[5]. Cordesman, Anthony. “Iran, Mattis, and the Real Threat to U.S. Strategic Interests in the Middle East“. Center for Strategic and International Studies. Commentary. 10 Jan 2017.

[6]. Kishore, Joseph . “Democrats back Trump administration’s new sanctions against Iran“. World Socialist Web Site. 4 Feb 2017.

[7]. Glaser, John. “Trump Administration Begins Threat Inflation on Iran“. The Libertarian Institute. 2 Jan 2017.

 

Breitbart’s Yiannopoulos’ Sexist Nonsense

Alt-right ideologue and vocal Trump supporter Milo Yiannopoulos just wrote a gem of a sexist piece for Breitbart asking for a cap of 5-10% for females to enter STEM studies (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). He is concerned that if female participation would be above that level society would be “giving in to ideology and social engineering, rather than looking at what the numbers say and respecting women’s choices.”[1]

The problem with Mr Yiannopoulos is that some of the facts and numbers he presents to back up his proposal are pulled out of thin air. One paragraph crucial to his overall thesis is the following:

“In Norway and Sweden, some of the most progressive, female-friendly places in the world, the number of women studying maths and science collapses to single figures. What this tells us is that, given every opportunity to choose, women stubbornly refuse to study the subjects feminists would like them to.”[1]

When checking this claim I found an article stating that in Norway “only a third of those who study mathematics, natural sciences or technological fields are women.”[2] And at the postgraduate level the following occurs in Sweden: ” … if one compares the percentage of women and the number of men who have left academia five years after the award of a doctoral degree, one sees that in all disciplines except social sciences, contrary to stereotypes, more men are likely to leave academia than women …”[3]

To spell it out: “One third” is at least a whopping 330% more than Yiannopoulos’ “single figures” as far as Swedish females studying math and science is concerned, and staying in academia more than men can hardly be equated with Yiannopoulos’ claim of females “stubbornly refuse to study”. Ergo, Yiannopoulos just makes things up to bolster his sexist policy proposal.

This manner of making a case, which can only be characterized as ‘conclusion-based writing skewered towards sexism’, is very troubling and should be exposed as such. It’s fine for this writer to have opinions, but he has to have some decency to respect the facts, which, as shown in an analysis of a speech he recently gave at the University of Pittsburgh, he does not have.[4] When unsupported premises start to be treated as facts, then arguing becomes almost futile. And that’s exactly the toxic MO of Breitbart and Trump.

The long-term effect of this prejudiced mindset is to further delay the in my opinion necessary adoption in the US of best and most socially just practices from European social democracies. Instead, what the US will be experiencing during the trump administration is a, hopefully temporary, counter-spurt in the overall civilizational process towards impulse control and empathy.

Meanwhile, as of February 2017, because of making controversial statements generally interpreted as favoring pedophilia, Yiannopoulos was disinvited from appearing at a conservative conference, lost a book deal with a prominent publisher and resigned from Breitbart.

[1].  Yiannopoulos, Milo. “Here’s Why There Ought to Be a Cap on Women Studying Science and Maths“. Breitbart. 15 Jun 2015.

[2]. Armundsen, Bard. “Women and men still study completely different university subjects“. ScienceNordic. 26 Aug 2015.

[3]. Kamerlin, Shina. “Where are the female science professors? A personal perspective“. F1000Research 5:1224. 6 Jun 2016.

[4]. Goddard, Audrey. “I fact checked Milo Yiannopoulos’ speech and it was nonsense“. The Tab. 4 Aug 2015.

On Trump: The Steele Report Echoing the Golitsyn Deception?

 

Ten days before the inauguration of Trump an anonymous bombshell intelligence report was published by Buzzfeed.[1] The report, written by former British MI6 agent and Russia expert Christopher Steele, alleges that 1) Russian intelligence has compromising material on Trump gathered when he visited Leningrad and Moscow a few years ago; 2) there were extensive and frequent contacts between people high in the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence; and 3) that intelligence was swapped between the two parties; Trump giving intelligence on Russian oligarchs in the US and Russia reciprocating with ‘opposition research’ on Hillary Clinton. If the report is even half true it will be the biggest political bombshell in recent history, even bigger than Watergate, and will lead to a hopefully short constitutional crisis solved by Trump stepping down as President and the possible arrests of Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Michael Cohen.

 
If false, and the Intelligence Community knew these memos to be false, this will be a very troubling interference by them into the affairs of the US Government and heads will roll.
 
If its truth doesn’t matter in this post-truth age, then you’re in for at least a good spy novel read.
 
The material was widely known apparently in media, intelligence and political circles since the summer of 2016, but were never divulged until CNN found out that a two page synopsis of this material was presented to both Trump and Obama at an intelligence briefing, which might have lend a certain credibility to this set of ‘intelligence memos’.[2] After CNN’s report Buzzfeed decided to publish all the 35 pages of memos to inform the American public of what these allegations were.
 
Apparently the FBI already had these memos before McCain also got a copy and passed them on to the FBI. The believers’ narrative is that the memos were written by a former MI6 agent who had a good reputation for producing believable material. He was hired by both anti-Trump republicans and later by democrats. They also make the case that this material provides the missing background info to understand Trump’s puzzling positive relationship with Russia.
 
The story will not easily disappear. If it is true, which still might be possible, it will blow up Trump. If it is false, which seems to be the current working hypothesis, the focus will be on who fabricated it, when and why.
 
The Wall Street Journal and others think it came from a British private intelligence company named Orbis and that the writer was Christopher Steele, who went underground fearing for his life.[3] He is considered by many to be a reliable source.[4]
 
Obviously, if there really exists a compromising tape, and as long as there is plausible deniability about its existence, the Russians have some power over Trump. If the Steele Memos (or Russian Dossier) are to believed, the Russians did not use any big pressure on Trump because he has cooperated so well with them.
 
Since these memos have become public all parties involved will have adapted their tactics. For example, the Russians will lay low and consistently deny any wrongdoing because they do not want to jeopardize their desired goal of more lenient sanctions or even their total lift. They took a huge risk with helping Trump into the White House in order to have sanctions lifted, because, if found out, there might be a severe backlash and sanctions might increase.

On the other side–and here the full, fascinating wilderness-of-mirrors metaphor is applicable–author, journalist and expert on Russia, David Satter, came up with an alternative explanation of the origin and intentions behind this very controversial Steel Dossier / Trump Report. He thinks that the Russians fed Steele with concocted, but very plausible, compromising information about Trump’s relations with Russian prostitutes, agents and politicians in order to confuse, undermine and demoralize American intelligence, politicians and public.[5] So far that game plan seems to work.

I thought about this possibility before, because Soviet intelligence had probably mounted something similar in the late 1950s when they concocted a very complex but plausible story of Soviet infiltration at very high levels of US intelligence, especially the CIA, and mixed the story with the idea that the big breaks in the international communist world, especially the Russia-China break, were intentional deceptions in order for the Communist bloc to look fragmented and weak to the West. And it was touted as a very smart, very devious long term plan by the Communist world to defeat the West.

This information was carefully fed to one defector, Anatoly Golitsyn, who brought the story to the CIA where the head of counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton, bought the package, hook, line and sinker. This information triggered an unprecedented mole-hunt within the ranks of the CIA, which had a crippling and polarizing effect on the CIA’s capacity of sorting out genuine defectors from plants and solid information from deceptive fabrications, for example the very tricky question of the extent of Soviet involvement in the JFK assassination about which different defectors presented different stories.[6]

For several reasons I believed the Angleton-Golitsyn thesis on Soviet deception to be correct and wrote an article in 2004 explaining the whole set-up and weaving it together with then stock-in-trade right-wing conspiracy memes about Yale’s semi-secret senior society Skull & Bones and the New York based think tank The Council on Foreign Relations.[7] Though I did not have, then nor now, definitive refutation nor confirmation of the thesis, it was US journalist Ron Rosenbaum who pointed out the possibility that the whole Golitsyn story could have been a very clever concoction of which even the defector himself was not aware.[8]

If Satter’s thesis pans out then Trump and his team could be cleared from most of the Steele allegations, even though the extent of Trump’s financial involvement with Russian oligarchs and Mafya is still unclear, and we can conclude that Russia’s intervention with the US electoral process was one or two layers more devious and smart than most of us might have thought.

Originally posted on Facebook, January 19,  2017.

[1]. Anon. [Steele, Christopher]. “Trump Intelligence Allegations“. Buzzfeed. 10 Jan 2017. 

[2]. Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein, . “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him“. CNN. 10 Jan 2017. 
 
 
[4]. Nick Hopkins and Luke Harding. “Donald Trump dossier: Intelligence sources vouch for author’s credibility“. The Guardian. 12 Jan 2017. 

[5]. Satter, David. “The ‘Trump Report’ Is a Russian Provocation”. The National Review. 12 Jan 2017.

[6]. Books sympathetic to the Angleton-Golitsyn thesis are Edward Jay Epstein’s Deception: The Invisible War Between The KGB And The CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989) and Mark Riebling’s Wedge: The Secret War Between the FBI and CIA (Alfred Knopf, New York, 1994).

More critical books are Tom Mangold’s Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton: The CIA’s Master Spy Hunter (New York: Touchstone, 1991) and David Wise’s Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors that Shattered the CIA (New York: Random House, 1992).

[7]. Schuller, Govert. “The Abiding Communist Threat in its Open and Hidden Manifestations“. Alpheus. 4 July 2004.

[8]. Rosenbaum, Ron. “The Shadow of the Mole: Two superpowers, three master spies, four false defectors, five schools of mole lore, and seven types of ambiguity.” Harper’s (October 1983). Also in: Travels with Dr. Death (New York: Penguin, 1991).

On Trump: Why We Should not Normalize Trump

 

In December 2016 I found online a list of 76 proven lies by Trump and read them all. The list is named “Donald Trump’s Bullshitopedia: An Ever Expanding Catalog Of Lies”.[1] The list is a good reminder that Trump is a pathological liar. I am not just saying that to bash Trump, but to make the case that we have to move into larger theoretical frameworks to start understanding both Trump and his followers and what they are doing to this country and the world. So far I have scouted a few contenders, two of which complement each other:

1) Understanding Trump’s behavior within the theory of psychopathology.[2] Trump arguably suffers from what psychologists call ‘the dark triad’ of of narcissism (self-aggrandizing, self-serving), machiavellianism (calculated manipulation) and psychopathy (lack of impulse control and and lack of empathy).[3] Such persons are very hard to handle. Either you evade them as much as possible or suck up to them and play along. Not many people have the skill to stand up to them, stay fair and firm, gain respect and guide them into constructive attitudes and ideas.[4]

2) Understanding Trump within the theoretical framework of ponerology, i.e. the use of evil for political ends.[5] Trump is a psychologically deviant person who has aggressively taken over and pathologized a political machine–the Republican Party–and bamboozled and spellbound a significant part of the American electorate with blatant lies, undeliverable promises and fear mongering. Then he manipulated both the GOP and Americans to get himself into the White House thereby extending the reach and power of a pathocracy which might have started with the Bush II administration.[6] This process of ‘ponerization’ is enabled by more or less normal persons accepting and adjusting to a psychopath instead of standing up to him.[7]

What these two frameworks have in common is the idea that normal people might cave in by either stepping aside or getting spellbound. With these theoretical frameworks in mind the following set of sharp observations from the Bullshitopedia article will give such frameworks flesh and and relevance:

The fact that Trump still manages to attract supporters who are willing to look past his shameless mendacity, and worse, to revere him as a quasi-savior, is a frightening testament to the decline of American democracy. These are people who not only submit blissfully to being lied to, they embrace a philosophy of bigotry, division, fear, and the authoritarian strains of fascism. They have abandoned whatever tendencies they may have had toward freedom, in favor of a despot who reeks of false and unattainable promises of security and prosperity. It is the behavior of cultists who have surrendered to mindless discipleship and have lost the ability to discern fantasy from reality. It’s a learned response that has been ingrained from watching way too much Fox News.[1]

What caught my eye in this quote–and this has been noted before–was the observation that

It is the behavior of cultists who have surrendered to mindless discipleship and have lost the ability to discern fantasy from reality.

This very well accords with the observation in ponerology that when 

… a group has succumbed to pathological influence its members soon lose the ability to distinguish normal human behavior from pathological. This atrophy of critical faculties in relation to such individuals becomes an opening to their activities. It can also be used to identify potentially dangerous groups.[7]

That some will try to normalize Trump is understandable as the rise of a pathocrat to the office of president of the USA is for some too horrific to contemplate. It is only normal to want to cover over the fact that a psychologically deviant personality sits in the Oval Room.  The only hope in December 2106 was that the US Electoral College would have had the intellectual fortitude and authentic conscience to assess Trump as unfit for the job because of his psychopathology and massive conflicts of interest, and reject him. Unfortunately did this not happen, though impeachment is still possible.

Originally posted on Facebook, December 5, 2016.

[1]. “Donald Trump’s Bullshitopedia: An Ever Expanding Catalog Of Lies“. News Corpse. 29 Nov 2015. According to the compiler this list is based on the file on Donald Trump maintained by PolitiFact. The Huffington Post compiled a list with “The First 100 Lies: The Trump Team’s Flurry Of Falsehoods” enumerating the lies coming from Trump and his spokespersons since his inauguration. 

Originally posted on Facebook, February  2017.

[2]. Schuller, G. “On Trump: Diagnosing 301.81 and the Goldwater Rule“. Alpheus. 21 Feb 2017.

[3]. Whitbourne, Susan Krauss, Ph.D. “Shedding Light on Psychology’s Dark Triad: A dirty dozen test to detect narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy“. Psychology Today. 26 Jan 2013.

[4]. Barker, Eric. “How to Deal With a Narcissist: 5 Secrets Backed by Research“.  Observer. 28 Jan 2016. 
 
[5]. Ponerology is a psychological research program of psychopathological processes on a social scale in organizations and politics. See: Lobaczewski, Andrew. Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes. Red Pill Press, 2006 [1998]. You can read online a very fine introduction.

[6]. Schuller, G. “On Trump: The Aspiring Pathocrat” Alpheus. 24 Feb 2017.

[7]. “The Genesis of Evil“. Political Ponerology Web Site.

On Trump: The Aspiring Pathocrat

In previous posts I have commented on some of the psychological dynamics of Trump and the political dynamics of his followers. In this post I like to explore the rather dark territory of their interaction in rather clinical terminology necessary to get a sane and objective grip on this otherwise very disturbing phenomenon. I will execute this with the help of a relatively unknown inter-disciplinary research program named ‘political ponerology’ which addresses pathological processes on a social and political scale.

Previously I addressed the logic of how libertarian conservatives following politicians like Ron and Rand Paul could have become authoritarian conservatives following someone like Trump.[1] This had to do with the increased intolerance of some conservatives, which one researcher saw as the product of one’s innate authoritarian tendencies amplified by one’s threat perception, with the important caveat that perceived threats could be both real and imagined. This formula — Intolerance = Authoritarian Disposition x Threat Perception — came out very handy in explaining this shift in conservative preferences.

The logic seems to be that when libertarians perceive grave threats (like real socioeconomic downturns and/or imagined conspiracies) to their social and political world (which concept might also be a mix of real and imagined components), this threat perception might then trigger intolerance towards ‘others’ depending on how big their innate authoritarian dispositions are.

Secondly I addressed the idea that, because Trump displays such self-aggrandizing and cruel behavior to others, the US electorate is entitled to a professional assessment of his mental health even though that might involve breaking the Goldwater Rule forbidding professional psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists to make diagnostic statements on public figures.[2] This is important because familiarity with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders  or just engaging serious psychological websites will lead directly to the idea that it is highly probable that Trump suffers from one kind or another of narcissism, either just a curable malignant narcissistic character trait or even irreversible Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

What I had not addressed is the question of how a narcissistic leader and an intolerant following might interact and amplify each other leading to possibly catastrophic results. What I had in mind was something of an inter-disciplinary, macro-social framework combining psychology, sociology, history and political science. When I read Norbert Elias’ great The Civilizational Process I thought to have found such a framework as he addressed the process by which a civilization generates personality structures with increased impulse control and capacity to empathize, and also generates correlative political structures monopolizing violence and pacifying parts of society.[3] 

Elias sees this process going in spurts and counter-spurts and it looked very probable that Trump and his followers were displaying a collective regressive behavior characteristic of a civilizational counter-spurt as they arguably deliberately reject both outer and inner impulse-control mechanisms and start railing against elites, regulations, taxes, political correctness, feminism, environmentalism and outsiders, and instead start to extol nationalism, militarism, authoritarianism, political violence, repressive security measures and censorship. Except for some scattered comments, Elias did not look into the mechanism itself by which a regressive political movement gains power and infects the rest of society with its deviations.

To get a more filled out picture of this mechanism one has to dig into a relatively small research program surreptitiously started by the Polish psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski and friends while they studied psychology when Poland was ruled by a repressive Communist regime.[4] With their understanding of psychopathology and first-hand observations of the regime and their agents they had plenty of empirical material to work with.

These studies culminated in a manuscript which got lost twice, but after careful reconstruction was published in Polish in 1984 with an English translation in 1998. The English title is Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes. This is a very serious, bit depressing, but also very enlightening study which is now promoted by a group of academics and should get more exposure and funding as it addresses the process by which organizations, political parties and whole countries can get infested and hijacked by the pathological behavior of only a few individuals.

The key terminology is composed of concepts formed with root words like patho-, i.e. severe psychological deviance, and ponero-, i.e. manifest evil which can become politically organized and lead to oppressive regimes, the study of which Lacobzewski named ‘political ponerology’.

In a very abbreviated form the study highlights how certain organizations become ‘ponerogenic associations’, i.e. organizations either started or taken over by charateropathic or psychopathic individuals in which normal persons become increasingly marginalized or become spellbound by its leadership and lose the capacity to recognize its deviant behavior. Once a ponerogenic organization becomes an influential political entity–enabled by the natural ignorance and weakness of otherwise normal people in the rest of the population–there is the chance that it will infect a country’s elite, something which Lobaczewski calls ‘hysterization’ or ‘macropathy’. Once an elite, or faction, comes to power it becomes that country’s ‘pathocracy’.

One of the key concepts is what Lobazewski names the ‘First Criterion of Ponerogenesis’:

“One phenomenon all ponerogenic groups and associations have in common is the fact that their members lose (or have already lost) the capacity to perceive pathological individuals as such, interpreting their behavior in fascinated, heroic, or melodramatic ways”.[6] 

A commentator paraphrased this quote as follows:

“When a group has succumbed to pathological influence its members soon lose the ability to distinguish normal human behavior from pathological. This atrophy of critical faculties in relation to such individuals becomes an opening to their activities. It can also be used to identify potentially dangerous groups”.[7]

Lobaczewski presents a fine-grained analysis of this process of how otherwise normal people get into the habit of ignoring morally inconvenient facts in their society which leads to the impossibility of drawing valid conclusions. To compensate for that lack of veracity people become more confused, emotional, irrational and egotistical, and start perceiving non-existent conspiracies and dangers. Then, when the deviation from reality has grown quite extensive, people will become susceptible for manipulation by con-men and psychologically deviant individuals.

Lobaczewski discerns patterns and cycles in Europe and the US and his translators and commentators have extended his analyses to the Bush II administration. Lobaczewski thinks–writing in the 1980s–that the US is actually suffering from ‘macropathy’ possibly leading to a ‘pathocracy’ and should maybe be cut up in 13 pieces because smaller countries, like in Europe, have a better chance to detect and manage macropathic tendencies.[5] He thinks Europe had its ‘hysterical’ cycle from 1890 till the start of World War I at which point widespread war and revolution took over and many countries fell for Communist or Fascist pathocracies. After World War II western Europe was getting much better, having learned some bitter lessons. Lobaczewski projected quite positive developments in Europe into the beginning of the 20th century, which might be confirmed by the many quality of life statistics in most European social democratic countries. The editor of the book, in her running comments of the text in her footnotes, thinks that it was especially the neoconservative Bush II administration which harbored political psychopaths like Bush himself, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove (with Rice and Powell as spellbound demi-normal persons). There is no mention of Kennedy, Carter, Clinton or other Democrats.

My sense is that the ponerological categories developed by Lobaczewski are eminently applicable to Trump and his followers and that the liberal Democrats, especially Sanders, represent a typical European slant towards a more humane and sane social democracy, though many corporate Democrats are quite beholden to the US power elite and the policies developed by its long-term policy think tank the Council on Foreign Relations, such that I expect Clinton to endorse an adjusted version of the TPP.

Many commentators think that Trump is not merely an unfortunate deviation of otherwise lofty Republican principles, but is the logical outcome of decades of build-up resentments against taxes, regulations, immigrants, minorities, feminists, scientists, etc. In that sense a Trump administration would be the continuation and intensification of the Bush II neoconservative pathocracy. The encouraging development this time is that the more decent people in the GOP are becoming aware of the dangerously deviant nature of Trump. Many prominent Republicans are finally distancing themselves from Trump, because of his predatory sexual attitudes and dangerous pronouncements about the democratic process itself. They see he is really unhinged and dangerous and they have just enough decency and critical faculty to more or less say ‘enough is enough’. Fortunately the American electorate tends towards rejection of Trump too and will throw the election to Clinton, probably in a landslide [not!].

If these ponerological categories apply then the US really has a very serious problem, especially if the left-over Trump followers coalesce into a genuine, but very deplorable, Amero-fascist movement. The big question will be if this movement will become a hard or soft Fascist movement, and if normal, decent people will detect this phenomenon and will be able to manage it in a wise manner. Lobaczewski’s research program of political ponerology will help.

Naperville, 21 Oct 2016
Initially posted on facebook

[1]. Schuller, Govert. “On Trump: Intolerance and Authoritarianism“. Alpheus. 20 Feb 2017. 

[2]. Schuller, Govert. “On Trump: Diagnosing 301.81 and the Goldwater Rule“. Alpheus. 21 Feb 2017. 

[3]. Schuller, Govert. “On Trump: Elias, Civilization and Trump“. Alpheus. 24 Feb 2017. 

[4]. Lobaczewski, Andrew. Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes. Red Pill Press, 2006 [1998].

[5]. Lobaczewski, 57.

[6]. Lobaczewski, 158.

[7]. “The Genesis of Evil“. Political ponerology web Site. 

On Trump: Elias, Civilization and Trump

 

Last  summer I read the phenomenal study The Civilizing Process by the eminent sociologist Norbert Elias.[1] some of his findings can be applied to understand the rise of authoritarianism in the West as embodied in the political career of President Trump. This article will present some of the theoretical underpinnings of Elias’ work, then apply them to the US Anno 2016-17, and end with some observations derived from the psychologist Julian Jaynes.

On a theoretical level there are two dualities Elias explicitly tries to overcome.

1) The duality between an alleged independent individual and an independent society standing over and against the individual as if it’s a thing. He makes the case that a) society is nothing more than the pattern of human relations, and that b) humans are, as far as their personality structures are concerned, the product and carriers of these relations.

2) The duality between a-historical psychology and a-psychological history. Elias makes the case that a) personality structures have a history inherently correlated with societal developments, and that b) historical developments are often the product of changing personality structures.

The empirical material to back up his theories are derived from the history of the West from the 12th till the 20th century, where he sees a civilizing process happening in the development of trend-setting upper class exemplars, going from knightly warriors to aristocratic courtiers to bourgeois entrepreneurs to highly educated professionals, who all displayed their own peculiar psychologies in the way their personalities were structured by an inter-connected set of a) subconscious ingrained, b) half-conscious habitual and c) conscious deliberate modes of impulse controls formative of their social behavior, speech acts and feelings of shame and pride, in short, their sense of self.

The arc of development was from relative low impulse control with its attendant violence and insensitivity towards others to increased impulse control, less violence and increased social sensitivity towards people further away in one’s chains of interconnections. At the same time, and reciprocally causal, the structure of society changes from relatively decentralized, conflictuous and arbitrary, to a centralization of political power and taxation, monopolization of violence, pacification of towns and rural areas, and increased interdependence.

The main point of Elias is that the changes in society and changes in personality structures are two sides of the same coin; that the processes of socio-genesis and psycho-genesis are to be conceptualized as one process, which he named the ‘civilizing process’ by which individuals are configured by their social relations from birth on, and subsequently also become the carriers of these configurations which they then pass on. At the same time this process is not just repetitive, but changes slowly over the centuries in spurts and counter-spurts towards increased impulse control, rationality, experientiality and sensitivity.

But the process is not without tensions and conflicts, though their nature also changes in the civilization process going from more inter-personal tensions and their resolution through violence, towards more intra-personal conflict, i.e. tension within one’s own mind-space between natural impulses and internalized control mechanisms. Unfortunately for many people this inner tension might lead to unsatisfactory lives and for some even to break-down, institutionalization, or suicide. At the same time ever larger parts of a population can live a more secure, fulfilling and civilized life.

And then there is the danger of collective regressions or civilizational ‘counter-spurts’ when substantial parts of the population, for whatever reason, deliberately reject both outer and inner impulse-control mechanisms and start railing against elites, regulations, taxes, political correctness, feminism, environmentalism and outsiders. Instead they start to extol nationalism, militarism, authoritarianism, political violence, repressive security measures and censorship. When such a counter-spurt gets politically organized we are dealing with authoritarianism, and here in the US with a soft, Amero-fascist variant in the form of Trumpism. For a deeper understanding of this phenomenon one has to turn to a budding academic research program under the name of political ponerology, or the “science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes”, about which I will report later more.[3] 

Regarding ‘sense of self’ I think that most people are acculturated into one kind of ‘sense of self’ or another, one more individualized, the other more collective, but still ‘sense of self’ nevertheless.

What comes into play too is the differentiation between a) philosophical concepts of self; b) social-scientific concepts of self; c) religious concepts of self and d) ordinary ‘popular’ concepts of self which might be more implicit and tacit.

My now preferred concept of self is to bring out this semi-private, imagined, inner mind-space-time construct in which an analog ‘I’ moves around in an imagined duplicate of the world and also projects a metaphor ‘me’ into different hypothetical scenarios and spaces, all the while trying to reconcile its different parts by fitting them into our life-story narrative, and with the whole infused with self-conscious emotions of remembered and expected feelings of shame, pride, duty, repugnance, pleasure and pain.

According to Jaynes this sense of self rose out of the ‘bicameral mind’ some-when between 2,000 and 1,000 BCE in the Middle East and is still spreading through the world and qualitatively changing, which brings me back to Elias who seems to have caught sight of its changes in the West from the Middle Ages into modernity.

Naperville, 16 Oct 2016
Initially posted on Facebook

[1]. Elias, Norbert. 2000 (1939). The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. rev. edn, Oxford: Blackwell.

[2]. Jaynes, Julian 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

[3]. Schuller, Govert. “On Trump: The Aspiring Pathocrat“. Alpheus. 24 Feb 2017.

On Trump: The Splitting of the Libertarian Movement

It looks to me that the libertarian movement, like the GOP and the Tea Party, is falling apart over the Trump phenomenon. One faction sees Trump as someone who is ignorant of, even a danger to, libertarian and constitutional principles and therefore should not be followed, while another faction thinks Trump will restore a coveted free market, repeal trade agreements, and will take on the statist establishment.

Maybe the most important libertarian voice to have turned against Trump is of the grand old man of libertarian politics, Ron Paul, and he doesn’t mince words:

“Trump’s notoriety comes from his aggressive nature and his personal attacks on individuals as well as groups, along with his bold proposals to violate civil liberties. He never abdicates ideological position, but portrays himself as a strong efficient boss for the people. He forcefully promotes an authoritarian type of government. Trump is a bully, not a physical bully, a verbal bully and that is combined with the overblown fears generated by the possibility of violent attacks against us. In reality Trump, in spite of his bombast is a fraud.”[1]

Besides Paul also libertarian luminaries like Jacob Hornberger, founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, and Ludwig von Mises scholar Dr. Richard Ebeling sound the alarm about Trump. In a recorded conversation both men could agree that of the remaining Republican candidates Trump poses the biggest danger to freedom because of his arrogance, authoritarianism, playing to the lowest common denominator, and strongman inclinations.[2]

Former New Mexico governor and leader of the Libertarian Party Gary Johnson is also opposed to Trump. He thinks some of Trump’s positions are “just whacked—just nuts. Holy cow! It’s crazy!”[3] His party’s chairman compared Trump’s positions with theirs and does not see much in common.[4]

Another anti-Trump libertarian worth mentioning is radio talk show host Glenn Beck. He quoted medical professionals who think that Trump is a “pathological narcissistic sociopath” and warned that “Donald Trump or anyone that is a big government progressive with narcissistic tendencies who will preach populism and nationalism in a time of economic and social unrest is a dangerous road to go down.”[5]

Then there is a growing group of pro-Trump libertarians, many of whom have come out since Ron Paul dropped out of the presidential race. For example the editors of LewRockwell.com, Walter Block and Donald Miller, have started Libertarians for Trump based on their assessment that Trump is the “the most congruent with our perspective”.[6] The Tea Party movement seems to back Trump through Sarah Palin’s incoherent endorsement and by other TP founders.[7] And conspiricist-in-chief Alex Jones is also on board based on alleged insider rumors fed to him by former Trump confidante and political strategist Roger Stone and author and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi. Jones now thinks that “Trump is for real”, meaning Trump is aware of the New World Order cabal and will oppose it “above ground” once in office as Jones has done for years “underground”.[8]

And then there are the dissidents in the different organizations. For example, founders of RonPaul.org have officially distanced themselves from Ron Paul and see Trump as “the only rational choice left in the presidential race for those of us who hold liberty dear.”[9] And some prominent Tea Party members have turned against Trump calling him a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”.[10]

All in all, the Trump phenomenon is not only polarizing the country, but more interestingly, all major conservative movements and parties with the possible effect of outright schisms. The reason why this is happening is in my opinion that libertarian and status quo conservatives with a medium to high authoritarian disposition are increasingly perceiving both real and imaginary threats such that their intolerance levels are increasing and become attracted to an authoritarian, fascist-lite conservative like Trump.[11]

It looks to me that their need for a bullying strongman to take on the political establishment trumps their sense of individualistic liberty and personal responsibility, and that they are ready to “walk away” from most of the thousand and one little and big deals which keeps this country together.

Naperville, 31 Mar 2016.
Originally posted on Facebook.

[1]. Paul, Ron. “Donald Trump: The Establishment Candidate“. Liberty Report. 18 Dec 2015.

[2]. Hornberger, Jacob & Richard Ebeling. “Libertarian Angle: Why People Are Supporting Trump“. The Future of Freedom Foundation. 22 Mar 2016.

[3]. Gillespie, Nick. “Exclusive: Gary Johnson Running For President, Call Trump’s Plans “Just Whacked – Just Nuts!“. Reason Magazine. 6 Jan 2016.

[4]. Libertarian Party. Press release. “Libertarians versus Donald Trump“.

[5]. Beck, Glen. Facebook. 26 Jan 2016.

[6]. Block, Walter. “Libertarians for Trump“. LewRockwell.com. 15 Mar 2016.

[7]. Miller, S.A. “Donald Trump enjoys support of tea party movement that refuses to fully embrace him“. The Washington Times. 22 Nov 2015.

[8]. Jones, Alex. “Breaking: New Trump Scandal, Devastating Info Released“. Info Wars. 18 Mar 2016.

[9]. Tim Martin, Esther Anderson, Jeff Hale. “RonPaul.com Founders Endorse Donald Trump for President“. RonPaul.com. 29 feb 2016.

[10]. “Tea Party leader: Trump a wolf in sheep’s clothing“. The Hill. 4 Mar 2016.

[11]. Schuller, Govert. “On Trump: Intolerance and Authoritarianism“. Alpheus. 20 Feb 2017. 

 

On Trump: Diagnosing 301.81 and the Goldwater Rule

During the 2015/16 US presidential primaries consensus emerged among health professionals [1], knowledgeable journalists [2,3,4] and those engaged in amateur diagnoses [5] that the psychological profile of then presidential candidate Donald Trump hovered somewhere between having a (curable) narcissist character trait of a malignant kind and suffering from (irreversible) Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

Making such a diagnosis has several ethical and legal aspects, especially the Goldwater Rule, which in the case of Trump brings out intriguing historical parallels.

First the diagnosis. In the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) the NPD is coded as 301.81 with 301 standing for the family of personality disorders and 81 for its specific member ‘narcissistic’. The definition is “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts as indicated by five (or more)” of nine different criteria.[6]

The Goldwater Rule is an ethical code in the mental health profession. On one side it prevents professionals from giving to the media a specific professional opinion about another person’s psychological health unless they have conducted an in-depth assessment through personal interaction and obtained the permission of the person in question to release its results. On the other side the rule allows professionals to share with the public their  expertise about mental health issues, but have to do so in general terms.[7]

So they cannot say that a specific person has NPD, but they can say that political candidates are often narcissistic (which sometimes can be good), that narcissism comes in many gradations, and that there are nine diagnostic criteria for NPD, which they may discuss in detail. Meanwhile they will have to leave it to the reader to make up his or her own mind if these criteria are applicable to some public figure or not.[8] Other people are not bound by that rule but are reminded to be careful in using mental health diagnostic tools because their cavalier use can lead to the stigmatization of, and adverse reactions from, those diagnosed.[6,9] One expert warned that especially during hotly contested and emotionally laden political campaigns psychological and political evaluations tend to get confusingly mixed and that the public, including professionals, might fall for unnoticed subconscious reaction patterns (transference and countertransference in psycho-speak) which will cloud their judgements.[10]

The Goldwater Rule originated in the context of the 1964 presidential race between the republican candidate Barry Goldwater and democratic candidate Lyndon Johnson. [9,11] The magazine Fact sent a questionnaire to 12,000 psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists with the main question if Goldwater was psychologically fit to be president. There were other questions and space was left open to make specific comments. 1,200 came back of which a whopping 50% responded in the negative, i.e. they did not think Goldwater was psychologically suitable to be president. Fact published the results with excerpts from the comments. Goldwater then sued the magazine for libel, which case he won because it was proven that the magazine had manipulated some of the comments to make Goldwater look more unhinged than the comments warranted.[12] The profession was embarrassed and instituted a rule to circumscribe what it can say about public figures, which then became known as the Goldwater Rule. Later analyses of the article indicated severe methodological problems with the ‘study’. [10]

But exceptions have been made in the case of foreign leaders like Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein, the former head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and a gaggle of terrorists and school shooters. And the possibility was raised for the justification to break the rule in case a politician would rise to “the level of a national threat”.[9]

Given the above mentioned caveats and given Trump’s policy proposals to deport twelve million illegal immigrants; “grab, grab, grab” from other countries the wealth he thinks is owed to the US; coerce Mexico to pay for a border wall, and threaten nuclear war if they don’t comply; close the borders to legitimate Muslim refugees; run the US like he runs his businesses, which means putting it in one or another kind of strategic bankruptcy; clamp down on free speech; his otherwise abysmal mastery of policy issues; and his callous attitude to women, minorities, journalists and other political candidates; he therefore poses, in my opinion, enough of a national and international danger that the whole world is entitled to a psychological assessment of this person to see if he can be trusted with handling the immense power inherent in the US presidency and not lead the world into some social, economic and/or nuclear disaster.

As some experts have already spoken, the public will have to do its homework.

Naperville, March 19, 2016.
Originally posted on Facebook.

Sources

[1]. Alford, Henry. “Is Donald Trump Actually a Narcissist? Therapists Weight In!” Vanity Fair. 11 Nov 2015.

[2]. Barber, Nigel. “Does Trump Suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder?” Psychology Today. 10 Aug 2016 [updated?].

[3]. Kluger, Jeffrey. “The Truth About Donald Trump“. Time. 11 Aug 2016.

[4]. Azarian, Bobby. “A neuroscientist explains: Trump has a mental disorder that makes him a dangerous world leader“. Raw Story. 18 Jan 2016.

[5].Konnikova, Maria. “Less Than Artful Choices: Narcissistic Personality Disorder According to Donald Trump“. Big Think. Early 2016.

[6]. “Diagnostic criteria for 301.81 Narcissistic Personality Disorder“. Behave Net.

[7]. “Ethics Reminder Offered About ‘Goldwater Rule’ on Talking to Media“. Psychiatric News. 18 May 2007.

[8]. “Robert Klitzman on Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Donald Trump“. Bioethics News. 7 Dec 2015.

[9] Friedman, Richard. “How a Telescopic Lens Muddles Psychiatric Insights“. New York Times. 23 May 2011.

[10] Stanley A. Renshon. The Psychological Assessment of Presidential Candidates. New York, NY & Oxon, UK: Routledge, 1998. Pp. 122-145.

[11] Klitzman, Robert. “Should Therapists Analyze Presidential Candidates?“. New York Times. 7 Mar 2016.

[12].  “Goldwater v. Ginzburg“. Case Text.

On Trump: Intolerance and Authoritarianism

 

To make some sense of the chaos in the Republican Party during the primaries and to partially answer the question why conservatives are flocking to Trump to the extent that he won the 2016 US general election, the following:

Political scientist and expert on political authoritarianism Karen Stenner sees three different kinds of conservatism which will be at loggerheads about certain issues and under certain circumstances. The three, with their main representatives now in the US, are: authoritarian conservatism (Trump); status quo conservatism (Romney); and libertarian conservatism (Ron Paul).

Her research focuses on the dynamics which propel people into the authoritarian camp. Her hypothesis can be formalized as follows:

I = A x T.

Intolerance = Authoritarianism x Threat

One’s level of Intolerance is equal to the product of one’s Authoritarian predisposition and one’s experience or perception of real or imagined Threats.

In her own words:

The impact of authoritarianism on intolerance of difference is conditional upon levels of collective (particularly “normative”) threat, such that this relatively stable and enduring predisposition yields more or less intolerant attitudes and behavior depending upon (the experience or perception of) threatening or reassuring conditions.

Her tripartite differentiation of conservatisms together with the idea that intolerance increases with threat perception, might explain the current chaos in the Republican Party. And it’s quite simple.

Because of increased threat perceptions by conservatives, many of the status quo and libertarian conservatives with a higher than average authoritarian disposition are drifting into the authoritarian camp because that faction reflects better their new level of intolerance. Meanwhile those conservatives with a lower authoritarian disposition, especially the libertarians, are fighting back and denounce the leader of the authoritarian camp.

The threats Stenner identifies which trigger intolerance are big divisions in public opinions regarding political matters and political leaders perceived as untrustworthy. Again, in her own words:

Nothing aggravates authoritarians more than feeling that leaders are unworthy of trust and respect, and/or that beliefs are not shared across the community (“normative threat”). And nothing lets down their defenses more than confidence in political leaders and widespread public consensus (“normative reassurance”).

The big question is whether the perceived threats are real and if such threats justify an authoritarian answer, but that’s for another post.

Stenner, Karen. 2009. “Three Kinds of ‘Conservatism'”. Psychological Inquiry, 20: 142–159.

Originally posted on Facebook, March 7, 2016.

On Trump: Trump Positively Mentions Arch-elitist Richard Haass. Why?

In March 2016 Trump mentioned Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass as an “excellent” foreign policy adviser.[1] This created some consternation in some libertarian and conspiricist conservative circles. What is the big deal here?

Why would Trump name the quintessential establishment figure Haass as an excellent (potential) adviser on foreign policy? He probably knows he would alienate, or at least startle, his anti-establishment, anti-status quo followers (let alone the conspiricists and nativists) by mentioning such an elitist policy planner.

I think he is, as usual, opportunistic and is tactically dealing with the increasingly strong head-wind from the establishment–like the very recent denouncement of him by 106 Republican foreign policy advisers–by signaling he might take their advise.[3] Reading some of the reactions it looks like the ploy doesn’t work and Trump is still left to his own skewered wits to formulate an intelligible and intelligent foreign policy beyond the few inane ideas he has presented so far.

For a little deeper background the following;

Chris Rossini, who writes for the Ron Paul Liberty Report, overstated the relationship between Trump and Haass, when he alleged that Haass is now Trump’s foreign policy adviser, which would turn Trump into a hypocritical flip-flopper on his views and use of the establishment.[2] The fact is that Haass does brief presidential candidates, so their August ’15 meeting is not that relevant, and after being mentioned by Trump, Haass put a more than arms-length space between him and Trump.

According to Reuters:

“A spokeswoman for Haass, Iva Zoric, said that he briefed Trump on foreign policy in August 2015. In a tweet late on Thursday, Haass wrote: “I do not endorse candidates. What I have done is offered to brief all candidates, & have briefed several, D(emocrat) & R(epublican) alike.”[1]

More important is that Trump mentioned him at all, and in glowing terms, during the debate last Friday as someone to listen to on foreign policy questions. Trump said:

“I think Richard Haass is excellent. I have a lot of respect for him.”

The importance is that Haass, as pointed out, is president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most influential, bi-partisan, corporate foreign policy think tank in existence. It was the major architect of the post-WWII global (read imperialist) political and economic order when it devised in the 1940s institutions like the UN, IMF and World Bank (and later the WTO). The CFR usually promotes, if not designs, international ‘free’ trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA, TPP, etc.

Its roots go back to the Versailles peace conference after WWI at which the American delegation tried to impose some of its policy preferences on the other victors, but were not entirely successful.

It is also hugely influential in the yearly, high-security Bilderberg conferences (with Haass in attendance), starting in the 1950s and still going strong, in which the Western European and North American elites hash out their differences.

The CFR was also the architect of the Trilateral Commission (of which Haass is a member) and G7 ‘summitry’ since the 1970s. The TC coordinates corporate policy preferences between North America, Europe and Japan, with some of the Asian Tigers now also joining. Its initial greatest ‘coup’ was the creation of the Carter administration, which started the implementation of the neoliberal agenda usually associated with Reagan and Thatcher.

In short, and in more political scientific terms, the CFR is the long term policy planning think tank of the Atlantic power elite, and its president has quite some influence by directing that policy planning process.

Either Trump is trying to cozy up to Haass to get access to the brain power of the CFR; or just wants to signal he is more moderate than he looks like; or has no idea who Haass actually is and what crucial position he has in the foreign policy establishment. With Trump we just don’t know.

Originally posted on Facebook, March 6, 2016.

[1]. Warren Strobel, Jonathan Landay and Phil Stewart. “Foreign policy thinkers praised by Trump have divergent views“. Reuters. 4 Mar 2016.

[2]. Rossini, Chris. “Trump Already Surrounding Himself with Establishment Men“. Ron Paul Liberty Report. 6 Mar 2016.

[3]. Staff. “Open Letter on Donald Trump from GOP National Security Leaders“. War on the Rocks. 2 Mar 2016.