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

unofficially. This phrase originally referred to Cardinal Richelieu’s right-

hand man, François Leclerc du Tremblay, a Capuchin priest who wore gray

robes. [Editor’s note.]

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

163

that it can continue fulfilling its propaganda function under

ever-changing conditions. He also has to uphold the leader’s

mystique inside and outside the association. Complete trust

cannot exist between the two, however, since the leader se-

cretly has contempt for the spellbinder and his ideology,

whereas the spellbinder despises the leader for being such a

coarse individual. A showdown is always probable; whoever is

weaker becomes the loser.

The structure of such a union undergoes further variegation

and specialization. A chasm opens between the somewhat more

normal members and the elite initiates who are, as a rule, more

pathological. This later subgroup becomes ever more domi-

nated by hereditary pathological factors, the former by the af-

ter-effects of various diseases affecting the brain, less typically

psychopathic individuals, and people whose malformed per-

sonalities were caused by early deprivation or brutal child-

rearing methods on the part of pathological individuals. It soon

develops that there is less and less room for normal people in

the group at all. The leaders’ secrets and intentions are kept

hidden from the union’s proletariat; the products of the spell-

binders’ work must suffice for this segment.

An observer watching such a union’s activities from the

outside and using the natural psychological world view will

always tend to overestimate the role of the leader and his alleg-

edly autocratic function. The spellbinders and the propaganda

apparatus are mobilized to maintain this erroneous outside

opinion. The leader, however, is dependent upon the interests

of the union, especially the elite initiates , to an extent greater

than he himself knows. He wages a constant position-jockeying

battle; he is an actor with a director. In macrosocial unions, this

position is generally occupied by a more representative indi-

vidual not deprived of certain critical faculties; initiating him

into all those plans and criminal calculations would be coun-

terproductive. In conjunction with part of the elite, a group of

psychopathic individuals hiding behind the scenes steers the

leader, the way Borman and his clique steered Hitler. If the

leader does not fulfill his assigned role, he generally knows that

the clique representing the elite of the union is in a position to

kill or otherwise remove him.

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PONEROLOGY

We have sketched the properties of unions in which the

ponerogenic process has transformed their original generally

benevolent content into a pathological counter-part thereof and

modified its structure and its later changes, in a manner suffi-

ciently wide-scale to encompass the greatest possible scope of

this kind of phenomena, from the smallest to the largest social

scale. The general rules governing those phenomena appear to

be at least analogous, independent of the quantitative, social,

and historical scale of such a phenomenon.

Ideologies

It is a common phenomenon for a ponerogenic association

or group to contain a particular ideology which always justifies

its activities and furnishes motivational propaganda. Even a

small-time gang of hoodlums has its own melodramatic ideol-

ogy and pathological romanticism. Human nature demands that

vile matters be haloed by an over-compensatory mystique in

order to silence one’s conscience and to deceive consciousness

and critical faculties, whether one’s own or those of others.

If such a ponerogenic union could be stripped of its ideol-

ogy, nothing would remain except psychological and moral

pathology, naked and unattractive. Such stripping would of

course provoke “moral outrage”, and not only among the

members of the union. The fact is, even normal people, who

condemn this kind of union along with its ideologies, feel hurt

and deprived of something constituting part of their own ro-

manticism, their way of perceiving reality when a widely ideal-

ized group is exposed as little more than a gang of criminals.

Perhaps even some of the readers of this book will resent the

author’s stripping evil so unceremoniously of all its literary

motifs. The job of effecting such a “strip-tease” may thus turn

out to be much more difficult and dangerous than expected.

A primary ponerogenic union is formed at the same time as

its ideology, perhaps even somewhat earlier. A normal person

perceives such ideology to be different from the world of hu-

man concepts, obviously suggestive, and even primitively

comical to a degree.

An ideology of a secondarily ponerogenic association is

formed by gradual adaptation of the primary ideology to func-

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

165

tions and goals other than the original formative ones. A certain

kind of layering or schizophrenia of ideology takes place dur-

ing the ponerization process. The outer layer closest to the

original content is used for the group’s propaganda purposes,

especially regarding the outside world, although it can in part

also be used inside with regard to disbelieving lower-echelon

members. The second layer presents the elite with no problems

of comprehension: it is more hermetic, generally composed by

slipping a different meaning into the same names. Since identi-

cal names signify different contents depending on the layer in

question, understanding this “doubletalk” requires simultane-

ous fluency in both languages.

Average people succumb to the first layer’s suggestive in-

sinuations for a long time before they learn to understand the

second one as well. Anyone with certain psychological devia-

tions, especially if he is wearing the mask of normality with

which we are already familiar, immediately perceives the sec-

ond layer to be attractive and significant; after all, it was built

by people like him. Comprehending this doubletalk is therefore

a vexatious task, provoking quite understandable psychological

resistance; this very duality of language, however, is a pathog-

nomonic80 symptom indicating that the human union in ques-

tion is touched by the ponerogenic process to an advanced de-

gree.

The ideology of unions affected by such degeneration has

certain constant factors regardless of their quality, quantity, or

scope of action: namely, the motivations of a wronged group,

radical righting of the wrong, and the higher values of the in-

dividuals who have joined the organization . These motivations

facilitate sublimation of the feeling of being wronged and dif-

ferent, caused by one’s own psychological failings, and appear

to liberate the individual from the need to abide by uncomfort-

able moral principles.

In the world full of real injustice and human humiliation,

making it conducive to the formation of an ideology containing

the above elements, a union of its converts may easily succumb

to degradation. When this happens, those people with a ten-

80 Specific characteristics of a disease. [Editor’s note.]

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PONEROLOGY

dency to accept the better version of the ideology will tend to

justify such ideological duality.

The ideology of the proletariat,81 which aimed at revolu-

tionary restructuring of the world, was already contaminated by

a schizoid deficit in the understanding of, and trust for, human

nature; small wonder, then, that it easily succumbed to a proc-

ess of typical degeneration in order to nourish and disguise a

macrosocial phenomenon whose basic essence is completely

different.82

For future reference, let us remember: ideologies do not

need spellbinders. Spellbinders need ideologies in order to

subject them to their own deviant goals.

On the other hand, the fact that some ideology degenerated

along with its corollary social movement, later succumbing to

81 From the Communist Manifesto : “By proletariat [is meant] the class of

modern wage laborers, who, having no means of production of their own, are

reduced to selling their labor-power in order to live.” [Editor’s note.]

82 Fascism seems to be the diametric opposite of Communism and Marxism,

both in a philosophic and political sense, and also opposed democratic capi-

talist economics along with socialism and liberal democracy. It viewed the

state as an organic entity in a positive light rather than as an institution de-

signed to protect collective and individual rights, or as one that should be

held in check. Fascism is also typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state

control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic which

accurately describes what was passed off under the name of Communism.

The fascist state regulates and controls (as opposed to nationalizing) the

means of production. Fascism exalts the nation, state, or race as superior to

the individuals, institutions, or groups composing it. Fascism uses explicit

populist rhetoric; calls for a heroic mass effort to restore past greatness; and

demands loyalty to a single leader, often to the point of a cult of personality.

Again, we see that Fascism was passed off as Communism. So, what actually

seems to have happened is that the original ideals of the proletariat were

cleverly subsumed to State corporatism. Most people in the west are not

aware of this because of the Western propaganda against Communism. The

word “Fascist” has become a slur throughout the world since the stunning

failure of the Axis powers in World War II. In contemporary political dis-

course, adherents of some political ideologies tend to associate fascism with

their enemies, or define it as the opposite of their own views. There are no

major self-described fascist parties or organizations anywhere in the world.

However, at the present time, in the U.S., the system is far more fascist than

democratic, which probably explains the existence of the years of anti-

Communist propaganda. That would demonstrate an early process of poneri-

zation of Western democracy which, at present, has almost completed the

transformation to full-blown fascism. [Editor’s note.]

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

167

this schizophrenia and serving goals which the originators of

the ideology would have abhorred, does not prove that it was

worthless, false, and fallacious from the start. Quite the con-

trary: it rather appears that under certain historical conditions,

the ideology of any social movement, even if it is sacred truth,

can yield to the ponerization process.

A given ideology may have contained weak spots, created

by the errors of human thought and emotion within; or it may,

during the course of its history, become infiltrated by more

primitive foreign material which can contain ponerogenic fac-

tors. Such material destroys an ideology’s internal homogeny.

The source of such infection by foreign ideological material