A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings: From the Powell Memo to the Eastman Memo and January 6th

Published on by Brynne VanHettinga Category: American History, Chaos Theory, Dr. Andrew Lobaszewsky, Elitism, Hysteroidal Cycle, January 6th, Psychopathy

Part 8 of a 10-part Series:

The Toxic Combination of Psychopathic Elites

and Hysteroidal Masses

“When communities lose the capacity for psychological reason and moral criticism, the processes of the generation of evil are intensified…until everything reverts to ‘bad times.’”

Dr. Andrew Lobaszewsky

We understand the motivation of the oligarchs: Justification of privilege, protection of wealth over the well-being of workers, keeping the plebes divided and working harder for less without protest. But what happened on January 6th was not entirely the work of oligarchs (although some of them were happy to fund it). Yes, at least one insurrectionist flew into DC on a private jet, but a snapshot of insurrectionist demographics (94% white and 86% male) indicates that—while 85% of them were employed–only 13% were “business owners” and 28% held white-collar jobs, suggesting that nearly half of them (44%) were working class folks.

Before we segue from the motivations of the American oligarchy to the inner psychological world of the American working class, we will first visit the research of Dr. Andrew Lobaszewsky. Lobaszewsky was a trained in Poland as a psychiatrist during the time Poland was invaded by Hitler and then dominated by Soviet Russia. Instead of focusing on military and political leadership, Lobaszewsky wanted to know what was going on the psyches of ordinary people who were subjected to oppressive, authoritarian regimes. When Lobaszewsky left Poland and came to the U.S. in the early 1980s, he compiled his research to describe what he termed “ponerology,” or the science of macrosocial evil.

While completing his studies in psychiatry, Lobaszewsky began to observe changes in the thought patterns and worldview of his friends and colleagues. Distinguished academics were suddenly disavowing their own prior research in order to accommodate the new “party line.” As Lobaszewsky and his colleagues witnessed what they called “personality disintegration” or “transpersonification” among themselves, they wanted to use their training to help them understand what was happening to them (and most everyone else). Lobaszewsky reports that he and his colleagues had to keep “abhorrence and fear under control,” as well as the “natural moralizing reflexes of revulsion” as they delved into the dark side of humanity.

Similar to the operation of modern terrorist “cells,” Lobaszewsky and his fellow researchers conducted their work in secret and did not even know the identity of others, communicating through an underground messaging system. At one point, Lobaszewsky tossed the collected manuscript into a furnace after receiving a warning about an impending search by authorities only moments before. A second copy was given to an American tourist to be delivered to the Vatican, but its whereabouts are still unknown to this day. Only decades later was he able to compile the findings of the underground research from memory and have it translated from Polish.

According to Lobaszewsky, somewhere between one and six percent of the human population is psychopathic. Lobaszewsky follows the “disease model” of mental illness and does not blame these individuals for what he asserts is a genetic anomaly. Psychopaths don’t always turn into serial killers, but psychopaths who are born with access to wealth or special talent can cause a huge amount of suffering and even death without committing any overt acts themselves. The main identifier of a psychopath is a complete lack of conscience.

At some point, a psychopath will realize he (it is usually a “he,” but sometimes a “she”) is different from other people. The psychopath tends to deal with this self-realization of difference in one of two ways. The psychopath may attempt to fit into normal society, and can become quite skilled at mimicking “appropriate” human emotions that they do not themselves experience. Alternatively (and more dangerously), they will attempt to re-make everyone else in their own image. Feelings like guilt or concern about the welfare of others are reframed as “abnormal” or signs of “weakness.” One can readily intuit how either of these approaches could serve the psychopath in a rise to power in a modern, capitalist society.

In modern times, Dr. Robert Hare has refined the concept of psychopathy, which now includes (in addition to lack of conscience) lack of empathy; egocentricity; pathological lying; disregard for the law and social convention; shallow emotion; and a history of victimizing others. Dr. Hare has developed a psychopathy checklist (which has been determined to be reliable by others in the mental health professions) as a diagnostic tool, which is mostly used on adult males in the U.S. prison system.

Lobaszewsky’s research found that about another 12 percent of the human population is “characteropathic.” These folks are not fully psychopathic, but have hereditary (and sometimes latent) personality defects that can be triggered by exposure/interaction with “deviant” individuals or unhealthy environments.  Lobaszewsky argues that characteropathy can be triggered when an individual lives in a society that does not allow them to fully express their talents and skills (e.g., underemployment). The question that Lobaszewsky attempts to answer is how an entire society or culture can become mentally sick and dangerous when less than 20% of the population exhibit either psychopathic or characterological traits.

Psychopathic personalities tend to thrive in modern, materialistic, success-oriented cultures. Positions atop hierarchies are always attractive to psychopaths, and as organizations become ever more immense, the rewards of ascendance within them become larger as well (not only more money to be made, but more power to control others). Psychopaths often seek such positions in either commerce or politics (where money and power can be traded) or large, impersonal organizations, where they can manipulate others to assist them in seizing power. Moreover, psychopaths are driven to impose their values on others, promoting ideals of greed, selfishness, and opportunism as “normal,” while values like empathy are considered “abnormal” or only for “losers.”

However, societal ponerization (when a society itself becomes evil) does not happen simply when psychopaths ascend to positions of power. According to Lobaszewsky, societies experience what he calls a “hysteroidal cycle.” Lobaszewsky’s cycle begins with so-called “good times,” or a period of apparent prosperity. But the visible and publicly celebrated prosperity is almost always rooted in injustice to one or more out-groups. Here in the U.S., the Gilded age (1870 to 1900) and the Roaring Twenties (1920-1929) were such times. New ideologies may arise which attempt to address the injustice, but the ideologies themselves become perverted by psychopathic individuals in pursuit of power. Psychopaths themselves have no specific ideology (having been identified among Nazis, Communists, capitalists, and even religious leaders), but will adopt a locally popular ideology to suit their own purposes.

During these “good times,” the majority of people lose the ability to think critically. So long as most people have enough and those who are inferiorized can be scapegoated, protest is minimized. Lobaszewsky describes the process of ponerization as incremental—“one evil opens the door to another”—which may be undiscernible in its early stages. As pathological thinking becomes normalized (usually by persons in positions of power and influence), it spreads and becomes ever more pathological. Characteropathic leaders are replaced with psychopathic ones. Under the new leadership, group members are subjected to increasing scrutiny and tests for ideological purity. When psychopathic leaders have gained control over a society—both through their own machinations in addition to the acquiescence (and even support) of the hysteroidal masses—the society has become a full-blown pathocracy.  

How would we recognize a pathocracy? Taking lessons from Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, one sure sign is when a government engages in a campaign to exterminate large numbers of its own people. How could a pathocracy be installed when we live in a democracy?  It is here we have to understand the process whereby the masses become “hystericized.” Shortly after January 6th, the New Zealand Herald suggested that those who stormed the Capitol “could have had a mass psychosis.” The greater concern was that this process of “radicalization” was not confined to the United States. The “conspiracy information ecosystem is highly international,” with the same tactics being deployed by ISIS, white nationalists and Christian crusaders. It is being driven by AI algorithms that target the darkest human impulses because this is what drives the growth of social media platforms.

Lobaszewsky asserts that these processes are always cyclical. An established pathocracy will not last forever because all pathocracies contain the seeds of their own destruction. The sheer level of suffering among the majority of psychologically normal people will eventually wake them from their hysteroidal stupor. A resistance will arise, but it will not come about as a great counter-revolution, but rather a “stormy process of regeneration.” As ordinary people struggle to survive in a pathocracy, they begin to see the things they have in common where they may have formerly focused on their differences.

A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings: From the Powell Memo to the Eastman Memo and January 6th

Published on by Brynne VanHettinga Category: American History, Chaos Theory, Christian Nationalism, Elitism, January 6th

Part 7 of a 10-part Series:

The Unholy Alliance Between Socio-economic Elites

and White Christian Nationalism

…the religious right has become more focused and powerful even as it is arguably less representative. It is not a social or cultural movement. It is a political movement, and its ultimate goal is power.”

Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 2019

Oligarchs, plutocrats, extreme inequality, the dominance of corporations and Wall Street in public life—all are not unexpected results (indeed they were the very purpose) of the Powell memo. Harder to connect is how all of this is related to January 6th, where it looked like a mob of “ordinary” Americans were fed up with a Congress that had lost touch with them. However, in their zeal to keep “the people” disconnected and distracted, the masters of the universe have created a population full of anger, angst, alienation, and anomie. Religion can fill the void of belongingness in such a system, and it can also be co-opted into the war against the people.

Anyone who has watched video footage from January 6th can see that Christian iconography was everywhere. Certainly, there were plenty of regular American flags and Trump regalia. There were also symbols that many of us would consider “un-American,” including Confederate flags and Nazi symbolism. But even more jarring was the juxtaposition of white supremacy and nationalist hate groups (Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, III Percenters) with Christian themes:  crosses, ichthys (the Jesus fish), along with Jesus-themed flags (“Jesus is my Lord, Trump is my President,” “Make America Godly Again,”  “GOD GUNS TRUMP”) and even a picture of a white Jesus wearing a red MAGA hat—images which many Christians find blasphemous (this writer included). 

 

One seeming paradox is the incestuous relationship between Christian nationalism and plutocracy. How can a greed-is-good, everyone-for-himself, winner-take-all ethos come wrapped in a religion which is purportedly all about loving one’s fellows and helping one’s neighbors?  So-called “Christian nationalism” however, is not merely a patriotic form of Christianity, but rather a very specific ideology that is authoritarian, patriarchal, and hierarchical. This is not the “Jesus loves you” Christianity that supports missions of feeding, healing, and teaching; but rather something more like 17th century Calvinism—which included practices of torture and witch-burning—or (farther back), the Holy Crusades.

According to Katherine Stewart in The Power Worshippers (2019), modern American Christian nationalism had roots in proslavery theology. Robert Dabney (1820-1898), a Presbyterian Pastor from South Carolina who had served as a chaplain in the Confederate army, turned to God in order to justify the ownership and enslavement of other human beings. Dabney began preaching the gospel of the “Redeemer Nation,” or the idea that slavery was divinely ordained, and that God would protect the white man’s property. Included in Dabney’s theology was the argument that God had also ordained the social subordination of women (based on the “first transgression” of Eve). Even after the Civil War and slavery was abolished, the “idea of the redeemer nation” persisted.

Fast forward to 1916, where an Armenian family who had fled the Turkish genocide arrived in America and bore a son they named Rousas John (R.J.) Rushdooney.  Rushdooney (1916-2001) grew up hearing stories of graphic persecution of Christians at the hands of Muslims, thus developing an intellectual and emotional attachment to the notion of Christian victimhood. Rushdooney attended the University of California at Berkeley, followed by the Pacific School of Religions (also based in Berkeley). Already, “all the distinctive features of his intellectual persona” were obvious: “a resolutely binary form of thought [which is a classic feature of authoritarianism], a craving for order, and a loathing for the secular world and secular education in particular.” Rushdooney became a disciple of Dabney’s works, including Dabney’s defense of slavery. Here we see the establishment of the dominionist movement, which takes up the theme of the Redeemer Nation: The United States was chosen by God, that its holy purpose is to become a Christian nation, where women are subordinated to men, education is wholly Christian-based, and no one pays taxes to support Black people.

Rushdooney found an ally in another Congregational minister named James W. Fifield, Jr. Fifield (1899-1977) can likely be credited for the marriage between big money and Christian nationalism. Fifield preached against the New Deal and the “social gospel” of helping those less fortunate. “With a talent for whispering into the ears of plutocrats,” Fifield was able to obtain corporate funding from the likes of Sun Oil, Chrysler and General Motors, who were happy to patronize a theology that “demonized labor unions and in general anything that required government to work on behalf of the people.” They teamed up with libertarian economists like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Henry Hazlitt, who “warned that the modern welfare state would soon overwhelm the free market and put humanity on the road to serfdom….The fusion of hyper-capitalist ideology with hyper-Calvinist theology purveyed by the likes of Fifield …[and Rushdooney]…secured the financial future of Christian nationalism.”

Stewart argues that Rushdooney and Fifield did not necessarily create anything new, but they were able to tap into the darker side of humanity that had much deeper roots in American history—not just slavery, but the whole anti-democratic notion that certain people are intended (by God) to rule, and others are intended to serve or submit. The goal of government was to preserve the privileges of the rulers and keep everyone else in line. Democratic goals like equality—especially when applied to non-Whites or non-Christians—were heresy.

Stewart argues that Republicans were not always anti-abortion. Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, yet there was no immediate “pro-life” uprising. Indeed, then-First Lady Betty Ford actually praised the decision, and many Catholic Democrats opposed it. The anti-abortion “strategy” (yes, it started as strategy and not as a visceral reaction based on faith) began with the formation of a group associated with the ascendance of the New Right: Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, a few members of the former Nixon administration, and the Southern Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell.  

This group of right-wing evangelicals were searching for a spiritual bogeyman they could rally people against. At this time, one of the primary objectives was raising money and advocating for tax exemptions to support “Christian” schools. Although there was an urge to proselytize children, Christian schools were the right’s “solution” to avoid desegregation. Obviously, one could not make a moral argument in favor of segregated schools and tax exemptions for rich people, no matter how “religious” they were presented to be. Using focus group techniques more often associated with marketing and political campaigns, they came up with the name “Moral Majority.”

Now that they had a name that resonated with the voting public, the next step was to find (or manufacture) an emotional “hook” that was consistent with issues of faith. Someone suggested taking on “women’s liberation,” but this was the late 1970s and the Equal Rights Amendment was going nowhere. Another suggestion was abortion. Here they found both a foil for victimhood (nothing could be more blameless and helpless than an unborn baby) as well as a convenient way to demonize your adversaries as “baby killers.”

In order for abortion to work as a rallying cause, it had to be presented as a moral issue of utmost urgency rather than a matter of reproductive medical care. Thus, a decision was made to reframe abortion as being about “life,” essentially ignoring the science of reproduction. An alliance was forged with a group of Catholic conservatives, along with a message of “rebuilding America on the basis of Christian principles.” As this tactic began to solidify and produce converts, it also served as a convenient distraction from the erosion of workplace rights and the fact that most folk were working harder for less. Not to mention the immoral acts of certain pastors.

All Christians are exhorted (with varying degrees of coercion) to evangelize (bring the “good news” of Jesus), proselytize, and convert. For Christian nationalists, this exhortation not only comes with the urgency of holy war, it also comes with the opportunity for the enterprising to make a lot of money. So-called “prosperity gospel” ideology gained popularity in post-World War II America. An offshoot of Pentecostal revivalism, prosperity gospel proclaims that God wants people to be rich, and wealth is a sign of both one’s own degree of faith and God’s grace. One can see how this is an easy segue to an apologetics for the very rich. The message is that anyone can become a millionaire through faith and hard work—which distracts from suggestions that fortunes might have been made through exploitation, expropriation, corruption, and opportunism.

Prosperity gospel also gave the ministers who preached it a new way to increase their own fortunes. The amount one gave to the church was directly correlated with one’s own degree of faith, so the more you gave, the more that God would reward you.  One site has compiled a list of the 15 richest pastors in America, along with an estimate of their net worth. This group apparently does not strictly adhere to the more patriarchal and white supremacist wing of Christian nationalism, as four of the richest fifteen pastors are African Americans and two are women. But we see a few names that we recognize from the radical right:  Franklin Graham (heir to the Billy Graham dynasty), Pat Robertson, and Paula White (who has been connected with Trump).

Carrying forward Rushdooney’s condemnation of secular education, Christian nationalists have been instrumental in the school voucher and school privatization movements. Snagging public money to support religious schools (and thereby depriving same to secular education) is certainly one of the primary objectives. But, of course, there are always opportunities to make money. A number of Michigan-based cronies of the DeVos family have made fortunes on religious-based charter schools and private colleges: National Heritage Academies, Cornerstone Education Group, Hillsdale College. These schools serve the dual purpose of indoctrination into right-wing ideology as well as pumping money into the political system to further erode the separation of church and state.

Leonard Leo, an ultra conservative Catholic, has served in a leadership capacity at the Federalist Society for over 25 years. Realizing that the Christian right had little hope of winning the culture war at the ballot box, Leo has forged connections with big money, and was instrumental in growing Federalist Society membership and influence. The Federalist Society has connections to many of the “usual suspects” of dark money: the John M. Olin Foundation, the Scaife Foundation, the Prince and Devos Foundations, Rebekah Mercer (who is known for connections to Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica), as well as religious groups like Focus on the Family, Campus Crusade for Christ and the National Christian Foundation. In addition to money, Leo is connected to the dominionist movement, who believes that Christians must take control of all aspects of government, business and culture in order to prepare for the return of Christ. The six Federalists on the U.S. Supreme Court seem hell-bent on installing a theocracy.

The irony of the Dabney-Rushdooney-Fifield dogma is its obvious and ongoing hypocrisy. An early form of this was the insistence on “states rights,” while at the same time demanding that the Federal government help with the return of escaped slaves (a reason many Southerners opposed secession—slaves would now have a safe place to escape to). Government support for the underprivileged, or what is condescendingly termed “welfare,” is vilified as enforced theft from hard-working Americans (i.e., rich white people), yet there is all manner of grift and con to extract taxpayer money to fund their own schools of indoctrination. But the biggest hypocrisy of all is the flouting of purported moral superiority at the same time one is flagrantly engaging in at least three of the seven deadly sins: Pride (more accurately described as arrogance, hubris, and entitlement), greed, and lust (especially for power).

A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings: From the Powell Memo to the Eastman Memo and January 6th

Published on by Brynne VanHettinga Category: American History, Anti-intellectualism, Elitism, Inequality, January 6th, Populism

Part 6 of a 10-part Series:

The Double-edged Sword of Populism

There has always been in our national experience a type of mind which elevates hatred to a kind of creed…For this mind, group hatreds take a place in politics similar to the class struggle in some other modern societies. “

Richard Hofstadter, 1963,  Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

Populism is a political movement that purports to champion the “common person” against a real or perceived elite that exerts an inordinate amount of power over the life of everyday people. The paradox of populism is that it can come from either the right (anti-government) or the left (anti-corporate), and its effects can be either progressive or regressive.

Populism often arises in response to real injustice, but then may morph into something darker as it gains power. A good example of this is the Jacobin Club of the French Revolution. It was formed by mostly middle and upper-middle class persons, and its goal was to preserve the gains of the revolution by preventing a reactionary backlash from the aristocratic elites. The Jacobins increased their membership by recruiting lower-middle-class shopkeepers and artisans, and they became increasingly radicalized. During the trial of King Louis XIV, moderates who opposed violence were excluded from the club. What followed was the Reign of Terror, where many people were publicly executed. The Jacobins were blamed, and they were eventually abolished.

Here in America, perhaps the earliest example of populism was Shay’s Rebellion in 1786-1787. A group of farmers who were subject to bank foreclosure violently stormed courthouses in Massachusetts. The governing authorities in some states (who were comprised of elites) were concerned whether they would be able to suppress future such rebellions themselves. Shay’s rebellion was the event that motivated the American Constitutional convention (May-September 1787). A national government would allow the states to combine defenses against future challenges to “property.”

Later populism in America was associated with the Progressive era (1877-1917). This was the period characterized by the ascendance of industrialism, the growth of monopolies, and rampant inequality. For most of the “regular folks,” there was a major shift from livelihoods on small family farms or independent shops to wage labor. It was the period where businesses combined to form huge “trusts,” which allowed regionally dominant businesses to merge across state lines. The enlargement of trusts created the American Gilded Age and prompted passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.  This was more than a matter of money and raging inequality, but presented a threat to democracy itself, as the voices of regular people were increasingly unable to be heard in the halls of Congress that had been captured by big money.

The Progressive Populist movement pushed forward trust busting (the Sherman Act), reform of government corruption and cronyism (the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883), and the labor union movement. Although the Progressives themselves were not directly responsible for violence, violence and unrest frequently appeared around labor strikes. Like today, while the mainstream press often blamed the striking workers, later investigations found that it was often created by Pinkertons (a vigilante law enforcement group hired by the industrialists) or federal and state national guard troops responding to requests to defend factories.

More recent examples of American populism are represented by the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. Although these movements are frequently portrayed as opposites, in their early days they sometimes were described as two sides of a very angry coin. Both were motivated to some degree by the government bailout of Wall Street and big banks during the Great Recession of 2007-2009, while the pain of Main Street and working people was ignored. Although both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street started as grass roots response to injustices against “the people,” the Occupy movement faded out due to lack of organization and resources. Conversely, the Tea Party movement morphed into something much more organized and better funded—including the support of right-wing billionaires.

Throughout American history, various groups have been demonized: Abolitionists, Mormons, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, African-Americans and other peoples of color, immigrants, bankers and intellectuals. We can intuit that the demonization of the latter (bankers and intellectuals) came from the ground up, whereas other forms of demonization were likely more generalized. Anti-intellectualism is a common element of populism in America.

Some of us remember former Vice-President Spiro Agnew’s calling students protesting the Vietnam War “effete snobs.” The intellectual is portrayed as someone who is content to live a life of the mind, safely ensconced within the Ivory Tower and immune from the hard work and exempt from fighting wars that all the rest of “us” must do. The intellectual is stereotypically described as enjoying an unearned social superiority while contributing nothing of real value to the rest of society. Intellectuals are the ones who live in an abstract world of spreadsheets and data, who jet off for meetings in fancy places like Davos, where they make decisions resulting in lost jobs and shuttered factories.

In modern times, the buzzwords are “meritocracy” and “professionalism,” along with their messages that only those with requisite (usually expensive) training and degrees are qualified to make certain decisions. We can sympathize with populist arguments that “elites” were behind policies (e.g., globalized trade and rapid technological change) that made a few very wealthy while destroying jobs and impoverishing the communities that were left out of the decisions.

In real life, however, the targets of anti-intellectualism are not always so easy to identify.  Typical non-Wall Street targets are higher-level public administrators and university professors. Although public administrators can be co-opted by the managerial ethos (get more work out of everyone for less), they are also public servants—most who genuinely want to see their work make a difference and improve communities. Likewise, many university professors genuinely want to improve the future through their students, and they often share the angst of their working-class neighbors—managing larger classes with fewer resources and constantly under threats from “the Administration.” Or state legislatures. Indeed, professional-level workers are increasingly subject to many of the same forms of inferiorization typically experienced by blue-collar workers. 

While “bottom-up” driven populist anti-intellectualism is usually based on legitimate grievances (and may sometime serve to advance democratic ideals), todays anti-intellectualism is a top-down driven version with entirely different roots and purposes: Oil and gas companies deny climate change, the corporatocracy and the wealthy promote “trickle down” economics, notwithstanding all the evidence that it doesn’t work as they claim. This form of anti-intellectualism allows them to whip up the working class against “intellectual elites.” Which, remarkably, never includes the well-paid white-paper “researchers” at their own posh think tanks.

 

At some point, rabid anti-intellectualism morphs into anti-science, anti-evidence, and denial of reality. The propaganda machine has been pushing policies (anti-regulation, anti-wealth-tax, anti-union, anti-education) that either harms regular working people directly or disempowers them in some way.  Relentless propaganda, combined with the defunding of public education, has resulted in loss of critical thinking skills among working and middle-class populations. Most people are already working too many hours to have time to educate themselves on all the issues—if they are even inclined to do so in a culture that disparages learning. Add on top of this the constant media barrage of glamorous and exciting lifestyles of the “rich and famous” juxtaposed against one’s own drab and shabby life, and you have a recipe for mass cognitive dissonance.

In a world where everyone is exhorted to view everyone else as competition for increasingly fewer resources (good jobs, housing, opportunity, recognition), anti-intellectualism creates another form of “us versus them.” Universities and research groups are working to make education more accessible as well as to bridge the divide between academia and the “real world.” At the same time, both oligarch-funded and organic social media hate propaganda machines have made intellectuals defensive. Feeling themselves under attack, some academics and intellectuals respond by expressing disdain for the ignorant masses, perpetuating the cycle of hate and distrust.