{"id":2144,"date":"2022-03-27T16:51:22","date_gmt":"2022-03-27T16:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/03\/27\/political-ponerology\/"},"modified":"2022-03-27T16:51:22","modified_gmt":"2022-03-27T16:51:22","slug":"political-ponerology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/03\/27\/political-ponerology\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Ponerology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ponerology is the theological study of evil. Political ponerology is thus the political-scientific study of evil. A tip of the hat to Tony Flood<\/a> for referring me to this Mises Wire review<\/a> by Michael Rectenwald of Andrew M. Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology<\/em>.  I just now ordered a copy from Amazon.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

A new edition of Political Ponerology<\/em><\/a>, by Andrew M. \u0141obaczewski, edited by Harrison Koehli, is now available on Amazon.1<\/a> This strange and provocative book argues that totalitarianism is the result of the extension of psychopathology from a group of psychopaths to the entire body politic, including its political and economic systems. Political Ponerology<\/em> is essential reading for concerned thinkers and all sufferers of past and present totalitarianism. It is especially crucial today, when totalitarianism has once again emerged, this time in the West, where it is affecting nearly every aspect of life, including especially the life of the mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of ideology, Political Ponerology<\/em> explains a phenomenon that had vexed me. How did Communist ideologues manage to convince the masses that they undertook their crimes for \u201cthe workers,\u201d \u201cthe people,\u201d or egalitarianism? But even more perplexing, how did the ideologues convince themselves<\/em> that their crimes were for the good of the common man? \u0141obaczewski explains that totalitarian ideology operates on two levels; the terms of the original ideology are taken at face value by true believers, while the party insiders substitute secondary meanings for the same terms, and normal people are subjected to gaslighting. Only the cognoscenti, the psychopaths, know and understand the secondary meanings. They recognize that actions purportedly undertaken on behalf of \u201cthe workers\u201d translate into the domination of the party and the state on behalf of the psychopaths themselves. The truth is the opposite of what the party insiders claim to be the case, and they know it<\/em>. Political Ponerology<\/em> thus explains the origin of \u201cdoublespeak,\u201d which George Orwell portrays so well. Coincidentally, \u0141obaczewski finished Political Ponerology<\/em> in 1984.<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

\u0141obaczewski argues that an adequate study of totalitarianism had hitherto been impossible because it had been undertaken in the wrong registers. It had been treated strictly in terms of economics, literature, ideology studies, history, religion, political science, and international politics, among other approaches. One is reminded of the literary accounts and studies of the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and Nazi Germany\u2014of the classic works by Hannah Arendt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, V\u00e1clav Benda, V\u00e1clav Havel, and many others. These made indispensable contributions but had, owing to no fault of their own, necessarily failed to grasp the root of the problem\u2014namely, the psychopathological dimension of the inception and development of \u201cpathocracy,\u201d or rule by psychopaths.<\/span><\/p>\n

The responses of normal human beings to the gross injustices and disfigurement of reality perpetrated by the ruling bodies had hitherto only been understood by members of the social body in terms of conventional worldviews. Emotionality and moral judgments blinded victims to what beset them. The deficiencies in the approaches of scholars, as well as the moralism of laypersons, had left pathocracy essentially misapprehended and likewise left humanity without any effective defenses against it. \u0141obaczewski redresses these deficiencies and provides these defenses. In this sense\u2014that is, in using a scientific methodology to treat socialism\u2014\u0141obaczewski\u2019s work is analogous to Ludwig von Mises\u2019s Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis<\/em><\/a>, first published one hundred years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ponerology is the theological study of evil. Political ponerology is thus the political-scientific study of evil. A tip of the hat to Tony Flood for referring me to this Mises Wire review by Michael Rectenwald of Andrew M. Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology.  I just now ordered a copy from Amazon. A new edition of Political Ponerology, by … Continue reading “Political Ponerology”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,29,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-and-evil","category-political-ponerology","category-political-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}