Mass Psychosis Hashtag Trend - where the psychosis originates, who it afflicts, whom it harms and what steps might be taken to prevent it.

#Masspsychosis is trending on Twitter.

Back in February, the English Libertarian 'think tank' The Academy of Ideas produced a video exploring this idea.  
The Academy of Ideas is an offshoot of The Institute of Ideas, led by Claire Fox, which itself was an off shoot of Living Marxism the magazine of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which folded in 1981. The staff of Living Marxism created Spiked Magazine, which is funded by The Adam Smith Institute, a creation of  Right Wing Billionaires the Koch brothers. Academy of Ideas is funded by a number of global Corporations notably Pfizer and Novartis, and others similarly inclined.

source: https://www.theguardian.cm/commentisfree/2018/dec/07/us-billionaires-hard-right-britain-spiked-magazine-charles-david-koch-foundation

In a rare public statement, in an essay published in 1978, Charles Koch explained his objective. 
“Our movement must destroy the prevalent statist paradigm. Our goal is not to reallocate the burden of government; our goal is to roll back government. We should consistently work to reduce all taxes, our own and those of others.

Defund the State and all social care programs under the guise of creating freedom for the Free Market. Pre-empt regulation of the Wealth Extractor class. Survival of the fittest, economic eugenics for billionaires who believe they are superior to all others. The weak and vulnerable must be allowed to fall.

Mass Psychosis.

The Academy of Ideas produced this video on the question of mass psychosis in the context of The Pandemic, and I think they were seeking to undermine the obvious need for collective action, supported by populations and their Governments, working as a co-operative to take preventative public health measures to protect everyone's health.
They do so by claiming that various governments existing strategies are driving an irrational tide of mass fear which is leading to an insanity that threatens 'our freedoms'. They accuse people of action driven by fear, when it is driven by concern, care and empathy.

Anti-masking is based on the idea of freedom, not the evidence of efficacy.

The NeoLiberal Anti-Statist

The - the Kochs, Rineharts, Rees-Moggs, Murdochs, Sunaks, Trumps et al liken support for preventative public health measures, (which the English and American Government cast as 'restrictions' - a deliberate trigger) to tyranny, while carefully ignoring the obvious insanity, cruelty and adverse outcomes of the English and US Governments repetitively failing strategies on limiting the harms of the spread of the SARSCOV2 virus.

1.3 million horrific Covid deaths across USUK/EU compared to China, with a similar population and 5k Covid deaths. China stopped the spread, USUK/EU enabled more spread.

Just the same as they ignore the obvious cruelty of allowing climate change to run, maintaining poverty and warfare, and doing little to prevent pollution. None of their wealth is invested into fixing the problems - it is directed to profit from the problems. COP26 was a failure. COP has always been a failure because it is adversarial - the people who show concern and empathy in an uneven struggle with the people who wish to retain power, and continue to extract wealth from the population.

One of their tactics is citing the harms of bad policy to argue for even worse policy options - an old trick.

The Academy of ideas video opens with the following :

“All one’s neighbours are in the grip of some uncontrolled and uncontrollable fear. . . In lunatic asylums it is a well-known fact that patients are far more dangerous when suffering from fear than when moved by rage or hatred.”

Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion

Similar to the old accusation of Hysteria as a uniquely female disorder, rather than understandable symptoms of trauma. When it comes to the Pandemic the vast majority of people in every country are showing more genuine concern than fear, we are demonstrating a desire to care for one another.

That is what wearing a good mask is about - preventing oneself becoming a vector of transmission.

Anti-masking is selfish and stupid but it must be noted it's only happening where well funded misinformation is allowed to circulate. And it's only occurring in people who have been mislead, persuaded , groomed through their biases, fears, insecurities - the groomed are being victimised. The people who organise the grooming are the real problem.

Equating people's genuine concern to Fear is gaslighting.

The narrator continues...

"According to the psychologist Carl Jung the greatest threat to civilization lies not with the forces of nature, nor with any physical disease, but with our inability to deal with the forces of our own psyche. We are our own worst enemies or as the Latin proverb puts it “Man is wolf to man”. 
In Civilization in Transition Jung states that this proverb “is a sad yet eternal truism” and our wolf-like tendencies come most prominently into play at those times of history when mental illness becomes the norm, rather than the exception in a society, a situation which Jung termed a psychic epidemic. "

They cited the following as part of their hypothesis:

"When it is understood that a flood of negative emotions, in conjunction with a weak and insecure sense of self, can trigger a descent into madness it becomes clear how a mass psychosis can occur. A population first needs to be induced into a state of intense fear or anxiety by threats real, imagined, or fabricated and once in a state of panic the door is open for either the positive or negative reaction to unfold. If a society is composed of self-reliant, resilient and inwardly strong individuals a positive reaction can take place, but if it is composed of mainly weak, insecure and helpless individuals a descent into the delusions of a mass psychosis becomes a real possibility. Great stress, in other words, can bring out the best in an individual or society at large, but it can also bring out the worst, or as the psychologist Anthony Storr writes about the potential for a mass psychosis: 
“. . .it is only if we accept the existence of a latent paranoid potential lurking in the recesses of the normal mind that we can explain the mass delusions which led to the persecution of witches and the Nazi slaughter of Jews. Vast numbers of ordinary men and women held beliefs about witches and Jews which, if they had been expressed by one or two individuals instead of by whole communities, would have been dismissed as paranoid delusions. There are extremely primitive, irrational mental forces at work in the minds of all of us which are usually overlaid and controlled by reason, but which find overt expression in the behaviour of those whom we call mentally ill, and which also manifest themselves in the behaviour of normal people when under threat or other forms of stress.”

Storr's book is about the need for solitude as a resource for creatives... the tone is one of individualism rather than one of creatives as part of a healthy community. That said Storr's view of humanity at large is rather negative. 

"it is only if we accept the existence of a latent paranoid potential lurking in the recesses of the normal mind that we can explain the mass delusions which led to the persecution of witches and the Nazi slaughter of Jews,"

This is a deeply negative view of our species in general. And it is utterly incorrect. Behaviour, good or bad, is learned. Very little is innate. Which is why the diversity of culture exists..

Culture and Behaviour

Alice Miller wrote in "The Roots of Violence" that the culture of parenting handed down by 'authorities' can, if it is adult centered, punitive and set to meet adult needs above children's needs, afflict a population, generation after generation.

She shows in her book, and in interviews, how a culture of authoritarian parenting promoted by State and Church, and tinged with intergenerational trauma, leads to varying degrees of harmful behaviour as a normal across a community.  Misogyny, Racism, Class and Caste ideologies are fed by this unhappiness.
She described some of the psycho-dynamics of Nazi Germany and the cult of Hitler (and others) as outcomes of a culture of child abuse. 
At that time corporal punishment of children was the norm across Europe, and was supported by the various authorities, state, educational and religious. 
A nation that bullies most children can indeed lead to the emergence of widespread bullying among adults, layered into the social hierarchy. Hurt children can become adults who hurt others. Authoritarian parenting can also lead to leaders emerging who have deep issues, presenting as irrational hatreds rationalised, veiled by claims to be seeking freedom and justice.

It's not everyone.

However it is not the case that all Germans bought the lies of anti-Semitism and Nazism. There was a resistance to that. Those who resisted were persecuted, publicly. Others who disagreed remained more or less quiet, in order to survive and protect their families and communities.

Storr and many others lay the blame on the ordinary people who are ruled over, citing their 'weakness' without making the effort to understand the nuances and variations to be found in a population being ruled over in such an oppressive manner. Blaming the victim.

It is a world view held by Ruling Classes who assume they are superior to the ordinary folk, and thus entitled to Rule.

If a society is composed of self-reliant, resilient and inwardly strong individuals a positive reaction can take place, but if it is composed of mainly weak, insecure and helpless individuals a descent into the delusions of a mass psychosis becomes a real possibility. "

This text suggests that there is an innate quality of us human beings that reflects the validity of a classification of superior and inferior,  that the inferior are weak and prone to stupidity, ignorance, delusion, insanity and mass hysteria.  
The poor are blamed for their impoverishment. 
The subtext, given the date of publication, is that support for preventative public health measures such as suppressing community transmission, to better manage the Pandemic, are a form of tyranny. A mass psychosis.
Scapegoating?

I would say the psychosis is in fact resident in the Hierarchies of Wealth Extraction and Violence that intentionally dominate entire countries, afflicting their populations. 

The Academy of Ideas rejects this, and harnesses the Jungian view of people as possessed by 'demons' to pull the cart of the Libertarian ideology that the Sovereign Individual should take precedence over collective good governance.

By claiming that existing (all) Governments are inherently oppressive and that ordinary people are generally weak, and prone to psychosis, therefore 'tyrannical' Governments must be restrained so as to protect the people (cover story).

The actual objective is to enhance the Liberty of the Free Marketeers to engage in wealth 'creation', by which they mean wealth extraction which relies upon externalised costs, a process that causes so much harm because externalising refuses to pay to prevent the harms and refuses to make good what has been harmed.

The Neo-Libertarians making the case that small weakened State government is needed in order for Civilisation to progress.

What they really mean is democratic regulation of Wealth Extraction must be pre-empted as we all face the challenges of Climate Change, Pollution, Poverty and War Fare. Obviously they cannot say that openly. That is a psychopathic stance. 

Too close to the bone.

In Nuremberg the Allies brought to trial a small number of active Nazi's and did not  put the German population on trial. They did impose forms of collective punishment during the war and in the aftermath.

The pursuit of Nazi's who fled Germany did not include those adopted by the US for their 'research' under Operation Paperclip.

The Allies also rejected putting Japan's Ruling Class on trial, in the same manner as they did at Nuremburg, because to do so would have exposed the realities of colonialism as a crime given that the practice followed by Japan had indeed been followed by Britain for centuries.

"Justice Radhabinod Pal argued that the exclusion of Western colonialism and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the exclusion of the fire bombings of German cities from the list of crimes and the lack of judges from the vanquished nations on the bench signified the "failure of the Tribunal to provide anything other than the opportunity for the victors to retaliate".  

In this he was not alone among Indian jurists, with one prominent Calcutta barrister writing that the Tribunal was little more than "a sword in a [judge's] wig."

Justice Röling stated, "[o]f course, in Japan we were all aware of the bombings and the burnings of Tokyo and Yokohama and other big cities. It was horrible that we went there for the purpose of vindicating the laws of war, and yet saw every day how the Allies had violated them dreadfully."

Source : Wikipedia

So we see that a significant difference between Japan and Germany in WWII was that whilst the Nazi project was not an overtly Colonial project, and the prosecutions of German war leaders were for War Crimes, the Japanese project was definitively a colonial project and given that the British Empire project was still extant, active and globally powerful as an economic hierarchy of wealth extraction that was oppressing and exploiting hundreds of millions of people the focus on Japan's War as a Colonial War would have drawn attention to the British and their crimes, not least from those countries still under the thumb of Britain.

Lesson to learn - the Ruling Class will always defend their interests, and bend every tool to that task.

#MassPsychosis - has been trending on Twitter and I saw this post, and responded to it. That response initiated this blog article.

"Twitter Thread : As #MassPsychosis trends. It seems timely to highlight the following: that most, if not all, governments suffer a recurring problem. That power & the quest for it, attracts pathological personalities. It’s not simply that power corrupts, but that it’s magnetic to the corruptible."
-- source: https://twitter.com/OxfordDiplomat/status/1477659141388832769?s=20 
my response: 
https://twitter.com/coreluminous/status/1477711001005006849?s=20
For this piece I have expanded from the thread I wrote on twitter, to add some more detail and a few relevant references (not exhaustive...).

I think that the hash tag #masspsychosis' is in part a distraction, a scapegoating trend that could be used to scapegoat the people most afflicted by the malign behaviour of powerful institutions that influence Governments.

I think we have to be very careful with this.

I also think that there is a form of psychosis that is inherent to Ruling Class behavioural dynamics within a Hierarchy of Wealth and Violence system. Monarchy is the original knife crime syndicate, and  as far from the claims of 'nobility' as any other claim ruling class entitlement makes.

I think that the effects of that psychosis is institutionalised and that the institutionalised power of those who Rule (rather than Govern healthfully) generates further psychological distress as a symptom within the population afflicted by the dominance systems of any Wealth Extraction system that is protected by violence.
What follows is the expanded text, working from my response to the tweet.
1. I think that the issue is Power Disparity and lack of Accountability. Distal Power is a term that describes the greater the distance between those who have power and those who are disempowered, the greater the disempowerment, and the greater the distress endured by the disempowered due to actions of the powerful. It's one thing to be stressed, it's another thing to be chronically stressed with few social material means to alleviate the stress, let alone prevent it.
2. The first power disparity we all experience is as infants relating to parents. The bio-logical default is to nurture our children in ways that allow them to become high functioning adults by meeting all their needs, in a timely fashion.
3. The degree to which parents use their power to nurture the child or to use their power to get the child to meet the parents perceived needs determines much of adult behaviour. The roots of adult behaviour are often established in the first four years of their lives.
4. Self regulation of Affective State (the ability to regulate one's emotional content) is biologically mandated to complete by 18 months after birth.  External chronic stressors  undermine the ability of many parents to provide the kind of caring relationship that establishes healthy self regulation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY7XOu0yi-E - Allan Schore on the biology of affective state self regulation. I hour long, quite detailed and superbly laid out. It is a video I return to frequently, and his other work on this is, I think, essential study for anyone concerned with these matters.
5. In any culture predicated upon Rule or Domination by Extreme Wealth Extraction from a population and their shared environment,  or any system of dominance and extraction protected by violence, then we see that warfare and poverty are defining characteristics, they are maintained as active and intentional counterparts to the extraction and concentration of wealth.

Low wages, cheap labour costs, externalised environmental costs are the basis of Wealth Extraction and these impose intense chronic stress upon any population so afflicted. Inequity harms populations. Equity and Justice nurtures populations.
The book 'The Spirit Level' written in 2009, examines this in great detail, looking at the evidence from countries and their economic systems and prevalence of distress.
https://equalitytrust.org.uk/resources/the-spirit-level

"The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better was published in 2009. Written by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, the book highlights the "pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption". It shows that for each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being, outcomes are significantly worse in more unequal rich countries."
6. Any human culture, where it breaks with well observed and understood biological mandates, must induce chronic stress - it cannot do otherwise. 

Climate Change is one of many examples of this. Many older cultures have understood this and have adopted stewardship behavioural dynamics. sustained over many thousands of years. Those cultures tended to be egalitarian, generating a diversity of organisational systems and ways of living attuned to their shared environment.

7. Rulers  - those who dominate a population - pay close attention to the behaviour of those they dominate, in the same way those who groom vulnerable people do.

Ruling systems have always studied carefully how people either react or respond, and have devised many strategies and tactics to maintain disunity (Left vs Right, promoting ideologies of Adversarial Politics to counter Co-operative Governance) by triggering the reactive, exacerbating and heightening fears and insecurities and knowledge gaps in order to 'nudge' the behaviour of the majority in favour of the Ruling Class. Ruling systems must groom the population they dominate to accept the status quo as natural. Deference must be inculcated, 'your Majesty'.
8. Thus we see clearly in the Cambridge Analytica 'scandal' that a core component of the exercise of Rule as opposed to healthy government is to be able to target insecurities within the population, heighten those insecurities,  and then use those to drive behavioural dynamics that can be exploited.

Destitution and Poverty are essential to maintenance of a cheap labour workforce, which is the basis of Wealth Extraction from 'human resources'.
9. Lack of self-reflection is not a barrier to this capability. If anything it enhances that capability due to the fact that a lack of conscience releases the actor from any sense of responsibility for harmful outcomes others are forced to endure, as long as power is retained over the population targeted.
10. Rulers cannot rest from their task to manipulate/habituate those they dominate because, in spite of all of the above, most people are decent, kind and loving and most people do the best they can do, in terms of genuine caring for family/community, in spite of the systemic barbarism of Rulers. 
Left to our own devices, most of us would veer towards egalitarian modes of behaviour, co-operative organisation, profit sharing.
11. This is good news. Our default setting as a social species is very robust. Rutger Bregman's "Human Kind" explores this in some detail looking at examples of massive trauma events and how people tend to look after each other more often than not.
https://www.waterstones.com/book/humankind/rutger-bregman/9781408898956
“This is a book about a radical idea. An idea that’s long been known to make rulers nervous. An idea denied by religions and ideologies, ignored by the news media and erased from the annals of world history. At the same time, it’s an idea that’s legitimised by virtually every branch of science. One that’s corroborated by evolution and confirmed by everyday life.”

and

"“In the very same years that Rousseau was writing his books, Franklin admitted that ‘No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in our societies.’47 He described how ‘civilised’ white men and women who were captured and subsequently released by Indians invariably would ‘take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods’.

Colonists fled into the wilderness by the hundreds, whereas the reverse rarely happened.48 And who could blame them? Living as Indians, they enjoyed more freedoms than they did as farmers and taxpayers. For women, the appeal was even greater. ‘We could work as leisurely as we pleased,’ said a colonial woman who hid from countrymen sent to ‘rescue’ her.49 ‘Here, I have no master,’ another told a French diplomat. ‘I shall marry if I wish and be unmarried again when I wish. Is there a single woman as independent as I in your cities?”

'Do we have to be this screwed up?' written by Suki Price looks at this too, from an anthropological angle.

"Modern life is full of problems - in individuals and in society too. Increasingly we see damaged and disturbed children, mental health problems, addictions of many kinds, antisocial behavior, and crime, violence and war. So it seems sensible to ask: does life have to be this way? Was it always like this for human beings? We ve been around for maybe as much as two million years: surely we didn t evolve to live such difficult and dysfunctional lives? Do We Need To Be So Screwed-Up?! sets out to discover the answer to this question and finds plentiful evidence to show that, on the contrary, human beings evolved to be naturally egalitarian, cooperative, and peaceful. Indeed, for over 95% of our history until about 10,000 years ago - that is how we were: kind, cheerful and happy! This is a paradigm-busting re-evaluation of human nature and our potential for happiness."
source : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17048084-do-we-need-to-be-so-screwed-up

I wrote two pertinent articles on this. (well, I think they are pertinent...)
a)  https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2010/10/two-poles-of-society-everything-in.html - on the emergence of hierarchically violent cultures and why the dynamic of domination rides roughshod over co-operative cultures.
b) https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-human-species-is-fine-its-culture.html - the species is not the problem, the culture is the problem. A message of hope and potential.
12. That said, chronic stress and unresolved trauma are trickle down behaviour changing dynamics of being Ruled over by  Wealth Extraction and Violence. It is clear that this is the case.
"Mental illness is now recognised as one of the biggest causes of individual distress and misery in our societies and cities, comparable to poverty and unemployment. One in four adults in the UK today has been diagnosed with a mental illness, and four million people take antidepressants every year. ‘What greater indictment of a system could there be,’ George Monbiot has asked, ‘than an epidemic of mental illness?’
The shocking extent of this ‘epidemic’ is made all the more disturbing by the knowledge that so much of it is preventable. This is due to the significant correlation between social and environmental conditions and the prevalence of mental disorders. Richard Bentall, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Liverpool, and Peter Kinderman, president of the British Psychological Society, have written compellingly about this connection in recent years, drawing powerful attention to ‘the social determinants of our psychological wellbeing’. ‘The evidence is overwhelming,’ notes Kinderman, ‘it’s not just that there exist social determinants, they are overwhelmingly important.’"
source : https://www.redpepper.org.uk/a-mad-world-capitalism-and-the-rise-of-mental-illness/
A sick society or a traumatised cult enduring a traumatising cult is not the same as a 'dysfunctional species'.  Indeed the concept of a dysfunctional species is nonsense, biologically inept and a negative, adversarial ideological stance.
13. There's a series of layered problems inherent to the current Hierarchically Violent Power and Wealth system. The matter is complex, because we are diverse but it is made complicated because the urge to power prevents resolution in order to avoid relinquishing Power.
- the System itself, it's behavioural dynamics as a cult. Admitting this with some degree of empathy and a desire to correct rather than extract retributive punishment is a big ask.
- the adverse effects of chronic stressors such as destitution, poverty, warfare, marginalisation, class/caste beliefs and other dynamic features of being dominated. The need for this understanding to be integrated into education in general is clear.
- the 'need' of The System to cow populations, and to habituate or condition the majority to acceptance of The System as the 'natural state of affairs'. Herbert Spencer's misappropriation of the work of Darwin and Wallace is a case in point. Racism is another example of a falsified claim of 'natural' state of affairs and the Human Condition.
- as long as the resistors remain a minority, Power retains it's grip. 
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-the-power-of-the-1-percent/

"it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”

When resistance is well informed, and is widely supported by the population, then the power dynamics can be altered towards less malignity.

- resisters that are reactive can be manipulated. Political, Ideological and Religious Grooming all operate on this basis. 
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2021/06/grooming-how-it-operates-why-it-works.html
My article, an exploration of why grooming works, how it was engineered citing Brexit as a case study, how to disarm it with awareness and a suggestion on how to prevent it being deployed across media platforms by making defining grooming as serious intentional psychological abuse and as a criminal offence.
- responsive resistors are much more difficult to handle. Structures are built to offer hope, and thwart it. We see repeated efforts to undermine emerging movements, and their leaderships and to prevent them from accessing the legislative power necessary to regulate the Wealth Extractor dynamic. Corbyn, Sanders and others knocked back, time and time again.
- until the grass roots understands this psycho-dynamic, I think we are facing a steeper uphill struggle than we would if that understanding was common across the grass roots. Trade Unions in a very short time frame, between the 1840s and the 1960s demonstrated the utility of grass roots solidarity and political organisation grounded in well understood evidence.
- Political Grooming Operations are designed in part to prevent that understanding emerging, Establishment News Media have the same function.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ourbeeb/general-strike-to-corbyn-90-years-of-bbc-establishment-bias/
A good article on how this works, using the BBC as a case study.
- Political Grooming Operations are also designed to obscure honest appraisal of problems, they are deployed to generate adversarial dynamics across the population (divide and conquer by diluting grass roots solidarity though triggering arguments and beefs) and they are also used to recruit un-witting operatives who can be exploited by the system.
14. Psychology, as a Science, and as a social health institution must confront this - Psychology must eschew its allegiance to the Establishment, align with the humanity of us humans, as an egalitarian social species.
15. Equity oriented political organisation must become trauma informed, understand the effects of unresolved trauma, chronic stress, poverty and other factors external to the individual that impact each persons living situation.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/trauma-informed-practice-toolkit-scotland/pages/3/
An example from the Scottish Government of how this might be implemented.
16. Without these concerns correctly addressed, it is very unlikely this culture will turn away from the current destructive trajectories.
17. Systemic Power without love or accountability is similar to the Abusive Parent or Partner or Sibling within a family, without love, who is causing harm, maintaining dominance. 
Institutionalised and at scale.
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/07/this-is-abuse-relationship-dynamic.html
An article I wrote to suggest this model, using the English Ruling Class as a case study, in 2020.



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Corneilius

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Why Bullies are Attracted to Leveraged Distal Power Over Others: Suggestions on How to Prevent This Dynamic, in order to Prevent Harm.

A look at the pattern observed where Hierarchical Power Structures 'attract' some people who internalise power as a personal characteristic - "I want to be King of the World" - many of whom are bullies, men and women who are willing to abuse and harm others in order to gain, enhance, protect and project the power their position gives them, as part of their personal identification. 

This is written in the context of the politics of England, in the run up to Christmas 2021.

~

Henry VIII, serial wife murderer, ruthless and cruel.

Oliver Cromwell, replaced the equally ruthless King Charles he and his allies murdered with his own Dictatorship, under the guise of Democracy.

Only for his enemies and subordinates to restore the Monarchy, 

as a device to bind the population to the Oligarchs Parliament via The Church of England. The real life English Game of Thrones.

Iain Duncan Smith, Architect of cruel and callous Universal Credit Sanction System

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the rouge of prorogation, the Brexit joker, the Covid profiteer.

Cameron, Patel, Chumocracy and Cronies who cashed in on a manufactured PPE crisis in the midst of a Pandemic

Blair, the liar who launched an illegal, amoral War of Aggression,

and brought in the notorious Work Capability Assessment regime.

Milošević was indicted on 24 May 1999 for war crimes 

Trump and Netanyahu, corrupt in business, manipulatively inciting violence for political and gain.

Johnson, who has lied and gaslighted the English people in order to drive a Herd Immunity policy designed to protect the Hoard, not the people.

The Daily Mail, owned by off-shore extreme right wing billionaires, publishes misinformation, lies and spin as 'opinion' as if it were equal to evidence, under the guise of 'Free Speech'.

Rupert Murdoch, accused by Malcom Turnbull of causing the deaths of millions of people. He is known as the 'king maker' of English Politics, and was directly responsible for the election of Tony Blair,

'Saj' Javid, a former CDO salesman posing as Secretary of Health, whose ending of preventative public health measures, which he claimed would 'make us all healthier', sent tens of thousands into Hospitals that were already over stressed by an on going pandemic, having spent the year prior to his appointment earning three times his MP salary working for JP Morgan whose greedy eyes are watering at the prospect of a Health Service for sale.

and the anthesis of all of the above, Jacinda Ardern, who holds empathy as a strength essential to healthy governance.

Jeremy Corbyn, a man too honest for the English Ruling Class to allow into Power.

Humane decency handling State Power understood as a threat to the pathocracy.

~
Healthy Governance is possible, there are honest strong politicians who can make this work. But they need a population that understands the problem, and is engaged with the putting forward and implementing solutions. Socio-political adversarial division undermines the goal.

~

When we study history we see that all too frequently that, as a class, Rulers were people who were ruthless, often violent, dependent upon a corps of other people whose sense of conscience or caring responsibility towards others with less power than they accrued by their association with Rulers was practically non-existent.  Allowing poor people to die in large numbers was not a moral issue for such people. 
Men and women, past and present, who would lie and manipulate other people's perceptions in order to groom support, in order to  evade accountability for actions they took or are taking that cause others harm.  
And outside the structures of Governance, there are the extremely wealthy, the Wealth Extraction Oligarchy who influence politicians to assure their power to influence legislatures and protect their wealth extraction remains unregulated, the kinds of people who lobby Government to impose outrageously harmful policies in the midst of an pandemic.
It is no surprise, really, that such an attraction prevails in hierarchal violent social power systems where some people take leveraged institutional power and use it to rule over others, to bend entire populations to their will, for personal gain as much as the sense of entitlement of an established ruling class to prevail over a population.

"L'etat, c'est Moi!"
The entitlement to Rule over-rules the duty of care to govern well. In that regard here's a distinction I make where I point to a significant difference between Rule and Healthy Governance.  Those who rule tend to seek to enhance and then protect their power, most often at the expense of other people, and they do so by sense of entitlement - they believe in their own superiority.  Whereas healthy governance is the careful administration of the shared commons, grounded in careful and transparent deliberation on the evidence, with an eye to avoiding avoidable harms, in order to nurture the whole community and such a drive comes from humility and empathy.
Secrecy is common in the former, transparency essential to the latter. Lies prevail among Rulers, honesty is characteristic of good democratic governance. Rulers assume their opinion has the same validity as evidence, and tend to deny  evidence that undermines their position. Those who govern well will engage with evidence and follow where it leads, adjusting policy as new evidence emerges, in order to nurture their communities.
Rulers seek compliance, healthy Governance seeks engagement and co-operation as the basis for action to be taken, with mutual consent.  Democracy was in part designed to regulate the former so that the latter could emerge as the standard everyone deserves, and be developed over time into a robust and healthy system of governance.
The Path to Pathocracy
Pathocracy is a term coined by a Polish psychologist and writer, Andrejz Lobaczewski

Definition: pathocracy (n). A system of government created by a small pathological minority that takes control over a society of normal people (from Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, by Andrejz Lobaczewski)
The origins of the word come from the Greek pathos, “feeling, pain, suffering”; and kratos, “rule”
Pathocracy therefore describes those Governments and Institutions which inflict pain -sanctions, penalties, impoverishment, marginalisation - upon people as a means to persuade, cajole, dominate or control entire populations.
"The transition to pathocracy begins when a disordered individual emerges as a leader figure. While some members of the ruling class are appalled by the brutality/ irresponsibility of the leader and his acolytes, his disordered personality appeals to some psychologically normal individuals. They find him charismatic. His impulsiveness is mistaken for decisiveness; his narcissism for confidence; his recklessness for fearlessness."
source: https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-34/november-2021/problem-pathocracy writer: Steve Taylor
Profiles
In the UK, Boris DePeffiel Johnson, Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson, Sajid Javid, Priti Patel, Iain  Duncan Smith, Steve Baker, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Desmond Swayne, Anthony Lynton Blair, William Cromwell, King Charles, King Henry VIII, William The Bastard and many, many others fit this behavioural profile well. 

They all sought power for personal gain, out of hubris. They all created and projected  a charismatic persona for public consumption. They all gathered people around them who would carry out their policies and protect their power, ruthlessly. 
They all sought funding and support for their power from others who wished to maintain and  enhance their wealth extraction methods through their sponsorship of those who occupied the positions of power. Who pays the piper calls the tunes.
"Soon other people with psychopathic traits emerge and attach themselves to the pathocracy, sensing the opportunity to gain power and influence. At the same time, responsible and moral people gradually leave the government, either resigning or being ruthlessly ejected. In an inevitable process, soon the entire government is filled with people with a pathological lack of empathy and conscience. It has been infiltrated by members of the minority of people with personality disorders, who assume power over the majority of psychologically normal people.".
Bullying is a core component of such behaviours. How bullying operates in politics - the struggle for power in any situation - is an interesting and pertinent subject.

Kitty Jones, an English writer on political science and social care systems wrote a detailed blog, 'How Bullying Works:  Projection and Scapegoating' that is one of the best I have ever read.

She goes through the various strategies and tactics of bullying as it plays out in Politics. It is a superb piece of informative writing. Well worth your attention, and easy to read, without dumbing down in any way.

"Very few people, when put to the test, have the integrity and moral courage to stand up against bullying, harassment, abuse, threats and corruption. The targets of adult bullying are selected often because they DO have the moral courage to challenge; many people will pass by on the other side.

A target of adult bullying is most often chosen because of their strength, not their weakness. Research shows that targets of bullying tend to have highly developed empathy, and sensitivity for others, a high degree of perceptiveness, high moral values, a well-developed integrity, a strong sense of fair play and reasonableness, a low propensity to violence, a reluctance to pursue grievance, disciplinary or legal action, a strong forgiving streak and a mature understanding of the need to resolve conflict with dialogue.

Often, targets of bullying are independent, self-reliant and “different” in some way. Some people often disingenuously confuse these hallmarks of character with weakness."

This really does define the mass media mistreatment of Jeremy Corbyn and Meghan Markel in the English News media of recent years. We all know many more examples of that dynamic than we should.

Albert Mayles, a film maker, once stated: “Tyranny is the removal of nuance.” Caricature is one of the tactics to obscure the humanity that detail always reveals. Right wing News Media tends towards caricature of those targeted for bullying.

So let's take a quick look at a recent example of bullying in politics, perpetrated by a Senior Minister, an incident that demonstrates some of this dynamic.
The target of the bullying settles out of court:  
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/mar/04/priti-patel-reaches-six-figure-settlement-with-ex-home-office-chief-philip-rutnam
"Priti Patel has reached a six-figure settlement with a senior civil servant after claims that he was forced out of his job for intervening in her alleged bullying of fellow staff, it has emerged.
Whitehall sources said Sir Philip Rutnam, a former permanent secretary in the Home Office, received a £340,000 settlement with a further £30,000 in costs. He had threatened to take the home secretary to an employment tribunal hearing in September."
This recent example concerns Home Office Minister Priti Patel, who  was accused of bullying staff within her department. A senior official, Sir Phillip Rutnam, with a distinguished career and a degree of seniority, tried to protect the persons bullied by Patel, by confronting her behaviour. He was then fired by the Patel. The evidence of bullying and thus unfair dismissal was good enough for the official to go to court, suing for unfair dismissal. The evidence was good enough to support employing expensive solicitors and barristers. 
Patel settled case out of court, in part by threatening massive increase in court costs that would obliterate any award, and induce even more stress upon the official. 
Another form of bullying.  Using the budget reach of the Government to frighten a claimant. The Government is using this tactic to put pressure on The Good Law Project which has spent the last two years exposing crony capitalism and other potentially criminal acts of this Government.
Rutnam chose to cut his losses and accept the settlement, and thus no confirmation of the bullying is placed on the record.  Obviously he could not return to work in the Civil Service with that poisonous cloud hanging over him.
Priti Patel evaded accountability, remained in office, and today continues to push legislation that amounts to bullying. Pushing asylum seeks adrift in the English Channel in small leaky boats back to France. Making peaceful protest practically a criminal offence. The Cabinet is also proposing legislation to allow Ministers to ask Parliament in which the Conservatives hold and 80 seat majority to set aside judicial rulings where the courts have found the Governments action unlawful. Bullying. It is all legalised bullying.

The Official Who is Forced to Quit:  
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/20/alex-allan-the-veteran-windsurfing-mandarin-who-quit-over-bullying
"It might only have been two sentences long and dressed in formal language, but Sir Alex Allan’s resignation statement made his feelings abundantly clear.
“I recognise that it is for the prime minister to make a judgment on whether actions by a minister amount to a breach of the ministerial code,” said the veteran civil servant – who helped oversee MI5, MI6 and GCHQ in his former role as chairman of the joint intelligence committee – adding: “But I feel that it is right that I should now resign from my position as the prime minister’s independent adviser on the code.”
Alex Allen, a lifetime civil servant, who has given more service to the State than Johnson and Patel combined, and who they ought to treat as their senior, quits because Johnson backed Patel, going against Allen's assessment. Alex Allen was tasked with maintaining codes of conduct, he carried out an investigation, named the bully, and his assessment was rejected. Johnson knew well Allen would resign, rather than stay in post. One more honest official removed. Job done.

Push the strong out of the way. 
The Fish that rots from the Head.
"Soon the pathology of the government spreads amongst the general population. As Lobaczewski wrote, ‘If an individual in a position of political power is a psychopath, he or she can create an epidemic of psychopathology in people who are not, essentially, psychopathic" 
https://goodreads.com/work/quotes/1467675-political-ponerology-a-science-on-the-nature-of-evil-adjusted-for-polit  
Leading by careful, theatrical, choreographed example via news and public broadcast performance is part of the tactical playbook of the likes of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. Presented as the likeable rogue, they get away with  misconduct, repeatedly, because they arrange matters with their allies in the News Media to carry off the act, with commentary that portrays them as being funny, or boyish, or righteous. 

We have seen how frequently some ordinary citizens who cite 'one rule for them, one rule for us' as their excuse for their own misconduct are given air time and publicity as 'vox pop' segments. That line of justifying reckless behaviour is also encouraged via online microtargeted content. The activity of encouraging reckless behaviour among supporters, justified by the simplistic analyses of matters, which is part of what I call political grooming.

Microtargeting sends content to individual users and is mostly invisible to anyone other than the targets. Three people living in the same home could see entirely different materials, targeted at their specific biases.

The encouragement of bias in this way leads to spread of seemingly emergent reckless behaviour and thus the sense of the 'right' to abuse 'enemies' spreads. 
Protestors egg shops, assault police, stand outside Schools and Vaccination centers, etc., etc... the activists the justify their behaviour by claiming they are acting to preserve their 'Freedom' or asserting their 'Sovereignty'. Dog whistle politics provides cover for abusive behaviour. 

The technical term for the method of inciting street level recklessness to make it appear a natural outpouring of community level concern is astroturfing: creating the image of an organic self directed grass roots emergent movement - it looks like grass but it's plastic, manufactured.
The Populist Narrative is Simple
"The pathocracy government presents a compelling simplistic ideology, promoting notions of future greatness, with a need to defeat or eliminate alleged enemies who stand in the way of this great future."

Brexit, Make America Great Again, Oven Ready Deal. Cool Brittania.
Political Grooming operated with total impunity throughout Brexit. We need to understand how it operates, why it works, how to disarm it and how to prevent it. 
Political Grooming.
What is grooming?  When a person or agency targets a person or group of people, having studied their vulnerabilities - insecurities, fears, biases, hatreds  - and then uses various means to tap into those, and then deliberately exacerbates the emotions associated with these, in order to drive behavioural change that can be exploited by the targeting entity.
It is fundamentally and profoundly psychologically abusive. I wrote a blog that described how this operates, why it works, and how to disarm it, with suggestions on how to prevent it by defining grooming as psychological abuse, and thus a criminal offence. I used the Eu Referendum as an example.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2021/06/grooming-how-it-operates-why-it-works.html
Prevention hinges around recognising this activity as psychological abuse at scale, perpetrated against a population. However, even as a large part of the population recognise the harms, the people who have been groomed, manipulated and those who manipulated them persist with their position.  Obviously those who drove the propaganda cannot retract from their stance.

The difficulty for those who have been manipulated by emotional methods of grooming that create attachment, habituation and internalisation of the groomers world view is that detaching from it is an intense emotional challenge to their sense of identity, of self. 
Therefore both the groomers and the groomed, end up in a cornered position. The groomers are protected by the political power they have grabbed, and their asymmetric power to 'flood the content zone with their content' and thus they continue to push out a stream of denialism, as outlined in the article on Pathocracy by Steve Taylor. 

What needs to be understood is that the groomers also rely upon anger aimed at the groomed by others, because that anger generates a defence reaction among the groomed. It is critical that we see the groomed as being victimised by the groomers, and that we find ways to reduce anger at them, increase empathy for them and thus build bridges that help establish humane solidarity. In that way we can turn the tide from within the grass roots. The people most deserving of our ire are the groomers.

"a government uses propaganda to stoke hatred towards enemies, and to create a cult of personality around the leader. In the general population, there is an intoxicating sense of belonging to a mass movement, inspiring loyalty and self-sacrifice."

So we can see this - loyalty and sacrifice - among those who still support Brexit, even as the massive harms it has caused are being documented.

"A list of the economic self-harm caused by Brexit is set to be tapered off when it reaches 1,000 entries in the coming days or weeks.

R. Daniel Kelemen, a scholar of law and political science who holds the Jean Monnet Chair at Rutgers University, has been documenting the impact of the UK’s split with the European Union since the start of the year using hashtag #BrexitReality.

A mere eight months on he has already reached more than 950 entries, with the thread set to end when he hits the 1,000 mark."

Though Brexit will continue to damage the UK economy for years to come, I will end this #BrexitReality 🧵 on the economic self-harm caused by Brexit when it reaches 1000 entries.

Only 50 more to go! Please spread the word about it so more people can follow the final countdown https://t.co/k4D6Kpwmv0

— R. Daniel Kelemen (@rdanielkelemen) September 18, 2021

Even before the final vote in the EU Referendum, 'sacrifice' was a theme for the grass roots Conservative voters.

"A survey by YouGov suggests a majority of them would prefer Brexit took place to a host of scenarios, including 61% in favour of it even if it caused “significant damage to the economy”.
It suggests leaving the EU is by far the most important issue to the grassroots, even if it would see the party, officially called the Conservative and Unionist Party, abandon its unionist credentials.
Almost two-thirds of the members would be willing to allow Scotland to leave the United Kingdom, and 59% would rather Northern Ireland left than Brexit not taking place at all.
And 54% would rather see the Tories “destroyed” than stay in the European Union, with four in 10 even saying they would be happy to see Jeremy Corbyn inside Number 10 if it meant leaving."
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/list-of-economic-self-harm-caused-by-brexit-reaches-1000-entries-291251/
Going further back, Austerity was accepted as a necessary sacrifice by Conservative grassroots voters, Labour centrists and business leaders as an acceptable sacrifice, in 2010 and again in 2015, 2017 and 2019, in spite of the fact that the basis for it was a lie, and in spite of the immense social harms it caused.

Even as a series of UN Human Rights report made it plain that disabled people in England were being harmed, and their Human Rights being undermined, the 'sacrifice' was accepted by voters and the right wing media. Others paid the price, carried the cost. That is the nature of sacrifice - those who promote it do not make it.

Incompetence as a mask
None of this is 'incompetence', even through many will make that attribution, especially those who do not realise the abusers are genuinely capable of such cruelty. Johnson is not incompetent, his action has been quite deliberate.

The action of the abuser is deliberate. It is intentional action designed to cause harm. The veil of 'incompetence' is accepted and often designed to pre-empt the mergence of social solidarity - if and when the population as a whole really understands what is being done, then solidarity across diverse positions within the population will emerge. 
Thus seeding divisions along logical fallacy lines of 'thinking', encouraging and exacerbating bigotry and hatreds within the population is both strategic in the long term and tactical in the short term - the aim is to protect and enhance the Power of those who are abusing the Power of the State, and more, by deflection.
This is the reality of English Government Covid Policy. It is deliberate.
Democracy and regulation of pathocracy.
Protecting a population from the harms of unregulated violent power of any kind is the core purpose of healthy democracy.

Steve Taylor writes about this in The Psychologist article.
"Since there does appear to be a link between the dark triad traits and political power, surely the attainment of political power needs to be more strictly regulated. Or to put it more neutrally, since ruthless, narcissistic people with a lack of empathy and conscience seem to be attracted to positions of power, surely we should take some measures to restrict their access to power?

To an extent, this has always been the purpose of democracy. As Ian Hughes (2018) points out in his book Disordered Minds, the aim of democracy is to try to protect the mass of people from disordered authoritarian leaders. This is why, as Hughes also points out, authoritarian leaders with psychopathic or narcissistic traits distrust democracy. Once in power, they do their utmost to dismantle and discredit democratic institutions, including the independence of institutions and the freedom and legitimacy of the press. Moreover, such leaders are unable to comprehend the principles of democracy, since they regard themselves as superior, and see life as a competitive struggle in which the most ruthless deserve to dominate others. Any of this sounding familiar in a UK context?"
Source: https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-34/november-2021/problem-pathocracy  written by Steve Taylor.

Christmas, a break and a chance to think about a reassessment.
This Christmas, as we spend time with family, as students, teachers, health workers and carers, as brothers and sisters, as grand parents and grand children, as neighbours passing card to one another we will share the love, we will be kind, and within that context, of human kindness and solidarity, perhaps we can also spend a little time looking at this, be more willing to gently face the truth, with collective kindness in mind, and then we could also start to build a union of grass roots people, good, decent people especially students, parents and teachers, who ought by right be concerned with evidence based policy deliberations, for that surely is the base of all genuine learning and indeed,

Healthy Democracy extends beyond voting for loyalty or party.

We can steer towards policy, away from party loyalties, and identify as people and communities who care for one another, who value autonomy in harmony with empathy for one another, who live with diversity and compassion and want to nurture all our communities, and who want to protect all our children.  Yours and mine, and theirs.
We must organise to take the Power away from the bullies, for they are few, and they are causing great harm, and we are a multitude of really good people - it is we who have done most to reduce the spread of the virus, it is we who have born the costs.
As Steve Taylor writes:
"Once they possess power, pathocrats usually devote themselves to entrenching, increasing and protecting their power, with scant regard for the welfare of others. However, Lobaczewski also noted that pathocracies never become permanent. 
At some point, they are destined to fail, because their brutality and lack of moral principles are not shared by the majority of the population, who possess empathy and conscience. "
Please remember this, even if hope seems fragile, even as the harms pile up, even as exhaustion sets in.  The dominance of the pathological is not in evitable, nor is it an inherent setting of the Human condition.
Another way to frame it is to see the situation as a domestic abuse situation, scaled up to a Nation : roles and dynamics in one are seen in the other. I wrote this blog drawing on that analogy, to give a brief over view of the roles played by various entities and groups, exploring the dynamics of the current situation.
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/07/this-is-abuse-relationship-dynamic.html
As good neighbours we can help to confront the situation, when we are aware, well informed, interested, engaged and working together. 
This article from the Waging Non Violence website shows what can be done, even in the most difficult situations. We in England need a constitution, and legislation that prevents the rise of bullies and grifters through the ranks of mostly decent hard working people who really want to govern healthfully and with empathy.
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-the-power-of-the-1-percent/
"While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in non-violently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.
Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”

It can be done, Together we can do this, May you have a nurturing Solstice and mid-winter or mid-summer holiday where ever you are on this beautiful Earth. 

Solidarity! 

Project for Peace and Justice : Mission Statement

Green Party : Manifesto

Open Democracy : Through reporting and analysis of social and political issues, we seek to educate citizens to challenge power and encourage democratic debate across the world.

Good Law Project : using the Courts and The Law to hold Power to account.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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