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

and specialization. A chasm opens between the somewhat more

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

pathological. This later subgroup becomes ever more domi-

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

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

psychopathic individuals, and people whose malformed per-

sonalities were caused by early deprivation or brutal child-

rearing methods on the part of pathological individuals. It soon

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

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

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

binders’ work must suffice for this segment.

An observer watching such a union’s activities from the

outside and using the natural psychological world view will

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

edly autocratic function. The spellbinders and the propaganda

apparatus are mobilized to maintain this erroneous outside

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

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

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

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

position is generally occupied by a more representative indi-

vidual not deprived of certain critical faculties; initiating him

into all those plans and criminal calculations would be coun-

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

psychopathic individuals hiding behind the scenes steers the

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

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

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

kill or otherwise remove him.

164

PONEROLOGY

We have sketched the properties of unions in which the

ponerogenic process has transformed their original generally

benevolent content into a pathological counter-part thereof and

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

ciently wide-scale to encompass the greatest possible scope of

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

scale. The general rules governing those phenomena appear to

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

and historical scale of such a phenomenon.

Ideologies

It is a common phenomenon for a ponerogenic association

or group to contain a particular ideology which always justifies

its activities and furnishes motivational propaganda. Even a

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

ogy and pathological romanticism. Human nature demands that

vile matters be haloed by an over-compensatory mystique in

order to silence one’s conscience and to deceive consciousness

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

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

ogy, nothing would remain except psychological and moral

pathology, naked and unattractive. Such stripping would of

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

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

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

and deprived of something constituting part of their own ro-

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

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

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

author’s stripping evil so unceremoniously of all its literary

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

out to be much more difficult and dangerous than expected.

A primary ponerogenic union is formed at the same time as

its ideology, perhaps even somewhat earlier. A normal person

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

man concepts, obviously suggestive, and even primitively

comical to a degree.

An ideology of a secondarily ponerogenic association is

formed by gradual adaptation of the primary ideology to func-

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

165

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

kind of layering or schizophrenia of ideology takes place dur-

ing the ponerization process. The outer layer closest to the

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

especially regarding the outside world, although it can in part

also be used inside with regard to disbelieving lower-echelon

members. The second layer presents the elite with no problems

of comprehension: it is more hermetic, generally composed by

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

cal names signify different contents depending on the layer in