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

tions rule their decisions. What they need is good psychologi-

cal information in order to find the path of reason and measure.

Based on a ponerologic understanding of their condition, psy-

chotherapy could provide rapid positive results. However, if

the union they left is succumbing to deep ponerization, a threat

looms over them: they may become the objects of revenge,

since they have “betrayed” a magnificent ideology.84

This is the stormy period of a group’s ponerization, fol-

lowed by a certain stabilization in terms of contents, structure,

and customs. Rigorous selective measures of a clearly psycho-

logical kind are applied to new members. So as to exclude the

possibility of becoming sidetracked by defectors, people are

observed and tested to eliminate those characterized by exces-

sive mental independence or psychological normality. The new

internal function created is something like a “psychologist”,

and it doubtless takes advantage of the above-described psy-

chological knowledge collected by psychopaths.

It should be noted that certain of these exclusionary steps

taken by a group in the process of ponerization, should have

been takenagainst deviants by the ideological group in the

beginning. So rigorous selective measures of a psychological

kind taken by a group is not necessarily an indicator that the

group is ponerogenic. Rather one should carefully examine

what the psychological selection is based on. If any group

seeks to avoid ponerization, it will want to exclude individuals

with any psychological dependence on subjective beliefs, rites,

rituals, drugs, and certainly those individuals that are incapable

of objectively analyzing their own inner psychological content

or who reject the process of Positive disintegration.

In a group in the process of ponerization, spellbinders take

care of “ideological purity”. The leader’s position is relatively

secure. Individuals manifesting doubt or criticism are subject to

paramoral condemnation. Maintaining the utmost dignity and

84 It should also be mentioned that the same process occurs when a psycho-

logical deviant is thrown out of a group of normal people. The way to tell the

difference is that a normal group ejecting a deviant will not seek to exact

revenge on the ejected member, while the deviant will seek revenge on the

group he has been ejected from. [Editor’s note.]

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PONEROLOGY

style, leadership discusses opinions and intentions which are

psychologically and morally pathological. Any intellectual

connections which might reveal them as such are eliminated,

thanks to the substitution of premises operating in the proper

subconscious process on the basis of prior conditioned reflexes.

An objective observer might wish to compare this state to one

in which the inmates of an asylum take over the running of the

institution. The association enters the state wherein the whole

has donned the mask of ostensible normality. In the next chap-

ter, we shall call such a state the “dissimulative phase” with

regard to macrosocial ponerogenic phenomena.

Observing the appropriate state corresponding to the first

ponerological criterion - the atrophy of natural critical facul-

ties with respect to pathological individuals - requires skillful

psychology and specific factual knowledge; the second, more

stable phase can be perceived both by a person of average rea-

son and by public opinion in most societies. The interpretation

imposed, however, is unilaterally moralistic or sociological,

simultaneously undergoing the characteristic feeling of defi-

ciency as regards the possibility of both understanding the phe-

nomenon and counteracting the spread of said evil.

However, in this phase a minority of social groups tend to

consider such a ponerogenic association comprehensible within

the categories of their own world view and the outer layer of

diffusing ideology as a doctrine acceptable to them. The more

primitive the society in question, and the further removed from

direct contact to the union affected by this pathological state,

the more numerous such minorities would be. This very period,

during which the customs of the union become somewhat

milder, often represents simultaneously its most intensive ex-

pansionist activity.

This period may last long, but not forever. Internally, the

group is becoming progressively more pathological, finally

showing its true qualitative colors again as its activities become

ever clumsier. At this point, a society of normal people can

easily threaten ponerologic associations, even at the macroso-

cial level.

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

173

Macrosocial Phenomena

When a ponerogenic process encompasses a society’s entire