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

man with shame, self-loathing, and embarrassment simply do

not affect the psychopath at all. What to others would be a

horror or a disaster is to him merely a fleeting inconvenience.

Cleckley posits that psychopathy is quite common in the

community at large. His cases include examples of psychopaths

who generally function normally in the community as busi-

nessmen, doctors, and even psychiatrists. Nowadays, some of

the more astute researchers see criminal psychopathy - often

referred to as anti-social personality disorder - as an extreme of

a particular personality type. I think it is more helpful to char-

acterize criminal psychopaths as “unsuccessful psychopaths”.

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EDITOR’S PREFACE

One researcher, Alan Harrington, goes so far as to say that

the psychopath is the new man being produced by the evolu-

tionary pressures of modern life.

Certainly, there have always been shysters and crooks, but

past concern was focused on ferreting out incompetents rather

than psychopaths. Unfortunately, all that has changed. We now

need to fear the super-sophisticated modern crook who does

know what he is doing ... and does it so well that no one else

knows. Yes, psychopaths love the business world.

Uninvolved with others, he coolly saw into their fears and

desires, and maneuvered them as he wished. Such a man

might not, after all, be doomed to a life of scrapes and esca-

pades ending ignominiously in the jailhouse. Instead of mur-

dering others, he might become a corporate raider and murder

companies, firing people instead of killing them, and chopping

up their functions rather than their bodies.

[…T]he consequences to the average citizen from business

crimes are staggering. As criminologist Georgette Bennett

says, “They account for nearly 30% of case filings in U.S.

District Courts - more than any other category of crime. The

combined burglary, mugging and other property losses in-

duced by the country’s street punks come to about $4 billion a

year. However, the seemingly upstanding citizens in our cor-

porate board rooms and the humble clerks in our retail stores

bilk us out of between $40 and $200 billion a year.”

Concern here is that the costume for the new masked san-

ity of a psychopath is just as likely to be a three-piece suit as a

ski mask and a gun. As Harrington says, “We also have the

psychopath in respectable circles, no longer assumed to be a

loser.” He quotes William Krasner as saying, “They - psycho-

path and part psychopath - do well in the more unscrupulous

types of sales work, because they take such delight in ‘putting

it over on them’, getting away with it - and have so little con-

science about defrauding their customers.” Our society is fast

becoming more materialistic, and success at any cost is the

credo of many businessmen. The typical psychopath thrives in

this kind of environment and is seen as a business “hero”.4

4 Ken Magid and Carole McKelvey: The Psychopaths Favourite Play-

ground:Business Relationships.

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY

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The study of “ambulatory” psychopaths - what we call “The

Garden Variety Psychopath” - has, however, hardly begun.

Very little is known about subcriminal psychopathy. Some

researchers have begun to seriously consider the idea that it is

important to study psychopathy not as a pathological category

but as a general personality trait in the community at large. In

other words, psychopathy is being recognized as a more or less

a different type of human.

Hervey Cleckly actually comes very close to suggesting that

psychopaths are human in every respect - but that they lack a

soul. This lack of “soul quality” makes them very efficient

“machines”. They can write scholarly works, imitate the words

of emotion, but over time, it becomes clear that their words do

not match their actions. They are the type of person who can

claim that they are devastated by grief who then attend a party

“to forget”. The problem is: they really do forget.

Being very efficient machines, like a computer, they are

able to execute very complex routines designed to elicit from

others support for what they want. In this way, many psycho-

paths are able to reach very high positions in life. It is only

over time that their associates become aware of the fact that

their climb up the ladder of success is predicated on violating

the rights of others. “Even when they are indifferent to the

rights of their associates, they are often able to inspire feelings

of trust and confidence.”

The psychopath recognizes no flaw in his psyche, no need

for change.

Andrew !obaczewski addresses the problem of the psycho-

path and their extremely significant contribution to our macro-

social evils, their ability to act as the éminence grise behind the

very structure of our society. It is very important to keep in

mind that this influence comes from a relatively small segment