Cluster B Archives - Doctor Paradox

American Fascism: a Right-Wing Authoritarianism Dictionary

January 19, 2021January 19, 2021 doctor paradox

We glibly believed it could never happen here even though we’ve been warned again and again. And in some sense, even though it’s been here all along — hiding in plain sight. I’ll be adding to this authoritarianism dictionary over time, as I can chip away at it and as new words get added to the lexicon.

Term	Topic	Definition	Notes	Read more
13th Amendment
14th Amendment	white supremacy
15th Amendment	white supremacy
19th Amendment	misogyny
4chan	alt-Right	A notorious internet message board with an unruly culture capable of trolling, pranks, and crimes.		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan
8chan	alt-Right	If 4chan isn't raw and lawless enough for you, try the even more right-wing "free speech"-haven 8chan, which is notorious for incubating a large swath of the Gamergate culture.		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8chan
abortion	religious extremism
active measures	Russian
aggrieved entitlement
America's "original sin"	white supremacy	slavery
amoral
armed robbery	organized crime
ASPD	abuse & control	antisocial personality disorder
assassination
astroturfing		Pretending a well organized and financed operation is a grassroots groundswell
authoritarianism
banality of evil
banana republic		politically unstable countries whose economies are monocultures controlled by an oligarchy; puppet states		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
birth control	misogyny
bitcoin	alt-Right
Black Codes
BLM	white supremacy	Black Lives Matter
BLM (US)		Bureau of Land Management
blockchain	alt-Right
blood libel
bolt hole	End Times	A type of retreat or refuge for those in the survivalist subculture, to be absconded to in case of disaster or apocalypse.
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)	white supremacy	Supreme Court decision ordering the desegregation of schools. Resistance to the ruling took the form of "states' rights" advocates, among much else.
bug-out location (BOL)	End Times	Another name for a bolt hole or survivalist refuge location.
Calexit		Movement to split the state of Californnia into East and West states	Nigel Farage, Scott Baugh, Arron Bank, Gerry Gunster
capital gains tax
civil society
Civil War
Cluster B
collective narcissism
Communism
conscience
conspiracy theory
covert narcissist
cults
deep state		Networks of opposition within governments who undermine the official regime	Was also used as a concept in WWII Germany to mean anyone "not loyal to the Nazis"	https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/world/americas/deep-state-leaks-trump.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0
democratic socialism
desegregation
disinformation
domestic violence	abuse & control
Doomsday Clock
double standard	misogyny
down ballot
doxing	abuse & control	researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual
Drain the Swamp		Campaign slogan of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential contest.	He was referring to the dastardly no-good downright evil of individuals like his campaign advisor, Roger Stone, known for his role in about-to-be impeached Richard Nixon's campaign as a "dirty trickster," a moniker he relishes to this day.
Emancipation Proclamation	white supremacy
empathy
estate tax
"Eternal Rome"		ideology positing Russia as a geopolitical bulwark of conservatism against a weak-kneed West (part of Alexander Dugin's reformulation of Eurasianism theory)
exfiltration		The removal or copying of data from one server to another without the knowledge of the owner
facial recognition
fake news
false flag	Russian	covert operations designed to deceive by appearing as though they are carried out by other entities, groups, or nations than those who actually executed them
fascism
fellow travellers
fifth column
fifth world war	Russian	non-linear war; the war of all against all	term coined by Putin's vizier Vladislav Surkov	http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n20/peter-pomerantsev/putins-rasputin
Financial Crimes Enforcement NEtwork (FinCEN)	organized crime	Department within the Treasury that handles and maiontains FBAR filings from US persons holding in excess of $10,000 in foreign banks.
FISA Court	organized crime
FISA warrant	organized crime
fiscal policy
Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)		Legal statute requiring those persons lobbying on behalf of a foreign government or other entity to register such with the U.S. government.
foreign bank account report (FBAR)		Required disclosure to the US treasury by persons holding in excess of $10,000 in funds in foreign banks.
forensics
Freedmen's Bureau
FreedomFest		Conservative evangelical event annually in Las Vegas
free trade
fronto-paralimbic area	Part of the brain associated with empathy, along with the anterior insula
GamerGate	alt-Right			https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy
genocide
gift tax
"global cabal"	conspiracy theory	euphemism in far-right Russian discourse to refer to a perceived "Jewish conspiracy" behind the international order of institutions like NATO and the EU	similar to/related to "cultural Marxism," neo-Nazism, and anti-Semitism in general
Grand Jury		16 to 23 people impaneled to hear evidence from a legal prosecution, and decide if said prosecution has a caseworthy set of evidence to bring charges.
Greensboro Massacre
Great Migration
Great Society
human trafficking	organized crime
hybrid warfare
incel	misogyny	"involuntary celibate" -- a male individual who believes society owes him sex
inflation
information warfare
interest rates
interposition	white supremacy	Dubious theory underpinning the idea of states' rights, which is that individual states have veto power over any laws passed by the federal government
Jim Crow South	white supremacy
Johnson Amendment	prosperity gospel	Allowed televangelists to funnel tax-free riches into luxury goods and political advocacy
Kochtopus		Term for the sprawling political machinery of the Kansas-based billionaire Koch Industries inheritees, Charles and David.
kompromat	Russian	compromising material on a head of state or other important figure; typically used for blackmail purposes
lamestream media	alt-Right
liberalism		Political and ethical framework based on individual liberty via human rights and equal protection	Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality. Whereas classical liberalism emphasises the role of liberty, social liberalism stresses the importance of equality. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally they support ideas and programmes such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free markets, civil rights, democratic societies, secular governments, gender equality, and international cooperation
lobbying
"Lock her up!"	alt-Right
Logan Act
lynching	white supremacy
machine learning
Mafia state	organized crime	A systematic corruption of government by organized crime syndicates.	Term coined by former KGB/FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko. See also: kleptocracy
MAGA
malignant envy
malignant narcissism	abuse & control
manosphere	misogyny
Marxism
#MeToo	misogyny
micropenis	misogyny
micro-propaganda machine		MPM	the “micro-propaganda machine” — an influence network that can tailor people’s opinions, emotional reactions, and create “viral” sharing episodes around what should be serious or contemplative issues	https://medium.com/@d1gi/the-election2016-micro-propaganda-machine-383449cc1fba#.3iq7mbess
misogyny
money laundering	organized crime
narcissism
narcissistic collusion
national debt
national deficit
negging	abuse & control
neomania		obsession with the new -- a hallmark of Americsan culture
New Deal
non-linear warfare	Russian
novichok		military-grade nerve agent developed by Russia and used in the poisoning of former FSB agent turned Putin critic Andrei Skripal and his daughter in Lonson in March, 2018
oligarchy
one-party state
open source intelligence
oppo		short form of opposition research
outrage industry
Palantir
pathocracy
patriarchy	misogyny
peculiar institution	white supremacy	slavery
plausible deniability
Plessy v. Ferguson		1896
plutocracy
populism
postmodernism
post-truth
Potemkin village		Any structure or facade built expressly for the purpose of making the situation appear more favorable than it really is		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village
Powell Memo		Lewis Powell's 1970s memo to the wealthy white male elite, in anger over the crackdown against tobacco companies, as a call to arms to organize politically against "anti-capitalist" forces
PR	abuse & control	public relations
Progressive Era
propaganda	abuse & control
prosocial behavior
psychopath	abuse & control
psyops	Russian
PUA	misogyny	"Pick Up Artist" -- a self-styled lothario who helps train other would-be casanovas in his ways of manipulative charm
race riots
race war
rape culture	misogyny
Reagonomics	conspiracy theory		see also: trickle down economics, supply side economics, Chicago School econ
Reddit
retweet		When a Twitter user amplifies the tweet of another, by "retweeting" it out to her or his network
Right anterior insular cortex		Part of the brain associated with empathy; psychopaths have a deficit here
right-wing authoritarian
Ruby Ridge
sadopopulism
Second Wave Feminism	misogyny
senicide
sexual assault	misogyny
sexual harassment	misogyny
shadow profiles	surveillance capitalism	Data that Facebook collects on people who are not members of Facebook, via association with their friends who are		https://www.zdnet.com/article/firm-facebooks-shadow-profiles-are-frightening-dossiers-on-everyone/
shared reality
show trials
Signal		encrypted messaging app
SJW	white supremacy	Social Justice Warriors -- used as a pejorative by the alt-Right
socialism
sociopathy
sockpuppet accounts		Fake social media accounts used by trolls for deceptive and covert actions, avoiding culpability for abuse, aggression, death threats, doxxing, and other criminal acts against targets.
SMS		texting
special interest groups
spearphishing		An email designed to appear as if from a trusted source, to solicit information that allows the sender to gain access to an account or network, or installs malware that later enables the sender to gain access to an account or network
spite voter
stochastic terrorism				http://www.vox.com/2016/8/10/12422476/trump-second-amendment-hillary-stochastic-terrorism-anti-abortion-violence
suffrage		The right to vote, sometimes referred to as "the franchise."
swatting		hoaxed reports to emergency services intended to provoke a SWAT team response at the target's home; a form of Internet-based attack used by Gamergate, the alt-Right, and other groups and individuals
symbolic violence
tax avoidance
tax fraud	organized crime
tax havens
Third Wave Feminism	misogyny
total war
trial balloon		Information put out or leaked to the media to gauge public reaction.
trickle-down economics	conspiracy theory
truth decay	conspiracy theory
The Turner Diaries	white supremacy
unmasking	cybersecurity	Intelligence protocol redacting American identities from transcripts of foreign intercepts
volcel
Voting Rights Act	white supremacy
Waco, TX
wag the dog	abuse & control
wage gap	misogyny
watering hole	cybersecurity	hacker attacks that infect entire websites
whataboutism	Russian	Classic debate tactic of old Soviet apologists to deflect criticism of Soviet policy; whenever an American would levy a critique, the response would be, "What about the bad things America does?"	Trump parrots this strategy in an early Feb 2017 interview with Bill O'Reilly, in response to a comment about Putin being "a killer"	http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/04/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin/
white nationalism	white supremacy
women's liberation	misogyny
World War I		WWI gave job opportunities to blacks in the North, causing a great migration -- as well as a backlash and resistance from Southern law enforcement.
World War II
Yes California		Movement to secede from the US entirely, run by Marcus Ruiz Evans, Louis J. Marinelli	Marinelli lives in Russia

Capitol Riots: The President led a terrorist attack on Congress

January 10, 2021January 10, 2021 doctor paradox

January 6: A Day that will live in ignominy. The day Capitol riots broke out when an angry mob, following instructions from Donald Trump, stormed the halls of Congress and came within minutes of a potential hostage situation or worse: a massacre.

I’m still processing the events of Wednesday, as are many. Even though I fully anticipated something horrifying given the utter obviousness of the confrontation brewing, I did not have a particular picture in mind of what that thing was going to be.

Despite having steeled myself for the past 4+ years, I wept many times at some of the imagery and video footage. The defilement of the people’s halls by a violent armed mob who took selfies with Capitol Police was just not something I could have conceived of.

There must be accountability

This was one of the darkest days of our nation. Even during the Civil War the Confederates never stormed the US Capitol, so to see the Confederate flag waving in Congress was a desecration. It twisted me up to have such a raw display of America’s deepest gash of white supremacist history taken symbolically and literally to the nation’s capital.

This event was broadcast around the world, to our allies and to our enemies. We received rebukes from Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran. We — the supposed bastion of democracy. The country that lectures other nations around the world on how to do democracy better. We have been humiliated for the entire planet to see.

We need answers about what happened here. The people deserve to know who planned this, who helped this along, who looked the other away, and perhaps most importantly: who still agrees with it (Hawley and Cruz, for one — they must go).

We must stop fascism in America

The rot of fascism has been allowed to spread to the point where a violent mob of white supremacists, QAnon conspiracy nuts, MAGA faithful and a demon’s host of all stripes came within minutes of taking hostages inside the chambers of Congress. Five people lost their lives and already are being made into martyrs.

This did not begin with Trump, but he certainly amplified the signal at a much more psychotic rate than under previous administrations, certainly of my lifetime. We are now at a dangerous precipice: in a time of staggering wealth inequality, a once in a century health crisis largely being ignored by the right wing, deeply bitter partisanship played out over decades, the creep of authoritarianism around the world — and now at home.

Wednesday’s Capitol Riots did essentially mark the “crossing of the Rubicon” that the Trump cult begged him to do — it was a coming-out day for fascism. It was the President of the United States instructing an armed mob to walk up to the Capitol where lawmakers were certifying the election for the guy who won it, and telling them to “take our country back” and give it to him — by force if necessary. Which, of course, was necessary.

That is the Rubicon — the Rubicon is the willingness to use political violence when you have exhausted all other legal, shady, illegal, and hideously criminal means. That is the fascist twist. If we do not react now; if we do not censure, remove, and allow justice to hold these individuals accountable — both inside and outside of the government — they will take it as permission to try again and again until we deal with this.

We must hold the insurrectionists accountable — if we are to keep this republic.

Lordy, there are tapes: Trump extorts the Georgia Secretary of State

January 3, 2021January 4, 2021 doctor paradox

The Trump Tapes make the Watergate Tapes seem like Polyanna. It’s not like a 10x or a 100x — it’s like a 1000x Watergate.

Here is the full audio of the President of the United States essentially verbally abusing GA SecState Brad Raffensperger for over an hour on Saturday, January 2: Trump Tapes: phone call and transcript

There’s the usual chatter in legal, justice, and natsec communities about whether or not this constitutes a crime — the consensus seems to be strong that it does, but then again any smidgeon of wiggle room leaves me feeling a little bit queasy.

If this isn’t a crime; if this isn’t an impeachable offense — then nothing is. If a President can get away with this to keep tyrannical grip on power after losing an election quite resoundingly, then the republic is dead and all its ideals of self-governance with it.

New year, new Lost Cause: The Sedition Caucus

And yet… that’s not all. 11 additional Republican Senators have come forward to follow Josh Hawley’s lead in objecting to one or more states’ count of electors in the ceremonial Jan. 6 readout of the state certifications. The new Sedition Caucus is led by Texas lawyer and newfound facial hair enthusiast Ted Cruz, who is in danger of winning a Daytime Emmy for his crisis acting on the Fox News network.

Along with Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), James Lankford (R-OK), Steve Daines (R-MT), John Kennedy (R-LA), Mike Braun (R-IN), and Senators-Elect Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Mr Cruz presented evidence that the people they told to believe the election was rigged then did in fact believe that the election was rigged, and for this reason required another dangerous — and admittedly symbolic! — delay in securing the sovereignty of the nation.

Essentially they are making an argument to keep this President’s fragrantly, steamingly, scathingly unethical, anti-democratic, and anti-conservative, institution-destroying behavior protected and reinstalled against the will of the people for another 4 years of “deal-making” just like this. They haven’t been silently seething at or embarrassed by Trump’s behavior this whole time. They’ve been licking it up — “finally, a guy who will really keep fighting forever!”

However, now The Sedition Gang have been caught flat-footed by the timing of the Raffensperger call breaking — even Tom Cotton has now changed his tune and come out against the coup (though not without getting a few digs in at the Democrats). That is going to start turning the momentum back the other way, with luck. Even Lindsey Graham is inching back from the ledge a bit. The Jan. 6 reception may be chillier than they think.

Hoping it’s all fuel for the blue trifecta in Georgia.

🤞🏾💃🏼

brainwashing

A technique of torture and compliance, brainwashing is used in many contexts to control victims. From personal relationships and marriage to cults, all the way up to the scale of nation-states, removing or reducing independent thinking and action in a person or population gives the brainwasher enormous power and advantage.

The word’s origin is from a Chinese term meaning “forcible indoctrination to induce somebody to give up basic religious, social, or political beliefs and attitudes in favor of a belief system imposed by the brainwasher.” It’s also been referred to as mind control, or coercive persuasion — and is a form of highly unethical emotional and psychological manipulation.

7 brainwashing tactics

isolation — separating you from family and friends, or any kind of support network who may provide alternative and negative views of the abuser
monopolization of attention — they seek to have the target orient their entire world around the abuser, leaving them little time to think about anything else
weaken your resistance — wearing down your defenses over time, so their messages take firmer hold
give occasional indulgences — providing temporary relief or even pleasure contributes to the overall program of intermittent reinforcement, to induce dependency on the abuser for stimulation of any kind
demonstrates “all-knowingness” — becomes an absurd moral authority on your entire life, presenting the truth about your inner self and past history with more omniscience than you yourself possess. They know you better than you know yourself — and you believe them!
destroy all sources of joy — the brainwasher needs to ensure that they are the sole source of pleasure and pain, for complete operant conditioning control over the target. All other pleasures in life are eradicated or eroded.
degradation and humiliation — if the target gets close to figuring out the truth about the power imbalance and impropriety of the abuser’s behavior, the abuser will immediately begin a scathing shame campaign to punish the temerity of daring to stand meekly on one’s own

Brainwashing in politics and religion

Use of brainwashing by communist officials in China, Korea, and Vietnam gained attention in the U.S. in the mid-20th century. The brainwashing technique is also used by gangs, cults, and organized crime networks to control both members and outgroups.

Perhaps most commonly it is associated with fringe religious groups like the Peoples Temple, Unification Church (or Moonies), Children of God, Branch Davidians, Heaven’s Gate, Aum Shinrikyo, The Manson Family, and thousands of other cults less well known. Sometimes the brainwashing is intended to limit the followers’ access to the outside world, and sometimes it is about grooming them to perform criminal acts from financial crimes to murder to starting a race war.

Related to:

BF Skinner
Ivan Pavlov
Mao Zedong
Nazis
Moscow Trials
Jim Jones
David Koresh

malignant narcissism

Malignant narcissism is a more severe and more dangerous version of narcissistic personality disorder. NPD is an extreme and pervasive set of traits associated with narcissism, a common human quality that most of us possess in small amounts — while some have it to excess, and even great excess.

Adolf Hitler is the prototype

While there are several vocabularies around the phenomenon of narcissism and antisocial personalities, the historical clarity of the term malignant narcissism can make for helpful reference. Social psychologist Erich Fromm first coined the term to describe the mentality of the Nazis during the aftermath of World War II.

As the world reeled to understand the nature of the atrocities of the Holocaust and the unfathomable destruction wrought by the Third Reich, Fromm searched for a model to explain what he referred to as the “quintessence of evil.” He thought the extreme inhumanity exhibited by the Germans was emblematic of severe pathology and mental sickness, at the root of vicious destructiveness unleashed on the world.

Core traits of narcissism

Grandiosity; sense of self-importance
Obsessive fantasies of unlimited success, power, money, sex, etc.
Belief in their inherent specialness that necessitates associating with high-status individuals
Excessive need for admiration
Sense of entitlement
Superficial and exploitative relationships
Low empathy
Lack of conscience
Has deep jealousies and believes others are envious of him or her
Arrogant, haughty behaviors and attitudes
Chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom

Add a dash of sadism

As we push higher on the scale to psychopathy from narcissism we enter an arena with even less empathy, less conscience, and more sadism. It’s not merely that these folks are extremely self-absorbed (which they are), it’s also that they enjoy other people’s pain. They get off on hurting others for their own enjoyment, and feel like guilt or shame in doing so.

Quotes about malignant narcissism

“regressive escape from frustration by distortion and denial of reality” — Edith Weigert
“a disturbing form of narcissistic personality where grandiosity is built around aggression and the destructive aspects of the self-become idealized” — Herbert Rosenfeld
“These people are preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love, and with chronic feelings of envy for those whom they perceive as being more successful than they are” — DSM-III-R
‘exploitative and parasitic:’ it is as if they feel they have the right to control others and to exploit them without guilt — Otto Kernberg
“The defect, to be precise, is chiefly his missing conscience, which makes him incapable of empathy, guilt, and shame, unable to experience higher level feelings, and understand and respect higher values.” — Elizabeth Mika

Hyper Partisanship: How to understand American politics today

December 19, 2020January 19, 2021 doctor paradox

Buckle up, we’re in for a wild ride. Many of the serious scholars of political history and authoritarian regimes are sounding the alarm bells that, although it is a very very good thing we are getting rid of the Trump crime family soon, it is still a very very bad thing for America to have so rapidly tilted towards authoritarianism. How did we get here?! How has hyper partisanship escalated to the point of an attempted coup by 126 sitting Republican House Representatives?

These are some of the resources that helped me grapple with that question, and with the rapidly shifting landscape of information warfare. This outline is a work in progress, and I’m planning to keep adding to this list as the tape keeps rolling.

Right-Wing Authoritarianism

Karen Stenner — Australian political psychologist Karen Stenner found that approximately 1/3 of populations are authoritarian, or have authoritarian tendencies.
- Her book: The Authoritarian Dynamic

Adorno (F scale) and Altemeyer (RWA scale) — a measurement of the authoritarian tendencies in individuals and populations
- Adorno’s book: The Authoritarian Personality

Hannah Arendt — The Origins of Totalitarianism
Derrida — the logic of the unconscious; performativity in the act of lying
ketman — Ketman is the psychological concept of concealing one’s true aims, akin to doublethink in Orwell’s 1984, that served as a central theme to Polish dissident Czesław Miłosz‘s book The Captive Mind about intellectual life under totalitarianism during the Communist post-WWII occupation.
Erich Fromm — coined the term “malignant narcissism” to describe the psychological character of the Nazis
Fascism — elevation of the id as the source of truth; enthusiasm for political violence
- Jason Stanley — How Fascism Works
- Robert O. Paxton — The Anatomy of Fascism
- Tim Snyder — On Tyranny
- Federico Finchelstein — A Brief History of Fascist Lies
Tyrants
- Ruth Ben-Ghiat — Strongmen
- Tyranny as a triumph of collective narcissism
John Dean — 3 types of authoritarian personality:
- social dominators
- authoritarian followers
- double highs — social dominators who can “switch” to become followers in certain circumstances
Loyalty; hero worship
- Freud = deeply distrustful of hero worship and worried that it indulged people’s needs for vertical authority. He found the archetype of the authoritarian primal father very troubling.
Ayn Rand — The Fountainhead
Richard Hofstadter — The Paranoid Style
Lakoff — moral framing; strict father morality
Neil Postman — Entertaining Ourselves to Death
Anti-Intellectualism
Can be disguised as hyper-rationalism (Communism)

Cognitive and psychological data

conservative minds don’t accept new information coming in
- vs. Bayesian logic
- vs. Thomas Kuhn scientific revolutions
Psychological biases
- Status quo bias
The Asch Experiment — more than 60% of the time, people bow to social pressure
Stanley Milgram 1974 — we will submit to the demands of authority to a far greater extent than we might expect
- it absolves us of responsibility
- a “loophole” to quickly route around our conscience, making “normal” persons susceptible to the appeals of psychopaths
The Marshmallow Experiment — drive towards instant gratification
Edward Bernays — Propaganda
Narcissism and Sadism | The Dark Triad — difficult personalities
- narcissism = seeing oneself “above”
- Christopher Lasch — Culture of Narcissism (1979). Idea that narcissism is a defense mechanism against social change and instability in the modern world. It’s a method of psychological self-preservation in a hostile, threatening world; a cynical ethic.
- Tom Wolfe — The Me Decade
- Jerrold Post — authoritarian parenting
- The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump
- Mary Trump — Too Much and Not Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man
- narcissistic injury
- narcissistic rage
- aggrieved entitlement — elevated expectations combined with resentment at society for not meeting them (Michael Kimmel, 2013)
- dehumanization of the Others
- splitting; black and white thinking
- object permanence
- magical thinking — relation to Norman Vincent Peale and prosperity gospel
- Political ponerology — the nature of evil; interaction of difficult personalities with power and politics
  - pathocracy — Andrew Łobaczewski (2007)
  - sadopopulism — Tim Snyder
- Narcissistic collusion — the interplay of the grandiose expectations of the tyrant and his followers. It gives him power as a meshing of mutually compatible needs.
- Narcissism of small differences — Freud 1991
- Scapegoating
- Psychological decompensation
- Psychopath World
  - The Upside Down — up is down, black is white
  - No conscience
  - No empathy
  - The ultimate narcissist
  - Obsession with power, dominance, and hierarchy
  - Primitive goals, relentlessly pursued
  - Rigidity; inflexibility
  - No access to higher human ideals
  - Performative; mask-wearing
  - See people as objects for their use
  - Control issues
  - Cruel and sadistic
  - Empty and thrill-seeking
  - Enjoy breaking rules
  - Inauthentic; insincere
  - Projectivity
  - Destructiveness; recklessness
  - Conspiracy-minded
  - Cold and inaccessible
  - Reptilian
- Terminology: ASPD and the shifting umbrella of personality disorder and Cluster B
- Malignant narcissism as a historical conception of this group of personality traits

Paranoia
Abuse culture
- Bullies
- Emotional abuse
- psychological abuse
- physical abuse
- financial abuse
- legal abuse
- abuse of power
- Alice Miller — Her work identified the psychological impact of childhood neglect and abuse, not just at the individual level but at the societal level — where it has a tendency to produce a hierarchical worldview characterized by the need to control the environment.
- One-sided development — Dąbrowski (1996)
Cults
- charismatic leaders
- psychology of followers
- brainwashing and mind control; hypnosis techniques
- vulnerabilities to “cult capture”
- Jackie Speier, survivor of the Jonestown Massacre and CA Representative, sees parallels between Trump and cult leader Jim Jones
“Big Cults” — rise to the level of nation-state and even beyond
- Strongmen — Ruth Ben-Ghiat
- Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities are Destroying Democracy — Ian Hughes
- White nationalist / white power movement — see outline below under HISTORY section
- Mass shooters — many “lone wolves” are part of underground white nationalist cells
Psychological warfare
- Propaganda
  - Bernays –> Goebbels
  - Michiko Kakutani — The Death of Truth
- Emotional abuse
- Interrogation techniques
- Disinformation
  - Conspiracy theories
  - Fake news
    - “Flood the channel” strategy
    - Overwhelm and drown out the truth
    - Deep fakes
  - Lying with statistics
- Bot networks and cyborg botnets
  - agents
    - distraction
    - confusion
    - probing
    - persuasion
    - conversion
    - neutralization
  - flying monkeys
  - automated response
  - timed response
- Extortion
- Doxxing
Religious extremism
- Evangelicals
- Dominionism and extremist religious circles believing literally in the End Times and the rapture coming soon (Tim LaHaye et al), including at the highest levels of government (Pompeo, Pence, etc.)
- Calvinism
- Prosperity gospel
Living on Fantasy Island
- Norman Vincent Peale — the power of positive thinking (1952)
- Ernest Becker — The Denial of Death & the basis for fundamental self-deception
- Buddhist / Shambhala conceptions of “The Cocoon” — a mental place of safety we construct for ourselves to remain shielded from Real Reality
- Republican Denial Bubbles: climate change, trickle-down economics, “no one is racist,” birtherism, covid is a hoax, everything is hunky dory, you are getting very sleepy…
- It Was All a Lie — Stuart Stevens, former GOP strategist and co-founding member of the Lincoln Project, spills the beans on the Republican capture of civic discourse with a set of false narratives all spinning out from the white supremacist backlash to the civil rights movement of the 60s.

HISTORY

Capitol Riots and Putsch — insurrectionists storm the Capitol
Raffensperger extortion call
Georgia runoffs
Biden elected + Big Lie begins (continues, really)
George Floyd murder and summer of protest
- long struggle with police brutality and “driving while Black”
Votings Rights Act gutted
Citizens United
Growing nationalization of politics parallels the demise of local news

Hyper Partisanship in Congress: The Gingrich Years

Newt Gingrich and the Contract on America — Steve Kornacki, Julian Zelizer
- The rapid rise and fall of the House Speaker from Georgia who made the 1990s a bitter toxic brew of hyper partisanship
- The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism — Steve Kornacki
- Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party — Julian Zelizer
Rise of Evangelicals and the deals with the devils (Paul Weyrich, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, prosperity gospel, etc)
- ALEC
- abortion as a 180-degree turn for use as a wedge issue
- Brown v. Board of Education & the fight over segregated Christian private schools
White nationalism’s reputational laundering
- David Duke popped back up in both the 90s and the 2010s
- Some Vietnam vets nurtured their own “stabbed in the back” culture after the war
- Rise of the militia movement
  - Many returning soldiers saw the fringe left Communist movement in the US as an “enemy at home”
  - Greensboro, NC massacre
  - The Order
  - KKK & KKKK
- Paramilitary operations in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere in Latin America to “bring the war home”
- After the fall of Communism, the movement needed a new enemy. During the immediate post-Vietnam era they claimed to be working on behalf of the state, but towards the end of the 80s they did a 180-degree turn to a hard anti-government stance
- Survivalist fringe
  - Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing
  - Waco
  - Ruby Ridge
  - Unabomber / Ted Kaczynski
- Intersection of militia movement with NRA
  - Intersection of NRA with Russian active measures

Post-Soviet Capital Flight and the Rise of Russian Organized Crime

The fall of the USSR and capital flight; “end of history”
- Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? — Karen Dawisha
- Russian oligarchs laundered money through real estate around the world, but mostly in the US
- They found mutual transactional interest in Donald Trump, whose casino failures left him 4x bankrupted, blackballed by US banks, and in need of capital
- House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia — Craig Unger
Replacement of the Italian mob by the Russia mafia starting in the 1970s
- they didn’t “send their best” — The Kremlin agreed to allow more Soviet Jews to emigrate, but to fulfill their “promise” they opened the prison doors of the gulags and sent 1000s of hardened criminals to the U.S.
- a huge community of them settled in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
Putin’s revanchism leverages American belief that we won the Cold War and our conviction that it ended
- The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare 1945-2020 — Tim Weiner

Rise of Dark Money

The explosion of Super PACs and other seemingly endless vehicles for anonymous money lending to political campaigns exploded after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010. The hyper partisanship tilted even further when the GOP quietly began accepting far more foreign contributions than many people realized.

Citizens United
Koch Brothers / Kochtopus
offshore tax havens
unregistered FARA agents (Flynn, Manafort, Elliott Broidy, etc)
Jane Mayer
Panama Papers — biggest offshore data leak in history
FinCEN files

Rise of Russian Hybrid Warfare

Gerasimov Doctrine
Vladislav Surkhov’s surrealistic war theater
- Fifth World War: all against all
Cheka –> KGB –> FSB / GRU
Psychological warfare
Cyber warfare
- energy grid
- US Treasury
- election infrastructure
- nuclear weaponry
Information warfare
- Disinformation
- Cyborg bot networks
- IRA & Robert Mueller indictments
- Cambridge Analytica, data theft, and microtargeting
- Astroturfing, fake activism, paid crisis actors
Financial warfare
- Magnitsky Act
  - Bill Browder
  - Natalia Veselnitskaya
  - Trump Tower meeting June 9, 2016
- Campaign funding
  - Marie Le Pen (France)
  - Viktor Orban (Hungary)
  - Brexit (UK)
  - Trump / GOP (US)
  - Law and Justice (Poland)
- Corruption — organized crime, money laundering, bribery, human trafficking, drugs, arms, fraud, racketeering, etc.
Proxy warfare
- Private security forces and arms’ length deniability
  - Yevgeny Prigozhin
  - Erik Prince
- Ukraine
- Belarus
- Syria

Role of Facebook, Google, and Big Tech

Silicon Valley played its part in enabling — and profiteering from — hyper partisanship not just in the U.S., but around the world. Facebook in particular has a reputation for being callously cheap about moderating content from hate speech to live mass shooting video, including arguably playing a significant role in the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar.

Facebook as a rogue nation state with almost 3 billion non-voting citizen-serfs
- Reluctant moderators require regulating
- Questionable ethics
  - Moral hazard in political leanings
  - Paid propaganda machine for dictators and authoritarian regimes around the world
  - Allow disinformation to “skirt around” the rules too often, or fail to police bad actors at all
  - Fail to live up to their own moderating standards repeatedly
  - Refuse responsibility for arguably essential roles in geopolitical disasters including the Rohingya massacre in Myanmar and
  - A business model that fundamentally benefits from human conflict
  - Cambridge Analytica
  - Traumatic conditions of the Facebook moderation team, in the US and abroad
Google’s capture of the web
- monopoly powers
- surveillance powers
- AI powers
- collapse of online advertising market
- collapse of local journalism
- Youtube radicalization
Surveillance capitalism
Data as the new oil

Economic insecurity and staggering inequality

Piketty
Gilded Age
Progressive Era
Anti-Trust
Herbert Hoover –> FDR
Great Depression –> New Deal prosperity
Keynesian economics
Hillbilly elegy
- Bowling Alone
- The Big Sort
Globalization
Opioid crisis

Republican Myths

As further enabled by the rise of the PR-state

White supremacy and the myth of American innocence
Trickle down economics –> Reagan
Powell Memo –> Think Tanks
McCarthyism; John Birch Society
America as a Judeo-Christian nation
Immigration is bad
Climate change denialism
Smoking is good for you

Americana and Hyper Partisanship through the ages

2020 election
2016 election
Obama years
2008-09 financial crash
9/11, WMD delusions, Iraq War, Islamic terrorism
2000 Bush v. Gore
Welfare queens
Clinton and the Crime Bill
Reagan years
Watergate
Spiro Agnew
Nixon’s war on drugs as a proxy for the war on 60s counterculture
White militia movement
Civil rights & Vietnam
Cold War
The Holocaust; Stalin’s Great Terror; Mao’s famine
WWII & fascism
New Deal
Great Depression
WWI
Gilded Age
Snake oil
PT Barnum
Great Awakening preachers George Whitefield & Jonathan Edwards
- they argued that church authorities should not own people’s direct relationship with God
KKK
Jim Crow
Reconstruction
Civil War & Confederacy — the ur-Hyper Partisanship.
States’ Rights
Anti-Intellectualism
Slavery
Racism, Misogyny
Federalism vs. Decentralization
The Constitution and the Rule of Law
Democracy overthrows monarchy
Spirit of the Laws — Montesquieu
Social contract; consent of the governed
Puritans
Religious freedom
Liberty vs. freedom
The Enlightenment
Magna Carta
The Bible

Tactics of emotional predators

October 18, 2020January 18, 2021 doctor paradox

Chances are you’ve had an encounter with an emotional predator — whether you’re aware of it or not. Most everyone is familiar with the physical abuser: typically the man who beats his wife or female partner. But emotional abuse, and psychological abuse, are also integral components of abuse and are often present with, and precursors to, intimate partner physical violence.

Often individuals who abuse others have a personality disorder that increases their chances of becoming an abuser. Many of these personality disorders have narcissism at their roots — a psychological defense mechanism in which an individual harbors grandiose fantasies about themselves and feels selfishly entitled to having all their demands met.

Narcissists require a constant stream of admiration, or “narcissistic supply,” coming their way. They achieve this through charm, emotional manipulation, and all sorts of shady, unethical, or downright illegal tactics and behaviors. When a narcissist wants something from you, or wants you to do something, he can become a devious emotional predator who takes advantage of your good will for his own ends without thinking twice.

How to identify an emotional predator

One way to protect yourself from emotional predators is to understand how they behave, and become familiar with how to detect manipulative and deceptive behavior as early on as possible. If you see any of the warning signs below in a loved one, coworker, community member, or position of leadership, then use caution in dealings with this individual. Seek external advice and assistance in threat assessment before placing further trust in this person.

Manipulating your emotions
Creating unnecessary chaos
Consistent inconsistency
One-way street
Masters of deceptive and misleading stories
Love to play victim and hero
Diverting attention
Denying plain facts
Assert the opposite of reality
Projection
See the world as with them or against them (splitting)
Nurturing and maintaining enemies (paranoia)
Moves the goalposts
Refuses to take responsibility or admit fault
Gaslighting
Bullying
Frequent liar
Aggressive and easily angered

Trump is a cult leader

September 22, 2020December 28, 2020 doctor paradox

Cult leader playbook:

1. Position himself (and the group — his extension) as the benevolent safe haven to turn to when afraid

2. Isolate the follower from other sources of safe haven

3. Arouse fear in the follower

Rinse; repeat.

Qualities of a Cult Leader

Narcissistic — highly self-absorbed, they demand excessive admiration and slavish devotion to their whims.
Charismatic — they have a way of grabbing attention, whether positive or negative.
Unpredictable — erratic behavior keeps enemies on their toes and fans “on edge” with desire to please Dear Leader.
Insatiable drive — it could be status, money, sex, power, or all of the above, but they feel they deserve it more than anyone else on the planet.
Lack of conscience — they have no shame and will demand things a decent human being would not.

Trump has all the cult leader qualities and follows the playbook to a tee — doing little else, in fact. He should be considered highly armed and dangerous. An emotionally unstable individual with access to the United States’ greatest powers and deepest secrets. A threat to American life and liberty. Dictator Don.

The Authoritarian Personality: Deference to a higher power

June 20, 2020December 6, 2020 doctor paradox

Sociologist Theodor Adorno created the “F scale” in a 1950 seminal work entitled The Authoritarian Personality — to rank the level of predilection to fascism in an individual, which became desirable both during and shortly after World War II.

In authoritarian personality theory, the defining traits of the Platonic fascist (or the ur-Fascist as Umberto Eco would later call them) include the following:

conventionalism — following the rules; “this is how we’ve always done things”; fundamentalist thinking; dogmatic philosophy; intolerance of ambiguity (and intolerance in general)
authoritarian submission — follow the Ruler; the Ruler is always right, no matter how obvious the lie or big the myth. only ingroup authority figures matter, though.
authoritarian aggression — “send in the troops,” “when the looting starts the shooting starts,” “dominate the streets”
anti-intellectualism — distrust of experts; paranoid politics; intellectualism is unmasculine
anti-intraception — a dislike of subjectivity and imagination: “the fact is…”; black and white thinking; dislike of flamboyant self-expression; monoculture
superstition — conspiracy theory; anti-vaxxers; QAnon
stereotypy — racism, sexism, classism, ageism, all the isms; homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, all the phobias
power and “toughness” — obsessed with dominance and submission; rigidly pro-hierarchy; solves problems with violence; values physical strength
destructiveness — dismantle the Federal government; remove environmental regulations; pull out of international alliances; weakening America’s place in the world, abandoning the EU, and kowtowing to dictators around the world
cynicism — “both sides do it,” whataboutism, all politicians are bad, conscience (non)voters
projectivity — everything is Obama’s fault, almost literally; claims Biden is corrupt; Hillary’s email server (though they all used and continue to use private email servers, every single one of them); claim that the Clinton campaign started the birther controversy; accuse everyone else of lying
exaggerated concerns over sex — anti-abortion; homophobia; excessive taboos; excessive shame

We are seeing all of these traits today. We see the rise of authoritarianism — we see it in our leadership, we see it in our communities, and we see it surging around the world.

We see it in a much larger percentage of our populace than many of us might have imagined. People of good character far outnumber the Right-Wing Authoritarians, but they can be subjugated, emotionally manipulated, strong-armed, abused, intimidated, made cynical by the RWAs. And the RWA personality is driven to actively hate outgroups in many outrageously twisted and depraved ways, from pettiness to genocide.

Right-Wing Authoritarianism

Refined by professor of psychology Bob Altemeyer (The Authoritarians, et al) in 1981, the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale (RWA) addresses some of the limitations of the F scale and exhibits more predictive power in identifying individuals exhibiting authoritarian personality.

The RWA personality is associated with all of the following traits, beliefs, actions, patterns, and signs of authoritarianism:

extreme obedience
unquestioning respect for and submission to a chosen authority
forceful insistence on hierarchy
striving for dominance in social hierarchies
supremacy
wolves vs. sheep worldview
Manichaean struggle
punitiveness; vengefulness; malignant envy
destructiveness
extremism
subordination to the collective
tribalism
cult of personality
traditionalism
conservatism
fundamentalism
less openness to experience
aggression towards minority groups
resistance to change
justification(s) for social inequality
Libertarianism
police brutality
psychological abuse
hypocrisy
projection
magical thinking
disciplinarian
control freak
mass surveillance
repression
a primary drive to achieve relief from uncertainty, even at the cost of individual freedom

Democracy vs. Authoritarianism

Maybe we could offer up the RWA test as a “good faith” gesture, if one is interested in participating in civic discourse with credibility and authenticity. It would help us identify those individuals who are going to be unlikely to play by the rules of the game or have no intention of behaving fairly. It would help us draw authoritarianism and totalitarianism out of the proverbial closet and into public discourse so we can refute it vehemently in a proper forum.

Although we have bot tests, we don’t really have great ways of measuring and identifying human beings with deceptive agendas. If we could screen people as authoritarians via “honorable challenge,” we could save so much time by not wasting it on the lost causes whose power trip runs so deep it can never be exposed. It could serve as a way to drag out into the light any number of intolerable, anti-democratic sentiments masquerading as “strict Constitutionalism.” We can pry open the doublespeak and arm ourselves with the secret decoder rings of understanding RWA dogwhistles.

And maybe we can finally change the conversation by more easily identifying friendlies from foes from the start, without having to wade through every minefield.

Just maybe.

Donald Trump: Narcissist-in-Chief

March 28, 2020June 20, 2020 doctor paradox

More proof that narcissist Donald Trump is a narcissist:

It’s a hallmark of NPD to first dramatically underreact (“coronavirus is a Democratic hoax!”) and then suddenly dramatically overreact (threatening military-enforced quarantine of NYC).

Theory: Libertarians are the Narcissists of the Far-Right

February 2, 2019June 20, 2020 doctor paradox

I’ve been reading John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” and reminded of the quintessential liberal definition of the term:

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
(emphasis mine)

It seems to me that Libertarian proponents tend to make a systematic error in portraying liberty as only commensurate with the first part of Mill’s description: essentially interpreting it as, “I should be able to do whatever I want, and have no constraints placed upon my person by the government whatsoever.”

This misses completely the essential boundary established by the second part: that doing what one wants has limits attached, and that those limits are a proscription on engaging in activities which either harm others, or deprive others of their own rights in pursuit of liberty.

Harm

Being fixated with avoiding taxation, the Libertarian will proclaim that the government is coercing him out of his hard-earned monies — but this fails to recognize the real harm being done to the lower classes by the deprivation of funds to support the basic level of public goods required to preserve life at a subsistence level as well as social mobility: the essence of the American dream.

In short, Libertarian dogma tends to be singularly focused on the self-interest of the upper classes without any attendant regard to the rights of others that may be trampled on by either class oppression or the capturing and consolidation of political power in the hands of the wealthy. It fails systematically to recognize the perspective of the “other side,” i.e. those who are harmed by the enactment of the Libertarian ideology — much as a narcissist lacks empathy — and with it, the capability of seeing others’ perspectives.

The Libertarian narcissist Venn diagram is practically a circle.