Thx Paul. Super interesting, appreciate you sharing this. I’ll look deeper into it.
Thank you for this interesting interview.
In my opinion I think Mattias is missing something fundamental in his book.
Matthias in his book says that :
“Other misconceptions are that the leaders are primarily driven by money (i.e., “follow the money” and “cui bono”) or sadistic pleasure (i.e., they have a psychopathic or perverted personality).”
I disagree with this . All totalitarian states (probably all states) are led by psychopaths . The point is that in order to reach their positions they have to be exceptionally good as disguising it. It is true that they justify their actions with ideology but that is just a tool for them. He misunderstands psychopathy ;very few of them are sadists ;it’s just that they have absolutely no conscience or concern for anyone other than themselves .Discussing totalitarianism without a full discussion of psycopathy is like discussing economics without reference to how money is created out of thin air when banks make loans.
This is discussed in this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Political-Ponerology-Science-Psychopathy-Totalitarianism/dp/1734907452
Discussion
From the foreword :
“ How did Communist ideologues manage to convince the
masses that they undertook their crimes for “the workers,” or “the
people,” or egalitarianism? But even more perplexing, how did the
ideologues convince themselves that their crimes were for the good of the common “man? Łobaczewski explains that totalitarian ideology operate on two levels; the terms of the original ideology are taken at face value by true believers, while the party insiders substitute secondary meanings for the same terms, and normal people are subjected to gaslighting. Only the cognoscenti, the psychopaths, know and understand the secondary meanings. They recognize that actions
purportedly undertaken on behalf of “the workers” translate into the
domination of the party and state on behalf of the psychopaths
themselves. The truth is the opposite of what the party insiders
claim to be the case, and they know it. Political Ponerology thus
explains the origin of “doublespeak,” which Orwell portrays so
well. Coincidentally, Łobaczewski finished Political Ponerology in
1984.”
Excerpt from
Political Ponerology: The Science of Evil, Psychopathy, and the Origins of Totalitarianism
Andrew Lobaczewski