Category Archives: Political Psychology

Aside

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology

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FTAC

Political Islam evidently encourages the narcissistic want of power over others — supremacy — and children may obtain that social grammar early, and there is a difference between “you’re as good as anyone else” and “you’re better than everyone else”. The course of a malignant narcissism ends always in sadistic control by way of the diminishment and infantilization — induced dependence — of constituents by a despot and related demonizing, murder, and plunder of others. That’s the program. If you don’t like it, stand up together now.

The prompt:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/girl-8-calls-on-islamic-youth-to-back-jihad/story-e6frg6nf-1226475239074 – 9/17/2014.

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FTAC – On the Ideas of Genocide and War

14 Sunday Sep 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics

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“X” appears here careful to avoid the misappropriation of the term “genocide”, which really refers to a categorical cultural-racial basis for the elimination of an entire people. In such a frame, the Tutsi of Rwanda were the target of genocidal Hutu mania. Similarly, the white Arab onslaughts brought against the black animists of Darfur similarly constitutes “genocide” —

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0714/p09s02-coop.html.

The perception of “war crime” cannot hinge on carnage alone, nor some whacked out ideas about fairness in the parity of death counts. The war against war entails the destruction of one party’s will to war, or, if failing that, ability to make war. If one were to suggest that WWII was excessive in every aspect by every party in every respect, one would have difficulty arguing against that and the necessity of having in place, at least, a United Nations and an International Criminal Court. Of course, neither have proven of much use in Syria or against ISIS in Iraq, but at least we have them, and in time, we may have each other in such a way as to forestall the empowerment of personalities who lead themselves, their nations, and all surrounding into immense destruction.

Notably, the forces massed against Berlin (at the end of WWII) — and with an immense Russian force doing the honors — may suggest what it has taken in the past to eliminate the grandiose messianic will driving such war. That will, fear, drive, motivation, etc. exceeds limits, does not reason, would seem to fight to and perhaps even beyond death — and then it may work against an energy equal to its challenge and, eventually, greater than itself.

If hate were shit, and it is, a lot of people would seem to be walking around with a load in their pants.

A part of the psychology addressed in the generation of bigoted rhetoric lays out within the “paranoid delusional narcissistic reflection of motivation“.  How that becomes pattern in behavior and indicative of habits of mind, I wouldn’t hazard to guess but would suggest the language process associated with the same resides in childhood and a natural cowardice and imagination inclined to package fear borne by objects in such a way to push them away from the personal atmosphere.

I barely understand adults.

🙂

I don’t understand children.

However, to understand adults — to “get” an anti-Semite or other form of vociferous bigot — it might help to delve into the formation of language-sustained beliefs and attitudes adopted in childhood, and the coming into existence of some socially grammatical, rule-deriving, and later rule-based response to natural fears and emotional needs.

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FTAC – Note – Media Audience and Moral Entrepreneurship

11 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics

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One may differentiate between casual audience comfortable with the world it knows and humanist-intellectual audience with amateur or professional background and buy-in with regard to shaping the next world.

If you are here, you are either between those broad classes or in the latter, and if there’s even just a tiny bit of appropriate education or training back there, then you may be trusted to read critically, to both demand and sift data, to argue about dimensions and variables with a subject of interest, to engage in introspection and reflection as well as judgment, and to think broadly about what would be helpful — anthropologically, ethnographically, evolutionary — in the creation of a greater, more peaceful, more progressive global commune.

The prompt was a piece in Honest Reporting about pandering.

Pandering is a form in lying predicated on the enforcement of loyalty by the panderer.  The seminal fairy tale that is “The Emperor’s New Clothes” applies; it really is not a favor to be told how brave, glorious, and self-sacrificing one is by a personality inclined to sacrifice you in the interest of their own aggrandizement and unbridled glorification.

With the review of media coverage of the latest war in Gaza, the political skewing of the news devolves both to overt Hamas intimidation of the press and the reluctance of the same to either give up a story or taint the same with an acknowledgment of the compromise of their integrity.

Compromised journalism comprises its casual audience.

As suggested at the top of this post, not all audience is casual.  In fact, while a vast global intelligentsia has come into being with the development of the World Wide Web — the numbers may be low but the distribution must certainly be global — a large analytical class has also been present in the world either with partisan loyalties or greater humanist and spiritual motives.  From the “desk analysts” of national security bureaus to the latest in NGO do-gooders, there are plenty of readers who read for data and the arguably most accurate picture they may obtain from the same.  While some things lend themselves to a technocratic objectivity, from conventional defense arrangements to road building coupled with economic development, other themes require a broadened vision of humanity — that “anthropolitical psychology” I’ve mentioned on this blog — and also a world of poetry and consideration for the remaining 7,000 or so living languages in the contemporary human inventory and the cultures and individuals suspended in them in time.

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Addressing the Rise of Global Anti-Semitism – Brigitte Gabriel, UN

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Political Psychology, Politics

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“As you notice, I am wearing a Star of David.  This necklace was given to me by a man during a book signing in Dallas, Texas.  This necklace belonged to his wife who died in a tragic accident.  He said to me crying, this necklace was his wife’s favorite.  She died wearing it.  ‘She considered your her hero for your work with the Jewish people.  I want you to have it.  Promise me you’ll wear it.  I couldn’t find a more befitting time to honor her and her memory than now wearing this Star of David as a Lebanese giving a keynote speech at the United Nations in defense of the Jewish People.”

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FTAC – The Question was “Why ISIS Now?”

05 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by in Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology

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I would prefer venturing a metaphysical answer, but possibly the truth is practical: modern transportation x communications plus the unrest you mention create opportunity for the loose (with energy) to be seduced and moved to the fields of battle, which battle exists primarily in correspondence with a kind of personality. Aligned with Hitler’s famous question, “Who says I am not under the special protection of God?” are so many others asserting the validity of their own cosmic favor, whether of blood or “blood and soil”, of scholarly pedigree (who studied with whom), of nationalist superiority (so the Dallas mosque appears to have traded away a Turkish imam — Yusuf Kavakci — or one recently, an American, schooled — or groomed — in KSA). As an Out There malignant narcissist, Baghdadi in his craziness chose to exceed more limits than anyone else and press his case along the political lines of the Islamic political program _as her perceives it_ by asserting a direct line of descent from Muhammad and citing every aspect of legitimacy congruent with that assertion.

In the secular version of a similar but very different story, Viktor Orban in Hungary has been laying the groundwork for an autocratic nationalist socialist regime, claiming that such an organization produces greater wealth than would a democracy (which is true when the wealth is stolen under cover of an encompassing ideology). “Khamenei-Putin-Orban” has been the line I’ve been drawing on that, and while it doesn’t make sense in terms of state interests or ends, it makes sense in personality and the desire of each to maintain their unique feudal systems.

I’m not a know-it-all.

I’m a frustrated writer who has developed a broad awareness of some things and seems to enjoy spinning out these in-a-nutshell opinions.  The part having to do with “the malignant narcissist” has held up well lo these many years; other aspects having to do with the complicity of followers and of the silent plus, at times, the genius of these loose or unhinged personalities seem to me much more troublesome.

One understands in motivation the want of greatness in one career or another, and then too one may recognize the “reparative narcissist” as well as the malignant one, but how the malignant keep sucking in their shock troops and getting their barbed wire around the lives of tens of thousands of luckless souls, from Gaza to Waziristan, only God, nature, and the universe may know.

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FTAC – Distilled Thought – Control, Language, Power

04 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by in A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Journalism, Philology, Political Psychology

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“It isn’t healthy to get so sensitive over words.” Actually: opposite, Hatem Ade, because language is what has brought us (from secret group to global society in perhaps concentric circles) to this pass. There are so many directions to go as regards “words have a power”, but let me suggest this distillation: language is a natural human behavior; it is a cultural invention that abets survival within the bounds of each language society; and the cultural invention becomes a cultural suspension.

We literally live in language.

Every autocrat — malignant narcissist, political cabal — understands the primacy that language has in their ascent to power and their remaining in power, and not one of the type fails to overlook the information atmosphere in which their people — their subjects or subjugated people (eventually, it’s up to the people to decide which they are) — exist.

The above premise is never far from thought in every piece on this blog.

It’s there in the mention that the Islamic Small Wars are chiefly about integrity (and it is not okay to lie either to Muslims through patronizing speech or non-Muslims in deceitful speech).

It’s there in the idea that political reports from despotic regime (and their state-controlled media) must be greeted with deep skepticism because the political purposes of powerful controllers and influencing agents naturally corrupt the gathering and expression of observation sensitive to such interests.

It’s there in the notion that the generational transmission of language includes a “social grammar”, i.e., quietly discerned and internalized social rules about speech and what works in relation to needs and what might be met with cuffing.

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Link

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology

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The usual set-up goes like this: the empath is forced to make a stand on seeing the sociopath say or do something underhand. The empath challenges the sociopath, who straight away throws others off the scent and shifts the blame on to the empath. The empath becomes an object of abuse when the apath corroborates the sociopath’s perspective.

The situation usually ends badly for the empath and sometimes also for the apath, if their conscience returns to haunt them or they later become an object of abuse themselves. But, frustratingly, the sociopath often goes scot free.

http://www.addictiontoday.org/addictiontoday/2013/10/empathy-trap-sociopath-triangle.html – 10/30/2013.

Journalism – CNN – Brian Stelter Interviews Matti Friedman on Gaza War Coverage

02 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Journalism, Political Psychology

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(9/1/2014)

Related on BackChannels: “A Comment on Anti-Semitic Reportage” – 8/26/2014.

Matti Friedman’s related article on Tablet: “An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth A former AP correspondent explains how and why reporters get Israel so wrong, and why it matters” — 8/26/2014.

With reference to language behavior, the Islamic Small Wars bring to observation the profound divide between the principle of loyalty at any price, starting with lying, and the principle of integrity — truth telling — at some known price, including the loss of access to power.  This arrangement works because the tyrant’s power — the power developed by the malignant narcissist — is about control based in the enforcement of fidelity to the narcissist as central to survival and the narcissist’s subsequent enjoyment thereby of limitless narcissistic supply.

Simply put: where despotism is ascendant, it is easier to live with a loyal lie than weather the consequences of telling an uncomfortable truth.

That such a form in power corrupts western institutions, i.e., as with Hamas tacit arrangements with the UNRWA that have the terrorist organizations stockpiling rockets in UNRWA schools; also as with Hamas tactics in war including the direction and inhibition of once independent journalists, appears to come about through some combination of greed (the press wants the story and is willing to settle for a constrained slice of it) and weakness (as perhaps journalists and their organizations wish to come through physically unscathed and politically in position to go out again with the same skewing constraints in place).

Such journalism may be the best practicable under a circumstance managed by Hamas, but it’s also a compromised journalism that has bought into evil,  even so, and diminished itself and made its product less trustworthy for that.

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