Licensed psychologists and psychiatrists and member of the American Psychiatric Association have the “Goldwater Rule”, which guidance disallows or discourages the making of claims about political figures without having had direct evaluative experience with the same. I concur. For the practicing psychologist or psychiatrist, the work of arriving at a clinical evaluation needs be direct and personal as well as versed in both the clinical DSM and perhaps a full history of despots and dictators. For cognizant citizens and political analysts, editors, and journalists, background helps as well may ample knowledge derived from consistent study over time and here, in particular, a good look at narcissism.
Immediately related on BackChannels: “Anthropolitical Psychology” -> “Malignant Narcissism” (of chief interest here). In the ways of desk analysts, my way, and the web, reference leads to reference until curiosity has been cured by repeated encounters with certain ideas, principles, and themes.
Malignant Narcissists Trump and Putin AKA Trump-Putin AKA #TrumpPutin
For the authoritarian and totalitarian malignant narcissist and sociopath with enough money and power, everything paid off (or silenced) works out in the end.
For essence regarding the process that turned two weaklings into courageous and heroic-looking figures popular with millions of voters suitably bought, leveraged seduced, snowed, or threatened in their respective nation-states: “Malignant Narcissistic Process Distilled” (BackChannels, July 10, 2022).
Political Criminals and Brothers in Loot
Given defenestrations, Navalny, Novichok,Polonium Tea, and Ukraine, Putin’s an easy tag as the boss of a state he has insisted on sustaining as a criminal enterprise, a “Russian Mafia State“, and a scourge to common humanity and good leadership worldwide. Russia, in large measure, appears neglected by the thug and his cohort except for the elimination of critics, journalists, and rivals in every manner possible.
Felonious Trump with his four felony cases racking up 91 counts for his American grand jury approved indictments should smell ferociously bad to his inveigled, hypnotized, or in-on-the-joke base, but it’s there with piety sincerely or piety as a cover for crime, or without piety but with extraordinary anger, delusion, frustration, hate, and political impotence, a crowd already royally screwed by Trump but perhaps ready for more cognizant, forthright, honest, and thoughtful American politicians.
That Hell Sinking Moment: Trump and Putin Together, Helsinki, July 16, 2018.
The famous video and the infamous answer to an American journalist’s question should today look and sound more chilling and conspiratorial than perhaps was the case almost four years ago. Russia’s Internet Research Agency troll farm had been an issue; spying by Maria Butina had surfaced in 2018. While the American reality-defying Republican Party may brag ascendance, one may with cause suspect it’s actually on the back foot while Americans who bought into the Trump fantasy come up to speed on the devils.
January 6, 2021: Insurrection–Armed, Planned, Executed with Violence
“They were peaceful people. These were great people. The crowd was unbelievable. Did I mention the world “love”? The love in the air. I’ve never seen anything like it”– Donald John Trump, January 21, 2021.
Remember the characteristics of the malignant narcissist: “delusional, grandiose, messianic in ideation and well apart from normal as regards boundaries and limits, which may be considered a part of the parameters of conscience.” The men seen in the video are those conned, lied to, manipulated by the kind of men who blow up apartment buildings and point to themselves as the ones who can fix the situation while actually creating the false-flag situation; on the Trump side, the kind of men who in desperation for money would sell out their democracy for insurance against their own personal calamity. Both: close to crime . . . but that has made me wonder how far our United States of America has fallen in relation to dependence on its black markets, dark money, and deals itself with what used to be called “The Devil”. Today, the devils are just those sufficiently armored against conscience and ruthless enough to do anything for a buck and the witless adoration and validation of The People.
I’ve had enough and not only of the posting-with-an-agenda crowd on Facebook — everybody’s making a point! — but with the Far Right demonizing of billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Having now been summoned to his defense often (for having done a little bit of earnest homework on Soros as a global notable), I thought here to file and pull some of the barbs launched and planted around the Internet to aid the Putin-manipulated “Newest Nationalists” (I shall call them) for the purpose of leading EU/NATO (America First!) back to archaic, bloody, tried, and finished feudalism.
MUNICH – Neither the European public nor European political and business leaders fully understand the threat presented by Xi Jinping’s China. Although Xi is a dictator who is using cutting-edge technology in an effort to impose total control on Chinese society, Europeans regard China primarily as an important business partner. They fail to appreciate that since Xi became president and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), he has established a regime whose guiding principles are diametrically opposed to the values on which the European Union was founded.
In an interview published on Monday by German newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine, Soros said ongoing tensions between the world’s two largest economies and President Donald Trump’s blaming of China for the Covid-19 pandemic were complicating potential joint efforts to eradicate the virus.
However, Soros himself was not an advocate of closer relations with Beijing.
“There are a lot of people who say we should be working very closely with China (on tackling the crisis) — but I am not in favor of doing that,” he said. “We must protect our democratic open society. At the same time, we must find a way to cooperate on fighting climate change and the novel coronavirus. That won’t be easy.”
With the concept of “Malignant Narcissism” readily at hand for all engaged in political psychology, we may know more about authoritarian leaders than we do about their followers who appear simply ill-informed about the world and vulnerable to its framing by persons with other than democratic and noble intentions.
Barbs
George Soros: Anti-Semite and Coward? No.
As the Nazi program uncloaked for the destruction of Jewry in its entirety, father Tivadar and son George found themselves in Hungary with few options for survival. While Anne Frank and family had found Dutch help for hiding in a sufficient compartment at the rear of a complicated house, the Hungarian father chose social camouflage, i.e., blending into invisibility. Our George was fourteen years old and listened to his father. The barbs launched at the pair today: “cowards”. I’ve heard that it would have been more laudable for them to have died in the camps or joined the resistance — although there was no resistance — no units to join — in Hungary.
Today, real and thinking Jews know that against the unbridled horror of the Nazi Jew-killing machinery, merely to survive it would be to triumph over it!
(There’s a quotation to the left on this blog attributed to Simon Wiesenthal on the occasion of his 90th Birthday celebration held in the ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria, formerly Hitler’s favorite destination: “The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing”).
Soros father and son, as had painfully too few other Jews, survived the Holocaust, and in relation to the anti-Semitism mixed into so much Soros-related disinformation and invective, this is the way to appreciate them: both were Jews by birth — in the traditional matrilineal way — and both became Holocaust Survivors.
George Soros, Communist, Globalist, Totalitarian — Not Quite
What kind of mind and personality would incline to accept everything said by an “authority” or “big shot” — or “big talker” — with nodding approval and little curiosity and independence?
Here on BackChannels is a short listing of “Globalist” organizations –>
We “Earthlings” really do live on just one planet that in our modern world has been fully connected for international material and social exchange via communication technologies, global shipping, and every form of human travel so far invented. While we may be slowed down by COVID-19 and related restrictions on commerce and travel, we should not be pushed backward by it politically or socially into the shortcomings of earlier political eras or stages.
We have the Internet.
We have our better and wiser selves.
While we of little to modest means work on making the world a better place — and also keeping its 7,000 living language cultures (fewer) and about 4,200 religions (and a disputed and much smaller number of “Major Religions”) intact, George Soros, who chose some time ago to channel off investment revenue into global philanthropy through his Open Society Foundations, has been planting money and cultivating improvements in Qualities of Living worldwide.
In answer to latest Far Whacked Out Right flap doodle on Black Lives Matter, which in parts of its radical agenda can never work but will now be visible and discussable in the public discourse, one may have a look into Borealis Philanthropy, the organization that handles the money and monitors its performance downstream. Where that money goes astray, as it were and as it may — BLM is a “big tent” with fractious cliques, some of them perhaps Left of the Far Out Left — we may let the FBI figure it out as it will where crimes have been committed or incited.
Who Hates George Soros? Authoritarians, Dictators, Political Absolutists, Would-Be Fascists
Authoritarians and Far (White?) Right immoral nationalist entrepreneurs hate George Soros. Here are two practically unavoidable notes on the Soros-Orban relationship involving just one of the philanthropist’s notable enemies –>
VIENNA — Forced out of Hungary, Central European University marked its relocation to Vienna on Friday with a bittersweet ceremony that amounted to a victory for Hungary’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orban, in his campaign against liberal values.
Founded and endowed after the fall of the Iron Curtain by George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist, the university promoted democracy and liberal thought in a region where they had been suppressed for a century under fascism and communism.
Should the Jews of Hungary pack their bags? Those with an eye to history might wonder. Last March, in a formal speech commemorating the 170th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, President Viktor Orban said the following:
“They do not fight directly, but by stealth; they are not honourable, but unprincipled; they are not national, but international; they do not believe in work, but speculate with money; they have no homeland, but feel that the whole world is theirs. They are not generous, but vengeful, and always attack the heart – especially if it is red, white and green [the colours of the Hungarian flag].”
With these words, Mr. Orban pursued his marginalization of Hungary’s Jews. He didn’t name them. He didn’t have to. His familiar anti-Semitic tropes, which might have been lifted from any number of German sources between the late 18th-century and the defeat of Adolf Hitler in 1945, would have resonated clearly in the minds of his audience.
And this is the point: anybody who has ever lived under another form of government—that is, under a dictatorship which cannot be removed without bloodshed—will know that a democracy, imperfect though it is, is worth fighting for and, I believe, worth dying for. This, however, is only my personal conviction. I should regard it as wrong to try to persuade others of it.
We could base our whole theory on this, that there are only two alternatives known to us: either a dictatorship or some form of democracy. And we do not base our choice on the goodness of democracy, which may be doubtful, but solely on the evilness of a dictatorship, which is certain. Not only because the dictator is bound to make bad use of his power, but because a dictator, even if he were benevolent, would rob all others of their responsibility, and thus of their human rights and duties. This is a sufficient basis for deciding in favour of democracy—that is, a rule of law that enables us to get rid of the government. No majority, however large, ought to be qualified to abandon this rule of law.
I started developing my philosophy as a student at the London School of Economics in the late 1950s. I took my final exams one year early and I had a year to fill before I was qualified to receive my degree. I could choose my tutor and I chose Karl Popper, the Viennese-born philosopher whose book The Open Society and Its Enemies had made a profound impression on me.
In his books Popper argued that the empirical truth cannot be known with absolute certainty. Even scientific laws can’t be verified beyond a shadow of a doubt: they can only be falsified by testing. One failed test is enough to falsify, but no amount of conforming instances is sufficient to verify. Scientific laws are hypothetical in character and their truth remains subject to testing. Ideologies which claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth are making a false claim; therefore, they can be imposed on society only by force. This applies to Communism, Fascism and National Socialism alike. All these ideologies lead to repression. Popper proposed a more attractive form of social organization: an open society in which people are free to hold divergent opinions and the rule of law allows people with different views and interests to live together in peace. Having lived through both Nazi and Communist occupation here in Hungary I found the idea of an open society immensely attractive.
For some years, I have kept a “quick list” of articles about George Soros. I had compiled the list of URL’s to haul into intellectual battle involving those more loaded with attitudes and beliefs than facts and histories. Not all items so stashed were favorable the the Soros image, but as evidenced here the best work fits the mosaic of a son and father who both well knew the horrors of dictatorship and tyranny, survived both, and were to set themselves against both for the rest of their lives.
Here is the “Quick List” of Soros URL’s (and preceding note) relayed here verbatim in the plain text in which it has been maintained –>
Schwartz György
George Soros, Hon FBA is a Hungarian-American billionaire investor and philanthropist. As of February 2018, he had a net worth of $8 billion, having donated more than $32 billion to his philanthropic agency, the Open Society Foundations. Wikipedia Born: August 12, 1930 (age 89 years), Budapest, Hungary Net worth: 8.3 billion USD (2020) Spouse: Tamiko Bolton (m. 2013), Susan Weber (m. 1983–2005), Annaliese Witschak (m. 1960–1983) Children: Alexander Soros, Jonathan Soros, Andrea Soros, Robert Soros, Gregory Soros Nationality: Hungarian, American, British
—> Google brief results, “Hungarian surname Soros”
Our (American / EU / NATO) failure to so far address Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Russo-Iranian support for tyranny in Syria and war by proxy in Yemen, and our manner of perhaps chiding China (and trying to talk down North Korea off its military nuclear-development platform) may signal both result and cause for ceding the fullness of an authentic (!) democracy to the capricious will of politically absolute (authoritarian / dictating) elite and joining that at the expense of democratic constituencies.
Theresa May isn’t having it with Russia, but have a look again at what Tayyip Recip Erdogan has done to “NATO” member Turkey and at how Viktor Orban in Hungary has attached himself and family to state patronage.
Who else?
The American Jihad — why not appropriate the term and really confuse some issues? — may be to struggle against the extremist politics that divide us and to struggle against the “absolutism” or fascism and chimera of “national socialism” that may be in the process of being forced upon all of us.
I’m not sure the note was even relevant to the prompt, for the words came to mind after watching this June 2017 BBC documentary focused on Vladimir Putin with side trips into his relationship with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump:
As the Phantoms of the Soviet loom over America’s international affairs, two other BackChannels posts may be worth a look as regards reminding ourselves just how audacious totalitarian manipulation can be:
BackChannels believes that Moscow / Moscow-Tehran account in large measure for the contemporary experience of Islamic Terrorism and continues to promote the idea that Syria’s tyrant Bashar al-Assad incubated ISIS to deal himself the tool of a most useful enemy. If you have a device that can prick or sting the body politic of a target state, then that same tool may become a part of bending your enemy’s political and security cultures to your own authoritarian will:
Today, tweets from the President of the United States Donald J. Trump seem to suggest both trust of and a growing friendship for today’s Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Of course, Putin was himself a former KGB agent, who obviously learned well the methods of disinformation and propaganda taught him in KGB school decades ago. Now he used these techniques to, as the CIA report put it, to order “an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”
BackChannels 