Tag Archives: malignant narcissism

Turkey – The ‘God Mob’ Meets the Good Mob

03 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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Turkey’s anti-democratic turn has all taken place without much notice from the outside world. It was not just coercive measures — arrests, investigations, tax fines, and imprisonments — that Washington willfully overlooked in favor of a sunnier narrative about the “Turkish miracle.” Perhaps it is not as clear, but over the last decade the AKP has built an informal, powerful, coalition of party-affiliated businessmen and media outlets whose livelihoods depend on the political order that Erdogan is constructing. Those who resist do so at their own risk.

Cook, Steven A. and Michael Koplow.  “How Democratic is Turkey?”  Foreign Policy, June 3, 2013.

Nothing may so upset a dictator in embryo as much as the jogging of the communal memory of his antagonists.

There are no other qualified candidates, not least because more than half of Turkey’s admirals are in jail, along with hundreds of generals and other officers (both serving and retired), all on charges of plotting to oust Turkey’s mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) government.

The Economist.  “Erdogan and his generals.”  February 2, 2013.

While sufficiently cowing the military, Erdogan proved no slouch with the Fourth Estate:

Yet freedom of expression on contemporary issues lags woefully behind progress in other spheres, stymied by a government that regularly seeks to intimidate publishers, editors and reporters, as well as columnists. The Carnegie Endowment, a nonpartisan U.S.-based think tank, concluded early this year that press freedom in Turkey “is moving backward.”

Gutman, Roy.  “Turkey’s journalists say press freedom has declined under Erdogan’s rule.”  McClatchy, May 13, 2013.

Next: the educators!

By tweaking universityadmission formulas, he privilegedstudents from religious high schools, who had long been denied acceptance because they lacked a solid liberal-arts foundation. In order to help these unqualified graduates enter the civil service, Erdogan imposed a new interview process, transforming a meritorious civil service into a mechanism for political — and religious — patronage.

Rubin, Michael.  “Erdogan’s Agenda.”  National Review Online, May 16, 2013.

And back to the news on the web:

“Ordinary civilians being caught up in what’s taking place here,” says Ivan Watson while jogging toward a crowd gathered on an Istanbul street: “An old lady knocked on the ground by the water canon . . . .”

Watson, Ivan and Gul Tuysuz, Turkey protests show no sign of letdown.” CNN, June 3, 2013.

One bystander named in the video cited above says of Erdogan, “He has a big ego,  he has this Napoleon Syndrome on it.  He thinks of himself as the next sultan, and controlling all this middle east politics and such.  He needs to stop doing that.  He’s just a prime minister.”

Words more true seldom spoken.

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I’ve been using the term “God Mob” for a while and from the Coins and Terms page here, this is how I define it:

As with “mafia” in attitude or spirit, the term is indefinite as regards organization but clear in its recognition of the many and too familiar methods: bribery, intimidation, murder, patronage, theft.  ”The Godfather” lives, but under many other titles, including “President”.

In Turkey, the soul of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s democratic and meritocratic state has caught up with the assault under way by Prime Minister Erdogan and the AKP: the once protective leadership of the secular military has been compromised; an untold number of journalists of high integrity and professional mien have been broadsided, intimidated, or jailed by the Administration; and the schools, so Michael Rubin’s article suggests, have been compromised, shifting away from earned education toward rewarded acceptability on the basis of religious piety.

Erdogan may not dress like the Ayatollah in Iran, but perhaps, even so, he may resemble him in temperament.

Programs in the minds of autocrats may vary, as each has his pet, but look over the behavior, and it starts to look alike, starting with the deflection of criticism — all are always above all of that — followed, if the same persists, by an over-the-top effort to suppress it.

Three things matter to every “malignant narcissist”: 1) himself; 2) “narcissistic supply” — adoration, adulation, glorification, love, praise; 3) protection of supply by way of the control of others.

Countermeasures?

Don’t elect one in the first place.

Additional Reference

Charlemagne European Politics.  “Resentment against Erdogan explodes.”  The Economist, June 2, 2013.  Excerpt:

“Tayyip [Erdogan] istifa”, a call for the prime minister to resign, was the slogan most commonly chanted by the protestors. Not that most Turks would have known. Media bosses fearful of jeopardising their other business interests shunned coverage of the protests for nearly two days, opting instead to screen programmes about breast-reduction surgery and gourmet cooking. Faced with a public outcry, the main news channels began broadcasting live from Taksim Square. But pro-government papers continue to point the finger of blame at provocateurs and “foreign powers” bent on undermining Turkey. It seems an odd description of the thousands of housewives leaning over their balconies clanging their pots.

Taspinar, Omer.  “Turkey: The New Model?”  Brookings, April 2012.

Reuters.  “Turk protesters set fire to offices of Erdogan’s AKP”.  The Jerusalem Post, June 3, 2013.

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Turkey and Erdogan’s Heavy Hand

03 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars

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They are so touchy, these malignant narcissists!

ISTANBUL –  Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday again dismissed street protests against his rule as actions organized by extremists, described them as a temporary blip and angrily rejected comparisons with the Arab Spring uprisings.

AP.  “Violence flares on Day 4 of anti-government protests in Turkey.”  Via Fox blog, June 3, 2013.

The least little bit of citizen action, like that of the loose crowd gathered to protest the commercial development of a beloved old urban park, and they — lump all autocrats together for a moment — go off.

Where I live, a few police, a paddy wagon, and plastic cuffs and, perhaps, muscle enough for lifting the limp bodies of peaceful protesters would have been enough.  Instead, with perhaps the degree of “firmness” chosen inversely correlated with true state confidence installed in the leadership, out come the water canons and pepper spray, first thing.

This hails from the reblog posted previously:

But the police arrived with water cannon vehicles and pepper spray.  They chased the crowds out of the park.

In the evening the number of protesters multiplied. So did the number of police forces around the park. Meanwhile local government of Istanbul shut down all the ways leading up to Taksim square where the Gezi Park is located. The metro was shut down, ferries were cancelled, roads were blocked.

Will Erdogan, whose Administration may have “blacked out” the media, according to the same reblogged post, slip down the slope the way of Bashar al-Assad, and knowing what is in his own heart and what he wishes to project to others assume the same psychology surrounds him in that portion of constituents who might have nerve for more than the defense of a few old trees?

If the dimension I promote with “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy (FBPS)” applies in Erdogan’s Turkey, the president may be expected to rebuff or refuse all criticism of his tenure and, as have others more fixed in power have done before him, overreact to mild provocation.

The Fox article cited at the top of this post goes on to report 800 Turkish citizens detained in the protests to date.

In another article, published while I was snoozing, an academic seems to have chirped to a reporter:

“Erdogan does not listen to anyone any more,” said Koray Caliskan, a political scientist at Istanbul’s Bosphorus University. “Not even to members of his own party. But after the protests this weekend, he will have to accept that he is the prime minister of a democratic country, and that he cannot rule it on his own.”

Letsch, Constanze.  “Social media and opposition to blame for protests, says Turkish PM.”  The Guardian, June 2, 2013.

With Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe ever haunting this underlying political theme, which one might call “the rise of the dictator”, I’m not sure the personality involved believes “he cannot rule it on his own.”

Most of the type, I believe, believe they have no choice but to rule their roosts with absolute unquestioned authority, which is expressive of their problem.

Additional Reference

AP.  “Turkish president defends people’s right to protest.”  The Guardian, June 3, 2013.

Tisdall, Simon.  “Turkey protests expose anxiety over Erdogan’s growing autocratic ambitions.”  June 3, 2013.  Excerpt: “Particular concern centres on Erdogan’s ill-disguised, Putin-esque plan to swap the prime minister’s office for that of the president in elections due next year. But first he wants to enhance the executive powers of the presidency – hence the divisive and so far inconclusive effort to forge a new constitution. He must also somehow push aside the incumbent, Abdullah Gul, a loyal crony who has become less subservient.”

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Reference: “Accusation in a Mirror”

12 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Politics, Psychology

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“One of the most astonishing discoveries in the history of genocide studies was the Note Relative à la Propagande d’Expansion et de Recrutement (the “Note”), a mimeographed document found in Butare prefecture in the wake of the Rwandan genocide. The Note, which draws from Goebbels, Lenin, and others, is a manual of the rhetorical methods that could be used to inflame ordinary people to attack their countrymen.”

Marcus, Kenneth L.  “Accusation in a Mirror.”  Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, 43 (2012): 357-393.  PDF published via Loyola Law eCommons.

In practice, the technique has become visible and easy to spot in peace / hate-peace group chatyping.

As awful as the consequences intended by “Accusation in a Mirror” (AiM) may be, the technique fits well with other forms of disingenuous speech, hate speech, and sophistry.  Put it one the same page as “blood libel” and common slander.

Motivation?

Somebody thinks they’re going to get something by way of the sheer beauty and force of their will.

Such lose their conscience, their humanity, their restraints, and while they and their people may pay for it, disingenuous speech, motivated, so I suspect, by the want of self-aggrandizement powered by hate, leads always to great suffering.  When the practitioners are stopped in their tracks, related suffering abate, but it takes a while to understand this.

Related Reference

Truman Web Design.  “Kangura magazine.”  I believe I found this one the web at least as far back as 2006.  The home page starts this way: 

“Foreign invaders, plundering the rich earth of Rwanda.  Bloodthirsty parasites, who prefer exploitation to honest labor. An elite minority, enjoying influence out of all proportion to their numbers—ferreting their way into the highest-paying jobs, monopolizing the banking system, the educational system, even the very government to ensure the soft life for themselves and their kin.  Scheming, shrewd and crafty.  Without scruples. Without conscience.  Fearsome, loathsome, cunning as a cockroach.  Intent on the destruction of every hard-working member of the native people to whom the country rightfully belongs. If they were in your country, wouldn’t you want to be warned? Wouldn’t you read the newspaper each morning,wouldn’t you keep all the radios on?”

 The Truman Web Design-prefaced site (the subset is a “~” extended location) on the use of propaganda in the Rwandan Genocide also discusses, in addition to Kangura Magazine, RTLM Radio and media coverage of the event.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) maintains a similar report online: “Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda.” Similar sub-section: “Propaganda and Practice”.

Leets, Laura.  “Experiencing Hate Speech: Perceptions and Responses to Anti-Semitism and Antigay Speech.”  Journal of Social Issues, 58:2 (pp. 341-361), The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, 2002.  The abstract notes (this is a partial quotation), “A content analysis of the accounts produced the following patterns: (a) short- and long-term consequences mirrored a three-stage sequence found within other traumatic experiences; (b) respondents described motives as enduring, not situational, states; (c) the most common response strategies were passive; and (d) participants often sought support. The discussion focuses on implications for interventions that may mitigate negative consequences of hate speech.”

Dissemination: Political Psychology: Focus on Narcissism

16 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Pakistan, Religion

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“Don’t surround yourself with yourself.”

Those who remember, know the band well and true name of the music: Yes and “I’ve Seen All Good People”.

Theirs was a part of the ethos of the English-borne 1970s.

And here, 2012, far from those halcyon days, their art for the ears continues to resonate.

“Don’t surround yourself with yourself” — I should take the advice and perhaps others should take it for themselves as well.

My interest in the narcissistic dimension of political psychology started off with the direct and real space experience of personalities exhibiting mild to severe bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder while in cyberspace I happened to be surfing conflicts  and discovering for myself any number of autocratic regimes and the mess and misery they were able to bring to their hapless constituents.

My two-plus-two equaled the invention of a convenient catch-all: “Facsimile Bipolar Narcissistic Sociopathy (FBPS)“, which section exists on the Typepad hosted old site.

(For this blog, the “Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology” category should suffice, as I hope the whole production will not be so all over the place as the other, which I had created to showcase some other things I could do).

With the FBPS concept articulated, a networked opportunity to post an op-ed in the  Daily Times (Pakistan)  — “Beware the Malignant Narcissist” — and Facebook-enabled international activity, I found online another personality engaged on a similar track, Pakistani scholar Mobarak Haider, the author of Taliban: The Tip of a Holy Iceberg.

(In science, it is generally taken as a good thing to arrive at similar observations and insights by way of separate tracks — remember: theories stand until disproved, always, but they may be strengthened too by the arrival of new data — and that appears to be what has happened).

To move on: politics draw a variety of social competitors — advisers, leaders, warriors — and among the same, some may carry within themselves the over-the-top, unconstrained, boundary-confused, and often sadistic egotism of the malignant narcissist, and these too full of themselves no one needs.

As I type this, the intelligence of the world moves quickly in tens upon tens of thousands of communications per hour, and so it is I happen to participate in the Facebook presence of the Rationalist Society of Pakistan (the organizational site has been listed to the left).  One of my Facebook buddies, Lakhkar Khan Hoti,  posted there a statement by President Obama extolling the contributions made by Islam to humanity, which I interpret as part of the President’s promise to “extend the hand of peace” to Islam, and requested comment.

As professionals in a social-networking community may do, the original poster was asked to cite his source.

I had a source to something similar (having commented recently on Obama’s behavior in relation to Islam at Oppenheim Arts & Letters) and shared it this way:

“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”

There are some things humans — individually, in aggregate, without regard to legacy — may wish to entertain as twined language, technology, and trade capacities continue to contract and integrate lives and lifestyles across our ever gregarious species. Start with the meaning and significance of self-concept in relation to others and whether certain degrees of glorious narcissistic self-aggrandizement have a place in anyone’s better future, not least of all Pakistan’s.

My interest in political psychology and the dimension referred to as “narcissism” was inspired by encountering in my web-borne travels so many tawdry dictatorships — the junta in Burma; Robert Mugabe (thank him for reintroducing cholera to his people) in Zimbabwe; Paul Biya whose French connections and chateau keep him comfy while his people starve in Cameroon; etc. Copy and paste “African Dictator” into your browser, and you should come up with a blog titled and devoted to just that subject, quite colorful. And awful.

One might suggest there’s some difference too between overt religiosity and deep and rightly cherished spirituality.

There may be a good track in humanity enforced by our natural and overwhelming propensity to enjoy one another despite whatever hardships we may be enduring.

Where conditions have become untenable, whether by the hand of Pharaoh or through the failure of ambition as represented by the will to war — other ideas and policies proving bankrupt beneath the hands of lost autocrats and warmongers both — most people resign themselves to suffering or leave for what they hope will prove a healthier situation.

A bully anywhere — schoolyard, saloon, state, tribe, region — drives humanity away, and one may suggest that even God’s love goes with those who leave.

Time and again, and without understanding the sources of their own ruin, time reduces the malignant and all they have done to rags and relics, not to mention the diminishing of their reputation down into the class of assorted “bad examples” in lessons to new generations.

That day always comes.