Practical application of "Political Ponerology" in regard of today's events

[palestine]

Hello,

Given the importance and the actuality of the following threads:

• Trump Elected: The True MAGA Era Begins, Now What?
• The Situation in Germany
• Putin Recognizes Donbass Republics, Sends Russian Military to 'Denazify' Ukraine

I believe that it could be relevant to post a few quotes from recent articles by Harrison KOEHLI.

A "ponerologist's lens" allows to see, first, that the USA just escaped from a "pathocracy". The "pathocracy" was barely reaching maturity, but Trump's election put a brake - and killed it:

Harrison KOEHLI - "Depathologizing America"

It took decades to build the lie, and two weeks to break it, fatally. And now the liars—those whose power seemed so entrenched, such a fool’s errand to confront—just look effete and clownish. It’s like waking from a bad dream and realizing the monster you so feared was in fact a toy poodle in drag.

And so, here we are, USA escaped "a pathocracy" - and so "mass detention centers" or alike totalitarism.

What the USA has been through is a process going downward:

Harrison KOEHLI - "Depathologizing America"

Once a sufficiently saturated ponerogenic group gains a sufficient hold on a political system, that pathological structure extends downwards throughout the entire system. It is not just in the national leadership. A pathological system needs agents at all levels of society, down to the local: schools, banks, small businesses, and the institutions governing them.

I suppose that's what made several observers write article such as Smartest Man in World Warns "America Under Enemy Occupation" (Chris LANGAN). The reading is not required, but it shows people wondering about something literally destroying the country from the inside.

Ponerologist know that this is "a pathocracy" and would immediately hint at a basic process that they know of.

With an ideology at the start, such initial association ends up hijacked by some different clique; the initial people get discarded and what was the initial ideology becomes a" front". A good example is communism, but here, the USA have gone through almost every steps.

And so it's important to see that the ideology is being used as a vehicle. It mostly ends up with a brutal leader acting out of some very low-level STS principles.

For Russia, at the time, it's "communism" who was the vehicle.

Harrison KOEHLI hints at "capitalism " as the vehicle for the last pathocratic episode (last year's USA):

Harrison KOEHLI - "Pathocracy Rising: How Economic Systems Breed Deviants"

The current system developed as financial capitalism

On the one hand there is financial capitalism and usury. On the other: traditional Western conservatism based on productive labor.

In this sense financial capitalism is very similar to communism. As the system gains supremacy, those running the system will become progressively more saturated with those for whom the system works on a fundamental level, value-wise.

Communism and financial capitalism attract psychopaths of all descriptions.

The recent revelations about USAID demonstrate this perfectly. The CIA, after adopting political/psychological warfare strategies, weaponized this playbook worldwide to spread “democracy” and “liberalism.”

Generically, we see a phenomenon quite independant from ideologies:

Harrison KOEHLI - ponerology.substack.com

Pathocracy (...) has no fundamental relationship with either zionism or anti-zionism. In other words, a Jewish pathocracy is just as possible as an anti-Jewish pathocracy, or a pathocracy that has no relation to either.

And so, I believe that the above may be used in order to match the title of my post - "practical use of Ponerology". It's usually the same step-by-step process which affects civilizations gone wrong - and common factors along the way are sometimes easily put in perspective thanks to Lobaczewski.

I would, for example, start to question the possible relationship between the dead US pathocracy and Europe. Was it the same? If so, is there anything to find at the Frankfurt's stock exchange's building?! If the US one died because of Trump, what to do with "European leaders" - who did not change?

Thank you for reading!

 

[palestine]

Input about the last pathocracy (which died):
Laughter in heaven

We now live in a world where, over the last 20-25 years, we have moved into totalitarianism. ‘Soft’ totalitarianism it may be (although some of its manifestations – de-platforming, shouting down, physically attacking, excluding, debanking, suspending, sacking, having your personal messages pored over by the police, criminalising and even imprisoning, don’t look too ‘soft’ to me); but totalitarianism it is. Hannah Arendt believed that whenever there are matters that cannot be questioned, it is already a tyranny. This is where we are now. The reason for it is the usual one: an arrogant and mediocre elite, who believe that if they could control not just deeds, but words, and ultimately thoughts, they, with their superior understanding, will bring about a better society. History, of course, makes it clear that this is a calamitous mistake; but just thinking about what it entails should make that clear without needing to go to history for confirmation.

(...)

Self-denunciations are encouraged, lending an even deeper chill to proceedings. This has had a deleterious impact on intellectual and imaginative life, and induced an atmosphere of fear, in the very places where freedom of thought and speech are most valuable.

(...)

Here I will simply mention that in my view there has been a neoplastic expansion of bureaucracy in the last half century (starting, indeed, well before, but exponentially increasing more recently) and no political party has tried to cut it back, till perhaps now. Like all cancers, it is preying on its host. It is massively expensive, and that expense inflates the cost of everything ordinary people need. It stifles professional skill, free-thinking and excellence of every kind. It ensures mediocrity. Maybe pruning back bureaucracy is something that the US electorate also thought their man might have the chutzpah to attempt.

(...)

Trump is not admirable – not to me. But this was already not an admirable situation, to say the least. That culture was and remains a wholesale betrayal of our history, a manifestation of pathological self-loathing, a kind of ingratiating cowardice in the face of a bullying elite. Free speech is unusual in a world composed of largely tyrannical regimes, and it is infinitely precious. It was fought for at great cost by people in my country and the US who were brave enough to have a vision of a freer world. Until recently we were known for our passionate defence of free speech, for the equity of our justice system, for the dispassionate nature of our press and broadcasting, compared with most other countries. Not now.

This is not about Trump, principally at all. It is about something that lies much deeper.

(...)

When one party in a balanced system takes things to an extreme, the other party will begin to go to the other extreme. Then the first party points to the second party and says ‘there – see? I told you they were extremists all along.’ And if this situation is to be resolved, it will not happen without a somewhat uncouth intrusion, since couther strategies will have been tried for a long time without getting anywhere, and with the first party simply becoming more deeply entrenched, until … Agent Orange.

His gaze at the now-dead pathocracy would be:

When I look at the current culture, I am struck by its grossly left hemisphere traits. Signs include: extreme points of view, rather than civilised debate leading to mutual understanding; the view that those who are not for us are against us (‘silence is violence’ – sorry, no, it isn’t to anyone who thinks the tiniest bit – not rushing to a position is almost a definition of intelligence); an insistence on black-and-white thinking; a complete lack of compassion for, and indeed anger and vituperation hurled at, those who disagree; self-righteousness and its cousin, narcissism; need for total control; utility/power become the only value, while greater values, including beauty, goodness, truth and love, are neglected or actively travestied; lack of all nuance; neglect of context; the triumph of theory over experience; dogmatism; loss of the broader picture; knowledge replaced by information, tokens or representations; loss of the concepts of skill and judgment; the rise of bureaucracy in their place; simultaneous abstraction and reification - either virtual maps or mere lumpen matter (there is nothing mere about matter); uniqueness banished in the rush to categorise; quantity become the only criterion, at the expense of quality; reasonableness replaced by rationalisation; a complete loss of common sense; systems designed to maximise utility only; loss of social cohesion; depersonalisation; paranoia and lack of trust; anger and aggression; playing the victim and refusing to accept responsibility for your own failings (‘society is to blame’); art become largely conceptual only; music reduced to little more than rhythm; language diffuse, excessive, lacking in concrete referents; a deliberate undercutting of the sense of awe or wonder; flow reduced to just the sum of an infinite series of ‘pieces’; the discarding of tacit forms of knowing, and in their place ‘a network of small complicated rules’ (de Tocqueville); ourselves reduced to spectators rather than actors in life (as Descartes proudly said of himself); and all this accompanied by a dangerously unwarranted optimism.

Regarding the above exact quote, The Good Citizen Substack has written a pretty good sum up:

A Requiem for Retards

In the decades before the first wave of political correctness arrived in the 1990s, it was not uncommon to hear a special education teacher reply when queried about her occupation, “I work with handicapped and retarded children.” Among our family’s circle of friends was a kind and gentle lady, a recently widowed immigrant from Austria, who dedicated every Saturday afternoon to volunteering to work with (what today are known as) “special needs” children. She described them fondly, and collectively as retarded children, with no shame or outrage among those who heard this word—retarded.

In the decade that followed, political correctness was contrived in the laboratory of infectious social diseases devoted to plaguing the liberal mind and spreading its noxious ideas worldwide. The liberal mind is both a proud host and fervent vector for the proliferation of many civilization-destroying social diseases.

Because the liberal mind reverts to a default state of retardation, it justifies the spread of these terminal diseases as virtuous and righteous behavior, necessary to satisfy a collective good, by force if necessary, that only the liberal is suited to recognizing and furnishing. The retarded liberal mind concludes the results of its actions, without evidence or careful consideration of unintended repercussions.

The liberal always relies on enforcers originating from centers of lower indoctrination, or public schooling, who upon earning the requisite credentials shuffle themselves blindly toward all the institutions of power and control over popular ideas, where liberals only hire other liberals. Therefore, no conclusive evidence exists that sufficient education inoculates one from a future life as a retard. A cursory glance at public polling results, social attitudes, or nanobioweapon vaccine uptake by education levels will confirm as much. The greater the formal education in years, the greater the loss of pattern recognition triggered by skepticism for healthy inquiry. Formal training for the liberal world is simply assimilation that requires dispensing with common sense and curiosity.

Having habituated themselves to the ranks of shock troops within the special division of speech police, liberals soon found among many words of the English vocabulary, the word retard was being used as invective, or in a way that offended their fragile minds. The liberal, now the one with special needs—specifically the need to purge offensive language from the popular consciousness—mobilized teachers’ unions, journalists, and celebrities to begin their language purges. By the turn of the century, millennials accepted the language malware detection programming and began shaming anyone who dared utter the word retard.

Liberals were unaware that the insult already had a social cleansing mechanism to prevent its pejorative use around those who were retarded. It was called the child’s fist. There has been no more satisfactory and efficient equalizer in the history of childhood education.

The most important is to keep in mind that the above are symptoms. It's of course "all there is" for many people - but there are stages, above, etc, requiring attention. Those stages are for example "it's a pathocracy". We could get a bit higher than the symptoms and try to study the root causes.

 

[Ina]

Hello,

Given the importance and the actuality of the following threads:

• Trump Elected: The True MAGA Era Begins, Now What?
• The Situation in Germany
• Putin Recognizes Donbass Republics, Sends Russian Military to 'Denazify' Ukraine

I believe that it could be relevant to post a few quotes from recent articles by Harrison KOEHLI.

A "ponerologist's lens" allows to see, first, that the USA just escaped from a "pathocracy". The "pathocracy" was barely reaching maturity, but Trump's election put a brake - and killed it:

Harrison KOEHLI - "Depathologizing America"


And so, here we are, USA escaped "a pathocracy" - and so "mass detention centers" or alike totalitarism.

What the USA has been through is a process going downward:

Harrison KOEHLI - "Depathologizing America"


I suppose that's what made several observers write article such as Smartest Man in World Warns "America Under Enemy Occupation" (Chris LANGAN). The reading is not required, but it shows people wondering about something literally destroying the country from the inside.

Ponerologist know that this is "a pathocracy" and would immediately hint at a basic process that they know of.

With an ideology at the start, such initial association ends up hijacked by some different clique; the initial people get discarded and what was the initial ideology becomes a" front". A good example is communism, but here, the USA have gone through almost every steps.

And so it's important to see that the ideology is being used as a vehicle. It mostly ends up with a brutal leader acting out of some very low-level STS principles.

For Russia, at the time, it's "communism" who was the vehicle.

Harrison KOEHLI hints at "capitalism " as the vehicle for the last pathocratic episode (last year's USA):

Harrison KOEHLI - "Pathocracy Rising: How Economic Systems Breed Deviants"






Generically, we see a phenomenon quite independant from ideologies:

Harrison KOEHLI - ponerology.substack.com


And so, I believe that the above may be used in order to match the title of my post - "practical use of Ponerology". It's usually the same step-by-step process which affects civilizations gone wrong - and common factors along the way are sometimes easily put in perspective thanks to Lobaczewski.

I would, for example, start to question the possible relationship between the dead US pathocracy and Europe. Was it the same? If so, is there anything to find at the Frankfurt's stock exchange's building?! If the US one died because of Trump, what to do with "European leaders" - who did not change?

Thank you for reading!

Interesting point of discussion, however it could be more actual, I think, by comparing communist - capitalist - neo-colonialist dynamics with neoliberal globalism - multipolar nationalism dynamics, or the transition from one set to another set of dynamics.
Metaphorically speaking, for a wider picture one would need a wider lens, to make the capturing exercise worth the effort.

 

[palestine]

Interesting point of discussion, however it could be more actual, I think, by comparing communist - capitalist - neo-colonialist dynamics with neoliberal globalism - multipolar nationalism dynamics, or the transition from one set to another set of dynamics.
Metaphorically speaking, for a wider picture one would need a wider lens, to make the capturing exercise worth the effort.

Great take. I understand this may not be the exact thing you would be hinting at - but I created a thread here:

Thread 'Capitalism as a vehicle for a pathocracy'

Mar 5, 2025

Hello,

As the title suggests, I would be willing to adress, here, the specific situation when a pathocracy develops itself (country, civilization) through the capitalist ideology.

Last century, Stalin was able to complete the lengthy and complex process of "the ideological hijack" , as taught by Andrew LOBACZEWSKI, and brought communism to a pathocracy. A macro-scale totalitarian situation, mostly featuring victims on a frightening scale (gulags, etc).

Recently, Harrison KOEHLI has been stating that we escaped a pathocracy, located in the USA. It could be that...

• palestine
• Replies: 32
• Forum: Political Ponerology: Macrosocial Evil

• 

Well, it expressively discusses the capitalist angle. The present thread would be some ruler tool for today's situation - a basic form of locating ourselves about where we are.

I guess that I understand your take, which would fit in the form of studying not only today, and what lead to it, but "what lead to it in a bigger scope". Let me know if I have a correct reading of your idea!

Reflecting on your precise take:

comparing communist - capitalist - neo-colonialist dynamics with neoliberal globalism - multipolar nationalism dynamics, or the transition from one set to another set of dynamics

My own restrictive brain ;) sees this as the communist pathocracy which died, at some point in time (with Stalin's death) and then a new pathocracy graft would have happened - well seems it was capitalism. I don't know what to do with Mao. Some intermediary vehicle?

So I see all those in terms of "a pathocracy grafting itself". And dying. Each time. It would help me if you would expand on your own view - you seem to go with "dynamics", "spanning", rather than "pathocracy".

As well, I can see that you specifically hint at "the transition". This is interesting. From my own point of view, if communism died, something starts from scratch (what would be the next after communism, then?). And so, a new one, again it's the same phenomenon of "graft", and so we find the basic same features (traditional value abolition, etc). And so, thinking in terms of "transition" becomes difficult to me! It should have to deal with the above STS pool which "kind of sends" those pathocracies when they see some juicy grounds (an ideology). That's all I would be able to say and I am even not sure that it is that objective! That's why I am asking if you would like to expand on your ideas.

There is as well seek10, in another thread, who suggested to keep in mind the whole Hitler agenda as having been stopped - this representing an interesting development if we were to look at the whole 20th century (well, post-WW2). Somehow, I don't know if we would have the best angle when looking at pathocracies popping up and dying. I am sure it is relevant, but it seems that the very ultimate lens would take into consideration that the main STS efforts are that "Hitler agenda". Well, given how the last pathocracy, as taught by H. Koehli as having been next to "capitalism", was destructive, it is hard for me to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and simply focus on "there has been an STO intervention". Still, it seems that STO said "no", and that Stalin's win, and the whole neocon liberalism mess would be, even if the utmost destructive, a second-hand situation for STS. But I am not sure.

 

[palestine]

Oh, basically speaking, I have created this thread indeed for gaining time, in order to provide small answers as to how we ended up in the present situation which is sometimes difficult - without, chances are high to remain bound to some obscure "it's because of Ariana Grande". I gues it would be my goal, simply to provide the reader with a good starting point for understanding the world around ourselves, and so being able to explain a certain number of things. Some people would truly be asking themselves "what in the world is this sex surgery stuff?!?".

So providing a cozy bridge to a location which would be a quite good starting point for a consistent consideration. Something that holds, and that people could use, tomorrow and after tomorrow.

"Yes, there has been a lot of absurd attitudes, and this is because ... and so ...".

Well this was my initial goal! Big vulgarization so that people could start their own threads about it, in a productive way. Perhaps, setting the correct starting point would be all there is

 

[palestine]

Suggestions as where to go from there (now that the pathocracy touching capitalism is dead):

Depathologizing America

Consider this a return to baseline. We will still have corrupt perverts, but there will be fewer of them in power and they will no longer be actively shaping policy to promote a blatantly pathocratic agenda. There will still be high-functioning psychopathic frauds ascending corporate and governmental ladders—there always are. Billionaires will still rule the country—the U.S. is and always has been a plutocracy. And we will still have freaks like this. They will still represent a Trojan horse time bomb, but we will have decades to prepare for the next outbreak of ideological madness, which is the means by which actual pathocracies form. So take the win, keep it up, and use this time to avoid a repeat in the next generation or two.

and

Lobaczewski referred to the fall of communism as the depathologization of the USSR and its satellites. He described it as a natural process—the logical end to a pathocratic process whereby the silent majority develops into a society of normal people, a parallel institution within yet antithetical to the prevailing regime, and driven only by the common-sense understanding of the people that there is something wrong, alien—something deeply inhuman—about the system itself. In other words, it wasn’t political ponerology per se that brought down the Soviet Union. It was basic humanity operating on a mostly accurate but imprecise heuristic born of practical experience.

The same thing is happening now. Simply focusing on common sense, competence, and decency—even if not completely effective—is still remarkably effective. On decency, as Karen Mitchell points out, sexual deviance (specifically sexual boundarylessness) is an essential component of the predatory personality. The one advantage of the past 8+ years has been that a significant number of sexual deviants have felt comfortable exposing themselves as such. Because competence probably has no meaningful correlation with such deviance, many of those on the lower end of the bell curve have carved out niches for themselves in mostly useless DEI positions—or prioritizing DEI in other positions because they’re too incompetent to manage their actual duties. Now that those positions no longer exist—at least on the federal level—that means that a significant number of them are out of a job. The otherwise competent ones who nevertheless supported them are now at a crossroads: fall on your sword or fall in line.

On competence, Lobaczewski makes this one of the central tenets of logocracy.

Here are some "practical" suggestions from "Logocracy":

Logocracy - Chapter 25: Implementation Plan

This is the final chapter of Lobaczewski’s Logocracy, in which he sketches out a roadmap to its implementation. He reaffirms his support for evolutionary rather than revolutionary means—pointing out that the latter fail because they violate basic social-psychological laws of human nature. As such, by their very nature they lead to results antithetical to their stated goals. Similarly, revolutions led by clandestine organizations cannot succeed. The public must be aware, and involved, in any process of societal transformation. In revolution, this awareness is ignored, the existing structure is destroyed, and that structure is a precondition for any so-called revolution’s success (in its own stated terms). As such, some form of pathocracy is the most likely result, since the resulting vacuum is easily filled by psychopathic revolutionaries.

As for how this evolution might proceed in practice, Lobaczewski thinks that, particularly in Poland, the idea would gain support among a wide portion of the population: educated workers, farmers, and those who supported Solidarity. One roadblock would come from those who would be denied active civic rights in such a system (e.g. those of very low intelligence, drug addicts), and the politicians who would weaponize their opposition.

The first step would be the creation of a civic association similar to Solidarity which would function as a logocratic political party, later to transform into a non-party logocratic association if they were successful in eventually implementing a logocracy. The association will immediately begin the educational activities it would undertake within a logocracy, preparing the citizens who would take the civic oath upon its introduction, and developing criteria and training for parliamentary rights. The transformation to logocracy would occur after some time and be effected by a popular referendum.

The first institutions to be created upon introduction of logocracy would be the logocratic association (previously a logocratic party under the prior system), the constituent assembly, and the wise council. The first task would be drafting the constitution, followed by holding elections when the number of potential candidates is three times the number of available seats in parliament, and the number of citizens with civic rights exceeds a certain number.

In nations recovering from pathocracy, the principle of competence, along with the popularization of ponerology, “will greatly accelerate the process of spiritual rehabilitation of the nation and the formation of a healthy, creative structure of society.”

The above is interesting. The idea of structures promoting "normality".

Here is as well a very interesting article:

Post imperialism: A Template for a New Social Order

 

[palestine]

The conclusion would be:

decades to prepare for the next outbreak of ideological madness
+
promotion of "normality" / specialized structures
vulgarization of Lobaczewski's theory
[logocracy]