While some critics of US President George W Bush have charged that his
administration is pursuing policies of madness, such a charge is clinically
incorrect, but it may convey an extraordinarily disturbing reality. Both an
eminent psychologist and a noted political scientist perceive a particularly
virulent social pathogen as the basis for much of the present global strife,
with Washington at the center of the epidemic.
"It certainly seems that the world is going mad," Canadian psychologist Dr
Daniel Burston told Asia Times Online, quickly noting that an increasing
retreat into "social phantasy systems" would be more accurate. Burston - whose
work has been acclaimed in the mainstream media - noted that famed social
psychologist Erich Fromm had written on "socially patterned defects" that
enabled large groups of people to adjust themselves comfortably to a system
that, humanly speaking, is "fundamentally at odds with our basic existential
and human needs". Burston observed that this resulted in "deficiencies, or
traits, or attitudes which don't generate internal conflict when, in fact, they
should".
He saw the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal as raising a number of questions,
noting that "there seems very little doubt that it was sanctioned from above".
Burston labeled the guards' behavior as "sadistic".
Fromm, in his 1941 classic Escape from Freedom , wrote: "A person can be
entirely dominated by his sadistic strivings and consciously believe that he is
motivated only by his sense of duty." And on June 23, the Associated Press (AP)
reported that an August 2002 US Justice Department memo "argues that torture -
and even the deliberate killing - of prisoners in the terror war could be
justified", with torture being redefined as "only actions that cause severe
pain akin to organ failure".
AP also reported that the Justice Department had now "backed away" from the
memo.
Burston named Nazi exterminator Adolf Eichmann as representing the
"prototypical example" of what the phenomenon of "socially patterned defects"
can engender. He cited philosopher Hannah Arendt's famous work on Nazism.
In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil, Arendt
highlighted the unexceptional nature of the Nazi bureaucrat responsible for
killing untold numbers in extermination camps. Burston noted that "with one
very questionable exception, Eichmann tested normal on all psychological tests
that were administered to him by mental health experts before his trial".
Clinically speaking, Eichmann - an individual who worked daily at mass murder
for a period of years - was quite sane.
In instances where a group's behavior becomes deviant, even destructive to
themselves or others, "it [the pathological action] becomes a source of solace
and security for a person who adapts that way", said Burston. Eichmann had
"adapted". And Fromm noted that, in most cases, destructive impulses are
rationalized, ensuring "at least a few other people or a whole social group
share in the rationalization and thus make it appear to be 'realistic' to the
members of such a group.
In effect, an emotional-support network is formed, providing its individual
members with a mistaken sense of legitimacy.
The Iraq war's critics have long charged that numerous and severe shortcomings
in the Bush administration's actions were simply met with the unending
rationalization of what many see as blatant and tragic errors. Two often-cited
examples of this are the administration's claims regarding Iraq's non-existent
weapons of mass destruction, and Iraq's alleged link to the attacks of
September 11, 2001.
"The best way to tie these things together might be through what Fromm calls
'irrational authority'", said Burston, adding that "people have a need to
believe". He continued, observing that a majority of Americans mistakenly
believing Saddam Hussein was involved in September 11 can be seen as "an
example of people succumbing to the blandishments, or the temptations of
belief", believing in the kind of authority "which routinely resorts to
violence, deception and secrecy to achieve its ends", termed irrational
authority. And he noted how such misconceptions are aided.
"Crowds can be persuaded through specific formulas that involve frequent
repetitions, in an authoritative tone, by someone who is considered
authoritative. And for many people, this works - it just works," Burston
revealed. Paralleling that, in an autumn 2003 interview with this
journalist, Ray McGovern - a former 27-year Central Intelligence Agency analyst
who had regularly briefed the White House - had similarly said that Nazi
propaganda minister Josef Goebbels "was good, and his dictum about
say it five times and people will believe it, turns out, unfortunately, to be
true".
On June 24, Reuters reported that former US vice president Al Gore charged
that "very soon after [September 11], President Bush made a decision to start
mentioning Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in the same breath in a cynical
mantra designed to fuse them together as one in the public's mind." Gore was
also reported as charging that the administration worked "with a network of
'rapid response' digital brownshirts" (brownshirts were German political
thugs of the Adolf Hitler era) to pressure "reporters and their editors" into
refraining from critical news coverage.
Though Burston judges that many members of the Bush administration are sincere
in their pursuit of "a global climate that's more conducive to democracy ... to
diminish terrorism", he notes that the means the administration has employed
brought "consequences that are very often the reverse of what they intended".
But he discussed how noted psychologist R D Laing's theory of "social phantasy
systems" could explain this.
Citing his book on Laing's work, The Crucible of Experience, Burston
highlighted that Laing believed most people develop a form of "pseudo-sanity",
doing so as a function of the emotional imperative of adapting to
"pseudo-realities". The upshot is that they live within a "social phantasy
system" of varying degrees.
The described result for the individual is a proportionate loss of the ability
to think critically, as well as limited ability to consider anyone or anything
outside one's particular group, especially in a positive light.
"People who are deeply embedded within social-phantasy systems like these
function effectively within the framework of those groups. But their sense of
reality regarding the world outside of their reference group is profoundly
impoverished as a consequence," Burston outlined. "That makes them act in ways
which - from an outsiders perspective - look insane."
Notably, the unpleasant reality of a substantive social-phantasy system would
provide explanation for the growing disparity between the way the US views
itself and the way others view it. This might also explain the number of failed
policies increasingly impacting the United States.
Beyond this, "the concepts of socially patterned defects" (Fromm) and of
"social-phantasy systems" (Laing) make abundantly good sense of "normal"
political behavior - both in the US and abroad - "where people routinely
support leaders, parties or other political entities whose policies run
directly contrary to their individual and collective self-interest", said
Burston, who saw certain similarities between the present period and the 1930s.
While the historical context of the two periods differs greatly, "there are
some social psychological parallels", he observed, seeing the reality of the
1930s Italian "Corporative State" as a "closer analogy" to present US
circumstance. But while Burston spoke of a "conscious dissimulation and
trickery" on the part of today's leaders, he emphasized that what's occurring
is "a kind of dance, a kind of a tango between the leaders and the led".
As with the 1930s, there's a "certain willingness on the part of people to
absorb disinformation and take it in for fact ... no matter how implausible it
appears to be", Burston said. He attributed this to the diminishing of what
Fromm termed "rational authority", authority marked by transparency and
openness, and authority that breeds what has been called a "truth-loving
disposition".
"What we see now, increasingly, is the erosion of that [truth-loving
disposition] - people are becoming more and more suggestible, more and more
willing to be seduced," Burston related. Far earlier, Fromm had noted: "With
the rise of fascism, the lust for power and the conviction of its right has
reached new heights. Millions are impressed by the victories of power."
Burston sees the contemporary result as growing "opportunities for people who
have a hidden agenda to take advantage of the public trust. And that seems to
be increasing dramatically."
He believes that "we are seeing a growing threat to the viability of democratic
decision-making systems across the board, around the world". Burston warned of
the potential for a "corporate fascist regime" in the US, saying the country
could be "poised on the verge" of such an event.
Sixty-three years ago, Fromm had said: "There is no greater mistake and no
graver danger than not to see that in our own society [the US] we are faced
with the same phenomenon that is fertile soil for the rise of fascism
anywhere."
And noted political scientist Dr Michael Parenti told Asia Times Online that he
agrees. Parenti - who received his PhD in political science from Yale and is
the award-winning author of 18 books - noted that "there's a concern that we're
tending towards fascism, or we're replicating fascism today". The way in which
fascism is defined is key.
Parenti sees fascism as a tool employed by ruthless power elites to achieve
their ends. "And what they've learned in the more than 80 years since its
[fascism's] origin is that they can achieve many of these things - more
securely perhaps - while retaining a democratic veneer.
"The essence of fascism, I believe, is in its output. And its output is a
system which systematically redistributes wealth from the many to the few, and
ensures the domination of giant cartels over the whole political economy,"
Parenti said. By eliminating the traditional fascist symbolism and mannerisms,
by putting white gloves on it, if you will, Parenti sees the use of "plain old
Americanism" as the "cloak around which people will rally and give the
president these extraordinary powers, and surrender their own liberty and the
like".
Reflecting on the high military expenditures, the nature of America's tax
structure, and the evolving nature of its economic structure, Parenti warned
that an agenda not dissimilar to that of fascism appeared to be ongoing, but
"without having to go all the way and destroy every little shred of democracy".
His forthcoming book, Super-Patriotism, explores how patriotic pride and
fear is exploited.
"In spite of a veneer of optimism and initiative, modern man is overcome by a
profound feeling of powerlessness which makes him gaze towards approaching
catastrophes as though he were paralyzed," Fromm had far earlier warned. He
also observed that "truth is one of the strongest weapons of those who have no
power".
Ritt Goldstein is an American investigative political journalist based in
Stockholm. His work has appeared in broadsheets such as Australia's Sydney
Morning Herald, Spain's El Mundo and Denmark's Politiken, as well as with the
Inter Press Service (IPS), a global news agency.
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