The Pervrsion of Utopia (1)

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THE PERVERSION OF UTOPIALECTURER: PETER DEVLIN

The earliest story recorded story is about a tyrant named Gilgamesh, a Sumerian King and the first epic hero in world literature.

TYRANTS ARE AS DIVERSE AS HUMANITY

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TYRANTS: A HISTORY OF POWER INJUSTICE, AND TERROR (2016) BY WALTER NEWELL

Three Types of Tyranny

1) Garden Variety

2) The Reformers

3) Millenarian Tyrant

FOR NEWELL, THE ASCENDENCY OF THE MILLENARIAN TYRANT BEGINS WITH THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

THIS NEW TYRANNY IS CHARACTERIZED BY THE WILLINGNESS OF A LEADER TO COMMIT MASS MURDER IN THE SERVICE OF A UTOPIAN VISION

These leaders also espouse an egalitarian reorganization of society, have no regard for individual liberty, and typically have an outside enemy.

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THE NEW GODSModern Dictators like Mao, Hitler, and Stalin have been worshipped “in ways no mortal has been since the great religious prophets of the past, Jesus Christ, Buddha, and Mohammed” (Chirot, 1994, p.2)

NEWELL WRITES THIS NEW FORM OF TYRANNY DESERVES TO BE CLASSIFIED

In his book Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil (1964), the psychoanalyst Eric Fromm first described and coined the term malignant narcissism. He wrote that “such individuals are self-centered, grandiose, sadistic, suspicious, and disregard the rights of others. They also lack empathy and seek power through exploitation and abuse.”

Although not a discrete category in the DSM-5, malignant narcissism is a shorthand description for individuals who share the comorbidities of narcissism and antisocial personality disorders – that is, an “individual who is both pathologically narcissistic and anti-social, where self-justifiable violence, sadistic cruelty and self destructiveness are in service to a very fragile and unstable self-esteem” (Logan, 2009, p. 92)

They are often unaware that their grandiosity is a mask for self-loathing, self-doubt, and fear. Their extreme narcissism is like air blown into a balloon. It inflates a shriveled self.

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THE MNLLEADER & CARAVAGGIO’S NARCISSUS

THREE MALIGNANT NARCISSIST LEADERS AND THE PERVERSION OF UTOPIA

1509–1536

Jan of Leiden

1814–1864

Hong Xiuquan

1952

Credonia Mwerinde

JAN OF LEIDEN (1509-1536)

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ANABAPTIST MOVEMENT1523-TODAY

16TH CENTURY AND CHRISTIAN SCHISM

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JAN OF LEIDENDECLARES HIMSELF KING OF THE WORLD (1536)

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Jan of Leiden’s Reign of Terror

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ST LAMBERT'S CHURCH, MÜNSTER

HONG XUIQUAN (1814-1864)

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THE TAIPING REBELLION (1850-1864)

Led by Hong Xiuquan, self-proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ

AN ESTIMATED 30 MILLION PEOPLE DIED IN THE TAIPING REBELLION

More than any rebellion in human history and a number equivalent to the population of the United States in 1860

TAIPING HEAVENLY KINGDOM

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TAIPING HEAVENLY KINGDOM UNDER SIEGE (PRESENT DAY NANKING)

HONG XIUQUAN’S THRONE

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CREDONIA MWERIDE (1952-?)

HIGH PRIESTESS AND CO-FOUNDER OF THE MOVEMENT OF THE RESTORATION OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF GOD

CREDONIA’S CAVE

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MOVEMENT FOUNDED 1980

CREDONIA DURING HER LEADERHIPFOR THE MOVEMENT FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

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BY MARCH 2000, OVER A THOUSAND FOLLOWERS HAD DIED BY POISON OR IMMOLATION

WHAT JAN OF LEDIEN, HONG XIUQUAN, AND CREDONIAMWERINDE HAVE IN COMMON AS MNL LEADERS

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THE MNL LEADER LEADS A PERIPATETIC EXISTENCE, OFTEN MARKED BY SOME TYPE OF FAILURE, BEFORE THEY ASCEND TO POWER

MNL LEADER IS ATTRACTED TO RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS

The MNL often appears within millenarian or transcendental movements. Once they establish themselves as leaders of the movement, they inspire followers to surrender themselves to the leader’s millenarian plans. This begins a profoundly deep and disturbing relationship between leader and follower.

MNL LEADERS ARE CHARISMATIC

. This means they are “special,” at least to their followers, and they exist separate from mundane and ordinary human beings. The MNL leader embodies the transcendental and appears to his or her followers as chosen by God or history to achieve a millenarian plan.

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THEY BECOME A GOD OR GOD’S AUTHORITY ON EARTH

It is this spiritual authority that cements the millenarian leader’s authority over their followers. It also feeds the MLN’s need for adulation. It too allows them to place the mask of God over their self-doubt and psychic chaos.

ONCE IN POWER, MLN’S ARE TOTALISTIC, PARANOID, AND SADISTIC

Unlike other types of tyrants, the millenarian tyrant embodies a transcendent belief system. As avatars, their pathology becomes unfettered; their cruelty becomes capricious. They use millenarian ideological and spiritual beliefs to justify the dehumanization of their followers. They then play with them like murderous children.

Followers are psychically eaten by the MNL; followers surrender and lose their identities and become players in the leader’s psychic enactment of a personal pathology.

The MLN directs paranoia and hatred toward a single enemy. For Stalin, it was the Trotskyites. For Mao, it was the bourgeois. For Pol Pot, it was Cambodian ethnic and religious groups. For Jan of Leiden, it was Jews, the clergy, and the rich. For Oceania (the superstate depicted in 1984), it was Emmanuel Goldstein. This enemy, whose malevolence and threat to the state is often imaginary, unites followers in a sacred war. The creation of an enemy is also a violent manifestation of the leader’s own paranoia and fear. There are often sound reasons for a dictatorial leader to be paranoid. However, MLN’s combine these fears with a psychological fear or anxiety that their grandiosity covers up a mundane, self-loathing wretch.

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Stalin had a sadistically whimsical temperament. In his canonical book on the 1930 purges, The Great Terror (1990), Robert Conquest writes that the reasons Stalin decided to execute, or reprieve were often senseless and vindictive. In 1927, Dr. Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev, a highly esteemed neuroscientist of international renown, examined Stalin. Although the reason for the examination is uncertain, Dr. Bekhterev mentioned to colleagues later in the evening that he had just examined a paranoiac (never mentioning Stalin’s name). The following day, Bekhterev suddenly and mysteriously died. Stalin then ordered that Bekhterev’s name and corpus be removed from Soviet schools and publications (Haycock, 2019). And yet, a university student who was going to be jailed for throwing a dart at a portrait of Stalin sent an appeal to Stalin. Stalin responded by not only exonerating the student but praising him for his marksmanship (Montefiore, 2004).

THE DESTRUCTIVENESS OF THE MLN

When a malignant leader’s failed promises lead to disaffection by their followers, murderous violence can ensue. The malignant leader, on the other hand, must maintain the illusion of their omnipotence for reasons that are deeply rooted in their personal pathology. According to Daniel Shaw, their dependency on their followers is deeply ambivalent and conflicted (Shaw, 2003). They both need adulation to fuel their stunted egos and, whether aware or not, abhor this dependency. The leader then acts with sometimes extraordinary cruelty toward his or her dependents.

WHY THIS IS A PROBLEM FOR YOU AND ME

MLN’s prey upon every race, class, and religion. Their followers can be anyone. Scientists made sarin gas for Shoko Asahara; Catholic priests were leaders in the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God; TV actresses recruited sex slaves for Keith Rainiere.

Psychoanalyst and former cult member Daniel Shaw stated in a recent podcast on IndoctriNation that he believes that cult leaders are increasingly forming smaller cults. However, this does not mean a diminution in the growth of cults; instead, we may be living in a golden age for cults (Bernstein & Shaw, 2019). The MNL is in historical ascendency.

Social chaos, fragmentation, and dislocation are the social conditions that the millenarian leader needs in order to thrive. When human communities and bonds sever, as they now have for most of global humanity, millenarian leaders may fill the vacuum. They offer a totalistic, communitarian, transcendental vision and ideology that attract followers who face “the uncanny frailty of human bonds, the feeling of insecurity that frailty inspires, and the conflicting desires that feeling prompts to tighten the bonds” (Bauman, 2003, p. VIII).

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Three cages hang from the St. Lambert Cathedral in Munster. One of those cages held Jan of Leiden’s corpse after he was executed. It has hung there since his death. That empty cage may be a more appropriate memorial to MNLs than Lenin’s tomb or Franco’s Valley of the Fallen. For, in the end, these leaders, as powerful as they may become and as charming or charismatic as they might seem to be, are deeply disturbed and capable of ugly, destructive outcomes for those around them.

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