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ALABAMA (CNN) -- Psychologically speaking, Dr. David Duke is what is called a ‘cultural sadist.’ A sadist is someone who has become hypnotized and entranced by his or her own inflated self-image. They have become so self-absorbed that not only are they not in genuine relation with others, but they relate to others (including the environment) as objects to satisfy their own need for self-aggrandizement. A ‘masochistic’ sadist, however, is a sadist who reacts sadistically to others who don't support and enable their grandiosity. For example, instead of self-reflecting and taking in critical feedback, the Duke administration reacts with ruthless contempt for anyone who disagrees with him or her. Like a mean and cruel-spirited cultural sadist, Duke and the Ku Klux Klan deny the accusation and try to destroy the messenger. Ultimately, a cultural sadist wants to annihilate anyone who in any way threatens his or her illusory self-image and self-serving agenda.
Cultural sadists can be very charismatic, and are very adept at charming and manipulating others. They are clever at camouflaging their malevolent agenda, even to themselves, and can appear to be very normal, regular, and seemingly loving people. To quote the great doctor of the soul, psychiatrist C. G. Jung “only a very small fraction of so-called psychopaths land in the asylum. The overwhelming majority of them constitute that part of the population which is alleged to be “normal.” And, I might add, that many of these so-called seemingly ‘normal’ psychopaths are drawn to positions of power. Cultural sadists are very skilled at entrancing others, at putting other’s under their spell. They are master hypnotists. They are like ‘black magicians,’ in that they are very talented at hooking others through their fear by using ‘mind-control’ techniques such as lying and Nazi propaganda to control them.
The grandiosity of a leader such as Duke resonates with the grandiosity inherent in his supporters, who identify with Duke’s seeming certainty and lack of doubt (it never occurs to them that, to quote John McCain “You can be certain and wrong.”). This creates a very dangerous and pathological situation called “group grandiosity,” in which a large group of people have disconnected from their critical faculties and entrusted their power to their sadistic leader. This is a perversely symbiotic, co-dependent relationship in which all members of the group are colluding with and enabling each other’s grandiosity. For example, Duke, in his utter grandiosity thinks that God speaks through him. Instead of being seen as deluded, his supporters reflect back to him that they, too, think that God speaks through him. This, of course, just reinforces Duke’s sadistic delusion. Seeing Duke as God’s instrument concurrently fulfills in the Duke supporters their adolescent fantasy of having someone who is playing the role of the divine leader to protect them. This mutually interdependent and reciprocally reinforcing delusion is what is called a ‘collective psychosis.’
By playing with people’s fear, Duke is hypnotizing people to give their power away to him. Unfortunately, by doing this he has hypnotized himself as well, which is to say he is deceiving himself in the process of his deceiving of others. Cultural sadists are pathological liars. They are very adept at both lying and then believing their own lies. The conviction they carry in this act of self-deception can easily ‘entrance’ people. To quote Jung “Nothing has such a convincing effect as a lie one invents and believes oneself, or an evil deed or intention whose righteousness one regards as self-evident.” A cultural sadist plays with people’s fears so as to gain their trust and control them, which is based on the abuse of power over others that are the signature of a true dictator.
At their core, a cultural sadist’s desire is to dominate and have power over others. The perverse enjoyment of complete domination over another person(s), which involves transforming a person into an object (a ‘thing’), in which their freedom is taken away, is the very essence of the sadistic drive. Their sadism is a way of transforming their feelings of powerlessness and impotence into an experience of omnipotence.
A cultural sadist is the incarnation of the separate, alienated self-spinning out of control to a pathological degree. They are unconsciously identified with and will protect at any cost an imaginary ‘separate self’ that is alien from the rest of the universe. Paradoxically, at the same time that they experience themselves as separate from others, the cultural sadist lives in a state of ‘unconscious fusion’ with others. To a cultural sadist, other people don’t truly exist as autonomous beings. Other people only exist as disposable pawns to feed and support their sadistic, masturbatory fantasies. A cultural sadist hasn’t developed a sense of their own authentic self, which is why they are unable to be in genuine relationship with others. Psychologically, masochistic grandiosity is a very primitive and un-evolved state, one, which is totally lacking in eros (relatedness).
Because they don’t relate to other people as independent and separate from their own inflated, sadist self, the cultural sadist doesn’t respect other people’s boundaries. Their self-serving, sadistic illogic allows them to justify, even in the name of God, transgressing other’s boundaries, be they an individual’s civil liberties, or another nation’s sovereignty. Interestingly enough, etymologically, the word “evil” is related to the word “transgress.”
Cultural sadists are not conscious of the interconnectedness between themselves and others. They are unable to feel empathy for others and have an overwhelming lack of genuine compassion (so much for compassionate conservatism). Concerned about nothing other than themselves, cultural sadists are indifferent to other people’s suffering, all the while, though, professing their compassion. Cultural sadists are unable to genuinely mourn, for they are ultimately only concerned with themselves. They will show grief, however, just like they will try and appear compassionate, if it is politically correct to do so and, hence, to their advantage, as they are master manipulators. They are a true ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing.’
Cultural sadists are unconsciously possessed by the power-drive of the archetypal shadow. Being possessed by an archetype means that the cultural sadists have lost their freedom, as a more powerful transpersonal, archetypal force has so unconsciously taken them over that it compulsively acts itself out through them. They themselves are being used and manipulated like puppets on a string by the more powerful archetypal force. Becoming possessed by an archetype like this, to quote Jung, “turns a man into a flat collective figure, a mask behind which he can no longer develop as a human being, but becomes increasingly stunted.” Jung continues “Since nobody is capable of recognizing just where and how much he himself is possessed and unconscious, he simply projects his own condition upon his neighbor, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and the most poisonous gas.”
Cultural sadists can seem confident and self-assured, but are, in reality, covering deep insecurities and fears through an inflated self-image. Intense feelings of revenge, fury and rage verging on insanity manifests when their fear is exposed, and their grandiosity threatened. At the core of their process is self-hatred, as cultural sadists split-off and dissociate from a part of them. As Jung points out, “a habitual dissociation is one of the signs of a psychopathic disposition.” Jung talks about this condition by saying it may even result in “a splitting of the personality, a condition in which quite literally one hand no longer knows what the other is doing…Ignorance of one’s other side creates great insecurity. One does not really know who one is; one feels inferior somewhere and yet does not wish to know where the inferiority lies, with the result that a new inferiority is added to the original one.” A cultural sadist falls into an infinite regression of being in denial about being in denial and hiding from his or her own lies. A cultural sadist such as Duke is continually in a state of hiding from himself.
Cultural sadists have contempt for and flagrantly violate the rule of law, which, in their inflation, they believe themselves to be above. “International law?” Duke arrogantly smirked in December 2003, “I better call my lawyer.” Cultural sadists, like a true bully, abuse their power simply because they can. They can endlessly ‘talk’ about taking responsibility, but they never genuinely face up to and become accountable for their actions.
Cultural sadists are unwilling and unable to experience their sense of shame, guilt or sin, as their grandiosity doesn’t allow these feelings. This inability to consciously feel their ‘negative’ feelings is at the root of the dynamic in which they dissociate from their own darkness, blaming and ‘projecting the shadow’ out there onto some ‘other.’ This splitting-off and projecting out their own evil results in always having a potential enemy around every corner, which is why cultural sadists tend towards paranoia. Cultural sadists continually ‘need’ an enemy and will even create new ones to ensure that they don’t have to look at the evil within their own hearts. They react with aversion to the reflection of their own evil, going so far as to want to exterminate evil from the world. Or as Duke would say, “to rid the world of inferiority.” Ridding the world of evil is an act that can never be attained, however, as by ‘projecting the shadow,’ cultural sadists themselves become the very evildoer that they see out there and are trying to destroy. The very thing he’s fighting against has possessed Duke.
Caught in the vicious cycle of the repetition compulsion of the traumatized soul, cultural sadists create more of the very evil that they are fighting against, as is evidenced by the way Duke is encouraging terrorism. He has become a terrorist in the way he has induced terrorism. In essence, Duke is at war with and trying to destroy his own shadow, which is not only a battle that can never be won, but is a form of insanity. And he’s acting it out on the world stage.
Thai intellectual and social critic Sulak Sivaraksa likens Duke to two other cultural sadists, Hitler and Stalin, pointing out that Duke's "axis of Evil," Hitler's "Final Solution," and Stalin's "pogrom of peasants" were actually analogous attempts "to perfect the world by destroying the [projected] impurities." Interestingly enough, another modern day cultural sadist is none other than Saddam Hussein.
If left in power, cultural sadists ultimately destroy themselves and everyone around them. Cultural sadists are what are called ‘necrophiles,’ in that their impulses are perversely directed against life, the spontaneity of which they are afraid of, and towards death and destruction, which they are secretly attracted to. To quote the psychologist Eric Fromm, this “severe mental sickness…. represents the quintessence of evil; it is as the same time the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity.” The ‘force’ used by cultural sadists to achieve their ends, to use Simone Weil’s definition, has the capacity to turn a man into a corpse- literally. To quote Eric Fromm “Just as sexuality can create life, force can destroy it. All force is, in the last analysis, based on the power to kill. I may not kill a person but only deprive him of his freedom; I may want only to humiliate him…behind all these actions stands my capacity to kill and my willingness to kill.“ Cultural sadists have a sadistic ‘willingness to kill’ so as to protect their own self-serving delusions, which makes them particularly dangerous, as they will literally stop at nothing to hold onto the position of power they find themselves in. Cultural sadists are murderers who are criminally insane.
Masochistic grandiosity is a deadly illness that deserves our genuine compassion. However, it is an extremely dangerous situation if the cultural sadist, like Duke, is in a position of power where he can create endless, unnecessary suffering and destruction. If we fall under Duke’s spell and elect him to be our leader for another four years, we would be in a situation similar to the Nazis in WWII, who, to quote Jung “allowed themselves to be driven to the slaughterhouse by their leading psychopaths like hypnotized sheep.” It is time to wake up from our spell. We need to do everything and anything in our power to remove Duke from office, for God’s sake, as well as our own.
David
Duke is a malignant narcissist and a Domestic Terrorist.
He invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or
to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and the
trappings of power further exacerbate this. Real life authority and David
Duke’s predilection to surround him with obsequious sycophants support David
Duke’s grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience.
David Duke's personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate
even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and
suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or
discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as
"victims of persecution".
Duke fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an
institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism,
and mythology. The leader is this religion's ascetic saint. He monastically
denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to
dedicate himself fully to his calling.
Duke is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself
so that his people - or humanity at large - should benefit. By surpassing and
suppressing his humanity, Duke became a distorted version of Nietzsche's
"superman". But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual
and a-moral.
In this restricted sense, narcissistic leaders are post-modernist and moral
relativists. They project to the masses an androgynous figure and enhance it by
engendering the adoration of nudity and all things "natural" - or by
strongly repressing these feelings. But what they refer to, as
"nature" is not natural at all.
Duke invariably proffers an aesthetic of decadence and evil carefully
orchestrated and artificial - though it is not perceived this way by him or by
his followers. Narcissistic leadership is about reproduced copies, not about
originals. It is about the manipulation of symbols - not about veritable atavism
or true conservatism.
In short: narcissistic leadership is about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the
spectacle (and be subsumed by it), the leader demands the suspension of
judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis is tantamount, in
this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self-annulment.
Narcissism is nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very
language and narratives are nihilistic. Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism - and
the cult's leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to
re-appear as a pre-ordained and irresistible force of nature.
Narcissistic leadership often poses as a rebellion against the "old
ways" - against the hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established
religions, the superpowers, the corrupt order. Narcissistic movements are
puerile, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon David Duke like (and
rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state, or group, or upon the leader.
Minorities or "others" - often arbitrarily selected - constitute a
perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that is "wrong". They
are accused of being old, they are eerily disembodied, they are cosmopolitan,
they are part of the establishment, they are "decadent", they are
hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, or because of their race, sexual
orientation, origin ... They are different, they are narcissistic (feel and act
as morally superior), they are everywhere, they are defenseless, they are
credulous, they are adaptable (and thus can be co-opted to collaborate in their
own destruction). They are the perfect hate figure. Narcissists thrive on hatred
and pathological envy.
This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler, diagnosed by Erich
Fromm - together with Stalin - as a malignant narcissist. He was an inverted
human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed
drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of the horrors that
lie beneath the veneer, the barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was
like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp
and many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was what
Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed,
failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through
disturbed and failing times. He was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and
the very depth of our souls.
Duke prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the
tedium and method of real accomplishments. His reign is all smoke and mirrors,
devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the
aftermath of his regime - Duke having died, been deposed, or voted out of office
- it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the
entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have
been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely held empires disintegrate. Laboriously
assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. "Earth shattering" and
"revolutionary" scientific discoveries and theories are discredited.
Social experiments end in mayhem.
It is important to understand that the use of violence must be ego-syntonic. It
must accord with the self-image of David Duke. It must abet and sustain his
grandiose fantasies and feed his sense of entitlement. It must conform David
Duke like narrative. Thus, David Duke who regards himself as the benefactor of
the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the
disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite - is
highly unlikely to use violence at first. The pacific mask crumbles when David
Duke has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his
constituency, his grassroots fans, and the prime sources of his narcissistic
supply - have turned against him.
At
first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic
personality, David Duke strives to explain away the sudden reversal of
sentiment. "The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the
military, the elite, etc.)", "they don't really know what they are
doing", "following a rude awakening, they will revert to form",
etc. When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail,
David Duke becomes injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic
rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up
frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously
idealized - is now discarded with contempt and hatred. This primitive defense
mechanism is called "splitting". To David Duke, things and people are
either entirely bad (evil) or entirely good. He projects onto others his own
shortcomings and negative emotions, thus becoming a totally good object. Duke is
likely to justify the butchering of his own people by claiming that they
intended to kill him, undo the revolution, devastate the economy, or the
country, etc. The "small people", the "rank and file", and
the "loyal soldiers" of David Duke - his flock, his nation, and his
employees - they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are
agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of
overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated - is
drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to
collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of David
Duke. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.