Amazon Bans Political Ponerology in Germany

Enter the world of Kafka-esque bureaucratic censorship, and maybe buy a copy before it's too late

My last post was about cancel culture. Well, this week, Red Pill Press received a message from Amazon announcing that they “will not be offering” the English edition of Political Ponerology for sale on Amazon.de, the German Amazon portal. In other words, they banned it.

The reason?

The cover contains a swastika, and said use of said swastika “may” violate Germany’s anti-swastika laws—and probably most certainly violates Amazon’s own content guidelines. So they’re playing it safe and just banning the book outright.

What nonsense.

For some background the German laws in question, see here. But note the following, from the German criminal code:

Swastikas and other banned symbols can, however, be displayed in Germany if they are used for "civic education, countering anti-constitutional activities, art and science, research and education, the coverage of historic and current events, or similar purposes," according to the Criminal Code.

PP checks all of those boxes. It is exempt. Not only is the cover a piece of art which depicts the swastika as a mind-numbing drug—the book itself is a work of science, research and education.

It also covers historical events.¹ Dr. Lobaczewski was a member of the Home Army. You know, the Poles who fought the Nazis. The whole purpose of the book is to demonstrate that there is a scientific explanation for the existence of evil totalitarian regimes like those of the Nazis and Bolsheviks. They were both pathocracies.

Amazon would do well to actually read the book, especially the part where Lobaczewki calls Hitler a clownish psychopath. Here, I’ll make it easy for them:

Many thoughtful persons keep asking the same anxious question: how could the German nation have chosen for a Fuehrer a clownish psychopath who made no bones about his pathological vision of superman rule? Under his leadership, Germany then unleashed a second criminal and politically absurd war. During the second half of this war, highly trained army officers honorably performed inhuman orders, senseless from the political and military point of view, issued by a man whose psychological state corresponded to the routine criteria for being forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital. (pp. 86-87)

You’d almost think Amazon were defending the little Fuehrer. Well, that might be going a tad too far. I’ll just add an observation from Lobaczewski: it’s often those who are most virulently anti-Nazi or anti-Communist who react negatively to ponerology. Here’s a quotation for pondering:

If such a ponerogenic association [like the Nazis or Bolshies] could be stripped of its ideology, nothing would remain except psychological and moral pathology, naked and unattractive. Such a course of action would of course provoke “moral outrage,” and not only among the members of the association. Even normal people, who condemn this kind of association along with its ideologies, would feel hurt and deprived of something constituting part of their own romanticism, their way of perceiving reality, when a widely idealized group is exposed as little more than a gang of criminals. Perhaps even some of the readers of this book will resent the author’s stripping evil so unceremoniously of all its literary motifs. The job of effecting such a “strip-tease” may thus turn out to be much more difficult and dangerous than expected. (pp. 157-158)

Well, Red Pill Press’s rep tried to reason with Amazon, but to no avail. Now it appears the book is banned from sale in the Netherlands, too. Since reason is not a function of bureaucracy, other means may be required to rectify the situation. I’ll post an update if and when there is news on that front.

In the meantime, if you haven’t already, you can purchase your very own hardcopy of the book directly from Red Pill Press. And you can still get it from most Amazon portals. Here they are by two-letter country code: US, UK, FR, ES, IT, PL, SE, JP, CA, AU. (And here are the now defunct links to Germany and the Netherlands, may they rest in peace: DE, NL.)

And if you have yet to subscribe, please do, or consider upgrading to a paid subscription. I will continue to make all my original content available for free, but I have thought of a special project for paid subscribers. I will be posting a preliminary translation of Lobaczewski’s follow-up to Ponerology entitled Logocracy, chapter by chapter.

So if you’re interested in reading what Lobaczewski envisioned as a new political system—better than all the rest—you know what to do!

1. There’s also a brief, unfavorable mention of neo-Nazis, so check the contemporary events box too.