19 Comments

Quick note just to add that the Kevin Bacon film name references are strictly for entertainment purposes. I.e., no reference to their actual content or characters is intended, only the conceptual resonance in the actual names of the films.

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I spend a lot of time each day reading essays and articles, and this one was the best hands down. Well done! 👏

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Thank you kindly!

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Pierre Bayle? What’d he do? His dictionary is pretty damn great.

Ja ja, off to consult Igor.

Edit: this is the only reference to Bayle I could find: “ The Southern Land (La Terre australe connue), ascribed by Bayle to Gabriel de Foigny…”

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Yep, scribal error on my part. ;) Good catch.

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Phew. I was about to start a lil’ bonfire.

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lol

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Is German tradition.

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I'm disappointed to learn that Desmet denies the role of individual psychopathy. Extremely disappointed. That's almost bad enough to make me question the basis of everything else he says.

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He now has Ponerology, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see if he comes around! Like I wrote in my series, it's odd that he mentions it once, dismisses that psychopathy is important to mass formation/totalitarianism, but then never deals with the role of psychopaths in that environment (they have to have SOME role).

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After writing a book that explicitly denies it? Not a chance. I know human ego, and it always fails to measure up.

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You're probably right, but I wish you weren't!

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Does he deny it? Or does he say it isn’t a factor in Mass Psychosis?

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In his book, he denies that it played any relevant role in the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany (and implicitly, by extension, the Soviet Union).

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It might not have. It might be a different type of pathology that works in groups to accomplish horrible things. My limited experience with psychopaths is they were very social on the surface, but were loners really. I don’t see any of them being able to lead a revolution. They weren’t leaders, I guess.

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I recommend reading the book I edited, and which is the basic text inspiring this substack: Political Ponerology by Andrew Lobaczewski. He argues - from direct experience - that this wasn't the case. It WAS psychopaths. This view was shared, for instance, by Gustave Gilbert, one of the Nuremberg psychologists with direct access to the defendants.

Lobaczewski argues that in the early stages they play more hidden roles. It's only once pathocracies have consolidated that psychopaths gain the prominent upper leadership positions.

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Re Q Anon. I have yet to meet anyone who reads it or takes it seriously. I know someone who thinks it was legit 10-15 years ago. And thinks Q Anon was captured, maybe killed, maybe sitting in a prison somewhere, and his/her name and style was co-opted by the government to spread disinfo among right wingers. I haven’t read it, so I can’t say.

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Furries need to be lower on the list.I don't know of any other conventions that have aids vans outside to test for the spread of disease.I don't know of any other cons who have to draw flow charts of who fucked who just to find out who has HIV.I don't know of any other groups that have ''petting zoos'' to appease their zoophilia. 30% of them are openly zoophilic and if I had to guess the actual number is more than half.

You can look up a 3 part doc called The Zoo Files by Toad Mckinley on youtube.Far from the worst of their kind (for that you can look at the zoo sadist saga involving aptly named ''Snake Thing'') but in my opinion their entire community is completely psychopathic.Especially since the less disordered members constantly run interference and cover for the more evil ones.

Good article otherwise,though I don't think the SDEKB as a measuring stick is going to quite catch on.

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Whoa. Ok, yeah, we can move furries further down the list. TBH, I never looked to much into furries. Now I'm kinda glad that I didn't! But thanks for the info.

"Good article otherwise,though I don't think the SDEKB as a measuring stick is going to quite catch on."

Me neither. But it would be funny if it did.

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