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Evolution of the Anti-Democracy Axis in the Second Trump Maladministration [1]
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Date: 2025-03-29
In a pre-Trump II article, I presented an exercise of power-mapping the groups/forces that propelled Trump into power—a combination of right-wing populism and Christian nationalism that also had the backing of wealthy elites, Wealthy elites, identified by various labels as oligarchy/plutocracy/ corporatocracy have been actively imposing anti-democratic policies practically since the founding of America. This has taken the form of justifying wealth concentration, the supremacy of “markets,” and the subordination of human labor (slave, female, and factory) to property. The previous alliance found anti-democratic allies among Christian fundamentalists (who want to impose a Christian theocracy) and right-wing populists (who are threatened by the loss of what little privileges they have under white supremacy and patriarchy).
In the first iteration, we see that Donald Trump served as a unifying force, mobilizing disaffected whites who have been left behind in economic prosperity and feel abandoned by traditional institutions. In spite of his populist appeal, Trump is a malignant narcissist sociopath with a lifetime history of lying, cheating, conning and bullying his way to success, and whose only goals in life have always been his own self-interest. But this was lost on the masses, who have been fed a media diet that worships the rich and famous while foregoing critical questioning of character and even potential psychopathy.
Since Trump has been granted immunity by a subservient Supreme Court, avoided any accountability for prior criminal acts, and now has actually been elected by the popular as well as the electoral vote, he is intent on consolidating power, along with the usual grifting off the privileges of his position. And this time he has plenty of help from the oligarch wing, who is working to execute a swift destruction of democracy and entrenchment of oligarchic kleptocracy (e.g., the architects behind Project 2025).
Before we get into the details of the re-arranged axis, we should visit the works of Dr. Andrew Lobaczewsky. Lobaczewsky was a Polish psychiatrist who was finishing up his studies when the Nazis invaded Poland. Lobaczewsky lived through the Nazi occupation and then Poland’s rule under the Stalinist Soviet Union. Lobaczewsky studied pathological personalities (generally among prison populations) and then noted how similar personality characteristics were attracted to power, particularly political power. He developed a theory he called “ponerology” or the science of evil for political purposes.
Lobaczewsky struggled to get his work published, as the connection between psychopathy and political power was (and still is) controversial. In modern times, the themes of Lobaczewsky’s work have been taken up by forensic psychiatrist and former Yale Professor Dr. Bandy Lee. Dr. Lee explains how pathological social structures create pathological leaders. Dr. Lee, like Dr. Lobaczewsky, has been vilified for raising the issue of psychological fitness in leadership positions. Other mental health professionals have joined the call for better screening of potential political candidates—especially those who wield a lot of power.
According to Lobaczewsky, societies are more susceptible to being taken over by psychopathic personalities when (1) they are psychologically ignorant (most people don’t understand how malignant personalities operate); (2) there is a high (or even extreme) level of inequities in power and wealth; and (3) large proportions of the population feel excluded and unable to reach their full potential. In such societies, a cunning psychopath is able to exploit legitimate grievances while promising a solution. Lobaczewsky subscribes to the disease theory of mental illness—that is, he does not advocate that psychopaths should be punished for a condition they may have little control over, but that societies should learn to recognize them so they can be kept away from positions of power.
Lobaczewsky describes the process of ponerization, or how psychopathic pathology spreads through a society. A so-called “spellbinder” emerges who is able to gain large followings. The original group may be motivated by legitimate grievances and even a prosocial ideology, but it splinters into factions where new leaders emerge who are more interested in gaining power. The original leadership is taken over by more pathological leaders—leaders who often arise from powerful elites, who then give the spellbinder more mainstream credibility. As increasingly pathological leaders replace earlier ones, they solidify their control over society by means of authoritarianism, oppression and fear. “One form of evil serves to open the door to others.”
One characteristic of psychopaths is that they recognize that their own lack of empathy (which defines them as psychopaths) is not shared by the majority. Therefore, they are intrinsically motived to define their own lack of empathy as “normal” and everyone else as “abnormal.” Which is one reason that they crave power and wealth, because it permits them to set cultural standards and define norms. We have seen this here in America with our history of glorifying wealth, the pursuit of self-interest, winning at any cost and a general everyone-for-himself ethos of hyper-individualism.
Antisocial pathology has been exacerbated by the consolidation of mainstream media into fewer (and ever more oligarchic) hands. Gone are the local newspapers and broadcast media that connected people to their communities. With increasing media concentration on national topics (or topics that only interest the wealthy), people become less informed about what’s going on in their state and local governments. The rise of social media oligopolies further reduced access to trustworthy information, as now people were subjected to revenue-generating clickbait and algorithmically-driven “virality.” It has become ever more difficult to determine the trustworthiness of information or even the truth itself. Keeping people informed is not a priority because it is not profitable.
While the old-style corporate media would exercise “soft” censorship by either slanting stories or selective publication, they rarely reported stories that were blatantly false (not without threat of lawsuits). Now artificial intelligence can create “fake” stories and images that are practically indistinguishable from the real ones. This is after almost two decades of Silicon Valley billionaires conditioning users to become addicted to screen devices. Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs forbade their own kids from spending too much time on the devices they were foisting on the rest of us.
In twenty-first century America, we have been subjected to several decades of greed-is-good, primacy-of-the market propaganda. We have experienced an increase in inequality and the decimation of communities, resulting in increasing social alienation on top of economic angst. Addiction to devices (which has made a few men very wealthy) has created a collective attention deficit disorder, which has measurably decreased our collective ability to think critically. On top of this—and in spite of all the purported “connectivity” we have through our devices—we have become increasingly disconnected from each other. Even Lobaczewsky warned of the damage to “social coherence” from polarization between those who maintained “healthy critical faculties” and those induced by a “spellbinder” to demonize the “other.”
It is fairly obvious that we are living in a highly ponerized (or what Lobaczewsky would term hysteroidal) and fragmented society. Now that Trump is back in power, we see that he is no longer serving as a “connector” between the various axes, but rather that he is being operated upon by them as well as using them for his own ends. The new configuration has practically eliminated the populist element, while the oligarchs have morphed into an iron triangle: The old guard oligarchy (represented by corporations and institutions like the Heritage Foundation), the new oligarchy (technology elites) and Christofascism/Christian nationalism. The oligarchy shares ties with Christian nationalism through some of its members (who subscribe to both ideologies) as well as the prosperity gospel. The technocratic oligarchs do not share any direct connections with Christofascism, but they do share an ideology of racial and gender superiority (i.e., male and pale). This particularly anti-democratic ideology will be more fully discussed below. All three of the axes are motivated to some extent by greed and a belief in their own entitlement to power—things that in the past would have been considered “sins.” Their modus operandi is to motivate the “rabble” by appealing to hate, ignorance and fear. Which is why they are hell-bent on destroying public education.
The technocratic oligarchy which emerged in the early 2000s has developed an ideology that is even darker than old-fashioned greed and self-interest. This new philosophy even calls itself the Dark Enlightenment. Its founding thinker is Curtis Guy Yarvin, a software engineer who began blogging under the name Mencius Moldbug in 2007 or 2008 (around the time of the mortgage collapse and beginning of the Great Recession). Followers of Yarvin were already fans of Ayn Rand and the anti-democratic idea that societies should be run like corporations, where a small group of CEOS makes all the decisions and everyone else just does their job and keeps their heads down (and their mouths shut). Proponents of this philosophy believe that democracy is incompatible with freedom, and include Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, Elon Musk and Steve Bannon. Newer versions incorporate AI into the running of the technocratic state. The idea that people could be paid to serve each other and the community at large is foreign to this type of thinking.
In the tech bro utopia, a collection of “gov-corp” communities would compete for residents in the same manner they now compete for customers. While residents would have no say in governing decisions, they would have the freedom to “vote with their feet” and relocate to another gov-corp state that was more suitable to their needs (analogous to the “freedom” to leave a bad job, but no voice or power to insure that your next one will be better). If you are wondering how such a society would actually operate, you might want to check out Octavia Butler’s Parable dystopian science fiction series. Writing in 1998, Butler had the prescience to foresee the election of a proto-fascist US President promoting the slogan “Make America Great Again.”
The ultimate fever dream is a “technocapital singularity” that will run everything. The proponents of this ideology argue that what they call “The Cathedral” (aka the Deep State)—the network of institutions promoting and protecting democratic and egalitarian ideals—is slowing down “progress” toward the eventual singularity. Although the tech bro capitalists are not racists in the traditional sense, they do promote an ideology based on superiority and inferiority (with socio-economic status serving as a proxy for merit). Although they despise the masses and populism, the eugenicist elements of their beliefs—a shared misanthropy, misogyny and Western European (i.e., white) supremacy—ties them to the alt right, The tech bros provide an intellectual philosophy (activating the prefrontal cortex) while the alt right provides popular appeal to the dark emotions of fear and hate (activating the amygdala).
Each one of these—traditional oligarchy, technocratic oligarchy, and Christofascism—share a disdain for democracy and is happy to join forces to destroy it. But each one of them wants to rule everyone else. Christofascists want to create a theocracy, and the technocratic oligarchs want to create a corporate techno-state. While everyone is united in destroying democracy, at some point the alliance will splinter into factions as they jockey for power. Lobaczewsky proposes that ever-more pathological individuals will end up controlling the leader, which he asserts is what happened to Hitler. “The leader himself eventually realizes that if he does not fulfill his assigned role, he will be killed.”
Compared to the earlier power map, this one seems to be more cohesive and impenetrable. We can wait for the inevitable conflict and collapse of the new power arrangement, or we can find ways to dismantle it. The weakest link in the previous diagram was with the right-wing populists. We are seeing a resurgence of populism on the left, as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ rallies against oligarchy are gaining traction and momentum. Even some Trump voters are having thoughts of buyer’s remorse, which will likely increase as popular suffering becomes more widespread and acute.
Lobaczewsky tells us that the process of ponerization and pathocracy is a cycle. Although the pathocracy destroys the society that it rules, “every country…contains a large majority of normal people living and suffering there who will never accept pathocracy….When normal society awakens to the pathocracy, it also becomes conscious of the injustice which may have precipitated it….This does not come about as a great counter-revolution, but rather a more or less stormy process of regeneration.”
So, although there are signs of hope, it is going to be a rough road ahead. We will have to navigate not just resisting a kleptocratic, corrupt and lawless regime, but also managing our own survival (both economic and climate change-related), and maintaining our mental health, while building a community that can survive the future.
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