If you have ever wondered why some people - and particular politicians and social workers - are cruel to the extent of committing genocide, kidnapping innocent children from their families and putting them into institutions or foster homes (such as Domenic Johansson), and wanting to inflict pain on humanity, then you need to get hold of Polish psychiatrist Andrew Lobaczewski's book, Political Ponerology: A Science of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes. And if you have never heard of "ponerolology" before, it is because this is a new word coined by the author - it is the study of the causes of social injustice.
Ponerology seeks to explain phenomena that include aggressive war, ethnic cleansing, genocide and police states. Studies in this discipline have shown a tight link between social injustice and psychopathy - the ability to lie, steal, cause great harm or kill with virtually no remorse. The mass murder of innocent Social Democratic youth on Utöya in Norway by Anders Breivik only a few days ago is a classical example - he cold-bloodedly murdered his victims without showing the slightest degree of compassion or remorse.
Laura Knight-Jadczyk, editor of Lobaczewski's book, quotes Martha Stout, a psychologist and author that has worked extensively with victims of psychopaths, who said:
"Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members.
"Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken.
"And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.
"Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological make-up is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.
"You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness.
"The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience that they seldom even guess at your condition.
"In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.
"You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered."
Those of us who have noted the total indifference by some high positioned politicians and social welfare officers to the suffering of both parents and children of homeschoolers and others, who have noted the heartlessness of these people (see my article, Why is the Swedish State So Cruel and Heartless?), are rapidly coming to the conclusion that it is these people who are in need of institutional help and not their victims. When perfectly ordinary, well-adjusted families are brutally broken up and a proper recourse to justice denied them, there is clearly something very, very wrong indeed with "the Swedish Way" as education minister Major Jan Björklund calls it. And something needs to be done about it before more people suffer at the hands of these very disturbed people.
Psychopaths are part of The Dark Triad that also includes Narcissists and Machiavellians. All three types share to varying degrees an unappealing, though sometimes well-concealed core: social malevolence and duplicity, self-centredness and aggression, and emotional coldness. Most people who fall into the Dark Triad do not qualify for a psychiatric diagnosis, though at their extremes they shade into mental illness or become outlaws - particularly psychopaths. But the far more common 'subclinical' variety lives among us, populating offices, schools, bars, and the routine byways of daily life.
Martha Stout in her book, The Sociopath Next Door, says what distinguishes these people from the rest of us is "an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanising functions".
This explains why these people behave in an alarmingly inhuman way, incarcerating and torturing innocent people, murdering people - including women and children en masse - and above all ruling by the gun.
We here in Sweden may not yet be "ruled by the gun" but we are ruled by psychopathic laws whose effects differ only by degree. What is being waged against targeted victims like homeschoolers is a different kind of warfare, a kind of psychological torture, applied to the most vulnerable of citizens - and aimed at the heart of what makes for a stable and happy society - well-adjusted, loving families.
Utah governor Gary Hebert in an article entitled, Utah's Love Affair with Political Psychopaths says:
"Political psychopaths don't feel the same range of emotions that normal people experience. They can only experience fear, greed and the occasional elation when they find out they got away with another crime at the public expense.
"Absent are normal emotions like remorse, shame, and the feeling of accomplishment that awaits those that know they put more into public service than they took out."
This explains the egocentric and idiosyncratic nature of political psychopaths and their insatiable appetite for murder, plunder and torture we see in many rulers and their acolytes. It explains how, one level down, they can trample on families and rip them asunder. It explains how they can with emotional impunity herd civilians into state institutions like schools for indoctrination and deny that freedom of conscience to parents which would allow them to educate their children in their own way. Why else would they want to ban homeschooling if not to indoctrinate? Their academic and social arguments have already been disproved both by academic studies on the subject and by the success of millions of homeschoolers worldwide.
Kevin Barrett in, Twilight of the Psychopaths, describes these anti-social characters as people who:
Use lies and brainwashing to create an army of controlled, systematic mass murderers;
Use that army to enslave large numbers of people by seizing control of their labour and its fruits;
And use that slave labour power to improve the brainwashing process (by using the economic surplus to employ scribes, priests and PR men). Then go back and repeat the process.
Psychopaths, according to the Wikipedia, "lack a sense of guilt or remorse for any harm they may have caused others, instead rationalising the behaviour, blaming someone else, or denying it outright". Isn't this precisely what has happened in the Domenic Johansson case?
These people are masters at denial. And the most painful thing above all is that such people do not only live among us, but most of them constitute the greatest number of the ruling élite in the world. Sweden has its own set who, whilst not yet toting guns and murdering people outright, are doing the next best thing, and need to be replaced by politicians and social workers who care about, and have a heart for, the people they rule over and are supposed to protect and serve.
It is time that Sweden did some major house cleaning for the sake of the tens of thousands of children and their devastated families. Homeschoolers are the latest target. These psychopaths have to be stopped. But first of all let us identify them for what they are, bring them to account, strip them of power, and help them on the road to recovery to become normal, well-adjusted citizens like the rest of us. It is OK to have problems but it is not OK to take it out on harmless civilians.
May the government demonstrate it has a heart, free Domenic Johansson immediately, and have a proper review of the whole system of child welfare which is fundamentally flawed. May it emancipate homeschoolers by revising what is essentially a psychopathic law and rejoin the rest of the liberty-loving human family.
Acknowledgements
(1) Kamurai Mudzingwa, The Ruling Psychopaths Among Us
