ANARCHO-TYRANNY AND THE PSYCHORIUM

Yes, yes, I know; I said in the last post I would delve deeper into some criticisms of Lobaczewski, but frankly that was written back in mid-December, and I’ve had other ideas since. And there is an element of weekly whim to this – as though you’re having a peak each week into the processes of my disheveled mind.

It seemed (perhaps more) logical to follow up last week’s post with a deeper dive into some of its key concepts, particularly the question of human groupishness and the role of power struggle therein. That turned out to be a longer than usual post though, which I expect you’ll find as controversial as it is ambitious. But it’s not ready quite yet. It still requires some polishing tweaks. (Is that a mixed metaphor?)

So, this week (even though, to be clear, I never promised to post every week – but aside of the holidays, that’s what I’ve been doing) I thought I’d do a quick hit here. One of the great political insights of the last half century or so came from Samuel Francis. If you don’t know Francis, you should. Not only did he write the encyclopedic volume on the managerial revolution¹, but he was a constant source of original insights. Yes, in the later years of his life, he did become a notorious race realist. I think it’s even fair to say that he was a white identitarian. I’ve explained elsewhere why I am not a white identitarian.² I do though think white identitarianism (or white nationalism) is a perfectly reasonable political position – just as I think black or Hispanic identitarianism or nationalism is perfectly reasonable.³ And of course, such a position does not necessitate white (or black or Hispanic) supremacy. But if you have a problem with such ethnic or racial identitarianism and are prone to believing in the occult contamination theory of ideas, you’ve been forewarned. *insert mischievous smiley face here*

The idea of Francis’ that I’m exploring here is what he called anarcho-tyranny.⁴ So, I’ll provide a quotation from Lobaczewski and then one from Francis. And then I’ll offer a few thoughts on how these statements connect to each. So, first, from Lobaczewski:

A normal person deprived of privilege or high position will go about finding and performing some work which will earn him a living; but pathocrats never possessed any solid practical talent, and the time frame of their rule eliminates any residual possibilities of adapting to the demands of normal work. If the laws of normal man were to be reinstated, they and theirs could be subjected to judgment, including a moralizing interpretation of their psychological deviations; they would be threatened by a loss of freedom and life, not merely a loss of position and privilege. Since they are incapable of this kind of sacrifice, the survival of a system which is the best for them becomes a moral imperative. Such a threat must be battled by means of any and all psychological and political cunning implemented with a lack of scruples with regard to those other “inferior quality” people that can be shocking in its depravity.

And here is the quotation from Francis:

[such a] state does not perform effectively or justly its basic duty of enforcing order and punishing criminals, and in this respect its failures do bring the country or important parts of it close to a state of anarchy. But that semblance of anarchy is coupled with many of the characteristics of tyranny, under which innocent and law-abiding citizens are punished by the state or suffer gross violations of their rights and liberty at the hands of the state. The result is what seems to be the first society in history in which elements of both anarchy and tyranny pertain at the same time and seem to be closely connected with each other and to constitute more or less opposite sides of the same coin.

A brazen example of the kind of anarcho-tyranny Francis is referring to here were the events of the summer of 2020, ostensibly in response to the death of George Floyd. Night after night, for months, in dozens of cities across the U.S., neighborhood blocks were gutted with mass vandalism, arson, and looting. Multiple generations of families’ investment in their businesses were destroyed, individuals were assaulted and even killed, sometimes in huge gang attacks, sometimes captured on video. Rather than even condemning these crimes, much less taking strong action to end them, publicly elected officials (as well as corporate media personalities) soft peddled them, excused them as mostly peaceful, rationalized them as the necessary expression of the oppressed, when in position to do so released the criminals from custody back out into the riots, and in other cases fund raised for their bail. Far too often, though, the police simply stood down and refused to act. The anarchy was stoked, coddled and enabled.

Meanwhile, those like the McCloskey’s or Kyle Rittenhouse, who took action to obstruct the rampaging mob, to protect people’s property, or even their own lives, were smashed with the full weight of state power – and its ancillary corporate media mouthpieces. This absurdity of disproportionate and inconsistent application of the law was striking to many at the time. Certainly, one could point to the partisan politicization of local DA offices as potential explanation. And the crude opportunism of the managerial class in weaponizing such events against the Trump administration – and by extension the populist, middle American insurgency which had adopted him as their battering ram – are self-evident.

It would be a mistake though to lose sight of the larger implications, suggested by the juxtaposition of the quotations, above. That mass criminality is allowed – and even encouraged – to run rampage, seemingly without end, while the state uses its police powers to try to crush those who are attempting to defend themselves or others from that same criminality, seems insane. It seems like the world turned upside down. It’s a world in which clinically normal people can no longer trust what they thought was, not merely the rules of the game, but simple common sense. They are being sucked into the psychorium.

Francis’ notion of anarcho-tyranny is not merely a violation of legal norms and common decency, it is a generator of the psychorium, a home for psychopaths, and the road to pathocracy. In earlier posts, I emphasized how manipulative use of language generates the psychorium.⁵ No weapon of the psychorium, and eventual reign of pathocracy, is more powerful though than that which brings the psychoticization of society, which is the psychorium, right to the doorstep of normal people, with an iron ring of threatening violence closing in upon them on all sides. Manipulative words confuse and disorient us, they soften us up; the iron ring of threatening violence submerges us into a state of chaos and panic. The psychopath’s congenial environment is a moral wasteland of terror for the clinically normal.

As Lobaczewski observes, this is what psychopaths and pathocrats need to survive. For them, once they’ve showed their hand, there’s no going back. They’re all in, for the alternative is as inconceivable as it is unacceptable to them. For the clinically normal people, though, it’s what they must find a way to resist and expose, if we’re to avoid descending into a pathocracy in which anarcho-tyranny is not merely a disorienting and disturbing subversion of norms, but the macabre new social regime.  

1. Samuel T. Francis, Leviathan and Its Enemies: Mass Organization and Managerial Power in Twentieth-Century America, ed. Fran Griffin, 1 edition (Arlington, VA: Washington Summit Publishers, 2016). Francis’ book was published posthumously, and frankly could have used a little more of a heavy hand in the editing, but it is still the most ambitious and sweeping analysis of the managerial class available, to my knowledge.  

2. I discuss my thoughts on both racial realism and white identitarianism in Darwinian Liberalism. Though, truth be told, I’m unsure if I’d completely stand behind everything I wrote there. A single year feels like a decade in intellectual time, these days.

3. The very same day that I wrote this post, I saw the guys on MindMatters, who were so kind as to dedicate a show to my ideas, slag white identitarians. So, I thought it might be appropriate to expand upon why I say it’s a perfectly reasonable position to hold. Again, being an ethno-identitarian or ethno-nationalist does not necessarily entail either a belief in one’s ethnic or racial group being better nor any notion that one’s group should dominate any other group. Such a preference simply may be based on the fact that there is evidence that ethnically and racially homogenous communities seem to be more secure, stable and enjoy higher levels of social capital. There is evidence that ethnic heterogeneity is the best predictor of ethnic conflict, and this effect is amplified when the ethnic difference is racial: Tatu Vanhanen, Ethnic Conflicts: Their Biological Roots in Ethnic Nepotism (London: Ulster Institute for Social Research, 2012) ; in more ethnically and racially homogenous communities there are higher levels of social trust, people volunteer and give to charity more, and they are less resistant to government wealth redistribution programs for the less fortunate: Robert D. Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century: The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture,” Scandinavian Political Studies 30, no. 2 (June 1, 2007): 137–74, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x; Frank Salter, ed., Welfare, Ethnicity and Altruism: New Data and Evolutionary Theory, 1 edition (Routledge, 2013). Furthermore, there are perfectly good evolutionary reasons for this, as one of the two or three most important evolutionary biologists of the 20th century observed (W. D. Hamilton, “Selection of Selfish and Altruistic Behavior in Some Extreme Models,” Man and Beast: Comparative Social Bahavior, 1971, 57–91; W. D. Hamilton, “Innate Social Aptitudes of Man: An Approach from Evolutionary Genetics,” Biosocial Anthropology 133 (1975): 115–32), though political correctness sentiments have discouraged acknowledging this phase of his work. And we know from another stream of research that, unconsciously, humans are very good at selecting those who are genetically closely related to them for their most intimate relationships J. Philippe Rushton, Robin J. H. Russell, and Pamela A. Wells, “Genetic Similarity Theory: Beyond Kin Selection,” Behavior Genetics 14, no. 3 (May 1, 1984): 179–93, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01065540; J. Philippe Rushton, “Genetic Similarity, Human Altruism, and Group Selection,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12, no. 3 (September 1989): 503–18, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00057320; J. Philippe Rushton and Trudy Ann Bons, “Mate Choice and Friendship in Twins: Evidence for Genetic Similarity,” Psychological Science 16, no. 7 (July 1, 2005): 555–59, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.01574.x.. So, whatever you personally think of ethno-nationalism, there’s certainly evidence to suggest it is a perfectly reasonable preference.

4. Samuel Francis, “Anarcho-Tyranny, U.S.A.,” Chronicles, July 1994, https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/anarcho-tyranny-u-s-a-5/. If I might anticipate the response of any autistic anarchists out there, yes, I know you have semantic grounds for being aggrieved at this use of the term. Your objections are noted, but it is the vernacular understanding of the term, and it’s those people prone to the vernacular that Francis was trying to reach. So, I say you cut us both some slack.

5. See, here and here.