Narcissistic Leader’s Shared Fantasy (Frontline Club, London with Vaughan Smith)

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

The discussion centers around Professor Sam Vaknin's insights into the psychology and behavior of narcissistic and authoritarian leaders. Vaknin delves into the characteristics of such leaders, differentiating between genuine strongmen and autocrats, and highlights their shared fantasies, victimhood narratives, and eventual self-destruction. He argues that these leaders tend to foster environments of paranoia, aggression, and defensiveness towards perceived threats. The talk also explores the cyclical dynamics between autocrats and their societies, the role of journalists in covering these figures, and the inevitability of these regimes' failures. Vaknin suggests that these leaders are symptomatic of broader societal malaises rather than isolated phenomena, predicting their eventual downfall and replacement by more benign elites.

Highlights

Sam Vaknin explores the difference between authoritarian leaders and genuine strongmen in a fun, insightful way. 🔍
He describes their common delusions of grandeur, messianic complexes, and their tendencies toward paranoia. 🙄
Autocratic leaders create a shared fantasy making their followers feel liberated from accountability. 🎭
Journalists face unique challenges today and need to innovate to stay credible and relevant. 📰
Despite the omnipotence of authoritarian leaders, history shows that they always end up in self-destruction. 🔄

Key Takeaways

Autocratic leaders are like dramatic performers - all flair and destruction, offering liberation by legitimizing our unconscious desires. 🎭
They emerge during times of uncertainty and thrive on shared fantasies and victimhood narratives, making them irresistibly magnetic. 🧲
Journalists struggle with a credibility deficit in the age of disinformation, needing to rethink their strategies to resonate with the public. 📰
The cycles of authoritarian rise and fall are historical constants, signaling potential rebirth but also caution. 🔄
Even when autocrats seem invincible, they're destined for self-destruction, paving the way for new regimes. 🚀

Overview

Professor Sam Vaknin unravels the psyche behind narcissistic and authoritarian leaders in a captivating discussion. These leaders, he explains, are essentially performers who thrive on creating drama and destruction. They exploit times of societal change to rise, dragging followers into shared fantasies where reality is sidestepped. This gives followers a sense of liberation and safety, albeit at the cost of their own agency and critical thinking.

Vaknin elaborates on how these leaders transform paranoia, aggression, and defensiveness into their governing style, establishing environments where victimhood is vital. He also delves into the behavior of journalists who find themselves at a crossroads - needing to restore credibility in an age where truth is constantly under siege. He emphasizes that in history, these authoritarian cycles are common, hinting at both inevitable collapse and potential rebirth of regimes.

The discussion ends on a note that while these leaders seem omnipotent, their reigns are invariably doomed to self-destruction. Vaknin forecasts that after such falls, societies eventually recover under new, potentially more rational elites. Yet, his analysis implies a continued cycle of rise, fall, and rebirth, with the hope that humanity might learn to manage these cycles better.

Chapters

00:00 - 01:30: Introduction to the Podcast In the introductory chapter of the podcast, the host begins by intending to introduce Professor Vin to the audience. Professor Vin suggests that introducing himself might be quicker, but the host insists on proceeding with their prepared introduction. The chapter sets the stage for the podcast, which is affiliated with the Frontline Club.
01:30 - 39:00: Interview with Professor Sam Vaknin In the interview titled 'Interview with Professor Sam Vaknin,' the discussion focuses on the psychology of powerful individuals, coping mechanisms in chaotic situations, and how journalists can improve their reporting in such contexts. Professor Sam Vaknin, who has been a governmental advisor, academic contributor in physics, writer, and journalist, shares his insights and experiences. The interviewer mentions a shared interest in the Balkans with Professor Vaknin.
09:00 - 33:00: Characteristics of Authoritarian Leaders The chapter titled 'Characteristics of Authoritarian Leaders' discusses the contributions of Sam Vaknin in enhancing the understanding of personality disorders, particularly narcissism. In 1999, Vaknin published a pivotal work titled 'Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited,' which introduced and popularized terms such as 'narcissistic abuse' and 'flying monkeys.' These concepts have significantly advanced the comprehension of abusive behaviors, especially in the context of domestic abuse, and highlight the importance of Vaknin's work for survivors of such abuse.
39:00 - 59:00: The Cycle of Authoritarian Regimes The chapter titled 'The Cycle of Authoritarian Regimes' discusses the emergence of an industry aimed at understanding and addressing abuse. Despite the growth of this field, there is a consensus that more work is needed to fully comprehend the nature, prevalence, and societal impact of abuse, both domestically and internationally. The chapter also touches upon the distress caused by the significant and tumultuous changes occurring in the current global order, emphasizing the collective experience of living through a major historical narrative.
52:00 - 60:00: Media Credibility and Challenges The chapter "Media Credibility and Challenges" opens with the narrator expressing feelings of powerlessness and manipulation. They are concerned about their ability to accurately convey events in their field of journalism. The narrator emphasizes the importance of understanding the psychology of both the decision-makers and the audience as a means of improving media credibility. The chapter introduces Professor Sam as an expert who has been invited to shed light on these issues.
52:00 - 62:00: The Role of Journalists in Authoritarian Contexts In this chapter, the focus is on the challenges and responsibilities faced by journalists operating in authoritarian regimes. The discussion includes insights from a guest, possibly with expertise in journalism or experience in such contexts, who expresses gratitude for the introduction given by the host. There's an emphasis on the importance of cutting through complex issues and providing valuable information that can be used to make significant progress in understanding and addressing the difficulties inherent in these situations. The chapter is aimed at enlightening the audience on the crucial role journalists play in disseminating truthful, impactful narratives despite facing numerous obstacles.
62:00 - 91:00: Psychological Analysis and Conclusion The chapter titled 'Psychological Analysis and Conclusion' begins with a discussion emphasizing the importance of understanding the psychological attributes of strong men versus authoritarian leaders. The speaker initiates this analysis by posing a question about these attributes to an individual named Sam. It's highlighted that being a strong man does not inherently mean being authoritarian, as one can be strong yet still value democratic principles, consensus building, and teamwork. The chapter likely continues with an exploration of these distinctions and possibly concludes with broader psychological insights and conclusions about leadership styles.

Narcissistic Leader’s Shared Fantasy (Frontline Club, London with Vaughan Smith) Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 uh let let's let's let's start Vin I'd let's start Professor Vin I'd like to introduce you if I may to our audience um would you like me to introduce myself that that might be shorter well well I I have prepared something and so I would like to I'd like to do it if I may yes um I'm recording this for a podcast for the Frontline Club um which is is titled
00:30 - 01:00 the psychology of the powerful and how we can cope with a chaos and how journalists might better report on it I've known Professor Sam vacnin for several years now and I'm very excited that he has agreed to be interviewed today for the Frontline Club podcast Sam vacnin has done many things in his life he's been a governmental adviser he's made important academic contributions in physics he's a writer and has worked as a journalist for many years we share an interest in the Balkans I feel that Sam
01:00 - 01:30 is best known for his published works on personality disorders in 1999 Sam published a book titled malignant self-love narcissism Revisited the very language we use today to describe narcissism was brought to us by Professor vacman terms like narcissistic abuse and flying monkeys to name two of them have greatly Advanced our understanding of abusive Behavior it is my view that suffers of a domestic abuse are greatly in Sam's debt because it is
01:30 - 02:00 out of his work that an industry has emerged to help them it's not to say that we're anywhere near where we need to be in understanding abuse its nature its ubiquity and its impact on our societies whether in the domestic setting or on the international stage for most of us the extraordinary perhaps overwhelming changes happening in the world order today are deeply distressing whether we like it or not collectively we are living through the biggest story
02:00 - 02:30 of Our Lives I feel that something is being done to us and it makes me feel powerless and manipulated in my trade journalism I see a struggle to properly explain what is going on to do so surely we need to better understand the psychology of the people making these changes and perhaps of ourselves for acquiescing to them they might endanger us and and this is why I'm speaking to Professor Sam bman today Sam thank thank you very much for
02:30 - 03:00 seeing us thank you I am going to do all sorts of all sorts of work on trying to put this into a podcast after this recording well thank you for having me I'm overwhelmed by your introduction I almost recognize myself well um it well Sam we both know it's accurate um and and and I'm I'm I'm privileged and I'm really hoping that we can make inroads and I absolutely can't think of any anybody who can better try to cut through this stuff and try and leave us with something that we can use in in in
03:00 - 03:30 my trade and I really think it's incredibly important so if I may start with a questions um and and my first would be um Sam what are the psychological attributes of strong men and authoritarian leaders well first of all one should not conflate the two one can be a strong man and still adhere to democratic tenis and to consensus building and to teamw work and and so on authoritarian leaders on
03:30 - 04:00 the other hand autocrats and dictators definitely and so on um pretend to be strong men it's a performative act and they pretend to be strong men by excluding others contemptuously and so there's there should be a a major distinction between the two types we can have strong men in in F utterly functional democracies and that's not necessarily A Bad Thing from time to time right the course you
04:00 - 04:30 know uh but authoritarian leaders autocrats and dictators are always bad for your health exactly like cigarettes now the psychological features or psych or clinical features of uh people who end up being dictators and autocrats and and so on so forth are numerous and what I will try to keep it to a kind of headline style of reviewing bullet point style of reviewing everything and then if you wish to
04:30 - 05:00 expand or expound on any of these and I'm at your disposal number one the authoritarian leader believes himself to be chosen he has what we colloquially call a messiah complex he suffers from um the delusion of being a rescuer a savior a fixer A Healer in short he regards the world as a dystopian place and he regards his own
05:00 - 05:30 governance and his own period in power as the rication of a Utopia so all autocratic leaders are utopian that's Point number one point number two rebelliousness is an integral part of being an authoritarian leader authoritarian leaders are not about creating a new establishment or a new n
05:30 - 06:00 or a new power structure they they are very short-term thinkers they don't do succession well they don't do institutions well what they do is a constant state of Revolution so it's a permanent revolution number three autographic leaders hold themselves to be Visionaries disruptors because they believe they are
06:00 - 06:30 possessed of superhuman knowledge knowledge that is either Supernatural came from God or his emissaries or knowledge that is simply superhuman by virtue of their amazing genius unprecedented genius but at any rate they have access to information and the capacity to process information that is denied to mere mortals and that renders them Visionaries and that gives them the right to disrupt and to
06:30 - 07:00 destroy because they see much further than you and they can tell the future which you are B from doing they can definitely do that and of course this all leads to an emanation of self-confidence Charisma is essentially another name for ostentatious self-confidence coupled with firm conviction of infallibility I never get things wrong I
07:00 - 07:30 can never fail I have all the knowledge in the world I'm omnipotent I'm omnicient in short it's an apotheosis is a kind of self divination self self-deification the the autocrat regards himself as a kind of mini God or not so manyi in many cases God and of course entitled to behave in ways which are reprehensible in in mere mortals in in other humans in
07:30 - 08:00 his fellow men because he is not exactly human he is a Hercules is half human and half God or maybe the proportion is even different Soo autocratic leaders are therefore grandios and their grandiosity gives them the right to um espouse and promulgate a special type of morality so they are niches
08:00 - 08:30 Supermen they they are they they create a moral sphere an ethical and ethical code that applies first and foremost to others but comes from the autocrat he is the source of the law and autocrats regard themselves as hyperoral and pro-social they think that actually everyone else is evil and weaked or weak
08:30 - 09:00 or stupid or something and therefore everyone else is a threat to humanity at large it's been said that autocrats authoritarian leaders love Humanity but hate people so it's it's and it's very true the autocratic leader believes that there's some kind of mystical connection between himself and the collective the collective may be a nation state maybe a church maybe whatever but there's always a mystical connection it's a connection
09:00 - 09:30 that is Transcendental and in in usually is cloaked in religious Garb in religious language it's it's highly religious so and because the autographic leader perceives himself as highly unique unprecedented um he's unable to relate to other people so he's devoid of empathy he's devoid of empathy and he's
09:30 - 10:00 solipsistic his reality testing is impaired his divorce from reality is delusional but I think a common mistake that is made even in literature is that this solipsism this delusionality this dis empathy is not the outcome necessarily of pathological narcissism or psychopathy but it's the outcome of a narrative that places the autocratic
10:00 - 10:30 leader in the Vanguard of a new species so he's like the next stage in evolution he's taking people to Mars you know he's he's no longer with us on this planet he is divorced from us he has divorced us and and he is creating his own tribe and consequently of course he's unable to relate to us the same way you are not you as a human being can really
10:30 - 11:00 relate to the internal world of a dog or a cat would be difficult no matter how endowed you are and how much effort you put into it you're very likely to fail you're bound to fail actually because the autocratic leader sets himself or herself apart it's mostly himself by the way the vast majority of authoritarian and autographic leaders throughout history have been men that may change or may be changing now with you know feminism and
11:00 - 11:30 so on and we did we did have already a few examples of authoritarian autocratic women leaders um most recently in in Bangladesh and you know India Pakistan you name it and so um the autocratic leader having set himself apart from Humanity I would even I would even say in Contra distinction to humanity like I as a as a leader I am everything a
11:30 - 12:00 typical human being is not I am everything the a human being is not I am much more intelligent I am much more powerful I am much more of everything and quantity becomes quality I'm qualitatively different as an autocratic leader from the lead I am not the same I very the common denominator is very small and perhaps only biological so having having put himself ped pedestalize him pedestalize himself
12:00 - 12:30 having idolized himself this creates a lot of paranoia because the autocratic leader is aware that such self-elevation May generate or engender resentment and bitterness and envy especially envy and even anger and so on so the more the autocratic leader
12:30 - 13:00 um deifies himself idolizes himself the more paranoid he becomes because he realizes the backlash the backlash is in inevitable it's a matter of time so he de people like that develop what we call referential ideation referential ideation is when they believe that everyone is criticizing them hates them mocks them everyone is mocking them everyone is is hating on them and so on so forth they become very very defensive
13:00 - 13:30 and and they externalize aggression they become more and more and more aggressive because they attribute or actually misattribute to other people hatred their own emotions they project they attribute to other people the hatred that they feel the envy that preoccupies them the rage that is driving them they attribute all these to other people and then the environment becomes a hostile dangerous place so referential idation
13:30 - 14:00 leads to hypervigilance the constant monitoring constant scanning of the environment for imminent risks imminent attacks and so on frustration leads to aggression and paranoia all of them end up being paranoid it's a question of time to cope with all this um turmoil increasing inner
14:00 - 14:30 what the leader does he uses what we call infantile defense mechanisms I mention I mentioned projection I might as well mention splitting splitting is when the leader says I'm all good everyone else is all bad splitting is black and white thinking it's also known as de dichotomous thinking there's a dichotomy I am all good I'm all moral I'm all Superior I'm all intelligent I'm all all
14:30 - 15:00 knowing I'm I'm all and everyone else even my closest nearest dearest Ken uh assistants supporters acolytes psychop fans followers they're all inferior to me and inferior in by negation they're everything I'm not so I'm all good they're all bad they they conspire against me if they could they would have have taken me down they would have taken
15:00 - 15:30 me down you know there's a lot of paranoia there and so splitting is another example of primitive defense mechanism ultimately if I had to summarize I know you know it's I to cut a long story short is a bit too late but if I were to put it in a nutshell if I were to summarize I would say that the autocratic leader is an inverted human being and I'll explain what I mean while normal relatively healthy functional people have a conscious and
15:30 - 16:00 an unconscious and the unconscious is a cesspool honestly speaking it contains all the repressed urges and drives socially unacceptable behaviors thoughts that are highly unpleasant or uncomfortable ego distonic everything is buried there it's a huge garbage Dam dumb of anything and everything that you could not allow yourself of to accept or
16:00 - 16:30 to realize or to get in touch with emot emotionally and and psychologically so so in in a typical human being you have the conscious state which is public facing which is socially uh condoned usually which is conformist which plays by the rules and so on so forth and you have the unconscious where you are essentially a wild beast in the in in the autocratic leader
16:30 - 17:00 the unconscious is the autocratic leaders conscious State the urges of the autocratic leader the D the drives the Primitive drives of the autocratic leader the autocratic leaders fantasies including fantasies of extreme aggression the the autocratic leaders wishes including socially frowned upon and unacceptable and unpalatable wishes all these constit the autocratic leaders
17:00 - 17:30 conscious not unconscious whereas in a normal human being all these would be unconscious in an autocratic leader they are conscious and because the autocratic leader exhibit exhibitionistic and ostentatiously displays his unconscious and legitimizes his unconscious that is the source of his power that is a source of his attraction
17:30 - 18:00 magnetism and Charisma because the autographic leader legitimizes the unconscious in each and every one of us this is misperceived by people as Liberation as a kind of unshackling now they can give voice and expression to the hidden hidden most urges and drives and wishes and Fantasies even fantasies and wishes and drives and urges that involve hurting and harming
18:00 - 18:30 other people either individually or as collectives so this legitimization of the unconscious is the true source of energy and power of the autocratic leader and of course we have examples throughout history I think Hitler is the number one the most quintessential example but Donald Trump is not far in this sense and and so this is more or less an over of the pychology thank you um now you you you
18:30 - 19:00 said that um alra leaders are not necessarily personality disordered but um you have described uh flaws that could well be narcissistic or Psychopathic yes probably in because we have no access to these people they rarely attend therapy they would never subject themselves to any medical di diagnostic procedures but probably the overwhelming
19:00 - 19:30 vast majority of these people are Psychopathic narcissists malignant or what autoc calls malignant narcissis malignant narcissism is a combination of clinical narcissism clinical psychopathy and clinical sadism um whereas dark personalities such as dark Triad personalities are subclinical so dark Triad personalities are much more common than clinical personalities luckily for all of us and
19:30 - 20:00 dark Triad personality are simply to be honest a-holes that's what they are they're a bit mavan they are a bit Psychopathic and defiant and a bit narcissistic and self-interested and you know they're a bit of everything but they're not they don't amount to the disorders whereas whereas these leaders that I've just described whose psychology I've just described definitely in my view could be diagnosed one in all with malignant at the very
20:00 - 20:30 minimum malignant narcissism and possibly with outright psychopathy you um do uh autocrats are they inclined to surround themselves with similar dysfunctional people I mean if we use the current US Administration there's been a lot of concern about some of uh uh the president's selection of his people his team um do these people
20:30 - 21:00 collectivize well someone with this uh personality profile would tend to surround himself with two types of people basically likeminded people um and these people could be like-minded because they're submissive or opportunistic or both typic typically both submissive people are opportunistic submissive people control from from the bottom submissive people use their
21:00 - 21:30 neediness and dependency and clinging in order to manipulate other people and so there are there's many submissive people and very few um Mirror Image not mirror images actually reflections of the of the autocratic leader so autocratic leaders would tend to flock together they would tend to aggregate they would tend to collaborate they would they would tend to cross adulate they would agulate each other they would
21:30 - 22:00 tend to enhance each other and by enhancing each other self-enhance this is a process known as co- idealization I'll discuss it later if we come to it and so and the reason for this is is double first of all um predators in nature tends to tend to collaborate in order to prey on the you know on the vulnerable and on the weak it's just a fact of nature it's almost biological but I think there's another reason deep
22:00 - 22:30 inside these people suspect that they're completely Bonkers they suspect that they're insane and they need other people to tell them that they're not and so if Trump suspects deep inside when he's all alone in his bathroom he says to himself oh my God I'm a serious nut case you know luckily no one realizes but the minute after he talks to Putin he feels
22:30 - 23:00 good because you know they are both identical they're twins and so then I'm not alone and I'm not alone means I'm normal statistically even you know normaly is a statistical yard stick so if there are many of me if there are many clones of me that means I'm I'm okay nothing's wrong with me there is this need for normaly and hary hary cly the famous theoretician of psychopathy called it in
23:00 - 23:30 the 1940s the mask of Sanity these people need to put on a mask of sanity and it helps if there are other people who are very much like them and sustain help them to sustain the delusion the self- delusion self deception that they're normal nothing's wrong with them so at that point there is a mechanism called alloplastic defense um the minute you tell
23:30 - 24:00 yourself nothing's wrong with me but people keep telling me that something's wrong with me so that proves that something is wrong with them I mean by now I have established having spoken to Vladimir Putin I've established that nothing's wrong with me so all these lip tards and others who keep telling me that I'm that I'm you know crazy or narcissist or whatever something is wrong with them and that is no known as an alloplastic defense so it also is
24:00 - 24:30 also help helpful this Confluence of likeminded autocratic leaders is also this club actually is also helpful in creating the ability to uh project and blame others for everything that's wrong and and so to scapegoat basically other people it fulfills many fun so in effect um a state Administration
24:30 - 25:00 or a state Collective leadership could be pathologically narcissistic or or or or corruptly autocratic what I'm quite Keen to understand is whether there's a cyclical dynamic between um these types of administrations you've mentioned um Hitler's Germany um is there something happening and it leads me on to the ne the next question really um about perhaps there's a pattern happening here that perhaps we really should understand
25:00 - 25:30 but um it's about the psychological Dynamics involved in the relationship between this carismatic autocrat in his administration and his base and whether it has a repeating nature that we should be careful of yes uh the relationship between an autocratic leader and the collective that he leads he or she leads well it's a he in most cases leads this relationship is utterly deterministic it's predetermined it's it's like
25:30 - 26:00 predestination you know Calvin calvinistic predestination there's nothing the leader can do about it exactly like the shared fantasy in in the interpersonal relationships of narcissist the shared fantasy is inexorable it has a power of its own and it overpowers the narcissist that's why Freud called it repetition compulsion it's a compulsion the relationship between the Le the the the authoritarian leader and the lead people the the
26:00 - 26:30 nation state or the church or or a corporation by the way you could have an authoritarian autographic leader as a chief executive officer I mean ask any of Elon musk's employees so in all these settings where where there is a collective and a leader uh of this type there is an inexorable cycle and a cycle has several stages they're all well defined they all for follow each other deterministically there's absolutely nothing the leader or
26:30 - 27:00 the lead can do about it it starts with what is known as Co idealization Co idealization is when the purported leader the person who wants to become such a leader it's an early stage it's a love bombing stage where the leader love bombs his base his electorate the voters uh the citizens the Denis of a of a place the citizens of Nation the the employees in a company there's a love
27:00 - 27:30 bombing phase during the love bombing phase the leader idealizes his his would be flock or followers or acolytes or students or he idealizes them he tells them not only nothing is wrong with you but everything is right with you you can do no wrong you're Perfection rified you're wonderful you're amazing you are the culmination and the Apex of
27:30 - 28:00 human evolution you are you are an example to follow exceptionalism yes American exceptionalism you're an example to follow and so on so the the leader idealizes his potential voters or supporters or whatever and they in turn idealize the leader they say the the leader is a genius the leader is
28:00 - 28:30 amazingly cunning the leader is stunningly accomplished the leader is and the leader is so there is dual idealization and this is known as Co idealization that's stage number one stage number two involves othering alterity it's when the leader says you my base you're perfect and you're perfect largely because I'm perfect it it is my Perfection imuses you with
28:30 - 29:00 perfection my perfection ra radiates on you and renders you perfect okay but only you and I are perfect everyone else is imperfect and probably malevolently so everyone else is a threat everyone else is a risk so there is the this figure of the other and the other is not not so much a human figure it's it's more of an a set of abstract
29:00 - 29:30 principles so the other the other could be the Jews could be immigrants could be blacks could be women could be the other always embodies and Ries a set of abstract principles for and Abstract traits and behaviors for example the other may be lazy and prone to criminality or the other might be greedy
29:30 - 30:00 and antisocial or the other may be [ __ ] and manipulative and so there's this other the other of course becomes not only the enemy but an identity determinant because you define yourself as not being the other so if you're a follower of of a Le of this kind of leader you define yourself as a follower of a leader but at the same time you
30:00 - 30:30 also Define yourself as not the other like if you're a white supremacist you follow a leader and you follow the ideology and you identify with the ideology it constitutes a determinant and integral part of your identity but you're also not black a part of your identity is not being black so we call this negative identity for the next stage is
30:30 - 31:00 victimhood the F the famous sociologist U Bradley Campbell suggested that we have transitioned from the age of dignity to the age of victimhood everyone in his dog is a victim there's a serious shortage of abusers because everyone is a victim and now everyone is looking for abusers it's the scarcest rare earth resource uh there is so the minute you define yourself in contradistinction to the other the other
31:00 - 31:30 becomes a threat or at the very least a Potential Threat at that point you're a victim or at the very least a potential victim if things go out of hand or get out of hand you will be victimized so it's a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy and people adopt a victimhood mentality all the major autocratic regimes authoritarian regimes in human history were victimhood movements Nazism was a victimhood movement of
31:30 - 32:00 course Germany has been victimized in the Versa treaty and so on uh Donald Trump's movement trumpism is a victimhood movement the white the white male population has been victimized and Abandoned and neglected in globalization and so on you can't find actually even if you try very hard you cannot find a single exception all authoritarian movements are victimhood movements so then everyone acquires a victimhood
32:00 - 32:30 mentality and victimhood mentality induces in people a sense of urgency because if you're a victim there's paranoia paranoid ideation and if you don't emerge from this state of victimhood you're likely to go extinct so is there is a sense of Extinction imminent Extinction a magedon When Donald Trump talks to his base he keeps saying that the United States is ruined and destroyed and has
32:30 - 33:00 been betrayed and so on so forth and you know if nothing's done about it there will be no United States similarly he's telling zalinski that if zalinski doesn't hurry there will be no Ukraine the the M the moment of urgency and imminent or imminent even Extinction is a critical feature of authoritarian regimes it serves to motivate The Bays or the followers or the Believers if you
33:00 - 33:30 wish it's a religion on the one hand so it's a doomsday cult authoritarian regimes are death Cults they're doomsday cults essentially and then of course if you're about to go extinct and this might happen any moment now there's a sense of emergency or urgency and you're victim and so on you would need to sacrifice in order to emerge from this highly
33:30 - 34:00 threatening State a sacrifice is called for so all these regimes are sacrificial they couple sacrifice with hope it's as if the message is you're a victim you're about to be exterminated and annihilated and eradicated and obliterated now the only way to get out of this situation is for you to make sacrifices the sacrifice of course is you have to suspend your
34:00 - 34:30 disbelief you have to suspend your critical judgment and you have to suspend your identity this is the first sacrifice but additional sacrifices are called for including perhaps your your life so sacrifices I called for but if you were to sacrifice There's Hope like hope is coupled with sacrifice in a totally fantastic narrative in a par now during the Middle Ages there was
34:30 - 35:00 something called the morality play morality play involved an evil Wicked entity usually the devil and a totally good entity and they would Clash cosmically if you wish and then the good entity would win that's a morality play all authoritarian regimes are founded on a morality play the authoritarian leader is the embodiment and reification of good he's fighting evil Wicked
35:00 - 35:30 forces and he's calling on everyone to sacrifice in this holy holy war Jihad it's a Jihad so he's calling on everyone to sacrifice because only then there is hope I mentioned that the first sacrifice is self- suspension you are not allowed to think critically you're not allowed to have your own opinions you're not allowed to divate Conformity is the is the rule of the day
35:30 - 36:00 and so on so forth there is a resonance between the psychopathologies of the leader and the psychopathologies of the population authoritarian autocratic leaders don't rise just like that they cannot and never do impose themselves on a on a population that is otherwise inclined that's nonsense they absolutely reflect the population are driven by the
36:00 - 36:30 populace they are the culmination and reification of the electorate they are the people and they hold themselves to be the people so when you see Adolf Hitler and and Adolf Hitler is because the vast ma majority of Germans were Nazis and when you see Vladimir Putin is because 80 plus per of Russians love him love him to death to this very day and
36:30 - 37:00 if you see Donald Trump it's because Americans have always been Donald Trump having been exposed to Europe for a while they convince a small minority a small Elite convinced itself that Americans can become civilized they cannot we can discuss the foundation of America and I I can tell you a few things how I see it but I think Trump trump is the real
37:00 - 37:30 American not Barack Obama it is Donald Trump who is who is the quintessence of the United States in my view having lived there as well I lived in Russia I live in the states I've lived in 15 countries I I have firstand experience of all this and finally the autocratic or authoritarian leader is about destruction never ever about con Construction Construction building
37:30 - 38:00 something long-term establishment institutions they're boring they are impersonal they're imperfect they are prone to corruption and so building something is is pedestrian it's humdrum it's boring however destroying something is great fun in short autocratic leaders are highly entertaining their entertainment figures
38:00 - 38:30 even Adolf Hitler was a highly entertaining figure he was the first to make use of Technology such as a microphone or the airplane or the or television or radio because he was basically a prime rate Entertainer so they're all entertainers and they're entertainers who break things who destroy things spectacularly ostentatiously visibly and the first thing they destroy is the
38:30 - 39:00 prior the previous Elites so they're anti- elitist and anti-intellectual and anti- learning and anti- institutions they're anti they're defined by negation never positively they never build anything if you look at people like uh Adolf Hitler or or even people like Joseph Stalin and Mao and so on so forth people say Joseph Stalin he
39:00 - 39:30 he's the father of Soviet industry and the Soviet space program and Soviet nuclear weapons all these would have happened without Joseph Stalin Joseph Stalin probably has [ __ ] all these processes by decades similarly when people say but look at Elon Musk you know Space X and uh Tesla all these would have happened much faster and much better without Elon Musk just read the biography by isacon his
39:30 - 40:00 interference has delayed things has destroy he's a destroyer he's not a builder and so these are critical features of and then so this is the first stage the second stage is when people wake up they wake up usually because their interests are compromised poor people who voted to for Donald Trump are going to find that their Medicaid benefits are a c they're going to be very pissed off
40:00 - 40:30 they're going to begin to hate Trump they're going to begin to protest at that point the auto autocratic leader perceives it as betrayal initially the autocratic leader tries to explain the Betrayal um in an alloplastic way he says people are betraying me because they're being misled by Foreign forces by Foreign intervention or he says people are betraying me because um they've been corrupted by some other
40:30 - 41:00 politicians which I need to put in concentration camps hopefully and so so he's is but then at some point reality intrudes and there's no way to deny it anymore at which point he splits and he says I'm all good the people are all bad and I want them all dead which is exactly what happened with ma with Joseph with Adolf Hitler and will absolutely
41:00 - 41:30 happen with Donald Trump I have not beginning the slightest of a doubt at some point the people become the enemy because they fail to see the Fantastic uniqueness and the mystical Cosmic significance of the leader because they Rebel because they protest because they suddenly reacquire critical thinking because they disagree with the leader at that point they they become the enemy the leader becomes super hostile and
41:30 - 42:00 does not hesitate to try to kill you know millions and tens of millions if necessary Ma's cultural revolution is a perfect example of that when he developed the paranoid delusion that the Communist party that he has he has helped to establish has turned against him so what he did he recruited 19 and 20 years old college students does he sound familiar and he used these college
42:00 - 42:30 students to subdue and kill smug intellectuals and bureaucrats very reminiscent of Doge Elon musk's Doge Elon Musk doge is a reiteration or an iteration of the cultural revolution mous cultural revolution it ends super badly because the leader always comes to regard the people as truculent rebellious hateful Wicked evil and in
42:30 - 43:00 need of eradication Hitler's final wish was to destroy Germany on the 30th of April he made his will his final will and he gave instructions to destroy all the infrastructure of Germany and kill as many Germans as possible they've let him down yes I mean I'm rather Stark um is there anything else that you can tell
43:00 - 43:30 tell us about how things are likely to unfold I mean you've said before uh that these sort of people invariably end in Failure that they don't necessarily contain the ability to succeed and ultimately things fail is that something we can be hopeful about or will we suffer for that failure it sounds like we're going to suffer for that failure I think um a critical Luna critical misunderstanding even in in scholarly
43:30 - 44:00 literature is that the ethos of the autocratic leader is about destroying himself and everyone around him and the people at large in the world if possible in the planet it's a it's as I said a death C the the the culmination of the autocratic regime the the epitome the the apotheosis the the best thing that
44:00 - 44:30 can happen to an autocratic leader is the Twilight of the Gods the GTO demo it's the best thing that can happen like going out in a burst of destructive flame with everyone Dead everything destroyed A Wasteland Left Behind it's like if I Can't Live Forever then no one should live after me so the Twilight of the Gods Gods coupled with a betrayal drama have been
44:30 - 45:00 betrayed is is the reason is the is the reason for the for the autocratic regime it is the narrative that drives it forward inexorably it's it's a autocratic regime is a religion it's a it's it has a mythology it has her geography already Donald Trump is being compared to the second coming of Jesus Christ I'm kidding you know it has a a geography mythology personal mythology
45:00 - 45:30 of the leader it has temples it has rights and rituals it has it's a it's a religion it's a full-fledged religion but it is a religion that is evil by choice decadent nistic and it is performative it's a smoke and mirror thing it's a spectacle what deor G deor called the spectacle it's a spectacle it's a theater it's a it's political theater it's performative and so there is a a plot
45:30 - 46:00 there is a script there is a narrative a story line and the story story line always ends in this giant Devastation giant dis kind of mushroom Atomic mushroom if you wish of like everyone goes out in in Flames LED Again by the autocratic leader so as to your question it's not much a failure the autocratic leader drives
46:00 - 46:30 everything to this point autocratic leaders during their reign they amass fortunes they buque in the celebrity they but all the time they conspire and they act to undermine and Destroy Everything themselves included this is where it's all going this is this is is the the Crux and the gist and the justification of of this
46:30 - 47:00 theater production this is the story you know and so it's not so much that they're incapable of building and constructing and so on it's that destruction is so much more melodramatic so much more impressive um guarantees a place in history um attention and justifies or somehow sustains or butresses the leader's
47:00 - 47:30 feeling or sense of being a victim an inevitable ineluctable victim of betrayal these kind of leaders have been betrayed from Early Childhood they know to do only betrayal there was a famous uh British pediatrician turned psychoanalyst his name was Donald winot and Donald wiot started children who have been exposed to Early Childhood abuse and
47:30 - 48:00 Trauma and he found something so shocking that he the his his findings his Studies have been repressed for quite a while until the 70s actually he found that children who grow up grew up in a who grow up who have who have grown up in abusive traumatic environments love to be hated they absolutely reject and abhor any display of love and
48:00 - 48:30 intimacy they flourish and Thrive when they hated when they're feared when they're abused when they're ret traumatized they flourish they love it they seek it and this is exactly the psychology the toddler psychology of the autocratic leader he he FL this leader flourishes and thrives when he is under attack when he's hated when he's feared when everyone is trying to
48:30 - 49:00 destroy him when he's being when he's truly being victimized when he's you know then he then he feels in his element this is his comfort zone he doesn't know what to do with love or intimacy or long-term thinking or building something or creating institution he doesn't know what to do with any of this and so I think the inexorability of autocratic regimes the deterministic
49:00 - 49:30 fatalism is a major part of their attraction people are attracted to autocratic regime because they have become self-destructive there is a sense like life has become too much let's destroy absolutely everything and let's find the the right agent to do that so you see people in the United States selling celebrating the destruction of usaid literally
49:30 - 50:00 celebrating and egging egging Elon Musk on you know yeah go and Destroy even more go demolish devastate you know there is this sense that we're at a dead end uh things are really bad reality is totally unpalatable there's no way out there's no hope and so we best you know get it over with let
50:00 - 50:30 the other Sho drop let's let's ruin everything let's just ruin everything ourselves included that's a way out as well so and then people like Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler and Ma and Oban Victor Oban and erdogan and netan and these people come along and they play to this element this over overwhelming sensation of hopelessness and helplessness and they say you know what you may be hopeless in building things
50:30 - 51:00 you may be helpless when it comes to coping with reality but you are omnipotent when it comes to destruction anyone can destroy any child can destroy any child can push the nuclear button you know destruction is easy destruction is the great equalizer when you destroy you feel powerful you feel in charge you feel in control you feel that you are your own Master when you destroy when you
51:00 - 51:30 build you know the chance of failure is much higher you have to collaborate with other people it's a much longer process results are not guaranteed and so on so when people feel helpless and hopeless they default to destruction because destruction restores ironically their sense of potency control and power they are empowered by D ruction wow um Sam this is a extremely
51:30 - 52:00 comprehensive and a lot to digest and sounds to me that we're living in the area of a Nero or Caligula um I want to move on to what we might do about it um and quite specifically how should journalists reporters and analysts cover such leaders and these arguably but perhaps not unprecedented events we're faced with a I'm saying we
52:00 - 52:30 because I I used to be a journalist for 20 years and editor for another 10 and editor editor in Chie for 15 years so on multiple media online and offline so I'm well acquainted with the with the dilemmas of of covering events and so and so now I'm speaking as a journalist not as a you know professor of psychology so um we're faced with a major problem right now the first time in 250 years or
52:30 - 53:00 first time in 300 years actually we are not believed we're disbelieved we have what is called a credibility deficit and we all suffer from uh what is known in Psych in the philosophy of psychology as epistemic Injustice or epistemic injury in other words we know that we know we're trying to communicate the truth but we are shunned and and disbelieved and hated and rejected and
53:00 - 53:30 this this is injurious it's an injurious profession nowadays especially if you work in the mainstream media now I don't consider podcasters and the like uh to be journalist as you well know to be a journalist requires discipline it's a rigorous profession it's highly algorithmic you have to go through steps and stages and you have to be vetted multiple times by peers and superiors it's difficult difficult
53:30 - 54:00 job and yet uh we are disbelief since I mean we disbelief so everything and anything we do is I perceive it as a bit futile it's We are Becoming solipsistic in effect we're talking to ourselves like I may I may I may see a photo that you have taken it would move me in and on you may read some a column that I've written and similarly be moved
54:00 - 54:30 but it's very unlikely to exit our Circle it's very unlikely to influence a farmer in Idaho or a Russian nationalist in in Moscow very unlikely and so the first thing is how to take back how to reestablish the uh reestablish our credibility and I think to a large extent where it fall I think the media has been had the media
54:30 - 55:00 have been poit politicized I'm an Avid Reader of the New York Times for example but I know that even I have reached the conclusion that it is seriously biased I know not to resort to the New York Times when I want real information about Israel and don't misunderstand I'm a Critic of Israel I think horrendous war crimes have been committed in Gaza and elsewhere and so on so forth It's not
55:00 - 55:30 that I disagree with the view of the New York Times but I can immediately spot the bias and the and the um malpractice in effect so we are disbelieved because we've misbehaved and we've divided ourselves Fox News is rightwing New York Times is leftwing and you are extremely unlikely to find opposing views on either of them and so on so so I think the first thing is we need to to decide whether we are
55:30 - 56:00 conflictive or submissive if we are conf collectively if we are conflictive if the ethos is an ethos of conflict then we need to collaborate with networks of um whistleblowers Grassroots investigators which we tended to shun and hold in contempt erroneously we need in other words to begin to work work Grassroots up right now we are top down we are like
56:00 - 56:30 the the representatives of of the intellectual Elite we are filters we're membranes it's a wrong attitude it's not going to work anymore because we are totally disbelieved MSM is like dead and so what we need to do we need to start from scratch from zero we need to begin to collaborate with networks of regional and local wnab be investigative journalists we need to work with
56:30 - 57:00 whistleblowers much more much more so than we do we need actually to become the Hub The Hub of whistleblowing we so we need to start a revolution which is Grassroots esing and and forsaking our elitist um elitist kind of stature or posture which is led us nowhere except to alienate our readership and and viewership and you know so this is the conflictive potion
57:00 - 57:30 the other option is to be submissive collectively submissive that means we work only with insiders we purvey and and disseminate the official version We collude and collaborate with narratives that are you know and some media have decided to do that Fox News that I mentioned foolx news yeah and New York Times when when Obama was in
57:30 - 58:00 power so that's a first critical decision if we are conflictive we start from scratch we create networks grassroot networks whistleblowers and we start start from zero and we leverage all the digital media at our disposal we become if you wish glorified podcasters with a a lot more discipline and professionalism so that's option number one option number two is that we cow to
58:00 - 58:30 and we bend the knee and we collaborate with the and that would give us a list on on life of course so you collaborate with the regime the regime funnels advertising and everything to you one of the main instruments of autocratic regimes is advertising uh advertising budgets of governments are huge and in a small media Market it means life of death so if the government Cuts you off from for
58:30 - 59:00 example from auctions or tenders public tenders advertising for public tenders and so on you're dead as a medium so in small media markets I think only the submissive posture is is possible because also companies corporations in small media markets are afraid to advertise in opposition papers and opposition television networks you you see this you're seeing this in the United States which is a giant media Market where corporations are terrified
59:00 - 59:30 of Donald Trump the latest example is Facebook so you need to make this Choice the second thing is I think we have been confusing all of us may Kul all of us have been confusing for a very long time neutrality with objectivity you could be it's absolutely possible to be nonneutral
59:30 - 60:00 opinionated it's absolutely possible to support certain values and value systems and yet be objective it is possible absolutely possible um and I'm not talking about Gonzo journalism I'm not talking about a mixture of fiction and non-fiction your own personal biography I'm talking about you could visibly and clearly make uh make it known where you stand on certain
60:00 - 60:30 issues and yet acquire a reputation for objective reporting regrettably what has happened in in the media especially the Western media is that they started off by not being neutral by by exerting value judgments and then they felt the need to reframe new stories and so on so forth so as to support the their point of view so it
60:30 - 61:00 became a point of view journalism just seriously bad seriously bad because it's poic it's politicized it's wrong it's not journalism it's I I haven't seen journalism for a long time now by the way and that includes the likes of The Economist and so I haven't seen journalism BBC I mean don't get me started don't get me started we don't see we we haven't seen journalism I think since at the very
61:00 - 61:30 least um the late 1990s and in a world that is polarized and politicized and everyone you know and and very very belligerent and so on so forth there is a natural tendency to find shelter and Sanctuary among like your like-minded readers or viewers it feels more safe kind of more safe you know and also there's the fear of losing everyone like if you're objective you're
61:30 - 62:00 going to lose the right you're going to lose the left there's be no one no one you know so but it's not true in my view in my view if you're neutral if you are um objective and even if you're non-neutral this would have this would represent value added value people will gravitate towards something like that um neutral it neutrality is
62:00 - 62:30 immoral for example had you been neutral in Nazi Germany that would not have been an objective POS that would have been immoral similarly I consider it to be highly immoral to be neutral about Donald Trump a highly immoral stance you know you have to choose the truth at all times but when you choose the truth it means you're wedded you are beded to it wherever the evidence leads even if you don't like where it leads you're wedded
62:30 - 63:00 to it if I may give you an example we have still few two three minutes I'm I'm going on interviews here there and so one the last interview I've given on television a few days ago uh ended ended in a fracus there there was a big fight with the interviewer I left the studio don't ask and the reason was this they know that I'm a an opponent of
63:00 - 63:30 trump actually possibly the earliest ever I've I've given I've granted I granted an interview to American Thinker which is a conservative website in March 2016 it was before Donald Trump announced that he's running to be president before and I said this guy is a narcissist he's dangerous and he's going to win the elections it's a matter of public record by the way so I'm the first I'm the
63:30 - 64:00 prototypical anti-trump so everyone knows I'm against Donald Trump so they brought me to the studio and they asked what do you think about what he's doing with Ukraine I said I think it's very clever I think it's a brilliant move as far as real real politique because Russia is a natural Ally of the United States against China Russia and China are historical enemies they're historical enemies what are they doing here together the United
64:00 - 64:30 States has pushed them together bricks is an invention of the United States you know so I think it's brilliant what he's doing is putting is putting a wedge between China and Russia he's tempting he's seducing Russia away from China and yes he's sacrificing Ukraine and possibly Europe it's a new balance of power spheres of influence 19th century approach to
64:30 - 65:00 geopolitics but stupid it is not you may disagree you may agree you may but stupid it is not objectively speaking this is was exactly the vision of Kissinger who was far from stupid you know and all hell broke loose how did I dare to say something POS positive about Donald Trump you know and this is what I
65:00 - 65:30 mean I am not neutral Donald Trump is a menace Donald Trump is horrible I see equivalences between Donald Trump and Hitler too numerous to count and I think it should be taken down by almost all means possible there's no neutrality here but I attempt to be objective and what is doing with Ukraine can be pursued as a master stroke
65:30 - 66:00 actually kissra would have Egon would have said you're great it's great what you're doing you know that's an example I no I see I see that and I I agree with you entirely about um it is a master throat to attempt to attempt and and and and change the relationship between Russia and China I I appreciate that um obviously it's pretty uncomfortable to Europeans and even more so to ukrainians but um I wanted to end if I
66:00 - 66:30 may on what can we do people um those Europeans those ukrainians how do we weather this how do we um perhaps psychologically um manage our way through something like this if you look at history the much bigger sweep there's always an inherent conflict between the masses and the elites sometimes the masses Prevail sometimes the elites
66:30 - 67:00 Prevail now always when the masses Prevail they are led by Elites members of the elite Renegade Renegade members of the elite that has been true in the octob in the 1917 Revolution in Russia which was led by the intelligencia and not by the masses not by the proletariat but by the intelligencia basically that has been true in in China that's in MA time and so on so you have two types of elite
67:00 - 67:30 conforming Elites and then you have a long period of time where the elites establish self-serving institutions and basically hold the masses in contempt and you have Renegade members of the elite who have been rejected by the elite mocked and ridiculed by the elite or criticized by the elite or put put in prison by the elite and these Renegade members of the elite they team came up with the masses they lead the masses and there is an autocratic phase
67:30 - 68:00 authoritarian phase these are not these are forces of History they're akin to forces of nature you can go back as far as Assyria and Babylon you'll find the same scheme exactly the same scheme ancient Egypt the same scheme periods were isolated solipsistic um Elites her ically sealed from the masses operate and use the masses as slaves or
68:00 - 68:30 labor or consumers consumerism is a form of enslavement as well so the masses are like this faceless this faceless mob that supports the habits of the elite you have this and then the masses Rebel and they're led by Renegade members of the very same Elite and this ends up in huge destruction and Devastation and then the former Elites
68:30 - 69:00 take over again and they reconstruct they create from basically from scratch everything and new institutions and so on this has happened in the past 5,000 years written history so I don't see any way to oppose this each and every one of us on an individual basis should be I think brave enough courageous enough to fight back best of our ability but if you're talking about
69:00 - 69:30 about a collective effort this could be led only by counterveiling Elites and what has happened now is that the Renegade Elites are way too powerful um in in the October revolution in in Russia the elites were intelligencia the intelligencia intelligencia was not very powerful they didn't have money they didn't have you know and so seven years later they've been all abolished they've been all
69:30 - 70:00 executed and the the masses really took over same same happened in in China in the United States what is happening right now is that the Renegade Elites have succeeded to recruit a lot of money a lot of Technology a lot of power so it's going to be a much much longer process it's much more difficult to reverse because it's not only a few
70:00 - 70:30 Renegades and then you can get rid of them somehow put them in prison for example as Biden Tri to do to Donald Trump yeah put them in prison or something or assassinate them happens a lot but um there are too many confluent it's a collusion there are too many confluent interests here and this confluent interests are part and parcel an integral part of the very ethos of capitalism for example you cannot attack Silicon Valley because Silicon Valley is
70:30 - 71:00 capitalism so these Renegade Elites they are they carry they bear the torch of capitalism they are the new facee of capitalism so if you want to get get rid of these Elites and sulum them or replace them with New Elites you would need actually to get rid of capitalism which is exactly what Bernie Sanders is doing it's exactly the message of Bernie Sanders Benny s Sanders says look where capitalism has brought us we need to get
71:00 - 71:30 rid of whole edifice you know and so maybe one day America would become Sweden essentially a socialist country who likes to delude itself that it is capitalist so maybe come Sweden one day and then you'll have a new group of Elites and they will rule and they will hold the masses in contempt and they will ignore the masses they will sacrifice the interest of the masses the labor force will suffer and then there will be another rebellion and Renegade
71:30 - 72:00 members of the elite will take over and they will the name will not be trump it will be schm it doesn't matter it's the same story over and over and over again and there's very little you can do about it in my view Sam a final question um do you feel that journalists to be able to cope with this meet have a a better understanding of the psychologically behind it do you feel that um perhaps we should be looking at some sort of handbook for journalists to be able to communicate in
72:00 - 72:30 ways that communicate on these things better or do you think we're doing all right I think they're doing all right I journalists are sharp people Jour are very shock um the profession attracts people who are uncannily uncannily able to penetrate the psychology of others even without any without any formal education you know I found journalist to among the best psychologists interesting a journalist picks up on the narcissistic Vibes of uh
72:30 - 73:00 Donald Trump a journalist picks up on the utter Madhatter Insanity of Elon Musk any journalist does all journalists do only some of them think these are assets the the the debate is not about the mental health of Donald Trump and Elon Musk everyone agrees left right and Center that they are madters they're utterly
73:00 - 73:30 demented only the far right and even the right conservatives religious people and so they believe that these are assets they believe that they could leverage and harness this negative energy of insanity in order to get rid of the previous Elites The Establishment and the institutions they've created so they regard insanity is an asset when I'm online for example and I say Donald Trump is a narcissist people say yeah
73:30 - 74:00 that's why we elected him only a narcissist can cope with all this mess and only a psychopath can can cope with Putin know journalists struggle using labels um like the narcism label do you think we should use it more often yes of course there's nothing with naris nothing wrong with narcism label maybe you shouldn't say maybe you shouldn't say narciss because narcissist is a clinical entity but you could safely say
74:00 - 74:30 narcissistic um interesting to say that because you once told me that um uh you can be sure a person can be sure that they're victims of narcissistic abuse if they are victims of narcissistic abuse then that must happen from a narcissist must be coming from a narcissist so if what is happening to us as a society is narcissistic abuse which does sound like it perhaps Psychopathic abuse then we must be able to define the people delivering it as these personality disord people yes so you have thinkers
74:30 - 75:00 like ginger Koy and ginger Koy coined the phrase political narcissistic abuse and she believes it's coming from narcissist St to reison but you're most qualified to diagnose so that's why I suggest to use narcissistic rather than narcissist it has the same Force same power it's it's same same capacity to elucidate and Enlighten you and and so on so for it's more accurate there's no question no debate anywhere among anyone
75:00 - 75:30 that um that Trump is narcissistic take for example Elon Musk Elon Musk claims to have autism spectrum disorder he claims to be to what used to be called aspes disorder like any any true narcissist he diagnosed himself he didn't bother to go to any diagnostician he diagnosed himself the great Authority onsy pathology so Elon Musk diagnosed himself with ASP aspes and then everyone
75:30 - 76:00 immediately picked it up and now is known as an autistic person anyone in the field would immediately tell you that there's no hint of autism spectrum disorder in Elon musk's life biography Behavior speech Acts or whatever there's no hint of this there's no trace of it the man has nothing to do with autism spectrum disorder and yet people in the media call him uh an autist or someone with they
76:00 - 76:30 repeat this lie self- serving Lie by the way because what what what's the alternative the alternative is to say I'm a malignant narcissist that's not very you know so he said I'm not a malignant narcissist I'm simply being I'm misunderstood because I'm autistic I'm hurting people I'm hurting people I'm bullying people I am humiliating people but I'm doing all this because I'm autistic I don't know any better I am not God forbid a
76:30 - 77:00 malignant Mist who is doing this pleasurably with pleasure it's not I'm not sadistic and I can tell you perhaps I'm not an authority of on autism spectrum disorder but I'm definitely in authority on narcissis narcism pathological narcism and I can tell you with full Authority that Elon Musk is a malignant sadistic narcissist end of story no hint of autism definitely Donald Trump now I I was the
77:00 - 77:30 first to suggest that Donald Trump has narcissistic personality disorder but then I was joined by 100 of the leading psychiatrists in the United States so this seems to be pretty safe a pretty safe case Elon Musk is early days I am among the first to suggest that he has simply malignant sadistic narcissism the day will come a year from now that hundreds of psychiatrists would agree with me they would be saying the same but I don't think journalists
77:30 - 78:00 should do that a journalist may quote a psychologist or may refer to a psychologist the way you're doing right now but I don't think I don't think it's okay ethical or otherwise to to presume to diagnose people when you don't have the the least the least professional qualification to do to do so yes no that's that's helpful Sam I I understand that and the reason why I personally think the labels so important or these labels can be important is because along
78:00 - 78:30 with them goes a whole structure of behaviors that one might not actually see um we could see somebody project say um but we may not see the Envy or the jealousy that they may also contain we may not see that somebody might feel Godlike um we may we may not detect those things so so these labels do seem to be quite important um to understanding of of what's happening to us I encourage journalists to to work hand
78:30 - 79:00 inand on a on a regular basis with psychologist every time something happens pick up the phone talk to a psychologist publish the reaction so there are many instances where Donald Trump's virent umti in cious narcissism is on clear display and any psychologist would it so simply was psychologist it would also lend credibility to your writing you know and um similarly with
79:00 - 79:30 with Elon musk's uh narcissism and other people's psychopathy and and so there are there's like hundreds of thousands of psychologists they all would be delighted to be quoted yes have 15 minutes of fame you know and I think we should we should lend credibility to our writing by resorting to professionals you know Sam I'm incred be grateful for your time in helping us understand this but it does does sound quite
79:30 - 80:00 cataclysmic what phase you know what let's end on an optimistic note it's a phase it's going to end with absolute certainty it's going to end unfortunately it's going to end with the self-destruction of the autocratic leader and the destruction of many people around the autocratic leader see for example Vladimir Putin yeah so it always ends this way it's going to end and it's going to be followed by a more liberal Progressive Democratic phase and it's going to be led by more
80:00 - 80:30 benign Elites and institutions will be reestablished the Nations will heal everything will be okay that's an absolute certainty the problem is actually I'm much more worried not about autocratic leaders authoritarian leaders because they're transan phenomenon there are symptoms of a Malay or a disease of the population that elect Hitler was elected legally lawfully elected
80:30 - 81:00 absolutely four times voted into office four times I mean so the problem is with the population not with the leaders um what I'm really worried about if you ask me what is what happens after Donald Trump is gone is gone trumpism is dead in the water and the shambles of the United States are out there ready for reconstruction like after the Civil War and so on I'm afraid that the New Elites
81:00 - 81:30 will be as insulated as contemptuous as detached as disempathetic is this fundamentally then about the relationship between the personality
81:30 - 82:00 disordered and the rest of us and the inability of the rest of us to manage or perhaps even really understand uh this minority of people and cope with them is there any way that you can foresee that we may change that or are we destined to have this cycle go on forever destined and there was um a guy by the name of sander in 1989 he came up with the concept of shared fantasy m i expanded his work and applied it to pathological
82:00 - 82:30 narcissism but he he deserves credit not me and the shared fantasy is simply a paracosm it's an alternative reality where you're safe Your Dreams May Come True There's Hope um you are not accountable because all responsibilities and all decision making has been relegated to the to the leader so you don't feel accountable you never feel guilty you
82:30 - 83:00 never feel ashamed because you've never you never make a single decision or a single choice you feel safe in short it's very reminiscent of the womb it's a womb like situation it's uterine it's like a matrix so you are babified you're infantilized the autocratic leader comes to you and says listen having to make decisions having to make choices having to Bear
83:00 - 83:30 responsibility having to feel guilty having to feel having to feel ashamed having to make mistakes why do you need all this let me take it away from you and you don't need to think you entertain yourself have fun know that you're safe this is very reminiscent of the embryo in a womb or the newborn baby with a mother this is the shared fantasy it is overpowering it it is the
83:30 - 84:00 ultimate solution in times of uncertainty indeterminacy in times where everything is shaking when nothing is safe nothing is certain where the future appears to be dystopian and threatening menacing then the Shar fantasy has amazing power magnetic power it's irresistible becomes irresistible and don't think that you
84:00 - 84:30 and I um are resistant to it because in many ways we also embedded in shared fantasies shared fantasy seems to be the organizing principle of modernity and postmodernity only there are shared fantasies which are vile and wicked and harmful to others and so on shared fantasies which are exclusionary and xenophobic and racist and misogynistic
84:30 - 85:00 and homophobic and you name it you have these kind of shared fantasies and you have shared fantasies That masquerade as benign and I'm saying masquerade because anytime you divorce reality it's a pathology it's never benign communism was an example of a shared fantasy that appeared to be benign and has misled many intellectuals in the first decade of the USSR yeah Western intellectuals so communism is such an example but liberal democracy is
85:00 - 85:30 another liberal democracy is a sh fantasy it appears to be benign I'm not quite sure democracy for example may be a seriously flawed idea a really really bad idea one vote for one person if we are truthful and objective about it the democracy always leads to Devastation democracy has led to Adolf
85:30 - 86:00 Hitler democracy has led to Donald Trump democracy leads to bad places with bad people maybe we should review it a bit more objectively maybe we should go back to a type of democracy where the voters have skin in the game they have wealth they're educated they know the issues they spend some some time obligatory time to study and so on I mean maybe we should redesign democracy
86:00 - 86:30 that we accept democracy as it is and defend it vociferously and vehemently is a sign of pathology um is there some hope though Sam um and I I this is my final question but it's I'm getting such good answers I can't stop myself um but um Hitler and musolini never got on uh Germany in the Second World War never really engaged with the Japanese empire and perhaps those things may have undermined their
86:30 - 87:00 ability to have won those Wars um autocrats don't get on with each other is there you know for example people are always talking about um when Trump and musk might have a fight is it inevitable that they will fight that these things will fall apart and they're incapable of really managing relationships between each other well just historical correction Hitler and musolini actually did get along very well but it's true that Hitler and and Japan did not get along um and musk is not the equivalent
87:00 - 87:30 of trump he's not as equipotent As Trump trump Trum Trump can eliminate musk overnight in every possible way by the way confiscatory he could he could confiscate his wealth there's a way always if you really want if you really want to if you're so inclined he can destroy musk overnight like this musk knows it on the other hand musk is a useful idiot Trump is using him as a battering ram to
87:30 - 88:00 destroy the federal government institutions and establishments that may endanger his future regime future dictatorial regime for anyone who has any doubts so musk is useful it's he's a tool I wouldn't compare him to the relationship between musolini and Hitler um but autocrats autocrats by and large actually do get along very well there was a period of collaboration between Hitler and Stalin Hitler andini
88:00 - 88:30 had a good relationships to the very end to 1943 when musolini lost for the first time lost his regime and Hitler sent forces with scoten to kind of restore musolini um there was a collaboration between Japan and and Germany to the extent that Germany declared war on the United States in the wake of Pearl Harbor which it didn't have to do was very stupid as well yeah um and so on and so forth exactly as liberal
88:30 - 89:00 democracies flock together and the leaders of liberal democracies collaborate and you know this same applies to the autocratic clubs or the authoritarian clubs I I would be to differ I think they actually work well together they're not effic perhaps that's what you mean they're not efficacious in the sense that sooner or later everything falls apart they never succeed they it's like at the end they they're total losers all autocratic leaders not a single exception are
89:00 - 89:30 losers either because they have brought destruction and Devastation on their own domain or because they could have done a hell of a lot better so I mentioned Elon Musk for example if you read the biography by Isaacson it's so clear that Elon musk's totally unnecessary and often erroneous interventions pretending to be a genius have actually obstructed the
89:30 - 90:00 development of the products the engineers had to cope with his idiocy blatant idiocy the man is an idiot by the way in my view and I'm talking psychologically I think he's a stupid man but they had to cope with this and they had to and this [ __ ] the process of development and so on so Elon Musk has accomplished things but he could have accomplished a hell of a lot more had he not been a narcissist or or a sadist you know so
90:00 - 90:30 either way um they end badly either and mark my words I'll make a prediction you know only fools make predictions according to the tud and I've been known to be a full time and again uh Elon Musk will end his life penniless I hope not homeless I I believe that he will not be homeless but he will be penniless mark my words it sounds bizarre but let's see if we both
90:30 - 91:00 alive in 10 years time in 10 years time in a homeless shelter Elon Musk is on the way to utter self immolation and self-implosion like all narcissists and Psychopaths no exception um Sam I'm incredibly grateful for your time thank you very much thank you for having me um and um I'll I'll stop recording now then yes but we need to talk for a minute or
91:00 - 91:30 two yeah