The Psychotic Roots of Leftism

by Tim Haydon.

‘Communistic or Socialistic democracy is an upheaval of the unfit against attempts at order’

– Carl Jung

Perhaps the greatest masterstroke of leftist intellectuals post war was the publication in 1950 or thereabouts of the classic, powerfully influential ‘The Authoritarian Personality’ by Theodor Adorno and others of the ‘Frankfurt School’, then relocated to California.

This work solved a problem for the left. It was after all right wing, ‘racists’ and ‘fascists’ like Churchill and  imperialist Britain  which in the end  had stood alone against Nazi Germany, joined later by the distinctly non-leftist USA. The Left in the shape of Stalin’s Soviet Union on the other hand had allied itself with Hitler.

What to do?  Fortunately, a solution presented itself when the activities of the Nazi concentration camps were revealed in their full horror, unaccompanied by similar revelations of the vast murder machinery of the Soviets.  Conveniently forgetting that Stalin was at least as murderously anti- semitic as was Hitler, the story could then be told by the (mostly Jewish) intellectuals of the Frankfurt School and elsewhere, naturally anxious that the  Nazi mass murders, specifically of Jews  should not be repeated, that the war had been fought in aid of the Jews. That is why we have a ‘Holocaust‘  memorial day today but no corresponding ‘Gulag’ Day.

‘The Authoritarian Personality’, an attempt at synthesising Marx and Freudian  psychoanalysis,+ successfully demonised all people with right wing views as little Hitlers to a lesser or greater degree.  These people, it argued, suffered from neuroses and needed a firm hand, a father figure, to keep their repressed and chaotic urges under control. They inflicted these neuroses on the world around them. The demand for sexual realism had fuelled the Russian People’s revolt against the Russian autocracy of Church and Tsar in 1917.  Now, the refusal of right wingers to accept this realism would prove its undoing.

Unfortunately for Leftism and for ‘The Authoritarian Personality’, the twin pillars on which the latter stands, Marx and Freud, have both been largely demolished. Key features of the Marxist analysis have been undermined to destruction point by later thinkers and the unfolding of history. Freudian psychoanalysis, although it has some genuine insights, has in general  also been debunked as pretty much mumbo-jumbo, mere unscientific speculation, by real scientists led by Hans Eysenck. (See eg his ‘The Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire’).  Eysenck, one of the leading psychologists of the twentieth century, was the founder of the ‘London School’ of Psychology.

The influence of ‘The Authoritarian Personality’ and associated thinkers, however, continues in too many of our academic sociology departments and so in wider society, regardless of its extremely shaky premises. It is itself a rationalisation of left-wing prejudices. As Rothman and Richter pointed out in their critique (S.Rothman and S R Richter: Roots of Radicalism; Jews, Christians and the New Left. New York; Oxford University Press, 1982 pp 50-52), this was a study intended to confirm the preconceptions of its authors.  But it has been far too useful for leftists anxious to promote their own prejudiced agenda as ‘scientific’. So  much for leftist sociology.

As a result of this pernicious stream of thinking, right wing views, in the main the refined products of many centuries of human experience and trial and error and the very foundations of normal, healthy civilised life, have been denigrated as pathological. They arise, it was argued (by Erich Fromm, inter alia), from mental dysfunction centred on the ‘patriarchal’ family, which has been demonised as the breeding ground of authoritarianism and ‘fascism’. In particular the close attachments between parents and children (called ‘love’ and ‘respect’ by normal, balanced people) are ‘unhealthy’ and lead to ‘fascism’.  The traditional values of morality and religion encapsulated in and passed down the generations by the family require psychological reorientation because they are again symptoms of latent ‘fascism’.

A ‘therapeutic state’ based on Freudian / Marxist doctrines and involving the destruction of the family is required to ‘cure’ people of their neuroses through state policies and bring them to …..what?  Why, to Leftist values, naturally, which, Leftist thinkers tried to show, were normal; freeing the individual from the repression that causes neuroses. The Marxist state would fill the void left by the exit of parents and would command total emotional dependency beyond the merely political.

What a convenient ideology this is for those who long to control others, to boss them about for their own good!  And those who espouse these coldly inhuman doctrines think they are ‘anti-fascist’! Truly, the stupid capacity of some even highly intelligent people for self-deception is breathtaking. 

Whatever the alleged failings of the Right, however, they are eclipsed by the sheer nastiness and hypocrisy of those of the Left, which uses the cloak of caring for humanity as a shelter for the acting out of ugly personality traits.  Whilst professing love for all, Leftists tend to care little for those around them. It’s love in theory, not in practice.  As Vanessa Redgrave is quoted as saying;

‘My paradox is that though I care a great deal for the masses –the orphans of Vietnam, the starving of India –I seem to care little about the individuals around me. I’ve resisted the accusation. But, quite bluntly, it’s me.’

Redgrave is following in the well-worn footsteps of the father of modern Liberalism, Rousseau, who  ‘first combined that burning and sincere love of all the people in general with a thorough-going detestation of all human beings in the particular’ ( Dr David Burchell, The Australian, 14/ 09/ 2009).

 In his book, ‘The Psychotic Left’, Kerry Bolton argues that Leftism is a psychological aberration. Leftists share the same motivation as mass murderers, rapists and thieves. Across the centuries ‘from Jacobin France to the occupy movement’ certain common personality traits, specifically sociopathology and narcissism persist as constants.

In pursuit of the thesis that Leftism has provided an outlet and intellectual cover or rationalisation for behaviour which in other circumstances would be regarded as at best delinquent and at worst the murderous work of criminal psychopaths, Bolton gives us eye-popping psychological analyses of  the leaders of modern leftist thought, based on their own view of themselves, the views of people who knew them and their recorded thoughts and actions.

The father of modern liberalism, Rousseau was, we find, a utterly vain, preening, super-sensitive passive –aggressive narcissist wholly wrapped up in himself.  Karl Marx, who was dismissive of his own family, had a narcissistic personality disorder which saw him incapable of feeling for others.  He could write of the death of his wife’s uncle from whom he hoped to acquire some money, ‘Yesterday we were informed of a very happy event.’  As he wrote in a poem, his aim for humanity was ‘To clench and crush you with tempestuous force.’ Bolton remarks that ‘Marx’s ideological rationalisations for this destructive compulsion were manifested several decades after his death in the form of Bolshevism’.

Trotsky’s psychological traits were those of narcissistic personality disorder characterised by arrogance, conceit, exploiting others for personal gain, and a self-image of superiority. Lenin was treated for neurosyphilis and had brain abnormalities. He showed no interest in ‘the people’ until his revolutionary brother was executed, when he exhibited post traumatic stress disorder and post traumatic embitterment disorder; a persistent state. When it is most intense the latter can become pathological. It is characterised by feelings of hatred, anger and revenge and can lead to devastating social and occupational impairment.

Mao possessed the traits of sociopathy from his youth. He wrote then, ‘People like me only have a duty to ourselves; we have no duty to other people.’ Could anything be clearer?  Like Napoleon, he was interested only in power.  He did not believe in anything unless he could benefit from it personally. Thus he cared nothing for the future, because he would not be in it.  He made no pretence at all as to idealism and concern for future generations. That facade would come on a colossal scale with his leadership of the Communist Party and of China.

And so it goes.  The New Left was ‘a post-pubescent generation having a temper tantrum at their parents and like the Old Left was rationalised with an ideological façade.’ Typical of teenagers struggling with maturity, the New Left focused on two main concerns;

1. An adolescent tantrum to show one’s independence from parental authority which was rationalised. generalised and redirected into the ’white male middle class Establishment. It was therefore like many who have turned to Old and New Left, indirect aggression against one’s parents.

2. Typical adolescent attitudes towards sex, intellectualised as an ‘ideology’ of ‘sexual liberation’ which usually meant the freedom of males to prey upon the females in the ‘movement’ in the name of repudiating middle class sexual morality.

Where ‘liberation’ from middle class sexual morality can lead is illustrated by the figure of Alan Ginsburg. Ginsburg was as a child subjected to the sight of his schizophrenic, communist mother, naked except for a bloody menstrual pad, doing chores around the house.   A psychiatrist, Dr Elan Jung writing of this says, ‘Because of this exposure, there can be no doubt the young Allen Ginsburg was deeply affected ad clearly suffered from a very straightforward and direct form of sexual trauma.’ (K Eland Jung. Sexual Trauma, etc. New York; Hudson Press 2010)

Ginsburg was one of those ‘progressives’ from the 1970’s and earlier who were responsible for the intellectualisation of paedophilia. He was the founder of the Beatnik and Hippie subcultures. Ginsburg continues to influence pop culture. The feminist theorist Camille Paglia writes (The Purity of Allen Ginsburg’s Boy-Love. Salon, 15 April 1997) that ‘through his influence on Bob Dylan who in turn influenced the Beatles, Ginsburg revolutionised rock lyrics and directly influenced the thinking of young people around the world.’ Ginsburg’s poetry celebrated ‘Man  -Boy love’. Thus

‘Some think the love of boys is wicked in the world, forlorn

Character –corrupting, worthy mankind’s  scorn’,

Etc.

Ginsburg joined the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) as a logical expression of his New Left commitment to ‘freedom’. We can see echoes of all this in the Jimmy Savile and other on-going such scandals at the present. The BBC of course, stuffed with New Left radicals, is  full of such attitudes.

The psychotic far leftist of the 1970’s actually went on to venerate madness. The mad were the shock troops against the oppression of bourgeois authority of Western Doctors and Drug Companies. One such, the author of  ‘The Death of the Family’ actually collapsed into schizophrenia shortly after completing this diatribe against psychiatry and had to be iooked after by –yes –his family.

Bolton concludes ‘The Psychotic Left with these remarks:

‘Leftist ideology has been formulated by those who project their own personal, often family angst upon entire nations and civilisations, in a conflict that seems akin to the oedipal, transferred from parental authority to government authority. The motive, however rationalised is not to correct injustices but to destroy, What is notable about the dominant ideologies whether of the Old, New or Next Left, is that they seek above all else to destroy traditional human bonds cultivated over the course of centuries in swift tumults that take no account of human suffering but are unleashed with the utmost fury in the name of entirely abstract conception of ‘humanity.’

The Psychotic Left (Black House Publishing) has a forward by the psychologist Chris Brand and a blurb by Prof.Kevin Macdonald. It is a book that cried out to be written. Kerry Bolton who has performed this service brilliantly is qualified in psychology and has doctorates in theology and a PhD honoris causa.