Psychopathy in politics: callous indifference versus deliberate harm (2)

It's difficult for most right-minded people to think that their government (outside of war) is capable to deliberately seeking to harm people. But when the evidence smacks you right in the face, it's hard not to notice.
In in article some months back, this author wrote about how government actions can be driven by a desire to achieve goals, regardless of the wider cost to society. As alluded to in that article, this kind of "callous indifference", in its most inhumane form, can take the form of a dictator (such as Stalin) wiping out his opponents through willful mass starvation - the brutal logical conclusion of "the ends justify the means".
At a different level of indifference, the government of Theresa May created the "hostile environment", which has destroyed the livelihoods and quality of life of many British people (such as those married to non-EU citizens) and naturalized British citizens (such as the "Windrush" generation, and others). At the same time, the continuation of the "austerity" agenda has destroyed the livelihoods and quality of life of many disabled people in Britain in particular, as well as creating an antagonistic atmosphere in society towards those claiming welfare in general. The antagonostic atmosphere of the "hostile environment" also creates a situation where landlords are implicitly given a free pass to fall back on their prejudices to deny tenancy rights to any foreigner they are suspicious of.
This could all be documented under a policy of institutional "callous indifference". However, the British government is also guilty of going deliberately out of its way to make life almost impossible for many asylum seekers.

This is the sharp end of the "hostile environment", where indifference to harm transforms into active facilitation of harm to people. The highlighted link above explains how the British government makes an active policy of appealing against court decisions to grant asylum, even when the vast majority of those appeals fail. In other words, the government has a policy of denying basic rights to asylum seekers that have already been legally granted by its own courts. What's all the more extraordinary about this is that the government is wasting public money pursuing hopeless appeals, whose only function is to deny rights (that have already been legally-granted) to asylum seekers, and to prolong their misery.
Put into context, not only is this abusing the rights of legal asylum seekers, it is also misusing public funds in order to do so. As the government-sanctioned appeals simply stretch out the amount of time that asylum seekers are unable to receive government support (or the right to any kind of humane existence), this is not about "callous indifference" to harm, but active pursuance of harm towards asylum seekers. This is the logical conclusion of creating a "hostile environment": implementing a policy that actively seeks to make people's lives miserable, even those who are legally-entitled to (and ought to expect) humanitarian support from the state.
The fact that the government are effectively misusing taxpayers money to achieve this travesty is all the more sickening: taxpayers are subsidizing the active mistreatment of asylum seekers in the UK. The policy of the government to pursue appeals against granting asylum when there is no real evidence to support them is, almost by definition, an act of irrational institutional sadism. It is wasting public funds to be cruel for the sake of being cruel.

The term "hostile environment", by its very meaning, has malevolent overtones. To be "hostile" to people is to be threatening and to wish them ill. The "hostile environment" that the British government has created towards asylum seekers is one where their existence in the UK seems to be deliberately made as unpleasant as humanly possible, short of actually building internment camps for them (the UK already has some notorious "detention centres", ran by private contractors who are given more-or-less free reign, with little effective government oversight. The public prisons are, not surprisingly, in a similarly anarchic state).
To play devil's advocate, I suppose an argument could be made to compare it to the treatment of the French authorities, which generally create an environment where asylum seekers are left in a kind of neglectful indifference (and any camps are eventually disbanded by the authorities). In that narrow sense, could Britain's "hostile environment" be argued to be more "humane" than just letting asylum seekers live in camps in the British countryside, until they dispersed of their own accord, as seems to happen in France? This is still doubtful logic, as the "hostile environment" in Britain functions in much the same way as it would in France: in France it is administrative bureaucracy that encourages asylum seekers to migrate to the UK; when in the UK is it the "hostile environment" that creates a kind of Kafkaesque nightmare for them instead. There are no disorganized camps like in France, but UK policy turns asylum seekers into housebound paupers (if they are lucky), and has numerous "detention centres". Then there are those that disappear into the black economy as a result of all this.


A "compliant environment"

The term "hostile environment" has been replaced by "compliant environment", though few would appear to be fooled. "Compliance" is another term bathed in banal, institutional syntax, but describe actions that make pursuing cruelty active government policy. The policy hasn't changed; only its presentation has.
The term "compliant" follows from the notion that those who comply with the rules have nothing to fear; except that all the evidence has now shown that the government actively seeks to persecute asylum seekers who have already been proven in law to require humanitarian protection by the British government. It is the government who are failing to comply with their own "compliant environment". And going back to the case of the "Windrush" generation, these include people whose own documents have been confiscated by the government, either through gross negligence or callous indifference; documents that proved their legal rights. Again, the government show how they cannot be trusted to follow their own rules. It is those that are most vulnerable in society in this case who are the most likely to suffer; their rights taken away from them for the sin of choosing to take officialdom at its word.

The sense of betrayal, at discovering that the high moral regard that the British government is based on is really an illusion, must be strong with those who have suffered as a result of this. It is like if you discovered that your father, who had raised you and you trusted implicitly for years, is actually a monster. With the government, it is a case of: do as I say, not as I do.
Presiding over all this is Theresa May. Those who support her say that, in close quarters, she is kind-hearted and warm. This may be true, but her supporters also seem blind to the more realistic view that May is kind-hearted and warm to people she likes and understands; there is far more evidence to suggest that, outside of her narrow social circle, she deals with issues in a far more mean-spirited and narrow-minded way.
This may well come from her parochial and socially-conservative upbringing, which means she struggles to humanly relate to those outside of her own background, and is temperamentally resistant to change. When turned into an "ideology" or government strategy, the result is the "hostile environment"; in a sense, an instrument of May's own inner psychology. Her officials are meant to apply the rules as set out by her. The "Cool Britannia" of twenty years ago has turned into "Cruel Britannia" under Theresa May.
The moral hypocrisy of Theresa May and her government is what really stands out in this "do as I say, not as I do" philosophy. As an ostensibly religious person, it's hard to fathom how she squares her Christian morality with her government's treatment of asylum seekers, the "Windrush" generation, and the most vulnerable in society in general. The "hostile environment" is an immoral policy, reeking in antipathy, and used in a way that deliberately harms people.
And yet Theresa May is still a church-going, seemingly moralistic person (or claims to be). Ignorance cannot be an excuse, as the real-world results of her government's policy have been known for a long time. It is much more likely about cynical political calculation, as that has been her strategy ever since she arrived at the Home Office (these kinds of stories go down well with the party grassroots, as they make her look resolute on immigration). Besides, who cares about the suffering of those who cannot vote and have no voice? It's already been made clear that she doesn't care about the fate of even her own citizens, if they have opinions and lifestyles that are different from her, so making some "third world" foreigners suffer just for the sake of it would be even easier to sanction.

While the treatment of the "Windrush" generation could be called a policy of "callous indifference", for the government to misuse public funds to actively make asylum seekers' lives intolerable is nothing less than sadistic.

Ideology and psychology: Libertarian motivation, right-wing thinking and historic comparison

The link between psychology and ideology is something that cannot be underestimated in terms of its human impact, as politics is about human decisions; flawed psychology leads to flawed decision-making.
This author has written before about the disturbing links between sociopathy and political advancement. The world of politics attracts those who seek either amoral self-advancement, or those who wish to expunge their own psychological insecurities by imposing their own twisted world-view on the rest of society.

In the UK, the issue of Britain's membership of the EU was at one time something of an obsession with "cranks". Nowadays, those one-time "cranks" are in the position of holding the government "hostage", ensuring that their vision of Britain outside the EU is enacted in full.

Who are these people? What are their backgrounds and motivations? Looking at some of the more high-profile of the "Brexiteers" in more detail, a few common themes appear.
First of all, there is the fairly obvious issue that the large majority of those in favour "Hard Brexit" are Libertarians. Brexit has always been a Libertarian project at its heart, going back thirty years. It should be asked how many of the electorate would call themselves "Libertarians": 20%, if not even less than that?
The Libertarian mindset is one of strongly individualistic, anti-government (and psychologically anti-social) motivations. It is vigorously anti-Communist, against any use of government power outside of the bare minimum. This is the reason for the Libertarian sense of historic "betrayal" by the EU. As they thought in entering the EU they were entering the world's largest free trade zone, the resulting regulations and rules that then went with that, along with "ever closer union", they saw as a personal affront to Libertarian "freedom".
When a Libertarian talks of "freedom", they are talking about economic "laissez-faire" freedom: the freedom from government rules, and the freedom to trade and make money without rules. Thus the EU, in needing to have rules in order to create a "level playing field" within the single market, becomes the Libertarians' enemy. While to an objective observer, rules and regulations can be seen to have a common-sense application when dealing with a open border economy involving dozens of countries, to a Libertarian, these rules and regulations become something more sinister: a threat to the Libertarian's "freedom".

In this way, Libertarians have a highly-concrete (and personal) sense of their own individuality and "freedom", where anything that reduces their ability to act as they wish is seen as a threat to themselves personally. This explains how "Brexiteers" respond to any attempt on compromise over Brexit as anathema: having invested so much of their own time and careers to it, they "internalize" their ideology, calling those who call for compromise as "appeasers" or "saboteurs".
This violent rhetoric partially may come from the psychology innate in Libertarian thought itself, which with its strongly individualist themes also encourages an inherently aggressive, masculine world-view. This testosterone-fueled culture that comes from Libertarian thought has pervaded Western thinking, particularly in the dog-eat-dog world of the "Anglo-sphere", where inequality is seen not only as inevitable but actually a positive thing for society, and where personal "drive" is what matters in life, rather than your social background. In this way, poverty is seen as the result of personal failings rather than the result of wider injustice in society. Such a stark, unforgiving moral universe has uncomfortable parallels with even more extreme right-wing ideologies.


Where the "military" and the "diaspora" meet

A closer break-down of the people advocating Brexit reveals yet more curiosities.
Apart from the shared ideology of Libertarianism, a disproportionate number of "Brexiteers" come from military backgrounds: people like (former ministers) Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis and Steve Baker have all had military careers of one sort or another, while some other "Brexiteers" (such as current minister Penny Mordaunt) have military connections through their parents.
A disproportionate number of "Brexiteers" are also what might be called part of the historic white British "diaspora": people who were either born and raised outside the UK (but also outside Europe), or have spent part of their time growing up abroad, or spent a significant part of their adult life abroad. Prominent examples include Boris Johnson (born in New York), Douglas Carswell (born and raised in Africa), Daniel Hannan (born in Peru), Arron Banks (who has significant interests in South Africa), and others.
Lastly, there is yet another disproportionately-represented segment within the "Brexiteers": those of non-white background who are also "products of empire" like some of the white British "diaspora" already mentioned. The significant trio of Sajid Javid, Priti Patel and Suella Fernandes stand out here: all three are Libertarians, of South Asian heritage, and from different parts of the former colonies - Pakistan, Uganda, and Kenya-India respectively. These people are either ministers, former ministers, or powerful personages within the "Brexiteer" side of the Conservative Party.

What this all adds up to is a revealing character portrait of the motivations and backgrounds behind "Brexit". In short, what it tells us is that disproportionate numbers of Libertarians are former-military and/or legacy products (i.e. children) of the "empire".
Should this be surprising? Probably not, but being able to look at the cold, hard facts in this way certainly brings a fresh perspective on the whole "Brexit Agenda". It has been said that "Brexit" is really about creating "Empire 2.0": the "colonial" background of some of the key people involved lends itself to the view that they indeed wish to leave the EU in order to establish a kind of "Commonwealth-with-bells-on". Theresa May's current traipsing around Africa seems to support that viewpoint.

More generally, it might also be guessed that the "colonial" and military background to many of these people would skew their own view of how they see the world and Britain itself. Military people always have tended to be more nationalistic, arguably seeing their nation in a far more emotional (and personal) way than the ordinary person. Equally, those with a "colonial" background may well tend to see Britain through the eyes of mythology: their own distant upbringing taking the rhetoric of Britain as a "sceptred isle", a bastion of civilisation, all too literally, lacking the perspective that close experience of a country creates. In this way, in having a narrow (even disconnected) experience of "real" Britain, they have fallen for their own propaganda.
From a psychological point of view, they therefore invest personally in believing in Britain's unique status, becoming staunch defenders of its freedoms while ignoring its many flaws; and when they see the EU, they see an institution that threatens their own sense of Britain's mythology. As a result, they lash out at anything and anyone that threatens to destroy their own carefully-formed (and insecure) version of the world. "Brexit" therefore is about creating the Britain of Libertarians' own mythology.
The end result is that their view of Britain's place in the world is through the lens of its former imperial status and its status as a military power; by contrast, Britain's physical proximity to Europe they see more as a threat than an opportunity, skewed through the prejudice of two World Wars.

This mythology of Britain is what Libertarians are obsessed with; their own prejudice against Europe comes from their own personal background, equating EU bureaucracy with the slippery slope to Communist oppression and/or dictatorial autocracy that they may have heard about or experienced abroad. Thus they react to EU regulations as though they were the same as Soviet oppression or totalitarian methods of control. The rose-tinted perspective that many Libertarians have of the "colonies" from their parents' stories thus lead them into (masculine) fantasies about restoring British power and prestige, fueled by their own sense of having something to prove.


German parallels

This isn't the first time that ideology and a nation's fate has been guided by the fantasies and prejudice of an alliance of ex-military and "diaspora" ideologues.
Where there are "cranks" that are today Libertarians guiding Britain down an unknown and unstable path, a hundred years ago in Germany, "cranks" of a different kind were also fighting against the spread of Communism in Europe.
By 1919, Germany was in a state of institutional flux, with a weak centre of power in the aftermath of the First World War. Into the void stepped an alliance of ex-military "Freikorps"; right-wing nationalists who sought someone to blame for the mess. They then gained the trust of the German "diaspora" of the (former) Russian Empire, who began to flee from the Russian civil war to Germany: these were people of aristocratic stock (known as "Baltic Germans"), whose heritage went back centuries, to the time when Germans - then called the "Teutonic Knights" - ruled over vast tracts of the Eastern Baltic. These "Baltic Germans" were ardently anti-Communist, and had their own rose-tinted views of what Germany could look like if it were able to take advantage of the opportunity in the east and recapture its "lost lands" in the Baltic.
Into this mix was added their own prejudice. The "Baltic Germans" anti-Communism was also influenced by one of the most influential of their kin: Fyodor Vinberg. Under his tutelage, the Baltic Germans were able to influence a large part of the "Freikorps" into believing Communism was also part of a larger Jewish plot to take over the world. Thus Anti-Semitism became established in right-wing circles of German society thanks to the German "diaspora"; one of those listening was Adolf Hitler. The extreme views of those Baltic Germans went on to feature in "Mein Kampf".

Extremism can take many forms. A hundred years ago, it was the rise of Communism that led to the rise in Anti-Semitism. Today, what were once the fringe views of Libertarians have come to dominate political discourse in British politics. Their own prejudices - their irrational hatred of Europe, and their fantastical view of British exceptionalism - are leading Britain down a path where xenophobia has become normalized, and where casual violence goes unpunished.

This can't end well.

Narcissism, Capitalism and Crime: how Libertarians create anti-social behaviour

A few years ago, this author wrote an article looking at the rise of (clinical) narcissism over the last thirty years or so, and the concurrent development in the rise of consumerist culture in the world. Last year, the author wrote a piece on how crime developed in human society over time, looking at the effect that changes in industrialisation and modern Capitalist society have had on how humans interact (and become more anti-social).

About five years ago was when the author first looked at how changes in modern society have made people more individualistic and narcissistic; linked to this is anti-social behaviour and, at the extreme end, psychopathy.
In this article, I want to try and bring some of these threads closer together.

Any criminologist knows that the majority of crime is carried out by those who are uneducated, from unstable backgrounds, and are impoverished. This is just a fact. Gang members, for example, exist as a coherent social unit as an indirect result of the lack of cohesive community and family identity. From a social point of view, "gang culture" exists due to a failure elsewhere. The recent spike in violent crime in Britain, and in London in particular, is a sign of that failure.
Socially-conservative voices will talk of the failure of the family unit in creating the moral vacuum that allows gang culture to flourish; but at the same time, these voices will talk of a collapse in "individual responsibility", while promoting a social view that emphasizes individualism. But these voices are trying to have it both ways. If the family unit is to be promoted then this is, by definition, against the individualism they also want to promote. From a social point of view, you can either be pro-family (and pro-community), or pro-individual. Logically, you can't be both - pro-social on one hand, but anti-social on the other.

This hypocrisy is typical of the right-wing since the rise of Libertarian values with Reagan in the USA and Thatcher in the UK, both ideological disciples of Ayn Rand. This ideology took control of conservative politics in the Anglo-sphere around forty years ago, and has been able to maintain the loyalty of more traditional "pro-social" conservatives due to a kind of "devil's bargain": Libertarians would make all conservatives rich, while peddling a fiction that the lower classes could also get rich quick in a deregulated market economy.
The reality of their ideology was that it massively widens inequalities (the statistics support this), creating a "dog eat dog" society which makes it more and more difficult for those on lower incomes to manage. In short, the poorest ten per cent are now poorer in real terms than they were forty years ago, while the top ten per cent are massively richer. And yet, the peddled fiction of more wealth for all is maintained because GDP has increased.

What this means for the poorest in social terms is that the community and family bonds are stretched to breaking point. The Libertarian outlook on society is one where society is atomized.
At the family "micro" level, the kind of insecurity created by a deregulated market leads to insecure working conditions. This leads to numerous side effects on the family such as deprivation, families being encouraged to drift apart through the need to look further afield for work opportunities, which thus increases family breakdown (see: adoption, and its often under-examined social impact). Other related factors are the insecurity and deprivation creating relationship and marriage break-up (with the obvious negative psychological consequences on any children), with the more general human knock-on effects of insecurity such as abuse of alcohol and drugs, psychological and physical violence in the home etc. etc. which are all heightened when all these factors are grouped together in the lowest segments of society.
At the community "macro" level, the need for workers to work further afield, and in more unstable working conditions, leads to a breakdown in community cohesion. Neighbours no longer see each other regularly; it becomes more difficult for a sense of social community to develop; small animosities develop between neighbours of different circumstances, and so on. In this environment, crime and "gang culture" become more difficult to combat, as crime becomes an expression of selfish, anti-social narcissism, and "gang culture" becomes the replacement of community and family for those anti-social misfits that have lost their connection to society. They commit crime because they no longer give a damn about anyone else, except perhaps their gang, if they are in one.
Looking through these two perspectives - micro and macro - it is easy to see how society becomes atomized, how the bonds that hold society together fall apart, and how Libertarian values engender anti-social behaviour. When the social bonds that hold people together are broken down, the result is crime.

The England riots of 2011 were an example of selfish anti-social behaviour out of control. The Conservative government's instinctive reply to blame it on them as individuals, which was as predictable as it was depressing. While there was some blame passed on to the parents of those involved (which itself was not exactly helpful), there was no serious attempt to look at the underlying causes, and to think about why England, and why not elsewhere, such as in other European countries? What marks England different from other countries of similar levels of development, for example, are the levels of much higher inequality, itself a result of the Libertarian ideology that had been at the heart of government since Thatcher.
Also in the UK, the Conservative government's policy of "austerity" is part of the wider Libertarian agenda. The soaring levels of violent crime, homelessness and mental health issues can all be pinned - either directly or indirectly - on the government's policy of "austerity", which has seen police and prisons funding slashed and local government funding (which is responsible for community and social care issues) cut drastically. When these agencies no longer have the funds available to police or care for society as they once did, the result isn't hard to predict.
The simultaneous "reforms" being carried out to welfare provision (i.e. to reduce spending) have the same effect on a "micro" and "macro" level. More families are destitute, child poverty has more than doubled thanks to "austerity", while the effects on mental health are similarly predictable. The family unit becomes more and more strained, with the effects on the wider community that have already been mentioned. Crime, again, is the predictable result, one way or the other.

Libertarian ideology is bad for society's health because it is fundamentally "anti-social" in its perspective.

Psychopathy in politics: callous indifference versus deliberate harm (1)

It could be argued that there are two kinds of psychopathy, and two different manifestations of the behaviour.

First, there is what may be termed the psychopathy of "callous indifference". This is psychopath that has an aim, and will achieve that aim regardless of the cost to others. The aim is the only thing that matters, and those that get in the way only have themselves to blame if they get hurt. At the extreme level, there are historical figures like Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union with complete callous indifference to the fate of its population. He had a plan for the country, and no-one would be allowed to get in his way; if that meant millions of Ukrainians dying of starvation, or millions of others being killed and imprisoned by the government during the "terror", so be it. This even extended to his own family.
At the more mundane level, there are criminal gangs and the mafia, who get rid of people who are a "nuisance". Similarly, there are "white collar criminals" who will break the law and ignore regulations in order to make a profit. These are all manifestations of "callous indifference".
When it comes to government, there are governments ruled by those who have an aim, and are prepared to carry out that aim regardless of the cost to any innocent individuals caught up the government's scheme. It takes a large amount of callous indifference from government when they are shown real-life innocent individuals whose lives have been wrecked by government decisions, to still continue with the same aim regardless.

Second, there is the psychopath that perpetuates deliberate harm. This is the psychopath who (to use the British legal phrase), with malice aforethought, deliberately decides to do harm to others. His aim of deliberate harm is to "punish". An obvious historical example of this is Adolf Hitler, whose hatred of the Jews led to his conscious decision to try and wipe them out.

The focus of this article is on the first type: callous indifference, and how this is manifested in everyday politics.
Below, we'll look at some examples of government policy in contemporary Britain that could be construed as actions of "psychopathic" callous indifference.


Britain's "austerity" government" - a modern "case study" in callous indifference

The British government's policy of "austerity", enacted since 2010, has been its guiding principle. The idea, on the face of it, was to bring Britain's finances back into an even keel after suffering during the financial crisis. Explained in straightforward terms of "balancing the books", this garnered a lot of public support, at least initially. But this simplistic explanation masked the hidden truth.

The austerity agenda has pervaded all aspects of government, from local government services to the police and armed forces, the welfare system and public services. With local government budgets cut by up to fifty percent in some cases, this has had a predictable and devastating effect on social care provision, with this having a cascade effect on mental health services, the elderly and so on. The surge in the number of homeless people is inevitably tied up with the fact that those in need of help from the state are simply being left to fend for themselves due to the lack of resources now provided by the state, with the predictable result that some have become the homeless "refugees" of the government's austerity agenda.
The "reforms" to the welfare system, enacted mainly under the watch of Iain Duncan Smith, have had a similar effect. From the introduction of Universal Credit, to the earlier changes to how disability was assessed, has meant that every reason humanly possible is being provided to withdraw funds from those in need. With a regime introduced that assumes that those asking for welfare are "fakers", coupled with one that creates an internal working environment where those working under the system not meeting targets under risk of losing their jobs, there is a culture of fear, both on those in need and those assessing that need. Those working for the state apply the rules rigidly for fear of official retribution; those who suffer the consequences of these rules can fear for their very future.
This culture of fear is deliberate. The fear created is systemically no different from that which has existed in authoritarian regimes; the only difference is the extremity of application. It is a fear borne of insecurity, that nothing and no-one is to be relied upon, and one small change can bring personal disaster. It has the double effect of dissuading some from even attempting to gain welfare that they are entitled to, while those who are on welfare live in constant fear of some small accidental event (like missing an appointment because of an unreliable transport network) resulting in a "sanction". The ultimate result of this can be being cut off from state support completely, regardless of the consequences.
While the government's aim of the austerity agenda may not be to punish sections of society deliberately, the "hidden truth" referred to earlier is that the idea is to deliberately reduce the size of the state. It takes a large amount of callous indifference to ignore the fact that this would have a seriously detrimental, even dangerous, effect on some segments of society. But the government doesn't care, because its aim is reducing the size of the state, regardless of its effect on society.


Theresa May's "hostile environment"

It takes a certain kind of willful ignorance of the lives of others to think that creating an immigration system designed with an inbuilt assumption of "guilty before innocent" is going to only punish the guilty. Whereas in the past, Home Office officials were allowed a fair degree of leniency about how stringently they enforced the rules, under Theresa May's watch as Home Secretary, this turned into the "hostile environment". This meant officials were to follow the rules to a tee, for fear of bring reprimanded or sacked. Those applicants who, for whatever reason, failed to provide the correct documentation, were to be denied. There should be no exceptions.
One early example of this was when the rules were changed around five or six years ago, so that only those British subjects who earn a high enough salary in Britain are allowed the right to live with their non-EU spouses and children in the UK. These rules are among the most punitive in the world, certainly in the developed world. This is a rule of such basic inhumanity that it has created "skype families", or has simply meant that there are a segment of British subjects with families that are forced into exile from Britain; due to government policy, some British families are unable to live in Britain.

Now the recently-highlighted status of the "Windrush generation" has shown the cross-over of the "hostile environment" and the "austerity" agenda. In the case of those who arrived to the UK from the Caribbean fifty years ago (around half a million, by some estimates), the only documentary evidence of their arrival was on their landing cards from decades earlier. But thanks to the Home Office's necessary "downsizing" in the first months of May's tenure, these documents were all thrown away for want of space in their new location.
Now these people can no longer prove when they entered the UK legally, as the documents were discarded by the very department that later on would need them to prove these people's rights. In this sense, the government has made them "non-persons", whose rights have been literally thrown in the trash.
You could call this sheer incompetence on a mammoth scale, but that would ignore the deliberate necessity for those in charge to assume that the people affected by this would all have other means to prove how long they had lived in the UK. But, in the absence of any national ID card system, the government itself only recognizes a small number of historical documents in such cases, as those in charge ought to know. This was why those landing cards, as anachronistic as they are, were so important (as well an indictment of the government's lack of proper systems). Because the government's own method of recording historical data is so haphazard and chaotic, without a British passport or UK birth certificate to properly declare your nationality, it's often difficult to prove your own identity over a period of decades. In this way, the onus is put on the individual to somehow have to hand a huge sheaf of documentary records proving his rights over decades, as the government itself simply has no organised historical system of records worthy of the name. This is nuts, but this is "the system". As said before, government officials would know this.
The fact that officials discarded those people's documents without question can only be seen as an act of callous indifference, that leaves the rights of those people affected up in the air. In effect, they have no rights, at least compared other British citizens, as they do not have the documents to prove it; the government threw them away. And being up against a Home Office that is no longer allowed to show leniency in special cases, how can they prove what rights they are entitled to?
Government assurances that these people will be treated fairly are facile and worthless, as the only way to ensure these people's rights would be to change the law on the government's "hostile environment", which is politically unthinkable. And this still does not magically bring back documents the government have destroyed.
The government has shown time and again it can never be trusted to "do the right thing", as the default setting of the system now in place under Theresa May is one of callous indifference that has aims and targets to be reached, regardless of the cost to those innocents caught in its trap, whose rights are removed arbitrarily. Just be thankful if you're not one of them, I suppose?

The callous indifference of the "hostile environment" also turns landlords, employers, hospitals and schools into virtual immigration enforcement officers in their own right, as they are now legally obliged  - under fear of government sanction - to check the status of who come under their orbit. The "hostile environment" has created a society of spies. What this means in practice is that those people even suspected of being illegal immigrants can be caught in this web of paranoia and prejudice. This is one way how those of the "Windrush generation" discovered their rights had been removed; by, for instance an employer or hospital checking their records and discovering (thanks to government actions) they're "not on the system".
The "hostile environment" has thus allowed basic racism and prejudice to re-emerge, where Britain is heading back to the hateful culture of "No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs". While the government might blithely state that only the guilty have something to fear, the realities of this involve wary landlords denying tenancy to people that "seem foreign", while more unscrupulous landlords house foreigners in unsafe (and illegal) tenancies, with the tenants too afraid to report them. The same is true for the public sector, where staff are now meant to check the status of anyone they suspect i.e. who "seems foreign". While Theresa May's idea was to create a "hostile environment" that made it almost impossible for illegal immigrants to live in the UK, the reality is that this now applies in much the same way to many foreigners in general, and even some Brits as well.

The British government's "austerity" agenda, coupled with its "hostile environment", are thus two examples of callous indifference that can be seen in politics. This is what happens when the mentality of the psychopath enters government: an unflinching bureaucracy of fear.

A social history of crime, individualism and violence

When we talk about "crime", it's usually assumed that we all know what we're talking about, but it's also worthwhile reminding ourselves: what do we mean when we talk about "crime"?

"Crime" is the breaking of accepted social rules; or more exactly, the rules that government (and society) has defined as there to protect individuals. In this sense, "criminals" are also, by definition, anti-social i.e. against society and social rules. Crime is an anti-social act.

From a psychological point of view, this explains why psychopaths (who have Anti-Social Personality Disorder) may be responsible for a great deal of society's crime. There is an inherent aspect of individualism (which we could also call Narcissism) in the criminal act, for it means that the perpetrator wishes to do something knowing this is against the inherent rules of society. So, by seeing "crime" as the ultimate expression of malignant narcissism, this helps explain - from a psychological point of view - what is really going on. The individual wants to - if even for a fleeting moment - feel omnipotent. The question is: why does this happen? The "social" aspect of crime is something this article wants to look at in more detail.

The worst crime of all

A casual look through history books tells us that the history of mankind is also a history of violence. The nature of war means that for a "war" to be declared, someone in authority (i.e. an individual) must make that decision.
 "War" is surely the most extreme form of violence one individual can cause: a person in supreme authority has immense social responsibility towards his subjects; equally, given his whim, he can use that authority to cause unparalleled violence. While in modern international law, wars are "illegal" if they are not officially declared, this really makes little difference to the victims. The effect is the same: they are dead in either case. A brief look at the history of wars since the establishment of the ICC tells us that few individuals responsible for the worst violence are ever brought to justice. So the idea that war is somehow more "humane" today than it was a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago is (in many cases) a fallacy - for proof, look no further than the brutal wars that have been carried out in the Congo in the last twenty years, or (most obviously) by ISIS in the present day. Today's wars are carried out overwhelmingly in the "developing world", and these wars differ little in their moral conduct than they did millennia ago.

So "war" can be seen as the most anti-social act of malignant narcissism possible; the expression of an all-powerful individual's will on a population. The idea is that to this warmonger, the nation in question has somehow "offended" him. As wars are about territory or security, it follows that the ruler's brittle and insecure ego is where the desire for war comes from - in other words, narcissism. When we look at the events that led to the First World War, it has often been said that one of the main reasons for it spiralling out of control was due to the psychology of those in authority, such as Kaiser Wilhelm II. A look at history's most famous rulers - from Alexander The Great, through to Genghis Khan, to England's own Henry VIII and Cambodia's Pol Pot, is a look into the psychology of psychopaths and narcissists. History isn't just made by the victors; it's also made by the psychopaths. A look at the life of Stalin is an education in psychopathy.


A social history of crime

As said earlier, if "war" is the most anti-social act possible, then an individual's desire to commit crime is that same psychology on a more localised scale.

It's impossible to understand the motivations behind crime without looking at its social context. It's also impossible to do this without understanding how human society has changed, and also (in the modern day) how human societies change from one part of the world to another, and thus, how the level of crime changes.

It has been noted by researchers that Rhesus monkeys, when in captivity, exhibit greater levels of stress (and therefore violence, and sexual violence) than in the wild. Mankind progressed from being hunter-gatherers to settled agrarians thousands of years ago; this also resulted in people living permanently in close proximity with each other for the first time in their history. Not long after this, cities developed, and cities then built walls. Why? The reason for the walls was simple: war.

As we have seen, war is the ultimate expression of a ruler's will on a population; in the same way that Rhesus monkey's will fight for status and territory when forced to live in captivity, it seems that rulers of cities felt the need to fight war for status and territory; perhaps violence (and therefore "war") was a form of stress relief, which also served as useful for the city's male population.

In the ancient world, judging from records of official tablets, "crime" seems to have been a comparative rarity compared to more recent centuries. What we would today call "community spirit" might also have something to do with it. Individualism in the modern sense of the term is - hence the phrase - a modern concept (more in this later). Ancient societies seem to have been much more minded on each other than themselves. Religion probably had a large part to play in this, in that when  cities had their own gods, they all (even the ruler) felt subservient to a higher (or wider?) purpose. To put it in another way, these ancient societies were less focused on "material life" (the "here-and-now"); life was fleeting in any case due to short life expectancy, so it makes sense that people were more interested in their community as a whole, and also why the men were willing to go to war to defend it.
This also explains why, to modern eyes, this ancient mindset might seem extremely narrow-minded and ignorant; to the city's inhabitants, travel was difficult (even unthinkable due to social obligations) and daily life was about survival and planning for the next winter; thinking beyond that was pointless. So in this sense, "crime" was probably socially-unthinkable in these kinds of small communities as the effect on the criminal (and the city) would be socially-devastating.

This social analysis of crime probably rang true for most of the world until the nature of society began to change. Criminals were still considered something of a social aberration (and thus a source of entertainment when they were hanged); due to comparative difficulty in travel (e.g. with serfdom being widespread), foreigners a source of curiosity and mirth. A community's experience of "crime" would more than likely be through war than through personal experience: someone living in what is now Germany during the Thirty Years War would have had an endlessly-traumatic experience with "crime". But for many people, very little of any significance would happen in their community throughout their life. In many ways, their community was their life.

Society changes the rules

As we know, the human population of the world remained generally static, until it began to rise sharply with the onset of industrialisation and a growth in cities. The nature and frequency of crime seems to have seen a change around the same period.
To be fair, there had been some social changes in many countries prior to industrialisation, such as a relative decline in the role of religion and the rise of the scientific method in the 18th century in the West; some cities, such as London, grew noticably. With this came a gradual shift of culture, towards the individual.
But these were gradual changes. Industrialisation made living in cities and towns necessary for the new economic opportunities of industry to be taken advantage of, and it is this which makes fundamental changes to society.

Industrialisation gave new opportunities for movement of labour and capital; something which had been very difficult in an agrarian society based on static communities. In other words, for people to be successful in this new economy, they had to act more like individuals. It is therefore possible to identify the rapid growth in cities and changes to society as a factor that helps explain the higher frequency of crime; in particular, violence and sex crime. When this social change forced people to act more like individuals, the result was also a rise in crime.
We have already discussed how Rhesus monkeys react badly to captivity. In an insecure and uncomfortable social environment, such as in socially-cramped industrial cities, humans can react in much the same way.

The growth of industrialisation to different parts of the world has often seen much the same trend; a concurrent rise in crime, for the reasons mentioned above. Where this differs from country to country depends on the social structure. Obviously, not all industrialised countries have the same rates of crime: compare, for example, Japan and the USA, or China and Russia.
For the other factor that also seems to be important indicator of crime levels is the extent of what we might call "community spirit". As mentioned before, the "community spirit" that seems to have been a strong element of ancient cultures was a strong indicator of a "pro-social" environment where crime was almost morally-unthinkable. This was probably because those communities were extremely closely-knit and shared a high level of empathy due to their shared experiences, and therefore naturally looked out for each other. In other words, we could call this an ancient form of "crime prevention"!

Scandinavia is industrialised but has low crime levels because its society does not seem to suffer from the "dislocation" that is typical in most industrialised societies. This "dislocation" (or "social alienation") usually comes about through the nature of work: individuals forced to leave their families to get work in the city, for example. This situation is worsened by other factors such as lack of strong government institutions (e.g. a welfare state), which perpetuate higher levels of inequality, and a lack of a family support unit, feeding into the malignant narcissism that can gestate in an individual. When there is no-one there who seems to be there to support you, it takes little for an individual to resort to crime to get what they want.
The key to the problem is one of instability: when a society becomes unstable due to social or economic factors, this seems to breed crime. The complexities that modern industrialised society brings simply compounds that. Countries such as South Africa have extremely high levels of crime partly because of the lack of strong government institutions, gross inequality, and weak family connections. All the devices which can were used as a social form of "crime prevention" - as they were in pre-industrial, traditional societies - are not there. This can also be said (to an extent) of the UK, when comparing crime rates to those of other European countries such as Germany. Scandinavia seems to have few of these problems because of a strong social fabric from both government, the family, and society in general.

In this way, a study of the history of crime is also a study of social change: from traditional, closely-knit societies of the pre-Enlightenment (and pre-Industrial) age to more individualistic and fractured societies that came about through Industrialisation. From a psychological point of view, human society became more self-centred, but also dissatisfied, as it took itself further from its roots.
This social tension is not surprising, given the relatively short time that has passed; our minds have yet to adapt to the fact that we are not hunter-gatherers, and in spite of the advances made in technology and insight, our instincts are fundamentally unchanged. This explains why war is still fought because of the same basic drives for security and territory. At the individual level, this "instinct" explains why some people's desire for individualism (i.e. selfishness) crosses the line into criminal behaviour; they have been unable to discipline these instincts in the setting of the modern city. Like the Rhesus monkeys, they feel both trapped and frustrated by their "urban zoo", and are unable to restrain their urges.

This explains why urban life is more dangerous than country life, and why conservative societies in the modern world tend to have less crime: not because liberal societies are "more permissive" (and therefore "worse", as the reactionary right believe), but simply because what some would call "conservative" culture is also usually community-based rather than individualistic. Small-town and village life is safer because people are more likely to know their neighbours and look out for one another; while city-dwellers might mock this as an insular perspective, it is also fundamentally a more socially-protective one, too, which goes back millennia.
Yet this also raises one of the odd (and fundamental?) contradictions in modern conservatism's embrace of neo-liberalism. Because conservatism is meant to be about "communitarian" values (i.e. about what's best for the family, village, nation etc.), how does the "individualist" spirit of modern economics fit into this? It feels like a square peg in a round hole. No wonder societies like the USA and UK which embrace this contradiction have such social issues. Those nations that have copied that same flawed socio-economic model have developed the same problems with crime: a social model that creates social instability and encourages an amoral form of individualism also increases the risk that those people will become malignant narcissists, and criminals.

In some ways, crime in the UK bears more similarites to those in Russia. As British society has become more unequal, government support less reliable, family units breaking down, working life more insecure and stressful, we can see the effects of this in the crime and violence on Britain's streets. The drugs epidemic which seems to be sweeping through the country (especially its homeless) is surely a result of this variety of social pressures. Russia has experienced the same "social pressures" (albeit in much more extreme manner) since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The same culture of casual violence, petty crime and alcoholism exists in Russia as it does in Britain; the only difference is the question of degree. It would be interesting to make a social (and crime) comparison between the post-industrial cities of Northern England with those in, say, Siberia; the similarities may well be striking.

One wonders what the Rhesus monkeys would do.

The psychopath at work: some "psychopathic" career choices

Robert Hare's well-known book "Snakes In Suits" looked at the prevalence of psychopathy in corporate industry, and its connection to white collar crime. There is plenty of research to support the idea that psychopaths tend to gravitate towards particular fields of work, which we'll look at in more detail here.

The psychopath tends to (not surprisingly) gravitate towards careers where his personality traits could be considered advantages: jobs with elements of risk-taking, where it is an advantage to be thick-skinned and have an ability to hold fast under pressure, and make "cold-blooded" decisions; and where charm and charisma can bring rapid rewards, and machiavellian behaviour is tolerated (or even unofficially "encouraged"). Equally, they would gravitate towards career choices that would indulge their need for excitement and their habitual proneness to boredom and innate unreliability, where their machiavellian traits could be well used to hide their true nature.
In this sense, these kinds of careers would share a common thread of appealing to a psychopath's natural low level of anxiety, and high level of risk-taking; this is also matching with the narcissistic traits that psychopaths possess, as these types of jobs are ones that usually come along with a high level of authority and attention - either moral, financial or otherwise.
An excellent thread labelled the "Sixteen faces of a psychopath", and went some way to infer some of the kinds of careers that psychopaths might gravitate towards, based on the "type" of psychopath they are. As the title of this article may imply, these types of psychopaths may also be called "successful" or "sub-criminal" psychopaths. The obvious choice for some "successful" (and more disciplined) psychopaths might be the military, or other "high adrenaline" careers like the police or fire service. I've skipped these in the listings below simply because their appeal is self-evident. Instead, I've looked at other areas. In no particular order, we'll look at some of the "career choices" that may well appeal to a psychopath, and why (plus any supporting real-life evidence):


THE TEMP

There is plenty of research evidence to suggest that psychopaths are attracted into the "temping" industry. In his book, "The Anatomy Of Violence", Adrian Raine discovered that potentially up to a quarter of those working in the temping industry may have signs of Anti-social Personality Disorder. The nature of the work - being temporary and insecure - would appeal to the transient nature of the psychopath's mentality. Being unable to hold down a "steady" job, becoming easily bored, the flexibility that this type of career allows would naturally draw on the psychopath's attributes. If temps are therefore seen as "unreliable" by industry insiders, this might be blamed on the insecure nature of the work acting as a disincentive to ordinary workers, rather than the fact that the nature of the work also by definition attracts the "wrong" type of people i.e. potential psychopaths. As a wag would say, you don't have to mad to work here, but it helps! As we'll see in other fields, employers are restricted to hiring from among the applicants who apply: in some sectors, if a substantial number of the applicants are "crazy", there's nothing that they can do about it, often until it's too late.
The growth of the "temping" industry is one of the significant changes that we have seen in the workplace over the last twenty-five years. These days also called the "Gig Economy", the rise of insecure work must inevitably attract some "undesirables" who thrive in this type of economy, but often at the expense of someone else. As said elsewhere, the changes in the economy over the last thirty years have also played a part in this worrying development.


THE SALES REP

Equally, there are careers where superficiality and a flexible (amoral) attitude is the key to success: these are careers such as advertising/ marketing and sales (more on the lowdown on this industry here). As sales experts would say, you're not selling a product; you're selling yourself. Unsurprisingly, psychopaths can also be found in large numbers in these types of fields, owing to the charismatic and machiavellian characteristics in a psychopath's personality. The sales industry is by its nature a ruthless one: only success sells. The "gift of the gab" is an essential part of this, as is a "sixth sense" for identifying and exploiting the weaknesses of the "victim" who you're selling to. Any type of con man fits into this mould, of course: the sales industry is simply a legitimate method of the charming psychopath "conning" his way to success.
It also goes without saying that the same malignant "mentality" is prevalent in the financial sector; reckless risk-taking, machiavellian conduct, and an insidious influence over government is also what has led to how the financial sector has overtaken the politics of the global economy, with the effects that were seen in 2008.
Like with the "temping" industry, the sales industry and its "psychology" has become ubiquitous in everyday life. As call centres are used more and more by large and multinational companies as a cheap way of doing business, the likelihood of running into a psychopath's sales patter increases. Buyer beware.


THE PROFESSIONAL

The term "professional" here is used broadly to apply to anyone in a position of trust and institutional authority (typically with an educated background), where that "authority" can be easily abused. The many examples that have been found in recent years include doctors, teachers and so on who have been implicated in routine sex abuse or exploitation of one kind or another. The example of Harold Shipman is another.
What this also tells us is how these types of psychopaths are able to use their charisma and natural aura of authority to hoodwink their colleagues and the wider population, sometimes permanently. In The UK, the wider issue with "the establishment" is how respected institutions have, until recently, been free of public scrutiny, allowing these "respected" institutions to get away with all kinds of low (and illegal) behaviour for decades, thanks to an unwritten "code of silence".
In this way, psychopaths with a perseverance towards education can thrive as "professionals" as they can also take advantage of the institutional fear of the damage that would be done from "scandals"; using their machiavellian skills, they can exploit the "weaknesses" (as they see it) in these institutions to their own advantage, and effectively "become God".
Of course, the highest form of "professional" is the politician; but the dangers (and the lessons in history) are there for all to see.


THE "SHOWMAN"

This is where the psychopath is able to become an autocratic, larger-than-life figure, usually in a creative field. This may include such sectors as the entertainment industry (TV, film, the media) or the arts (such as music, fashion, design and so on). In his book, "Office Politics", the psychologist, Oliver James, made a point of stressing how much "psychopathic behaviour" he saw first-hand in the TV and film industry. Certainly, from a psychological point of view, the attraction of this type of career to the psychopath is clear: to indulge their whims and then blame their explosive and erratic behaviour on their "artistic temperament", would be easy for them. Misogyny is also a widespread "given" in these types of industries (see the "sexual psychopath").
More infamously, in the UK there is the example of Jimmy Savile, who was at the forefront of Britain's entertainment industry for nearly thirty years, and a serial sex abuser. Similarly, there is the example of rock singer, Ian Watkins.
It should lastly be said that of course there will always be an element of "overlap" regarding the "showman psychopath" in other sectors too (see below) - and it should not be forgotten that some of the world's most infamous dictators were also extraordinary "showmen" in their own way, a characteristic often seen in politics in general, and some other "professional" career paths.


THE "TEACHER ABROAD"

This is an unusually-specific example, but for specific reasons. The worldwide education industry is, alas, set up in a way that allows a potential psychopath to effectively "disappear" into it without trace. Links between institutions and countries are weak (it is very easy, for example, to hide a person's criminal record in such circumstances); meanwhile the ease for people to move around at whim is, in the modern age, great.
In some ways, this particular line of work already fits into a few of the categories mentioned above: like "the temp", it is easy for them to move around if they become bored (or get into trouble) - indeed, many do this simply as a method of travel, like a pilot; like "the professional", their respected status as a teacher allows them an elevated level of respect (and thus potential "leeway" for getting out of trouble); and like "the showman", some go into this field do so for vainglorious reasons, seeing the classroom as a small-screen "stage" for their own "performance" - indeed, there is a large incidence of failed actors becoming teachers abroad (!).
In this way, the lifestyle, authority and freedom offered by this kind of career may well be emblematic of the fluid nature of work in the 21st century; it appeals to what some have called "Anywhere People", who are fully at ease in the modern global world, willing and able to move from country to country for work. More generally speaking, the high-flying careers of "jet-setters" (i.e. expats who are able to earn their trade in far-flung places like Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and so on) also offer the same kind of "excitement" that would attract the psychopath. Sadly, there is real-life evidence of this indeed being the case.
There have been cases reported in the media about tales of abuse at private high schools abroad, and even at highly-respected institutions. This may well also be a case of where certain types of people are drawn to live and work in certain parts of the world. As Cambodia and South-East Asia became infamous after the arrest of Paul Gadd (AKA "Gary Glitter"), one wonders at why there are so many middle-aged male expats living in Thailand. It certainly isn't for the money.
In another respect, though, there are some careers in some parts of the world which could only attract the "mad" or the desperate: the education sector for expats in the Middle East is extremely lucrative, but also not for everyone - and that's before talking about the security issues. As said earlier with temping:
"you don't have to mad to work here, but it helps! Employers are restricted to hiring from among the applicants who apply: if a substantial number of the applicants are "crazy", there's nothing that they can do about it, often until it's too late"
Talk to any insider of these industries (and this author can be counted as one of them), and you'll quickly find plenty of anecdotes of some the "characters" they've met; tales that will entertain an audience, but may also have them wondering if this career choice isn't also possibly one of the "last redoubts of the scoundrel".

Is Islamic Extremism a mental illness?

What kind of person is an Islamic extremist?

Islamic extremism is an ideology, but is also a psychology of its own. One way to understand this psychology is to look at the psychology of Islamic extremists themselves: those who claim that their hatred and acts of violence are done in the name of Islam.

"If you insult my religion, I'll kill you"

The psychology of the Islamic extremist bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the psychopathic narcissist. One example that sticks in the memory is of a murder that took place in the UK. A middle-aged Muslim shopkeeper was murdered in his shop in Scotland, in an attack that shocked the neighbourhood, as he was a caring and sympathetic member of the community. It transpired that the perpetrator was a Muslim man from the north of England. It was discovered that the motive for the attack was that he had seen a seen a video the shopkeeper had posted online which had angered him as it had somehow "disrespected Islam"; so he decided to kill him.

In other words, the murderer had taken this man's comments as a personal insult. The murderer had associated anything which he saw as an "attack" on his religion as an attack on himself.

This theme is a common thread in Islamic extremism. The reaction in the Muslim world to the Danish cartoons is another example of this: Muslim reactionaries across the world react with fury and violence when they feel that their prophet has been insulted. Again, they react as though they were insulted personally. They are psychologically unable to disassociate themselves from their religion, as they see it as an essential part of themselves. Because they see their religion as their life, their own sense of self is therefore injured if their religion is "injured". No wonder they can't take a joke.

Without meaning to sound flippant, there is something of a "mafia" feel to this: the stereotype of the mafia boss who kills someone because "they disrespected them" sounds to sounds an awful lot like the reaction that Islamic extremists take to seeing their religion "disrespected". You dare not criticise Islam if you value your life. This is the thought that these Islamic extremists want everyone else to have.

Again, another example was the shocking attack on Charlie Hebdo. Journalists murdered because they made cartoons insulting Islam. The psychological reaction that can be seen in the examples mentioned is like that of a tantrum-throwing child; the insecure and weak-willed person whose ego is so fragile that any slight to their own self-constructed perfected image can result in a rage that is totally disproportionate to the situation: "You insulted my prophet! YOU INSULTED MY PROPHET! ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!", These people are in need of anger management classes, to say the least.

This touches on the wider issue of religion in the role it plays in "infantilising" society: because religion acts as a social code, there is a tendency for some to defer to it for all decision-making; in other words, their brains have been side-lined in the decision-making process. This is especially dangerous when the book you're reading from is open to many interpretations (or, in the case of Wahabbism and Salafism, reading words written about life in the middle of the desert in the 7th century as applicable cast-iron truths for the 21st). This child-like deference to a literal "God-head", and the internalisation of that God-head so that the "God-head" and the "self" become inseparable, is what makes this so potentially poisonous, as we have seen above.

"Infantilism" is also seen in narcissism. Elsewhere, we've looked at the differences and similarities between narcissism and psychopathy. Narcissists are at heart insecure and needy individuals with a fragile sense of worth always in need of affirmation (a source of narcissistic supply); this can make them tiresome company and difficult to deal with at the best of times; at their worst, they can be downright dangerous.
In social situations, this can be seen in more extreme groupings such as cults, as well as in the politics of populism and authoritarianism, where the leader attains an infallible status. There have been many historical examples of this. The psychology of the populist politician and their following becomes poisonous for all involved, especially if there is a religious underpinning to the movement, as can be seen in contemporary Turkey.

The rules don't apply

This "infantilism" prevalent in Islamic extremism is one aspect of the issue; another glaring part of the Islamic extremist's narcissism is their grandiose sense of self-worth and entitlement.

The "Trojan Horse" scandal in the UK with appeared in the news a couple of years ago is a prime example of this. This British news story uncovered how many Islamic schools in the UK were preaching intolerance, views antithetical to British law, and effectively bringing about self-imposed segregation of the Muslim community from the rest of British society.
Using the British state's own beliefs of "free speech" and cultural diversity back against them, they claim that their religious rights are being infringed if they are not allowed to practice their faith as they see fit. This would be a fair point, if it were not also the case that practising their faith as they see fit means that it also goes against various aspects of British law. These extremists see their faith as being being absolute and above that of national law i.e. because they are Muslims, the normal laws literally don't apply to them.
In this way, Muslim extremists seek to socially and legally separate themselves from the rest of society, using their faith as an excuse. They literally seek to create a "state with a state" in majority non-Muslim countries.

At the same time as claiming that their faith allows them special treatment (and can never be criticised), they still claim the same rights of "free speech" to incite hatred and violence against (for example) Jews (whom the Koran has called "pigs" and "monkeys") and non-believers in general. The use of "free speech" is therefore turned on its head, so that these extremists can have their cake and eat it: free to attack their "enemies" at whim, while free from attack themselves. In fact, it could be considered be a stunning piece of legal manipulation if its effect were not so dangerous.

Judge, jury and executioner

In a more general level, Islamic extremists suffer from a severe lack of empathy for others and society as a whole. We've mentioned earlier how this can exist in different social groupings (and also can be argued to exist in modern Capitalist society) creates divisions in society.
Islamic extremism very clearly divides between those who are "true" Muslims, and those who are not. This thus excluded not only non-Muslims, but  what they would call Muslim "apostates" who are fallen from the "right path". For the likes of ISIS and their fellow Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, this includes, primarily, Shias, as well as any other "lesser" branches of Islam that are deemed to have lost their way; and, of course Muslim "liberals", who would not be thought of as "Muslim" at all. This division, and the use of violent language, is what feeds their lack of empathy. For the extremist to feel "chosen" is what makes him a narcissist, and it is the need to therefore have an enemy (the more, the better) that helps to solidify his own sense of self, and reinforce the need for violence. The extremist scorns social rules, and is ultimately anti-social in character. This is the psychopathic aspect of the dangerous narcissism that lurks inside them.
We can see that, from a psychological point of view, the Islamic extremist is an insecure "rebel without a cause" who uses Islam as a way to seek validation from an unrealistic God-figure and a reliable source of narcissistic supply. It makes him feel powerful, and part of something "special"; he gains self-nourishment from the thought of having a divine cause, with this "divine cause" propelling him to impose his will on others, knowing he's doing "God's work". He feels he has the "divine right" to impose his will on others; this is an essential ingredient of narcissism
The source of narcissistic supply, therefore, is the ability to affect others around him in a way that no-one else can. Is this, then, the ultimate attraction of Islamic extremism? That it allows its "followers" to act like God; as judge, jury and executioner?

So this is the crux of the psychology of the extremist. Apart from the dangerous sense of entitlement already described, intertwined with this is the threat and use of violence to achieve his aims. And because those aims are ultimately unreachable ("A worldwide caliphate"?), this is what makes the Islamic extremist even more obviously a dangerously-psychopathic narcissist: he wants the world, literally. And nothing can stop him except death (which for him is an "honour" in any case). The obsession with death as a "martyr" (and the ultimate, self-destructive death-act) is the epitome of narcissism as a macabre exercise in histrionic attention-seeking. It is a sickness of the mind that kills all those that the narcissist extremist seeks to "take with him" in his orgy of death.

Narcissists versus psychopaths: a comparative analysis

Psychologists have long-recognised the overlap that exists between aspects of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), and Psychopathy. Both are conditions that plague society in different ways. It is generally thought that these two conditions affect around one per cent of the general population; however, this changes markedly depending on which aspect of society you are looking at. For instance, a disproportionate number of the violent criminal population are psychopaths; likewise, a disproportionate number of adoptees are narcissists. Similarly, some professions seem to attract a disproportionate number of narcissists or psychopaths.

In general, narcissism can be called the "less serious" of the two, for the simple reason that the evidence seems to show how psychopaths are criminally far more dangerous (and criminally-prolific) than narcissists. Psychopathy as a syndrome is thought to be some combination of narcissistic traits and "anti-social" traits (a fuller description of psychopathic behaviour and its causes can be see here). Narcissism can be summarised as a dysfunctional self-centredness and over-evaluation of one's attributes, which uses society and other people to gain "narcissistic supply" i.e. a feeling of love and attention. We'll go into this in more detail shortly. Psychopaths share these narcissistic aspects to a greater or lesser degree, but more importantly, also have an "anti-social" personality i.e. they have no respect for society and social norms. It is this "anti-social" aspect that explains why psychopaths are, by definition, more dangerous to others and society in general. Narcissists can also be highly damaging to others around them, but is usually manifested in a different form.

One of key differences between narcissism and psychopathy is motivation. As said before, narcissists' motivation centres on finding sources of "narcissistic supply". A psychopath's motivation is more simply amoral convenience. Understanding this difference in motivation is key to understanding the differences between how narcissists and psychopaths think.
An interesting example of this is to compare the lives and motivations of two infamous serial killers. While these are "extreme" cases, the comparison in their motivations provides an intriguing insight. The serial killer, Ian Brady, killed a number of children in the 1960s in the Manchester area. There was no obvious motive for the crimes, and he said he carried out these crimes as an "existential experiment" - in other words, he did it to see what it would feel like. Once caught, he showed no remorse for the killings, and has lived his life out in comparative comfort (and living infamy) behind bars ever since. His thinking shows a complete disregard for social norms, or the acknowledgement of the seriousness of these acts. In this way, he is a fairly clear case of a psychopathic serial killer - although, some elements of narcissism were also there (as with all psychopaths). Furthermore, this psychopathic mentality displays the indifference that Brady had towards his acts: he felt like doing it, so he did it. He was indifferent to the consequences, to the victims as well as the consequences to his own life. In general, the coldness of Brady's personality (the "dead-eyed stare", a common characteristic of the psychopath) clearly demonstrated his inherent psychopathy.
This "indifference" (or "indifferent aspect") is common to psychopaths, but less so in narcissists. In the case of "psychopathic narcissists" or narcissists who take their motivation to the ultimate extreme (i.e. murder), the motivation here is more likely about "feeling like God", or a form of ultimate control over the victim. A famous example of this is Harold Shipman, AKA "Dr Death". People like this seek "narcissistic supply" from successfully committing the ultimate social taboo, and getting away with it. However, equally, their narcissism is often ultimately their undoing (as was ultimately the case with Shipman), as they "over-reach"- and may inwardly seek the public recognition they crave, that can only be gained through capture. A serial killer who was diagnosed has having Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Jack Unterweger, was an Austrian responsible for killing up to a dozen women, mostly prostitutes. An outgoing, larger-than-life minor "celebrity" at the time due to his published work on life in prison, his life was lived in the spotlight, first in infamy, then redemption, then fame and adulation, and finally once again in infamy. Narcissism was the driving force in his life, which ultimately led to his suicide once he had been sentenced to return to prison.

Similarities versus differences

Narcissists and psychopaths share the same perspective on society: they see society as something to be used, although they use it for different reasons. Narcissists and psychopaths use people as a leech does a host. They see people as objects. They are self-centred and lacking in empathy for others' feelings and point of view. They are entitled, feeling the right to special treatment, regardless of their lack of deserving it. Likewise, both narcissists and psychopaths are lazy in achieving goals, unable to commit to long-term plans, and quickly become bored. This attitude also overlaps into relationships and sex: they see partners as tools for their own self-enjoyment. They change their partner as soon as things start to get too "serious" or when their short attention span seeks another "conquest". Both narcissists and psychopaths have an essentially superficial view of the world.

However, there are also important differences. While both narcissists and psychopaths lack empathy and are both inherently self-centred, their behavioural aspect still bears striking differences. Lacking empathy and thus proper, in-depth emotions, both psychopaths and narcissists can also be susceptible to bursts of violent emotion. This has also been called "controlled emotion" i.e. with the appearance of a tantrum for effect.
The difference is that narcissists are more likely to show these traits more exuberantly, being prone to bouts of histrionics (interestingly, this can also be seen in homosexuals). Likewise, narcissists are more likely to outwardly display mood swings, both positive and negative, whereas psychopaths are much more likely to have the appearance of being emotionally dead. This emotional instability which is much more prevalent in narcissists stems from an inherent insecurity, which in turn stems from the root of the individual's narcissism: a traumatic or unloving childhood. Narcissism is thought to be a by-product of a lack of attention or emotionally-stunted early childhood, resulting in the child relying on its own self as a source of attention and love. For this reason, narcissists, as well as being emotionally unstable and insecure, are also likely to turn to alcohol and drug abuse, and may even - in the last resort - turn to suicide. These are all forms of "attention seeking", although to an outsider they may appear to be something quite different. At their heart, narcissists are insecure, child-like, almost pathetic, individuals, who have never truly adapted to adulthood. Being a narcissist is a fundamentally unhappy experience, where the individual is rarely - and only only fleetingly - "happy", always in search of the next source of narcissistic supply.

By contrast, psychopaths, are rarely "insecure": on the contrary, they usually have high levels of self-esteem, and are well in control of their "emotions" (if they have any); as said before, these are usually used as another tool as part of the psychopaths repertoire. Unlike the child-like narcissist, the psychopath is a true predator: lacking empathy and seeing human emotions as "weakness"; they can also be extremely adept at knowing how to manipulate others. This is what makes psychopaths so dangerous. Narcissists, being more self-obsessed, are (arguably) less so. Psychopaths are thought to be a by-product of a combination of biological and environmental factors, and thus for this reason, a different type of beast from a narcissist.

While the narcissist can be symbolised as an annoying, needy, infantile child, the psychopath is the "wolf in sheep's clothing", always on the prowl, while acting as the innocuous "Samaritan". In this sense, narcissists are also often much more easy to spot due to their overblown personalities; the psychopath is more skilled at hiding their true nature, making him even more dangerous.

The psychopathic narcissist as serial killer (2): Jack Unterweger

In my last article on the subject of psychopathic narcissists, we looked at the example of Harold Shipman, who was responsible for the deaths of over two hundred people. His narcissistic traits were arguably evident from his teenage years, and then transmuted into something altogether far more sinister and horrifying as he reached adulthood. His method of extracting "narcissistic supply" was feeling like God, by having the ultimate power over the life and death of his patients, whist simultaneously having the status as a well-respected doctor in the tight-knit local community.

Another serial killer, this time the Austrian Jack Unterweger, was an altogether different creature. As we shall see, his narcissism took more flamboyant and public form (and therefore shocking in a different way). Unterweger's story was one that appeared to belong in the realms of Hollywood crime thrillers and the tales of "glamour" crime writers; almost stranger than fiction.

Jack Unterweger

Unterweger was born as the (probably unwanted) child of his Viennese barmaid mother and an American soldier, in the years following the Second World War. It was said she was also a prostitute. His mother was an ineffective and unreliable figure for her son, who was quickly given to the protection of his grand-father. However, his grand-father was little better. The young Jack lived in his grand-father's cabin, which his grand-father regularly brought prostitutes to. There being no proper privacy, the young Jack was forced to see and hear everything. The grand-father was also an abusive alcoholic.

As an adolescent and young adult he was a petty offender, and a repeat sex offender, which involved long spells in prison. By his early twenties he was effectively a callous criminal and social parasite. In 1974, his crimes took an even darker turn. While in Germany, he killed a young German woman, and was extradited to Austria to serve his life sentence.

It was at this point, during his time in prison, that Jack appeared to undergo a transformative social change. Being able to effectively immerse himself into the world of literature and learning for the first time in his life, he sought to turn his life around, reform himself and go through a process of psychological re-birth. Like the infamous character "Alex" from "A Clockwork Orange", he had all the appearances of being a genuine case of the positive, powerful effect that social re-wiring and positive education can have on rehabilitation.
While in prison, he wrote and got published a biography of his life and his time in prison, that stood as a powerful telling of the effect that social conditions in prison have on the psyche. It was also made into a film, while Unterweger was still incarcerated. At the same time, he wrote and had published children's stories and poetry, and clearly sought to use his time in prison to re-educate and re-invent his life. His case and his rehabilitation were taken on board by influential figures in Austrian society, which, by early 1990, led to Unterweger being released from prison after the minimum term possible to be served for murder - fifteen years.

By this point, Unterweger had become a minor celebrity: he was forty years old; a well-dressed, handsome, larger-than-life figure, who had regular television appearances, discussing issues such a criminal rehabilitation, and had roles on national TV as a reporter and correspondent. He was a media darling and an object of fascination for many of Vienna's intelligensia. He lived in a well-to-do part of Vienna, with a smart flat and soon had a doting coterie of fans, many of them female. It was not long before he had a devoted girlfriend.

It was at this time that a spate of murders appeared in the Vienna area over the period of months, all of them prostitutes killed in the same way: strangulation, using the same type of knot. As an interested party, Unterweger took it upon himself to make some casual investigations into the case and its effect on that seedier side of society. Later, he went to Los Angeles and did similar work with the police to compare the differing vice cultures between countries. It happened that while Unterweger was in Los Angeles, three prostitutes were also murdered in the same way.

A detective who had known Unterweger since his murder case of fifteen years earlier recognised similarities between the way the prostitutes in Vienna had been killed, and the way that Unterweger had killed his female victim in 1974. Eventually, police put him under surveillance, given the apparent similarities in the M.O., in spite of the lack of clear motive, and Unterweger's "celebrity" profile.
When the police did then go to arrest Unterweger nearly two years after his first release from prison, he got wind of the police's plans, and fled the country, eventually ending up with his girlfriend in Florida, via Switzerland, Paris and New York. With the police investigation ongoing, Unterweger went to ground with his girlfriend in Florida. While he was trying to rally his supporters in Vienna against the (to his fans' minds, absurd) allegations, he cajoled his girlfriend to take up lap-dancing to support them both.
In fact, Unterweger's relationship with his partner was almost entirely parasitic. The money he had made from his career as "Jack the writer" was nowhere near as profitable as appeared, and he relied on his partner to help fund his larger-than-life existence. Indeed, his whole lifestyle was a sham, that had been financed on the moral support and wrangled pity of others.  Playing the charmer and the manipulator as he had successfully with his partner and Viennese high society, he was now trying to make himself appear as the wronged victim.

Eventually he was extradited back to Austria, where his trial took place in 1994. The evidence against him was compelling, and it was then that all the dots could finally be joined. Not long after his release from prison, Unterweger had gone to Prague. It was during this time that a prostitute was strangled, using the same knot that would be seen in the Austrian killings. The prostitutes killed in Los Angeles when Unterweger was there were also killed in the same way. Likewise, a woman who had been killed elsewhere in Austria was killed at the same time that Unterweger had been attending a public event in the area.

Now it was clear what kind of monster Austria was dealing with. Unterweger had never "rehabilitated" at all: he had simply used the time in prison to get smarter. He was manipulator and parasite, reveling in the attention he had been getting as a "celebrity" (a sign of cerebral narcissism), while at the same time no doubt getting further boosts to his ego that he was killing women undetected. The sojourn to Los Angeles was surely "the icing on the cake" for Unterweger's dark, twisted narcissism: enjoying the protection and attention of the LA police, while at the same time sharing time with them as they investigated the murders that he had committed himself.
The motive for his murders can never be known, but again the "God" complex may have been a factor, as well a probable deep-seated hatred of his mother, who had been in all likelihood a prostitute herself. The narcissist in Unterweger may have seen these murders as some kind of way to "get back" at her. As said elsewhere, psychopathic narcissists like Unterweger are also misogynists (in the same way that PUAs also rationalise their behaviour), seeing women as objects to be used - "toys" to play with, and discard at will. These are all signs of objectifying others, as the narcissist - and a psychopathic narcissist such Unterweger - is incapable of empathising with others.

While in custody, psychological testing confirmed that he met the criteria for NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder). After sentencing, Unterweger carried out another act that confirmed his ultimate narcissism: unable to tolerate the thought of going back to prison, he hung himself. Living the life of a "celebrity" serial killer, perhaps he also felt it would also fitting to go out in a final, unambiguous ending.