Part 2. Narcissism; (Collective and Individual)
For most people, the term narcissism usually applies to characteristics of exaggerated egocentric exceptionalism as manifested by an individual within a larger community. In such cases, there are currently two recognised ‘states’ or conditions of individual narcissism; 1. ‘grandiose narcissism’, which manifests itself in symptoms of elevated high self-esteem and self-aggrandisement. 2. vulnerable narcissism which is characterised as exhibiting deflated low self-esteem and percieved victimhood. Moreover since the symptom of grandiose narcissism is invariably built upon exaggeration and fantasy of achievements, over-blown abilities and successes, social reality is always sooner or later going to undermine or deflate this individualised imaginary virtual world. Thus, a stage of vulnerable narcissim will almost certainly sooner or later follow symptoms of grandiose narcissism and external blame sought for the consequent loss of individual prestige. Therefore, in the place of the need for exceptional esteem, will arise the need for exceptional levels of pity which may be sought to compensate for this loss of an imaginary superiority. As a consequence, the American Psychiatric Association defined individual narcissism as exhibiting the following characteristics:
“..a grandiose sense of self-importance of uniqueness, eg exaggeration of achievements and talents, focus on the special nature of ones problems, preoccupation with fantasises of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love, exhibitionist need for constant attention and admiration, cool indifference or marked feelings of rage, inferiority, shame humiliation, or emptiness in response to criticism, indifference of others, or defeat and troubled interpersonal relationships, characterised by a lack of empathy, interpersonal exploitiveness, a sense of entitlement or expectation of special favours, and a tendency to fluctuate between extremes of idealisation and devaluation”. (American Psychiatric Association 1980)
So closely did this individual definition match many of the collective characteristics of religious, political and national communities particularly during the later decades of the 20th century, that within the discipline of social psychology, increased research into the phenomenon of Collective forms of Narcissism took place and it was concluded that;
“Collective narcissism is a belief about the ingroup, an aspect of ingroup identity and an element of ideology uniting group members. Collective Narcissism is a belief about the ingroup endorsed by group members who may differ in the levels of intensity with which they endorse this belief.” (The Psychology of Collective Narcissism. Chapter 1 Page 23, electronic edition.)
And;
“Collective narcissists emotionally invest in pursuing recognition of the exaggerated importance of their ingroups. After all it is more socially acceptable to demand privilege and special treatment for the group rather than oneself.” (Ibid page 35 )
In other words if groups of individuals get their sense of self-image, self-worth, etc., primarily from membership of a particular group, community or nation, whether its particular attributes are collectively exaggerated or not, then the insistence on special treatment or even demand for it will in those cases also be collectively pursued and therefore be more influential and powerful. This is undoubtedly the case with regard to the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, whose elites insist on special treatment and who often define criticism of their religion as a hate crime or apostasy against their belief in God. Clearly the ones offended by criticism are the fundamentalist believers not their imaginary God. However, this exagerated group importance and the hypersensitive reaction to denying it is not always restricted to the elites, for;
“Even if one is the most miserable, the poorest, the least respected member of a group, there is compensation for one’s miserable condition in feeling ‘I am a part of the most wonderful group in the world….Consequently, the degree of group narcissism is commensurate with the lack of real satisfaction in life” (Eric Fromm. 1973)
Narcissistic pride in thinking oneself exceptional whether as an individual, group, nation or religion of humans is a manufactured imaginary conceit. It is in direct contradiction to the inter-dependent reliance of all human individuals on all members of human communities as well as the absolute reliance of all humans upon all forms of life on earth. This reliance extends from the basics of the plant-produced air we breath, the plant (and animal pollination) produced food we eat, the atmospherically produced water we drink, the plant produced clothes we wear, the ecological environments we live and the tools or instruments we use. Anthropocentric exceptionalism and its self-indulgent narcissistic offshoot are all products of ignorance and ideological spin. The only thing exceptional with hierarchical mass society humanity is its propensity and ability to mass kill it’s own species and most of the species it depends upon and that ability is nothing to become narcissistic about.
And it is here that a further hierarchical mass society component giving rise to the phenomenon of individual and collective narcissism arises. Rather than analysing the socio-economic system and blaming that system for creating any alienating and immiserating symptoms, which obviously needs changing, it becomes easier and more ego satisfying for narcissistic inclined members of exceptionalist minded groups, to protect the image of the ingroup system and blame other outgroup victims for anything that goes wrong. For example the idea that members of out groups are taking jobs away or for over using public resouces, which could obviously be remedied by job sharing and humane wealth distribution. Of course, the populists who benefit from the current divisive system encourage this mutual blaming of the victims of the system. But the existence of an emotionally narcissistic addiction to ‘belonging’ to a so-called ‘superior’ group also allows the poor and underpriviledged to cling onto a form of elite identity which actually economically and socially marginalises them, but whose elites cynically allow them to be officially ‘counted’ as members of the allegedly superior group collective.
This need for a vicarious form of self-esteem also explains why narcissistically inclined members of such Collectivist Exceptionalist and Narcissistically inclined groups, religions or nations, will tolerate and even condone the most extreme levels of hostility and aggression to outgroup members, up to and including systematic genocide, without breaking openly, or breaking away intellectually from the groups superior collective identity. The mass banality of genocide (as per Hannah Arendt) is therefore not only a matter of being born and socialised into a system and simply learning to obediently follow orders. For many, involvement in group excesses can also be the result of a deeply held emotional attachment triggered by an individual Narcissistic need to belong to a supposedly superior collective – group or nation. ‘My country, religion, party, sect – right or wrong’ is a frequently adopted rationalisation of narcissistic addiction, but it invariably signals a serious retreat from humane or humanist values along with a stubborn avoidance of acknowledging that humanity is in essence one species (Homo sapien) and not made up of fundamentally different biological organisms.
The above noted emotional and counterproductive form of exceptionalist and narcissistic attachment to a sub-species form of collective can be so strong that it also notoriously took place with Communist Party members in the 20th century. There were those, who on the basis of the Russian Revolutionary uprising of October 1917, intellectually bought into the globally manufactured, supposedly intellectual superiority, of Bolshevik sectarian ideology. Some party members became so emotionally ‘attached’ to the concept of ‘their Party’ that even after the exposure of massive crimes against workers, peasants and internal party members, that they could not bring themselves to criticise or leave the ‘Party’. Why? It became clear from discussions with ones I came across as a young trade union activist that it was because their self-identify and self-belief had been narcissistically grafted onto an exceptionalist ideology of Leninist and Stalinist/Bolshevik superior way of thinking. Consequently, recognising they and the Party had been substantially misled by its elites – for so long – was emotionally impossible for some of them them to admit. Since they could not face this reality, their clinging onto the party’s dogmatic ideology of intellectual superiority paralleled that of religious dogmatic certainty and for the few remaining disciples of Lenin, it still is.
We see the almost identical phenomenon exhibited by some members of the Jewish community who appalled by the domination of Jewish Zionist fascism simply become ‘Jews against occupation’, or Jews against Zionism, not human beings against occupation, Zionism or genocide. Similarly, some Muslims appalled by Islamic forms of fascism, become anti ISIS or anti-Islamist Muslims, not human beings against ISIS or Islamism. Christians appalled by prelate child abuse, become Christian’s against child abuse, not ‘humans against child abuse’. Of course all these types of partial responses to exceptional events, within exceptualist groups, religions or nations, nevertheless serve to prop up and perpetuate their own groups general exceptionalism. In most cases, ‘liberal’ members of such exceptionalist ‘isms’ (national or religious) become in effect the ‘soft cops’ of institutionalised physical or intellectual exploitation, in contrast to the fascistic ‘hard cops’ of exceptionalist institutions. The latter being the ‘foot soldiers’ who harm individually or mass kill with no apparent qualms.
Yet both liberal and fundamentalist tendencies within exceptionalist collectives benefit from the mixed proceeds of the ‘grand game’ of hierarchical mass society exploitation of people and nature whether locally or by close or distant colonisation and mass monoculture production. In a matter of a few thousand years of history or less, the elitist designations of superior religions, nations and even the fictionalised construction of ‘races’ along with their practices, have been successfuly imprinted upon their citizens intellectual capacity, until in the modern world simply being an amazing human entity on an amazingly supportive eco-system is not enough self-identify for millions of people. Sadly, rather than revolutionary socio-economic alteration, many people – even on the radical left – seem to need some narcissistic addictive additive to their actual already amazing biological species form of human identity.
Exceptionalism and its emotional twin, narcissism seem to be symptoms infecting the thinking of anyone not fully aware of the insidious socialisation process taking place within the unnatural and alienating social structures of hierarchical mass societies. Therefore, predictably, in the event of notable group failures, scandals or crimes, self-criticism or criticism of a group thinking itself exceptional will be generally avoided and the tendency will emerge which will blame such failures on external factors. Typically: ‘Look what they made us do. It’s their fault. They made us so angry/fearful it became necessary to commit violence in the extreme’. ‘They just wouldn’t agree to let our superior culture, religion, nation to rule over their inferior culture, nation, religion etc., and dominate the places and peoples we wish to dominate.’ In the case of the exaggerated exceptionism of collective exceptionalism and narcissism, these tendencies, (including hostility to external criticism and rage against internal critics) will be all the more forcibly pursued. Thus, research on Collective Narcissism produced the following observation;
“Evidence suggests that out-group hate and inter-group hostility are directly predicted by collective narcissism.” (ibid Collective Narcissism.)
As already noted, exceptionalism and Collective Narcissism are not the exclusive products of any one religion, nation or sect, they are all manifestations arising from the structural features of hierarchical mass society formations, albeit with various nuanced differences and additions. However, all the variations of these symptoms share some common characteristics with other hierarchical mass societies manifesting the phenomenon, whether their central exceptionalist orientation happens to be skin colour, religious affiliation, political orientation, national identity, ethnicity, gender or geographical location. Each particular Collective Narcissistic variant therefore;
“… produces bias to arrive at specific conclusions that the ingroup is still exceptional while being unrecognised and still great while engaging in immoral actions intergroup oppression and intergroup hostility……….Collective narcissism is a particularly insidious belief as it produces general gullibility and predilection toward fake news and conspiracy thinking with a specific preference for conspiracy theories that justify intergroup violence. They serve ruthless leaders to attract followers. They give followers of such leaders justification for coercion and violence as means of advancing their political goals.” (The Psychology of Collective Narcissism. Conclusion.)
The realisation that the close connections between the above research summary of conclusions concerning exceptionalism and narcissism and the reality of past and present acts of organised genocide and crucially – the lack of organised elite opposition to its continuing use – are unavoidable. The only way to avoid making these connections is by allowing bias and prejudice to distort, ignore or excuse the various characteristics, actions and policies of the latest 21st century examples of genocide . But I suggest exercising such avoidance strategies also come with their own social, psychological and emotional costs both to victims and to perpetrators of genocide, a phenomenon which will be considered in part 3.
Roy Ratcliffe (January 2024)
Part 3. (Genocide: Victims and Perpetrators.) is to follow.
critical-mass.net 
Post shoah the reputation of Xtianity totally shot. By their fruits you shall know them.
Modern church = Orthodox Judaism today. LOL In the blessing after eating bread, notice the blessing for Hannukka. The wicked Greek kingdom attempted to force Israel to abandon the Oral Torah. (The language “Oral” implied. Why? B/c the Written Torah was written).
What defines the “Oral Torah”? According to Rabbi Akiva, the kabbalah of Oral Torah refers to פרדס, an abbreviation for p’shat, r’miz, drosh, sod. Orthodox Judaism throws פרדס out like a fisherman places a worm on a hook. But in point of fact Orthodox Jews, following the disastrous victory of the Rambam statute halachic code which perverted T’NaCH & Talmudic common law; these religious Jews do not know how to learn Oral Torah. Oral Torah became a lost wisdom. Which learns the Talmud as a fabric which contains a warp/weft, Halacha\Aggadah relationship. דרוש ופשט align with the Aggadah portions of Talmud and Midrash. While רמז וסוד align with the halachic portions of the Talmud. G’lut Jewry lost the wisdom, how to learn the Torah לשמה.
This requires proof. Oral Torah – a logic format by which the generations can interpret the k’vanna of the Written Torah. Two major branches of logic. Deductive logic and Inductive logic. Assimilated Roman statute law most essentially relies upon deductive logic. A rabbinic figure teaches a din to his students, and those students “interpret” the k’vanna of their rabbi’s halachic ruling. Rabbi Akiva had 5 major talmidim who survived. They passed the masoret of the Mishna to Rabbi Yechuda Ha’Nasi, primarily by means of their deductive reasoning in how they understood the words of Rabbi Akiva.
The halachic codes most famous today, the Rambam, Ben Asher, and Yosef Karo. These assimilated codes rely most essentially upon the logic format of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. They do not possess a grasp of the hidden kabbalah of Rabbi Akiva’s פרדס logic system. The story of Hannukka depicts not only a conflict between the Jews and the Syrian Greek empire. But equally a Civil War between the P’rushim (the forefathers of rabbinic Judaism) against the Tzeddukim (the assimilated house of Aaron Cohonim, who ruled the Banana Republic of Judea for benefit of their masters: the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans).
When the Persian empire permitted the generation of Ezra to return and rebuild Judea and the Temple in Jerusalem, the Persia kings did so b/c the Assyrian policy which removed the indigenous population of the 10 Tribes from their homelands, this policy opened the gates of that empire to foreign Invasions. The Babylonian empire conquered the Assyrian empire quickly due to this critical strategic blunder.
Hence Cyrus, the king of Persia, permitted Jews to return. And paid for the construction of the Temple, to cement shut this gateway of foreign invasion into the Persian empire. Jews rebuilt Judea and would fight to prevent a foreign army to conquer it again.
Aristotle rode with Alexander the Great, when that Greek general conquered the Persian empire of Iran. Approximately 1000 years later, with the invasion of Spain by Muslim armies, the Muslims rediscovered the writings of the ancient Greeks which Constatine concealed & cloistered, and only permitted Catholic monks to study, thus causing the Dark Ages.
The ‘Golden Age’ of Spanish Jewry, an utter misnomer. Ibn Ezra’s son converted to Islam. Jews living in Spain almost totally assimilated to the cultures and customs of the conquering Muslim empires. Specifically, where the Maccabees defeated the assimilated Tzeddukim (they wanted to turn Jerusalem into a Greek polis/City State) Rambam and the assimilated Spanish rabbis totally embraced the rediscovered ancient Greek philosophy! Would Jewish refugees make t’shuva and expel the assimilated Tzeddukim from the Temple for a second time? No. G’lut Jews lost the wisdom of pursuing mitzvot observance לשמה.
The Rambam named his assimilated Roman Statute law code the “Mishnah Torah” due to his total ignorance that the term Mishna Torah refers: not only to the 5th Book of the Torah (this he clearly knew), but that Mishna Torah means: common law (this he clearly did not know). Rabbi Yechuda Ha’Nassi wrote the 6 Orders of the “Mishna” because he understood that the Book of דברים makes a Mishna Torah common law Case/Rule reinterpretation upon the other 4 Books of the Written Torah, with the k’vanna to grasp the prophetic mussar applicable to all generations of Israel.
NaCH serves as mussar precedents (called בנין אב in the logic of Rabbi Yishmael’s 13 rules of logic); the Aggadah portions of the Talmud (about 1/4th of the Sha’s Bavli), together with the Geonim Midrashim, specifically Midrash Rabbah, serves as a commentary to the Aggadah (Which organizes its drosh around the order of the Mishnaot rather than the order of the T’NaCH like as does classic Midrash commentaries.); the Aggadah makes a drosh back to T’NaCH Primary mussar sources with an eye to learn the k’vanna of prophetic mussar. Prophets command mussar – the T’NaCH definition of prophesy.
Following the Rambam Civil War, {{{[[[[(( Rambam published his assimilated Roman statute law halachic code in about 1185 ce. He died in 1205. The Spanish court of Rabbeinu Yonah place the ban of charem upon the Rambam {like as similarily a later court condemned Spinoza} in about 1215; and burned his corruption with the evilly named Mishnah Torah.
Despite foreign travel being highly confined during the Dark Ages due to a lack of functioning roads and bandits, the fires of the Rambam Civil War in Spain spread first to France. In 1242 the Pope and the king of France ordered the total destruction of all Talmudic hand written manuscripts in France. {The printing press not developed until about 2 Centuries later.} The public destruction of all Talmudic manuscripts in France, its impact upon European g’lut Jewry compares to the impact of the Romans expelling the Jews from Judea and renaming the land Palestine!
In 1290 the flames of this Jewish Civil War spread to England which culminated in the expulsion of Jews from England. Then this international Jewish Civil War returned back to France. The king expelled the Jews of France in 1305; this disaster destroyed the common law learning on the Torah and Talmud. (Rashi p’shat employs inductive learning by means of comparative precedents. This Rashi Chumash p’shat totally different than the Rashi’s Talmudic commentary of “p’shat”. The criticism made by the Baali Tosafot commentaries on the Talmud, it learns the common law inductive reasoning methodology of the Talmud, by means of a common law inductive precedent search/based commentary to the Talmud. Rashi p’shat on the Talmud most essentially lacked this essential understanding of Talmud as Common law.
Rashi’s Talmudic simple deductive reasoning p’shat commentary on the Talmud, written to conceal from the Pre-1st Crusades church, the inductive reasoning of common law. Hence Rashi p’shat on the Chumash, there Rashi showed his understanding of inductive reasoning precedent based p’shat. His Chumash commentary most essentially entails the inductive comparison method of a judicial case juxtaposed to similar judicial case/law ruling ie common law.
The expulsion of the Jews from France in 1305 destroyed the Rashi-Tosafot common law school of Chumash and Talmudic inductive logic reasoning common law scholarship. Disasters followed one after another. The Talmud refers to this type of crash as ירידות הדורות: which means domino effect/ripple effect.
The kingdoms of Germany imposed crushing taxation without representation upon the Jewish stateless refugee populations living within the German kingdoms. As did the king of England the Germans likewise pauperized the Jewish refugees almost over-night with their criminal taxation without representation theft of virtually all Jewish wealth. When the Germans could not squeeze more gold out of “their” Jews, they expelled these Jewish refugees from their kingdom. Jews fled from one German kingdom to another only to be abused in the exact same way – over again and again.
Then in about 1415 the Pope imposed the ghetto war crimes upon the Jews of Western Europe. Jews would remain imprisoned in these ghetto war crimes for over 3 Centuries, till Napoleon kicked the Pope in his balls, and freed the Jewish refugees from the ghetto and granted French citizenship to French Jewry! This revolution likewise witnessed the economic transformation from Lord/serf agricultural based economies to citizen/democracy industrial based economies. The last Lord/serf feudal based agricultural based economies: Czarist Russia and the Confederate South. Both of these agricultural wealth based economies witness military defeat. Czarist Russia tasted the bitterness of the Crimean War of 1856. While the Southern Confederacy tasted the bitterness of the battles of Gettysburg and Shermans burning of Atlanta.
The Vatican imposition of the ghetto war crimes upon Western European Jewish refugee populations cause a huge population transfer, wherein millions of Jews fled from Western Europe unto Eastern Europe, specifically the Ukraine and Poland.
Disaster followed disaster. While the rediscovery of the ancient Greek philosophical writing significantly contributed with terminating the Dark Ages and ushered in the Rennaissance. The ensuing Catholic corruption erupted in the Reformation and the terrible 30 Years War. Europe’s population during the 30 Years War, about 1\3rd the size of Europe’s population during WWI. Yet about as many people killed in the 30 Years Protestant/Catholic Wars as died during the War to End All Wars! Soldiers on both sides slaughtered Jewish ghetto imprisoned refugees, like lions often play with their prey.
1648 with the Peace of Westphalia finally terminated that horrible barbaric war. This war forced European governments to demand laws of war, following the horrific abominations and war crimes committed by both sides.
But for Jewish refugee populations disaster followed disaster! The same year of the Peace of Westphalia, witnessed another more horrific explosion! The Khmelnytsky Uprising – which lasted about 9 years and resulted in the slaughter of approximately 1.5 million Jews. This disaster followed up by the Sabbatai Zevi & Yaacov Frank false messiah absolute disasters.
After Napoleon kicked the Pope in his balls and freed Western European Jewish refugee populations from the criminal ghetto war crimes against Humanity, Jews freed from the ghetto prisons came out of the Dark Ages unto a modern world! Reform Judaism declared Karo’s Shulkan Aruch assimilated statute law based upon deductive reasoning, and not inductive precedent based reasoning, as archaic and not relevant to the Modern age.
Disaster followed by disaster defines the Jewish g’lut refugees experience in Europe and Muslim/Arab lands. Reform Judaism caused “Orthodox Judaism” to cling to the Neturie Karta abomination: Berlin our New Jerusalem – what-ever country Jews live, that’s our homeland Av tumah avoda zarah. Orthodox rabbis in the early 20th Century condemned political Zionism’s attempts to find a great power patron who would support the Jewish return back to our homeland. The Orthodox assimilated statute law addicted rabbis despised the Balfour Declaration of 1917!
These Orthodox rabbis tended to duplicate the error made by Pope Pius XII; they held that Orthodox Judaism has a monopoly over the Torah, that the opinions expressed by the Reshonim – infallible! They decreed that ירידות הדורות means that later generations of Jewry cannot criticize earlier generations of Reshonim scholarship. Despite the fact that the Reshonim failed to lead Jewish refugee populations back to our homelands. Orthodox Neturei Karta Judaism despises the phenomenal success achieved by late 19th Century Political, Cultural & Labor Zionism!
Just as the Wilderness generation rebelled to rise up and conquer the oath brit homelands of Canaan, so too Orthodox Judaism behaved like dogs who return and eat their own vomit. Those arrogant rabbis who imagine that Orthodox Judaism has a monopoly-hold on the inheritance of the Torah; who embrace the deductive reasoning “monopoly” perversion of T’NaCH and Talmudic inductive logic common law; who favor their copy-cat “Xtian replacement theology” assimilated deductive Aristotelean logic statute halacha model monopoly. Just as the Wilderness Generation has no portion in the World to Come, so too Orthodox Judaism/Shoah has no portion in the World to Come.)))}}}]]], Jewish g’lut refugee populations experience destruction after destruction after destruction after destruction.
The point of the Sharon government’s decision to establish a Balestinian state in Gaza in 2005: to give the Arabs a “piece of the action”, to operate as an Independent State. Recall that Bibi opposed PM Sharon’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza.
PM Begin made a similar political calculation to return the Sinai back to Egypt, for the 2nd time, to validate the Egyptian state in order to cut a Peace. The Camp David Accords served as the model for PM Sharon to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza. The ‘orange ribbons’, (the mass national protests against the unilateral removal of Jews living in Gaza), served as a protest which took Israel to the edge of the cliff of Civil War in 2005!
But once done its done. PM Bibi does not involve Israel in Egyptian or Syrian weapons and acquisitions. Israel has yet to bomb an Iranian nuclear reactor. If Iran set off a nuclear explosion test, would Israel declare war? I do not know.
PM Bibi gave Hamas enough rope to hang themselves. That Israel conquers an Arab country, the first time in the history of the Jewish state that Israel fights a war to totally conquer an Arab state. Even the quasi-Arab state of Gaza! This game changer radically changes the balance of power in the Middle East. Herein explains why countries like both France and Turkey so radically oppose this war that demands the unconditional surrender of the Hamas government.
To employ a metaphor: Israel conquering a Arab country: the shit hits the fan; the fox in the chicken coop has the feathers flying. This war has totally discredited the UN! Another first in international politics. Same holds true with the Red Cross-Double Cross. From South Africa to China, the total unconditional surrender of Hamas & Islamic Jihad in Gaza, radically changes the balance of power in the Middle East vis a vis other great powers.
1970-71 Black September Jordan expelled the PLO. It made a forced mass population transfer of Balestinian terrorist. Hizballah’s alliance with Hamas & Islamic Jihad terrorism suggests that post the complete and total surrender of Hamas in Gaza, since Gazans democratically elected Hamas into power in its 2006 elections. Therefore Israel should make a mass population transfer of the entire Gaza dhimmi Arab refugee population of Gaza unto Lebanon.
Palestine: 1922 to 1948 R.I.P. Ben Gurion named the Independent Jewish State – Israel in 1948. Gazans in the 2006 elected Hamas as the government of Gaza. Following the Oct 7th Abomination Israel invaded Gaza.