How authoritarians weaponize emotions

 

Why are murderous ideologies invariably based upon hijacking our emotions?

Murderous ideologies are frequently rooted in intense, primal emotions rather than rational thought because these ideologies are designed to bypass critical thinking and trigger immediate, often violent, behavioural responses. By focusing on emotional drivers such as fear, anger, and rage, these ideologies manipulate individuals into perceiving threats and acting on them, often bypassing the brain's rational, logical centres.

Here is a breakdown of why murderous ideologies are based primarily on feelings:

1. Emotions Overpower Rationality:

Hijacking the Brain: Intense emotions like outrage and fear activate the amygdala—the brain's, survival-focused "primal" center—which can override the prefrontal cortex, the area responsible for logic, empathy, and decision-making.

"Crimes of Passion": Many violent acts are not calculated, but rather impulsive reactions to intense emotions like jealousy, revenge, or, most commonly, fear-based anger.

The Role of Fear: Fear is a powerful, primary motivator that can shut down rational thought and drive people toward aggressive, protective, or "defensive" actions against perceived enemies.

2. Dehumanization and "Us vs. Them" Dynamics:

Emotional Categorization: Ideologies often foster an "us versus them" mentality, which uses emotion to categorize people, leading to dehumanization.

Creating "Bad Essence": To justify violence, ideologies often promote the idea that the target group is not just different, but fundamentally evil, subhuman, or animalistic. This removes the emotional barrier of empathy, allowing for cruelty without guilt.

3. Psychological Justification and Control:

Post-hoc Rationalization: While initially driven by feelings, murderous ideologies provide a structure to justify actions after the fact. People tend to look for reasons for their actions, so once the killing begins, hate serves as a justification that reinforces the behaviour.

Authoritarian Dynamics: Extreme violence is often linked to "authoritarian personalities" who seek to regain a sense of power or control when they feel threatened or insecure.

Emotional Manipulation: Manipulators exploit cognitive biases by using emotional triggers, such as, for instance, in the Holocaust where anger over economic and political crises was channelled into antisemitism.

4. Need for Belonging and Meaning:

Group Cohesion: Murderous ideologies often provide a sense of purpose and social belonging. The pressure to conform to a group makes it difficult for individuals to break away, as they fear rejection.

Ideology as a Shield: Such belief systems are often "hard shells" of fixed dogmas that protect individuals from the uncertainty of reality, hiding an underlying, chaotic, and unbridled emotionalism.

In Conclusion: Murderous ideologies are effective because they leverage, rather than challenge, the most raw, primitive, and intense emotional states of human beings.

To sum this up:

So, the question remains, why are so many of our so-called democratic institutions captured by hyper-emotionality that leads to them becoming authoritarian and as a result potentially murderous? Why are so many of the leftist leaders of Western countries decrying the combined efforts of Israel and the US to end the tyranny of a murderous theocracy which has killed thousands of its own people while attacking its neighbours with impunity as it shouts death to Israel and death to the USA? Western leaders are openly sympathising with the homicidal hyper-emotional irrational world view of Islam, and its top-down absolutism because they hope to do something similar to their own citizens. This is why British subjects are now being jailed for Facebook posts and why Tommy Robinson is under constant attack from the authorities for exposing the extent of the Muslim rape gangs operating in the UK. It's time to restore reason to politics by rejecting the toxic feelings upon which Postmodern Cultural Relativism and Cultural Marxist Critical Race Gender and Climate Catastrophizing Theory operate.

But here’s where it gets kinky:

For many years I booked and hosted blues gigs and events in Niagara to some measured success. As a result, the blues scene in the Niagara Peninsula is “happenin”, as we say in the biz. What is invaluable in playing the blues convincingly is feel. Many folks have the coordination and ear to play well technically. Many have mastered the theory of music to express themselves using their understanding of harmony, modes, melody, time, and technique to play well mechanically but do so without any real mojo. However, some folks who seem to know nothing of these things theoretically still play with such expression and passion that it astounds me that such “funkitudinal groovinality” could exist. I know since I have had the privilege of playing with them. However, what is useful in both playing music and in artistic expression is a very poor tool to use to navigate the multivariate complexities of this wicked world. Due to my utter rejection of the group think of social collectivism and my stance on the importance of a responsible government limited by constitutional law and inherent rights, my former musical chums have come to loathe me with a flaming passion. They live purely by feelings where rational, calm, and circumspect discourse are words they would need a dictionary to understand.

Yet what I have witnessed in the music scene has now become what my wife calls “the spirit of the times” where hyper-emotionality, outrage, and grievance narratives are all that determines how folks will react to the harsh realities confronting them. Whether this is due to being raised without discipline and consequences for their bad behaviour where parents and teachers both taught little Johnnie and dear wee Sally that they were the centre of the universe such that their false perceptions of what constituted fair ought to trump their own failure to toughen up, or whether this is due to the chemicals and hormones in our food that are turning our brains into mush, who can tell? Perhaps the prefrontal cortex responsible for logic, empathy, and decision making has become an amorphous blob of useless fat leaving the amygdala’s survival-focused "primal" centre in control. Today much of the West is fulfilling Devo’s prophecy in the tune Joko Homo!

They tell us that
We lost our tails
Evolving up
From little snails
I say it's all
Just wind in sails

Are we not men?
We are Devo
Are we not men?
D-E-V-O

We're pinheads now
We are not whole
We're pinheads all
Jocko Homo

Are we not men?
We are Devo
Are we not men?
D-E-V-O

Are we not pins?
We are Devo

Monkey men all
In business suits
Teachers and critics
All dance the poot

We are living in a dystopia where monkey men in suits dancing the poot have become our leaders doing the jerk as they climb deeper into bed with murderous Islamic theocracies and Communist China that supply dictatorships with the means to attack Western democracies along with the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel! We have now regressed into our amygdala’s lizard brain to become “lizardus erectus”!