FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY OF POLITICAL PATHOLOGY |
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Andrew Hammer, Executive Director |
The Psychopathology of Normality,Part 3: Why do Nations Have the Right to Kill? by Richard Koenigsberg |
The mission of the Foundation for the Study of Political Pathology is to explore the question, “What are nations and why do we assume these entities are entitled to bring about the deaths of human beings?” According to Rudolph Rummel, there have been well over two-hundred sixty-million deaths in the Twentieth Century resulting from wars and genocidal episodes. Rummel wonders why textbooks assigned to students rarely emphasize the fact that nations are killers. |
Men in the Twentieth Century died for nations. But do we really know what “nations” are? What are these entities which generate death on such a massive scale? And why do human beings give nations the “right” to take human lives? |
We know the names of the “leaders” who generated mass-death in the Twentieth Century. People like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot. But the massive dying that occurred under the leadership of these men was possible because they represented their nations. This is why these men had the “right” to kill. |
People may be horrified by the actions initiated by these leaders, but once we evoke the idea of the nation, we are not mystified. People say to themselves, “This is what nations do. They sometimes engage in operations which result in the deaths of hundreds-of-thousands, even millions of people. What is to explain?” |
The mission of the Foundation for the Study of Political Pathology is to explore the question, “What are nations and why do we assume these entities are entitled to bring about the deaths of human beings?” According to Rudolph Rummel, there have been well over two-hundred sixty-million deaths in the Twentieth Century resulting from wars and genocidal episodes. Rummel wonders why textbooks assigned to students rarely emphasize the fact that nations are killers. |
Up to now, we have taken for granted the “normalcy” of mass-murder undertaken by nation-states. Our mission is to “bracket” the question of normalcy. What if we begin with the individual human being—who would rather live than die. Then we look at ideologies of destruction in a new way. We view that which ordinarily is viewed as normal—as abnormal. We investigate the psychopathology of normality. |
Share your thoughts on this essay by writing a paragraph or two and sending them to:Best regards,Andrew Hammer, Executive Director |
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