Want to avoid the joycamps? Afraid of being unpersoned? Then be a goodthinker and watch 1984! There's a reason the term "Orwellian" is used so often today. From the news to politics, the novels and allegories of writer George Orwell help explain how and why the Big Lies are disseminated, and with good reason. Orwell grokked the true nature of totalitarianism, and how its pathological twisting of reality perception helps it achieve and maintain power. In the year 1984, and in recognition of...

Based on true events, Agnieszka Holland's 2019 film Mr. Jones tells the story of an English government functionary who, hot off the heels of interviewing Hitler in the early 1930's, tasked himself with going to Soviet Russia to interview Stalin. The story's protagonist, Gareth Jones, seeks to inform Stalin of Hitler's plans for European domination and plant the seeds of an alliance between England and the Soviet Union that could offset the Nazi party's plans. In the process, Jones learns...

Today on MindMatters we share seven books to understand what's really going on in the world today: in the universities, on the streets, in government; the ideologies running the show, the psychopathy behind them, and the rise of soft totalitarianism. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents Cynical Theories: How...

Wokeness may appear crazy to its critics, but underneath the surface is something even more sinister than most are willing to admit. As an ideology with wide appeal, critical social justice theory has served its purpose as the lockpick to western civilization, as James Lindsay has put it. It has opened the gates to the highest political power, and every aspect of western culture. But what has entered through the gates? Today on MindMatters we look at Wokeness through the lens of ponerology...

The mind-virus of psychopathic thinking is all around us. Day after day, individuals are falling prey to the paramorals and paralogic of a weaponized pathological ideology. It has its own purpose-built language, government polices, and social norms, making it difficult to escape. But it is not real. And the lies only seem to be getting bigger, and more numerous. What is the endgame? Utopia. But for whom? And why do utopias always end up as dystopias? These answers and more this week on...

Fifteen years ago the world was introduced to the research of Polish psychologist Andrzej Łobaczewski in his seminal work Political Ponerology. In it, he outlined the danger of pathological revolutionary movements, the poisonous influence of psychopaths in positions of power, and the real origins of totalitarianism - as well as why relatively normal people are left woefully vulnerable to pathological thinking and psychological 'infection'. When the book was first published the "forever war...

In 1996 Dr. George K. Simon wrote and self-published In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People, almost single-handedly changing the 'self-help' landscape in the U.S. The book remains a best-seller. With decades of clinical research under his wing, Dr. Simon saw that a very large percentage of psychological and emotional issues people suffered from were due to the effects of the extremely manipulative individuals in their lives. Learning to recognize the signs...