The More Dangerous State of the World, the Need for Fit Leadership, and the Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, Part 6

A Final Summary of Expert Opinions by U.S. Security and Mental Health Professionals

Below is a final summary review of the critical themes from our major National Press Club conference, offered to us by Dr. Sally Adnams Jones, author, psycho-educator, and therapist. Video headings are credited to Dr. Madeline Taylor, also author, psycho-educator, and therapist.

Matthew Bywater, the only student panelist as a member of the next generation, with a master’s degree in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science, who has studied in authoritarian societies such as China and North Korea, spoke next.  He will submit the World Mental Health Coalition’s Declaration of Freedom of Mind to the United Nations.  He explained that the Declaration opens up unprecedented ways to protect the mind and is a template for international agreement on the most fundamental of all freedoms.  It responds to the authoritarian takeover that marks the Trump presidency and breaks new ground in protections.  It specifies the ways, and outlaws all the main variants, of mind control.  It defines and prohibits the phenomenon of mental slavery and specifies the psychological right to individuate.  And with the duty to warn, the declaration creates an unqualified prohibition of censoring speech, media, and experts, in relation to mental health issues, and the unqualified right of the public to fully access information and expertise.  Current human rights law, by contrast, permits restricting freedom of speech in times of emergency.  Authoritarianism begins at home, and endures in our schools, work places, and institutions.  Before it becomes a political or social problem, it is first a psychological disorder, affecting and afflicting individuals.  This disorder afflicts both ruled and ruler, victim and victimizer, or “predator and prey,” to quote Trump himself.  This is the dividing line, not traditional left or right, but authoritarian or democratic, anti- or pro-social, pathologically disordered or not.  Authoritarianism is part of the human condition, but it need not always be.  We have the tools to push back with human rights as the centerpiece of this endeavor.  The public need to learn to defend this freedom against those who would violate it.  Proponents of “freedom of mind” face wide-ranging opposition, which is not simply irrelevant to the powerful: it is an impediment to their modus operandi.  Much of the academic middle remain perplexed by the rise of authoritarianism, and think mind control is a cult problem that afflicts the fringes of society.  Proposals to update the law to advance this have met with resistance from legal traditionalists.  And in the domain of human rights, rights violation is still conceived of involving situations where the violator is a governmental actor.  We are on a precipice.  The spread of democracy is halted as dangerous leaders take hold of entire countries.  Destructive mind control techniques have spread from the cultic fringes of society to the mainstream.  But there is hope.  An emerging body of mind-protective law continues to develop and expand at the national level.  We are living through a golden age of cult awareness.  The word “narcissist” has well and truly entered the lexicon.  Hundreds of thousands of families from Hong Kong, Turkey, and Russia have embarked on a new life in the free world determined to protect and nurture their young children’s minds.  During recent mass protests in China, protestors identified and skillfully pushed back against the mind control of the Chinese Communist Party.  As psychological awakening slowly extends across the world, it shows us that humanity is not too thin a community to base a universal right to be mentally free.  It is the widest community we have, and that is why freedom of mind is so important.

Dr. Steven Hassan, mental health professional, forensic expert, and Fielding fellow who has been helping people leave destructive cults since 1976, said he grew up with Trump in Queens, and knew then he was a malignant narcissist.  Yet, he himself was still deceptively recruited into the Moonies and experienced brainwashing and mind control firsthand for two and a half years, which ended with deprogramming.  Dr. Robert Lifton’s book, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China, was used to help him understand how he had been brainwashed.  He then studied psychology and wrote four books, including, The Cult of Trump.  He added we are not ready to understand that mind control is real.  After a subjective experience of his own, followed by 48 years of getting people out of cults, he concludes this is a dissociative disorder.  This is 300.15 in the DSM-5, which names cults and brainwashing, yet mental health professionals are not taught about this disorder, or what can be done to help people recover.  This is a public health emergency, and we need to preventively educate about how to tell the difference between ethical influence and unethical influence, as it is on a continuum.  We need psychoeducation and to train people in how to perform interventions.  We also need recovery and to be able to say, “I was in that cult.”  He himself once thought the Moonies’ fat billionaire was “the messiah,” too.  He turned his back on his religion, country, and thought democracy was Satanic, and that theocracy needed to take over the world.  He was in the room when the leader said he would amend the Constitution and make it a capital offense to violate the rules.  Although educated about the Holocaust, Hassan himself became like a Nazi.  All cult leaders are the stereotypical malignant narcissist.  Yet Trump too, is controlled by other cult leaders, who have their own followers brainwashed to follow him.  Gareth Gore has an important book coming out called Opus, on the Opus Dei cult.  William Barr, the head of Heritage Foundation and Project 2025, is Opus Dei.  It is a very dangerous, authoritarian, Catholic cult, which thinks the Pope is Satanic, because he wants justice and human rights.  New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is another network of 30 to 40 million Americans, that the media call Christian Evangelicals, but this is a mind control cult with a prophet who “speaks directly to God,” who told him Trump won the election.  If you can control information, you can control minds.  They are programed, through behavior, information, thought, and emotional control to be new identities, to be obedient and dependant on their cult leader, and they will do whatever he says.  If they say, “Follow Vance,” they will follow Vance, because they are so programed to fear Satan.  Phobia indoctrination is a universal mind control technique.  We have to think what will happen after the election, as we will have to depolarize our country.  People have been radicalized into MAGA, but they are waking up and joining a group called, “Leaving MAGA.”  We need to create an off-ramp, destigmatize, and build common ground.  Never attack the leader or argue facts—it just activates the cult identity.  They feel persecuted.  What works is being told about Chinese brainwashing, pimps, and traffickers.  It is a way to have a dialogue, to educate people on reality testing.

Dr. Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry and author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, said his political messaging consultations are like doing psychotherapy with 30 million people at a time.  The Founding Fathers feared that, ever so often in a democracy, there would be a Trump: we are vulnerable to demagogues that can draw out “the passions of the mob.”  Abraham Lincoln described these as the lowest demons of our nature.  The White House is not the appropriate institution to house Trump.  There has been a lot of discussion about his diagnosis, and the question is, “To what extent do we know things about this person that make them troubling in particular ways?”  In Trump’s case, they are troubling in virtually every way—and they can be quantified.  Westen and colleagues spent years developing a way to quantify diagnosis of personality, from minor to severe pathology, 20 years before Trump was in power.  Most people specialize in one or maybe two personality disorders, but he scored Trump on this instrument, and he meets diagnostic criteria from the DSM-5 for five personality disorders!  These are: 1) narcissistic; 2) antisocial; 3) psychopathic, which has more lack of remorse; 4) paranoid; and 5) grandiose and paranoid delusional disorders.  The Founders did not just expect a Trump, they tried to limit the likelihood—but they did not expect anyone to have his lack of honor—or the lack of honor of the Republicans, who have supported him and have been complicit, out of their own cowardice, avarice, and quests for power.  The Founding Fathers included checks and balances, in case they made a bad decision.  We have undone virtually every one of those protections.  We saw Congress sit back after an attack on themselves, where they were protected by police who gave their own lives, and 147 of them still said, after that, “I will not cede to the Biden electors.”  The Supreme Court’s decision to provide blanket immunity for the president for crimes he can commit in office, may meet criteria for conspiracy.  Westen is worried about his getting elected by the electoral college, as there is no way he will win a popular vote.  But he is much more worried about the people the Trump Republicans have planted throughout the swing states, in positions of authority, having to do with counting and certifying votes.  Last time, 63 courts said there was no fraud, but now the Supreme Court will use delay as a way of deciding cases.  All it takes is a handful of courts to delay, and a handful of cases that get up to the Supreme Court, where they will delay to pass the deadline, and it goes to the House of Representatives.  And there, each state gets one vote, and if its 26 Republican states and 24 Democratic states, like it normally is, Donald Trump will be reinstalled as next president.  Sometimes, by extraordinary rolls of the historical dice, you get a Benjamin Franklin, a Thomas Jefferson, and a George Washington, all in the same place, at the same time.  And other times, you roll snake-eyes, and you get a Donald Trump, a Ted Cruz, and a Marjorie Taylor Greene.  These are the times that try men’s and women’s souls.  We have to preserve our democracy.

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee will hold a live session on:

“Reflections on the Election”

Thursday, November 7, 2024, at 12 noon EDT/9 a.m. PDT on Zoom.  This will replace this week’s regular Friday session, and requires a paid subscription.  Thank you!

Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist and an expert on violence who became known to the public with her 2017 book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.  During this crucial election season, she organized a major National Press Club Conference on the theme of, “The Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”—of which the summary video is here.  We have also successfully published, The More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 40 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew. Dr. Bandy Lee’s website on this topic is here. Two articles quoting from the original Dangerous Case of Donald Trump are here. Please continue to share our two critical Statements, for, as our conference revealed, we may not survive another dangerously unfit presidency in this very dangerous world!