These posts explore the themes developed in my monograph, Narcisso-Fascism, which is itself a real-world test of the central concepts of the Biocognitive Model of Mind for psychiatry.
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Two big events yesterday: Herr Drumpf got the huge kick in his fat arse that he well and truly deserves (but see Chris Hedges view on the outcome), and the independent AUKUS report was delivered. What report? AUKUS is a treaty between the UK, the US and Australia by which Australia will acquire nuclear submarines. Initially, it will lease three used Virginia class subs from the US to practice on while the UK and Australia design and build an entirely new class of vessels. Part of the deal is that this country will develop a base south of Perth, WA, for the subs which the US and UK will use as their own bases. If all goes according to plan, it is expected to cost in the order of $380billion over 25 years, not including the cost of running them for another 30 years or so. During the transition, it will involve the Navy, which has about 15,000 personnel and no nuclear technicians, running three entirely different classes submarines with no common elements and nowhere to store used nuclear fuel.
This deal was abruptly announced in September 2021 by the then Liberal-National government, in the lead up to an election which they lost. It was apparently cooked up by the former PM, Scott Morrison, and his good friend and fellow far-right evangelical, former US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and a couple of cabinet ministers. At no stage was there any discussion in cabinet, in parliament or in public. The opposition Labor party were informed of it one Saturday afternoon and given a few hours to support it, which they duly did. If they’d had any brains, which they don’t, and a spine to share, which they don’t, they would have said: “Can you send us each of the 300-400 page reports to Defence, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Treasury, Science and Technology, Education, Health and Human Services, Conservation and Environment, and Cabinet, and we’ll look at them over the next six months and let you know what we think.” They didn’t. They caved in at the thought of saying No to the US. Meanwhile, there are still no such reports.
Since they took office, Labor have made the first payments of $10billion to US and UK shipyards, essentially to keep them open until the vessels are designed, and started major work on the base in WA. Because there has been no proper investigation of this matter, an independent enquiry was conducted over about six months. Their report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS deception, was released this week, 113 pages available on their website, along with a 5 page executive summary and over 1000 submissions (my fairly long submission is No. 733). They concluded:
After carefully considering all the material presented to us, we conclude that AUKUS is the worst, most costly and riskiest defence decision ever made by Australian governments, and without adequate public scrutiny. AUKUS represents a massive cost for submarines that are of contested utility and may never arrive. In essence, AUKUS undermines our sovereignty, risks our national prosperity, distorts our defence budget and fails to promote regional peace.
They recommended it should be suspended forthwith while a Royal Commission investigates it. In my view, that is absolutely correct. There is no prospect whatsoever that these ships will ever be delivered. The US will not release its submarines and the British record on major industrial projects (HS2, Hinkley Point nuclear power station) is one of endless delays, severe cost overruns and failure to deliver. Moreover, the whole idea needlessly antagonises our neighbours and major trading partners. There is, however, very little chance of a proper investigation because it would show that this project has been corrupt from the moment it was conceived, implicating hundreds of politicians, industrialists and financiers. Since Scott Morrison was booted out in 2022, he has left parliament and has a very lucrative career, stage-managed by Pompeo, as a “consultant in business, defence, space, resources, finance, infrastructure and faith.” In office, he was widely seen as a supremely slippery and untrustworthy character with a record of business failures behind him, who schemed and manipulated his way to high office entirely unburdened by talent, qualifications or scruples. Why would anybody pay to listen to this clown? His background was in marketing, he knows jack shit about defence, space, resources and all that. Well, that was part of the deal; even if nobody turns up, he still gets paid.
OK, you say, so what? Looks like those brain dead, piss tank Aussies have once again by ripped off by the Yanks and the Poms, don’t they ever learn? Clearly, they don’t, but there is a much bigger issue playing out: in the US, the Republocrats have been replaced by the Demolicans; France is yet again paralysed by riots, Albania burning, Italy convulsed, Poland in yet another crisis, Britain lurching toward a police state, Israelis want to expel all Palestinians, on and on. Things are falling apart, the centre isn’t holding, so what’s going on? Are these just random events or are they in some way connected? Let’s use AUKUS as a case example.
The entire rationale of AUKUS is that Australia is an outpost of civilisation overhung by vast hordes of little yellow and brown johnnies who spend their entire lives looking at us greedily and plotting how to slide down here and push us out. We can’t possibly defend ourselves so we need a big powerful friend who will stand behind us and come to our aid should we need it. In order to prove ourselves worthy of saving, we buy lots of very expensive weapons from them and rush to join all their wars and share their animosities, even if they’re on the far side of the planet and don’t involve us. During peacetime, such as now, we join with them in demonstrating our commitment to freedom, democracy and apple pie by joining in their regular “freedom of navigation” exercises, during which our planes fly right on the edge of the nominated enemy’s airspace and our ships sail up the Taiwan Strait or similar, just to show the little yellow and/or brown johnnies that they can’t mess with us, they’d better watch their manners coz we’re in with the Big Kids.
The rest of it is that we must make the Big Kids want to be interested in saving us, yet the only thing we have worth their effort is our location. For example, the US has never had a naval base in the Indian Ocean, so we’ve kindly offered them one just down the river from where I used to live in Perth. In fact, we’re going to build it and run it, all they have to do is sail their nuclear-powered and armed subs and carriers in and we do the rest, gratis. They don’t even have to clean up after themselves, we’ll pump their sewage ashore and treat it (respectfully, of course). And nuclear waste as well, that’s part of it. Of course, we don’t have any facilities for nuclear disposal or even anybody who’s worked in one of them things but that’s OK, we’ll find a hole somewhere in the desert and dump it, just as we did at Maralinga and the Montebello Islands, which still glow in the dark.
All that assumes that the Great Northern Powers would have any interest in coming all this way just to see the koalas and in that, we’re lucky. They do. Britain has just had a freedom of navigation exercise where they sailed their newest carrier up the Strait of Taiwan and they’re excited by the thought of seeing black swans on Perth’s Swan River. What Taiwan has to do with them, or what they’ll do when they get here, how it will help them with their post-imperial decline, is nowhere explained. But the US? Of course they’ll come, the idea of having yet another overseas military base to add to the 850 they admit to, especially one they didn’t pay for, is the last piece in the jigsaw for them, the jigsaw showing the globe bestridden by a colossal Uncle Sam, who, with one fearsome gaze of his laser eyes and a rattle of his nuclear arms, subdues all the little yellow and brown and black and white johnnies who don’t have the good fortune to be born Amurricans.
This is theme No. 1, that there are countries that consider themselves “Great Powers” who have the right to dominate the world. That’s biology, you say, but as long as they keep it to themselves and don’t bother us, all will be fine. But it isn’t. They don’t keep it to themselves so, in order to dominate the world, they need two things. First, they need their civilian population to hand over taxes to pay for battleships and bombers and send their sons to be blown up in some far-distant swamp or desert and who will fall into line and cheer when told to, and not object when the far-distant natives are being blown away or gassed or starved for the greater glory of the imperium. Second, they need a far-distant country with lots of resources with natives who can work the mines and plantations, with leaders who can either be bribed into letting the imperialists loot the place or overthrown, and natives who can be subdued with grapeshot, gas and starvation, or all of the above.
Theme No. 2 is what we see playing out now: the civilian populations in the Homeland (that’s actually a Nazi term) are getting sick of being taxed to pay for wars to enrich the already rich, in far-distant countries that neither they nor their leaders can find on a map while essential services at home deteriorate and the planet gallops headlong toward a climate armageddon, all while said leaders are robbing the place blind and indulging their every sexual fantasy and a few more. At the same time, the usually docile natives of foreign lands who actually own the vital resources to keep the imperial war machines running are getting tired of being pushed around and, to great shock and outrage in the imperial capitals, are pushing back, very successfully. Countries that thought having US bases on their soil would protect them have just learned that it converts them into targets. Using its own, non-nuclear resources, Iran has just forced two nuclear armed powers to back off; dirt poor Yemen has kicked the infinitely corrupt Saudi regime where it hurts; Brazilians said “No way” to the deeply corrupt Bolsonaros; Albanians have told the Kushners to eff off; evil Russia is pushing back against NATO and winning, and so on.
Australians have to push back against the ridiculous idea that we have to join yet another American war of choice, this time against our biggest trading partner, in the vain hope that this time, the US will win (for a change) and that we will somehow come out in front despite having nobody to trade with. This is stupidity and arrogance beyond belief, especially when nobody in successive governments has made the slightest attempt to show that domination is a viable way to conduct international affairs while cooperation is not. That’s a measure of their contempt for the ordinary voter. You have to ask what planet these people live on, but we already know: it’s Planet Corrupt. As Morrison shows, and Kushner and all the others, they’re all on the take in one form or another.
People who hold power do not willingly give it up. The thrill of domination is so great that any attempt to restrict them will provoke an insensate rage to the point where they would rather destroy everything than surrender power. However, they can be defeated. As I pointed out in my submission to the AUKUS enquiry, this country can survive quite well here in its remote corner of the globe as long as we don’t waste our money on weapons we can’t even use, and don’t paint a target on our foreheads. But I think things are going to get worse before they get better.
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My critical works are best approached in this order:
The case against mainstream psychiatry:
McLaren N (2024). Theories in Psychiatry: building a post-positivist psychiatry. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. (this also covers a range of modern philosophers, showing that their work cannot be extended to account for mental disorder).
Development and justification of the biocognitive model:
McLaren N (2021): Natural Dualism and Mental Disorder: The biocognitive model for psychiatry. London, Routledge
Clinical application of the biocognitive model:
McLaren N (2018). Anxiety: The Inside Story. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press.
Testing the biocognitive model in an unrelated field:
McLaren N (2023): Narcisso-Fascism: The psychopathology of right wing extremism. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press.
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