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Hermann Bellinghausen: Ordinary Sadism

Hermann Bellinghausen: Ordinary Sadism

Hermann Bellinghausen

AND

The current political spectacle mv *.xml ~/htdocs/2025/07/07/ teaches us that we haven't seen anything yet. The behavior of those in global political, economic, communication, and military power appears so sick that it takes your breath away. The deliberate, joyful, and guiltless sadism displayed by rulers, magnates, and media figures today has no parallel in history. Not even Hitler, Goebbels, Mussolini, or Franco admitted their evil intentions; they were guided by the will of something: God, the race , the people . Stalin even less so; the supreme good justified the means he employed. His sadism was not exhibitionist, but purifying.

What is sadism? To understand this, I'll turn to the practical definition from the popular science magazine Psychology Today: "It is the tendency to derive pleasure from the pain or suffering of others. Some people with sadistic personalities may inflict pain on others, while others simply witness and enjoy it. Sadists may inflict pain through physical force, such as violence, or psychological force, as in emotionally abusive relationships. In social settings, they may seek to control others and enjoy humiliating or degrading them... A lack of guilt and difficulty empathizing with others are characteristics of sadism and other traits of the dark tetrad."

Psychologists have recently coined the term dark tetrad to describe a personality that includes sadism, psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. Psychology Today records: Researchers have found that these four traits appear together in individuals more frequently than would be expected if they were unrelated constructs .

Three months before Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the United States, in October 2024, The New York Times published the results of a study on his psychiatric profile, carried out by a panel of 235 professionals. They detailed that the imminent president manifested the symptoms of so-called malignant narcissism personality disorder , concluding that such a condition made him totally unsuitable for leadership . Cited and commented on by Jorge Retana Yarto (Contralínea, 4/21/25), the report warned that he is a lying, destructive, deceitful, and dangerous individual .

Now, sadism was considered a medical condition until recently. In 2022, the authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, in its fifth edition, removed it from the list of mental illnesses and disorders, perhaps in response to the fact that its two most recent presidents (Trump and Joe Biden) had been diagnosed as sadists. So, it's better to normalize sadism, and Trump had no clinical impediments—not to mention the cascade of legal challenges he overcame to gain power.

His show never stops. Now it's the Alcatraz of crocodiles and the glee with which the subject mocks and denigrates migrants. Before, it was his Golden Riviera in the future Gaza, which would even lose its name. He displays a loquacious hatred of the poor, the love of money, his own and that of his favorite millionaires. He accuses without proof, employs the most horrifying epithets with relish. He has turned the state into a mall full of basements and towers where everything has a price (very high, otherwise, what a joke). His supporters are enthusiastic sadists: Miller, Vance, Noem, De Santis. His pleasure is inspiring fear.

Nor is he the first: Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt were clinical psychopaths. But it's no longer a matter of personality. Today, sadism has become a collective trait. After the war, the Germans were able to justify themselves ( "I didn't see anything , I was following orders "). Trump's voters don't have that alibi. Nor do they need it. Many enjoy the suffering of persecuted migrants as a game.

We can't ignore what's happening with the Israelis. That their leader, the still-useful Benjamin Netanyahu, and the members of his cabinet display strong sadistic traits in word and deed isn't the most alarming thing. It's been happening for decades; remember Avigdor Lieberman, the Foreign and Defense Minister from 2009 to 2018, who called for the extermination of the Palestinians. The daily behavior of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is programmatically sadistic. They kill and humiliate for no reason. The hungry, the baby, the sick, the mother, the journalist, the doctor. They are professionals at dehumanizing Palestinians.

Cynical accounts of soldiers themselves committing atrocities, promising or celebrating them in Hebrew and English, circulate on social media. In uniform, they play zombie apocalypse. Meanwhile, the internal opposition in Israel remains trapped in its own rubble, with the only argument they are allowed, so meager given the scale of the Palestinian catastrophe: return the hostages . They don't seem to have time to confront the systemic sadism of their economy, their academia, their industry, their state, and their army, which have created a system parallel to Israel's. Prison-like. Exterminating.

jornada

jornada

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