Extension of the Eysenck's model of ideology into 3-D. The anterior - posterior dimension is related to the attitudes toward Semitism.

Dimensions of Ideology

The left-right dimension of the Eysenck's model derives its name from the seating arrangement in the French Legislative Assembly during the time of French Revolution. At the left were seated Jacobins, a political group that met in the former Dominican, Jacobin monastery in Paris. At the right side were seated Girondists, deputies from the district of Gironde. The left-right dimension is typically associated with the economic aspects of political beliefs, pertaining to distribution of wealth and power.

The vertical dimension was located by using a scale measuring William James’ tender-mindedness vs. tough-mindedness continuum. James distinguishes between two basic temperaments: The tough-minded individuals are those who are empirically oriented, those who 'go by facts.' By contrast, the tender-minded are rationalists who 'go by principles'. According to James, the history of philosophy is largely the story of the clash between these two temperaments: 'The tough-minded think of the tender-minded as sentimentalists and softheads. The tender-minded feel the tough-minded to be unrefined, callous, or brutal.'

Beliefs endorsed by large numbers of individuals or by individuals in influential decision making positions determine the character of a society. The character of society reflects the shifts of the dominant values of the society. These shifts may be either gradual, as in the case of changing generation cohorts or abrupt, as in the case of social revolutions, but in either case may have profound impact on individuals. However helpful Eysenck’s circumplex is for description of ideological configurations, it lacks a time dimension. While factor analysis is the method par excellence for capturing structures of events, the time dimension of these events is better described by time series analysis. Time series analysis describes cycles of events, undulating through history like waves propagating on the surface of an ocean. In society, generation cohorts form these waves and their crescents are often marked by wars. Sociology uses the term cohort to designate discernible groups of people along the time line of a society. Shared experiences against a background of major social events, among which war figures most prominently, tend to fuse groups of people of similar age into a cohort. A cohort is defined by shared beliefs, attitudes, and opinions, and is charged with emotionality as the core beliefs of an individual’s value system. Like any core beliefs, they are insulated from rational argumentation and often immutable.

Political compass

Location of Britain's public figures on the Political Compass in 1996 (blue dots) and in 2004 (red dots).

Location of MK 18 Scale on the Political Compass. The blue line indicates the East-West principal component.

Location of some public personalities on the two-dimensional surface of the Political Compass,

Eyes oozing out of sockets...  The generations growing up in the post-World War II years tried to distance themselves from the legacy bestowed on them by the war cohorts. The World War II was a cruel war that killed more people than any other war in history. Predictably, the emotional charge of attitudes, beliefs, and opinions of the cohorts shaped by this war was unusually large. After the war, elated by victory or crushed by defeat, generation cohorts on all sides of this worldwide conflict were haunted by memories of the largest slaughter ever perpetrated by humankind. To protect themselves against images of burning cities, arms and legs torn out from joints, intestines spilling out of stomachs, eyes oozing out of sockets, and charred bodies of incinerated children, they surrounded themselves by the most complex and elaborate system of psychological defenses ever seen. In this process they warped themselves, us who followed, and the century we had to share with them.

Emergence of Consciousness III  In the United States, the first attempt at structural shift took place in the 1960s and 1970s during the era of Vietnam War protests. As the military involvement in Vietnam increased, a new philosophy was taking roots in America. No single philosopher codified it, nor did it have a name with the customary -ism suffix, so people call it the 60's. There was an interesting aspect of this movement which is obvious to those who lived during the Timothy Leary's times. Another shift happened in the 1980s, around the times of the Reagan's administration, with Madonna singing the Material Girl:

Time Travel on the Internet A contemporary successor of Eysenck's circumplex is the Political Compass at PoliticalCompass.org. The 'Way Back Machine' at Archive.org allows to travel back in time on the Internet.

Visiting the PoliticalCompass.org as it was in 1996 (blue dots) and comparing it with the contemporary (2004) political landscape of the Great Britain (red dots) one can notice the movement of politicians into the fascist quadrant and, within the fascist quadrant, the movement toward its more extreme areas.

What is Fascism?  Laurence W. Britt (2004, Free Inquiry Magazine, Vol. 23, Number 2) has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. His findings are excerpted as follows:

Powerful Nationalism Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

Obsession with National Security Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

Stress on Crime and Punishment Under fascist regimes, the police is given vast powers. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and to forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that in certain, loosely defined circumstances, human rights can be ignored. The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Identification of Enemies as a Unifying Cause The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

Controlled Mass Media, Suppression of Opinions, Censorship Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is controlled and owned by groups or individuals, sympathetic to the government. Certain opinions or viewpoints are suppressed or criminalized. Censorship is very common.

 Religion and Government are Intertwined Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders. There are attempts to control certain aspects of private sexual behavior. Abortion is criminalized, homosexuality is suppressed, and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

Corporate Power  Benito Mussolini once remarked that 'Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.' The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite. Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. Unions and labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

Hostility to Academia Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

Conceptualization of the MK 18 Scale  During a discussion revolving around topics described in the preceding paragraphs, a friend of mine mentioned Bertram Gross book Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America (1980) on a kinder, gentler brand of tyranny.

'Anyone looking for black shirts, mass parties or men on horseback will miss the telltale clues of this creeping fascism,'

Gross wrote.

'In America, it will be as American as Madison Avenue, executive luncheons, credit cards and apple pie.'

Then a half-facetious question arose:

'when Nazis will come to America will they wear swastikas on their sleeves?'

My friend replied:

'Of course not. They are already here.'

To verify his hypothesis, we content analyzed Hitler's book Mein Kampf. To look under the sleeves, we removed Hitler's anti-Semitic statements. To stress that our scale is not based on the Hitler's Mein Kampf but on the Mein Kampf sine Hitler's anti-Semitic statements, we called this scale MK 18.

Two-dimensional Political Compass  On the two-dimensional surface of the Political Compass, Ariel Sharon, George Bush, Tony Blair and the a-Semitic atavar of Adolph Hitler are proximate, as the Mein Kampf was analyzed sine Hitler's anti-Semitic statements and as these statements load on the third dimension of the Political Compass.

Development of the MK 18 Scale The factor analysis of the MK 18 Scale, augmented by the Consciousness scales, and complemented by the Gilgen and Cho's East-West scales, by the scale derived from Rose and Milton Friedman's bestseller Free to choose, and scale derived from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's perennial bestseller The suffering of young Werther was based on responses of 86 subjects to 300 items. The determinant of the correlation matrix, incipient to the factor analysis, was .0506759 with the Bartlett's sphericity test indicating that the coefficients of correlations were not obtained from random data. The principal components analysis extracted two eigenvalues greater than one. The first coefficient lambda was equal to 3.0746 and the second lambda coefficient was equal to 2.0347. Using Kaiser's criterion, two eigenvalues were retained. The communalities of the subsequent principal factor analysis were estimated by the Rolf's method of squared multiple correlations. The obtained factors (the first factor is shown as a blue line in the above plot) were rotated by Cliff's Procrustean rotation to the target structure of the Political compass. On the average, 52% of subjects expressed agreement with statements culled from the Hitler's book. The location of the MK 18 scale within our factor-analytic structure is shown below. Let us compare results of our analysis with the Political Compass,' populated by some contemporary politicians and personalities.

Adding this third dimension to the Political Compass, its circumplex changed into a sphere with polarities of its component dimensions shown in the virtual virtual space below. On this three-dimensional model of the political ideologies, Ariel Sharon, George Bush, Tony Blair form a cluster in the authoritarian - right wing - anterior pole of the Semitic dimension, while Adolph Hitler is located within in the authoritarian - right wing - posterior pole of the Semitic dimension.

Extension of the Eysenck's model of ideology into the 3-dimensions by adding the MK 18 scale. The vertical dimension is the tough minded - tender - minded continuum, the horizontal axis is the left - right, radical - conservative dimension. The anterior - posterior dimension is related to the attitudes toward Semitism. Click the above picture to view this structure in the virtual reality space.

The Third Dimension of our structure of ideology is thus likely the dimension related to religion, heavily loading on the Semitic component of this religious complex. As contrasted with the other components of our model of ideology, the religious complex is far less mutable that the other segments of this manifold, as religious beliefs are impervious to rational argumentation and charged with emotionality.

Resurgence of Religion Religious beliefs are among the core beliefs and are not open to rational argumentation. The limbic system of the brain plays a central role in the emotional life of individuals, their feelings of love and hate, euphoria and despair, love and hate. Emotions accompany the fight or flight reactions to external threats, decisions in life-threatening situations, and allow to sacrifice lives, including own life and lives of the young generation to protect the innermost core beliefs. Mencius’ rhetorical questions: ‘If people would love life above anything else would not they always use all to preserve it? And if people would abhor death more than anything else would not they always try to avoid it? But people love some things more than they love life and fear some things more than they fear death,’ describe well the role of the limbic system.

Let's consider the events, concomitant to the change of the political climate following the fall of the Soviet Union. The origins of the Soviet Union reach to the closing years of the WW I and coincide with the time when ideologies such as nationalism, socialism, and national socialism were replacing religion which was up to that time the primary cohesive force of the European Empires. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the religion is returning to reclaim its previously prominent role. To the extent the war implies the sacrifice of treasure and the ultimate sacrifice of lives, it is strongly emotionally charged. During the war-time, if the predominant cohesive force of a nation is ideology, the ideology will be emotionally charged as it was during the WW II in the Soviet Union . If religion is the predominant force within a nation, the war will become a deeply religious phenomenon. During the age of nationalism, Eysenck's circumplex was quite adequate to explain principal constellation of the political ideologies. With the resurgence of religion, omission of the religious dimension from the Political Compass is no longer tenable.

Tripartite Brain Tripartite Brain The human brain consists of archipallium, paleopallium, and neopallium. These three cerebral layers gradually appear during the development of the fetus (ontogenesis) as well as during the the evolution of species (phylogenesis). Paul MacLean in his book The Triune Brain (1990) calls the archipallium the reptilian brain, as it constitutes virtually the entire brain in reptiles originating about 450 million years ago. The paleopallium or the limbic cortex of the brain, was added to the brain of early mammals about 150 million year ago and the neopallium or the neocortex, appears in later mammals, including the primates and the homo sapiens, and begins to play a major role only about a million years ago.

The archipallium, paleopallium, and neopallium communicate with each other, but each is an autonomous unit that governs basic categories of behavior. Archipallium controls the self-preservative behavior, paleopallium the emotional behavior, and neopallium the rational behavior. The neocortex is responsible for higher cognitive functions such as language and reasoning. Beliefs are located along the hierarchical structures, spanning the tripartite brain. Beliefs closer to the neocortex, are amendable to the rational argumentation. Beliefs located within the limbic area of the brain, are insulated from the rational argumentation and are virtually immutable. In 1787, a convention in Philadelphia drafted the Constitution of the United States and in 1789 the Bill of Rights was passed by Congress. Our founding fathers knew that collusion of secular and religious powers is not conducive to a rational search for alternative solutions that may prevent a military conflict with its concomitant sacrifice of treasure and supreme sacrifice of lives. Thus it is not without profound significance that the first amendment begins: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.'

Notes

Marc H. Ellis is also on the list of Self-Hating and Israel Threatening Jews, together with Norman Solomon, Noam Chomsky, Israel Shahak, and others. A similar list existed in Germany during the Weimar Republic featuring names such as Thomas Mann, Bertold Brecht, and Lion Feuchtwanger.

Quotes to consider

Jerry Falwell in his 1982 book Finding Inner Peace and Strength maintains that

Ludwig von Feuerbach (1804-1872) in his Essence of Christianity (1841) says that

Hans Kung stresses that

References

Krus, D. J. & Tellegen, A.(1975). Consciousness III: fact or fiction? Psychological Reports, 36, 23-30.