Where Psychology meets the Political Activist+

I have always been interested in seeing what goes on behind the scenes, at the things that I deny about myself and what others deny about themselves. Over the last 50 years or so it has led me to some interesting places, people and ideas. At Christmas a  friend of mine bought me a copy of the Pencourt File, it's a study of the Intelligence Services attempts to destabilise the Wilson Government of 1974 to 1976. When I was involved in a previous incarnation of political activity, I read the magazine "Borderlands" which looked at the role the same services role in their infiltration of the Radical, the Left and the Green movement. As we approach another five years of Right wing government my thoughts go back to these issues.+

There is an area where the secret state intersects with our paranoia and our fears. The Left and all critical views tends to attract to it a higher proportion of people who are suspicious, egotistical and obsessive. Of course this proportion is small but nevertheless there. Just recently I read a psychotherapy article about that if you compare 100 political activists with 100 non political activists the non activists are significantly less neurotic. Anthony Storr`s book the Political Psyche is a rich read indeed......tut still there is no harm in a speculative flow of consciousness.......

There is however something I have observed over the years...wherever I have been involved in politics and campaigning I always encountered individuals who have a military or police background underwent an Epiphany and turned to the Left........perhaps innocent I know, but then again......I often wonder that with the growth of the anti fracking movement, for example, would reveal about police or military backgrounds of a few key activists. I have charted how some activists reappear and disappear over a number of years. They usually appear when the Green party is gaining in strength and power and are always involved in controversy and dispute. Some disputes in anti Fracking camps and actions can be most instructive particularly when they coincide with police raids on these camps. That old Welsh Republican Socialist Jac o the North has much rich speculation on these subjects as do those rascals who produce Green Dragon.

The psychological view of Freud is that individuals project and displace their fears and loathings on to others One individual in particular has created a web site suspecting that prominent Greens are or have been members of the Israeli Secret Service and spends much of their time researching mine and others wicked pasts. The sadness is that where the secret state meets the psychotic the intersections are many and varied and defeats speculation. . Knowing the difference is crucial and essential. But then again, which quadrant of the Venn diagram have I wandered into in the silly season in the dog days of rationality that is July? And of course I am working my way through the ten series of “Spooks”.