Pharaoh Complex: A mixture of “Communist and Fascist patterns of thinking” for controlling a staged, politically shaped ideology

The philosopher Jogy Wolfmeyer noticed something while caring for his borderline patients: they often reach judgments very quickly, even when the facts convey a completely different message. One patient even remarked to him: “If we turn all the other people into borderliners, then I no longer have to learn to differentiate.” For it was the most laborious task to explore and question a borderline patient’s position on various issues. It was much easier for him to join a group that simply took a position without the conditions of logic.

Borderline patients usually stated that they felt particularly drawn to extreme right-wing or extreme left-wing parties because these did not question their behaviour. Wolfmeyer also sees an increase in borderline disorders arising from the emptiness of faithlessness. Religion means an adrenaline release shaped by guilt and shame. To fill this gap and obtain the needed adrenaline kick, they seek alternatives that allow them to stimulate their emotions. Hatred, jealousy, envy … everything that brings this lost kick back into life. Whoever as a party defames various groups has already opened the door for borderliners.

The Pharaoh Complex

(Defined by Jogy Wolfmeyer)

 

Jogy Wolfmeyer speaks of a Pharaoh Complex in politics when it comes to things that have a natural cause, yet are suddenly defined as a fantastical narrative by certain persons with criminal potential. The term describes a pattern of rule in which power is based not on open enlightenment but on reinterpretation, fear and symbolic elevation. Natural processes are not explained but exploited politically or religiously.

The expression “Pharaoh Complex” can be understood as a political image for the tendency to reinterpret natural or complex processes into deliberately steered narratives. What is meant is a power relationship in which authority is secured not through openness and verifiability, but through interpretive sovereignty, fear and symbolic elevation. Whoever possesses the power of explanation over an event can stage himself not only as a leader but almost as a prophetic figure.

The image of the pharaoh is historically particularly fitting for this. In many pre-modern systems of rule, astronomers, priests and court advisors played a central role because they could interpret natural events. Eclipses, comets or unusual celestial phenomena were thus not understood as regular natural processes but as signs of higher powers. For the population this could create the impression that the ruler possessed a special, almost supernatural legitimacy.

Myth and Power

Pharaohs usually had astrologers as advisors who gave them the opportunity to present themselves as prophets. A predicted solar or lunar eclipse was a miracle for the subjects and even attributed to the pharaoh the power to command the stars and planets. The myth remained intact because the subjects were very simple people who usually did not engage with complex topics and thus could not recognise a recurring cycle.

Such systems live on the fact that people’s everyday lives are marked by uncertainty. Where knowledge of natural cycles, astronomy or medicine is lacking, myths that promise order easily arise. Those in power benefit when they present chance, natural law or historical dynamics as an expression of their will. Power is then not only exercised but sacralised.

The pattern is timeless: Whoever expresses contradiction is not treated as a conversation partner but as a danger to the order. In religious systems this could appear as heresy, in political systems as disloyalty or as a disturbance of the public consensus. What matters is not whether a claim is true, but whether it stabilises the ruling narrative.

 

Religion, Black-and-White Thinking and Community

The accusation that religions or ideological movements work with a black-and-white scheme points to a real psychological and social dynamic. Many communities structure the world in opposites such as good and evil, pure and impure, loyal and hostile. Such patterns can create belonging, but also make people susceptible to exclusion and moral overreaction.

The circumstance that people allow themselves to be driven by fears into a power-driven religion is known through all religions. Wolfmeyer describes religions as a borderline community, consisting of the black-and-white thinking of a borderliner in the sense of good and evil. Whoever contradicted the powerful or questioned his supernatural powers, which were none, was usually executed, labelled a heretic or enemy. This methodology is now repeating itself in politics with the expression “conspiracy theorist” and even with criminal prosecution of those who want to pursue enlightenment.

Terms and Political Labels

In the present, political slogans often take on a similar function. Terms such as “conspiracy theorist” or “climate denier” are used not only descriptively but also pejoratively. They can simplify debates, but also serve to quickly mark opponents and push them out of the realm of legitimate speech. This creates a symbolic boundary: Whoever is so labelled is no longer regarded as someone with a possibly debatable standpoint, but as irrational or dangerous.

The problem lies less in the word itself than in its function. When political language only labels instead of arguing, the confrontation withers. Then enlightenment is no longer understood as a common process, but as a struggle between camp thinking and moral self-affirmation.

But let us bring in the Corona pandemic, where Wolfmeyer was regarded as a conspiracy theorist because he claimed that this virus is not based on antibodies but on the cellular defence of the leukocytes. This was then confirmed by investigations initiated by Wolfmeyer at the University of Graz, Vienna and Charité. Although these data had long been available, politicians continued to remain in the narrative that vaccination with a genetically engineered product was the solution, while Wolfmeyer pointed out that small doses of cancer drugs designed to increase the leukocyte count would be the better choice.

International confirmation
Several meta-analyses (summaries of many studies) came to similar results:
Blood group 0 is associated with a somewhat lower infection risk (odds ratio approx. 0.81–0.88).
Blood group A is frequently associated with a slightly elevated risk.
The effect on severity or mortality is significantly weaker or not clear-cut.

https://insights.medunigraz.at/news/detail/covid-19-einfluss-der-blutgruppe
(English version / related information available via Med Uni Graz)

The studies confirm the important role of innate cellular immunity (especially neutrophils/leukocytes) in COVID-19
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/all.14647
https://www.mdc-berlin.de/news/press/severe-covid-19-neutrophils-work-overtime

Criticism, Science and Crossing Boundaries

 

Serious criticism of political narratives must be based on verifiable facts. Whoever offers alternative explanations should bring clean evidence, comprehensible data and the willingness to correct. Especially in questions of health, climate or natural processes it is important to distinguish between plausible scepticism and unfounded assertion.

The term “Pharaoh Complex” can therefore be useful as a warning: It reminds us that those in power can tend to turn uncertainty into myths. It equally reminds us that counter-criticism must not itself tip over into dogmatism. Enlightenment does not mean denying everything, but measuring claims against evidence.

Climate Shift instead of Climate Change

Wolfmeyer saw through the climate narrative early on: The wandering of the North Pole constantly influences the lava flows under the crust of our Earth. This change, he said at the time, would be marked by increased earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and would also alter the magnetic fields that affect our climate zones. A natural process that precisely contradicts the narrative that numerous so-called experts now attribute to humanity and its behaviour. No gas, whether CO₂ or another gas, can shift the plates under our Earth or generate a magnetic resonance that steers our air currents into other paths. Whoever believes this story has not understood the chaotic system of the climate zones. Because our climate zones are chaotic, our weather has not been precisely predictable for centuries, because it is subject to the inner forces of our planet and does not play out only on our surface, as humanity erroneously believes.

Wolfmeyer calls this politically steered Pharaoh Complex one of the greatest lies in human history. He even states that this climate shift already took place in the 1980s and is now labelled a catastrophe due to our increasingly networked world, while in the 1980s the internet was only just spreading and there was no great media presence for it. The weather in Austria in the 1980s was marked by storms, heatwaves, prolonged rain and winter extremes, because this climate shift caused by the wandering North Pole produces such climate shifts every 40 to 50 years. Thus it is foreseeable that in 40–50 years the same actors will again be at work, imposing the lie of CO₂ once more on the people living at that time.

Austria in the 1980s:
27 July 1983: Austrian heat record with 39.7 °C in Dellach im Drautal.
1983: Century summer with long heatwaves.
1985/1986: Extreme cold waves and snow chaos.
Several severe storms, hailstorms and floods.

The Courage to Use One’s Own Reason

 

The “Pharaoh Complex” ultimately describes an old political temptation: Power wants not only to govern but to define reality. Against this neither blind defiance nor mere indignation helps, but sober examination, historical education and the courage to ask questions. A mature public recognises myths before they become rule.

It is therefore knowledge that those criminals form into a religion which was permanently accessible to those who had dealt with the subject. As in the age of the pharaohs, however, those who want to destroy an artificially created narrative of extremists are to be silenced. Immanuel Kant once said: “Have the courage to use your own reason.” The question is whether humanity will ever stop letting itself be led astray by false prophets, or constantly fall for the deceivers.

In the meantime one can say with pride: I was a heretic, conspiracy theorist or climate denier, because one has not fallen for a Pharaoh Complex.

Jogy Thomas Wolfmeyer
Austrian Philosopher