I became fascinated with psychopathy after I had attended a conference about Putin’s rule called PutinCon that took place in New York City in the Spring of 2018. A lot of great Russia experts spoke at that conference, but there was one that truly stood out: American neuroscientist James Fallon, an expert on psychopathy, not Putin (per se).
Thus, when I watched Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built in a limited and scandalous US screening in DC six months later, I took the film as a profound, near scientific study into psychopaths and only after that as a work of art about a journey through hell. For two hours, I studied the behavior of psychopaths that Lars von Trier had studied for years: Jack’s character is based off several notorious serial killers.
Four years later, in the Spring of 2022 I’m asking myself: is it possible that an entire nation is a collective psychopath? I’m, of course, talking about Russians.
But first, a brief reminder of what psychopathy is. It is a chronic mental disorder characterized by antisocial behavior, lack of remorse, empathy or shame. Psychopaths are unable to form meaningful connections with others - in other words, they are unable to love or care about somebody (not even family members) although they can successfully fake it by learning from others. Psychopaths have no fear whatsoever; combined with absolute arrogance, it leads them to think and act as if they can get away with anything (and they very often do). As professor Fallon said at that conference, you can catch a psychopath next to a stabbed person holding a knife in their hands covered with blood, and the psychopath would never confess, and most probably, would talk their way out of it. There is a scene in the Trier’s movie when Jack drags the body of his victim down the road right in front of the police. He gets away with this murder.
No matter what he does, Jack remains as unperturbed as his late victims. He is not afraid, he is not ashamed, he is not remorseful. He shoots children in the head and does not feel an ounce of mercy or compassion. When Jack cuts off the breasts of his girlfriend, he only cares about the cut being sharp as he’ll use the skin to sew himself a trophy wallet.
Now that’s the Lars von Trier’s film. And then there’s Russia, a very real one, where wives of the soldiers that are committing war crimes in Ukraine encourage their men to do more and rape as many Ukrainian women as they can (which we know from intercepted phone calls). That particular story made some noise in international news, but there are many more stories just like that that just don’t get translated into English. Russian mothers asking their sons to loot and bring gifts back home, wives asking for rings from dead Ukrainians, etc.
While the world was shocked to find out what the Russian Army had done in Bucha (and other places are yet to be discovered), the Russians themselves either urged their family members to commit more crimes or stayed indifferent towards inconceivable suffering of their closest neighbors. While their own shot Ukrainian children in the head (and raped and tortured Ukrainians), the Russians were preoccupied with the stitching on their trophy wallets.
And sadly, in this case, it was not the war that brought out the worst from Russians. The opposite happened: it’s the Russians that brought their mundanity to Ukraine. Torture has simply become a method of operation in Russian prisons where prison chiefs order each rape and sadistic pervert torture to be videotaped and stored (which we know thanks to a massive leak of gigabits of such videos). Murders are simply a method of operation in Russian politics and business - and that one is quiet well-known thanks to the Novichok and Polonium-210 poisonings that Russians carry all around the world, not only inside Russia. Stealing would be fair to call a national idea, the Russian dream if you want. Non of these tortures, murders, huge corruption scandals that made international headlines and sent shockwaves across the world ever moved the Russians: the vast majority simply stayed indifferent.
Lack of empathy for their own compatriots probably stems out of lack of love in families, neighborhoods and schools. Oscar nominated, winner of multiple film festivals movie Loveless by Andrey Zvyagintsev shows just that: how parents simply don’t love their children. Instead of love there’s humiliation and oppression, but most of the time indifference. Russian parents prefer to have their children fear them (that translates as respect), rather than love.
As mentioned before, psychopaths are incapable of feeling love or empathy, but they can skillfully fake that. Jack tried and failed to build a perfect house, before he succeeded: he made his house of dead bodies.
Russians too, have tried to build a normal house, just like any normal person would have but failed. The only material they can, it turns out, work with is war and death.
Lars von Trier explained in his own words that The House That Jack Build “celebrates the idea that life is evil and soulless, which is sadly proven by the recent rise of Homo trumpus - the rat king”.
Rephrasing that, the Russia that Jacks built celebrates the idea that life is evil and soulless, which is sadly proven by the recent rise of Homo putinus - the war and death king.
What saddens me most in my own concept of a collective psychopath that I reckon Russia is, is that you can never win over a psychopath. A psychopath is akin a predator, as James Fallon told me in an interview at PutinCon: either you kill it, or it kills you.