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| Rhinakerous and Hippocriticus
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Rhinakerous and Hippocriticus
See expanded drop down menu for this whole section on left
Inquisition 21 published a competition to name and/or provide a drawing that describes a character that has become all too familiar in our new age of fascism. This is the strutting, cruel minor official, usually a policeman or a social services officer, whose powers go way beyond his or her intellectual capabilities to handle them wisely. Rhinackeros, a rhinoceros with authority, a combination of ‘rhinoceros’ and ‘knacker’ appears to be the best to date for this individual, while Hippocriticus has been suggested for those in authority who could benefit from the saying, ‘Physician heal thyself’.
Here, first, is a true story of an event experienced by this editor before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I was in a party of journalists travelling by bus from West to East Germany and we stopped for inspection at the border checkpoint. A short and very arrogant East German guard in a green uniform and large cap boarded the bus and asked our driver, “How many passengers are on this bus?”
The driver replied, “Twenty-five.”
“Wrong answer!” the guard barked. “I am now also on this bus, so there are twenty six. Because you gave me the wrong answer I will now check all the passports!”
As he came down the aisle checking each of our passports, we were in stitches trying to avoid laughing openly at him, but he did not notice. He was strutting and foolish, but he had the full power of the fascist state supporting him.
Over and over we hear reports of how other similar junior officials such as police, probation and social services officers treat those who are accused of sex crimes and who are on the sex offender register. It has become so common and so many new bullies have been created that we need to identify them in a manner that clearly relates them back to the petty fascists in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. In this way, we may sound a small warning about the road we are once again travelling down.
Why should you enter such a competition? Because you could make a significant contribution to our semantic environment and it is within our semantic environment that we both gain and lose our liberty. We need to cut through the fogs of ideology and complexity and name and show these petty bullies for what they are.
Here are a few of the characteristics of this obnoxious, new, petty but powerful individual. Opened up to him through the ideology of the sex abuse moral panic is a whole hitherto unavailable world where he can bully and cruelly punish and even destroy men (and their families in the process) who are far superior intellectually to him. He can disavow all of his own hated inclinations and project them onto the oppressed individuals over whom he now has power and he does this with malicious glee and cruelty. It may be a different, but equally vicious, woman who is a man-hating sadist and who also hates her own sexuality and self.
Because the male version is operating in the politically-controlled world of sexual morals, more often than not he will be assigned a younger female police officer who is being trained in what is seen to be appropriate police work for women. When this younger assistant is with him, his taunts and obvious enjoyment, and in particular the details he will go into, attest to his added enjoyment at having a young female sharing these interactions.
Despite the advanced intellectual capacities of those he bullies such is the power given to him by the state that he can break some of the best of them through insults, humiliation and shaming.
Please continue to suggest names for this distasteful character and/or a drawing. Also send descriptions of the other kinds of bullying meted out by such types. We are confident that we can get several prominent web sites to carry the finished profile and if we are correct in our opinion of the semantic importance of the need to properly describe this character, the name and image could begin to be circulated widely, including in the general media.
Hopefully, we will receive both male and female versions.
Submissions can be either anonymous or under one’s own name. Make them to the EDITOR.
Responses
From Gerard UK
Officer Knackerthrasher
It seems to me that the composite character you have in mind, whilst a fusion of several individuals and experiences, will be highly evocative to many and vibrantly true to life - it is to good fiction that we need to turn to for truth these days in our era of Newspeak. If evil is banal, evil-doers are often stupid little men who exercise power not out of any personal superiority but simply out of ideological endorsement by fanatical populist creeds. I think it's a brilliant idea and I look forward to seeing what results come in.
To throw my hat pre-emptively into the ring, I'd suggest 'Officer Knackerthrasher' as a name (although I'm pinching this from an old Monty Python sketch, in which it formed a small part of an absurdly long German name).
From Michael UK
I don’t have a better suggestion for a name yet, but reflecting on what Gerard has said and thinking about the small-minded little nobodies who exterminated Jewish doctors, lawyers, authors, artists and intellectuals in the death camps of Nazi Germany, Officer Knackerthrasher is incapable of intelligent interpretation. He cannot cope with the idea that human expression and communication - whether verbal, gestural, or artistic - is always ambiguous, still less that we are not conscious of a great deal of what prompts our utterances and actions. So he grabs at simplistic, reductionist pseudo-psychologies - 'this means that' psychologies - which are as stupid as they are authoritarian.
His concept of knowledge amounts to little more than parrot mentality: memorising the manuals his superiors give him to read, repeating the lines he hears on training courses until he has got them word perfect, and uncritically ingesting received wisdom. He has no critical intelligence to draw on, so he cannot question what his superiors feed him. More often than not, he despises the intelligent and well educated - those snooty boffins who made him feel so inferior at school because he couldn't spell or read properly. They didn't actually do anything nasty to him, except breathe - their presence reminded him so painfully of his mental ineptitude. So, as an adult, an adult who still can't really spell or read (and therefore think) properly, who has read very few books other than two-dimensional training course manuals and tabloid newspapers, he seeks easy power, a means of getting respect, not through intellectual or personal achievement but by putting on a socially valorised uniform or a badge.
As an Officer of Power, when someone who reminds him of his childhood boffin tormentors comes into his clutches, he is thrilled: now he can get his revenge. No matter how many books the boffin has read, how many academic or personal achievements he has made, now he will finally get his come-uppance for making our officer feel so inadequate in comparison. He will have to sit there, at last shutting his mouth, while our officer uses his power to pour scorn, mockery and humiliation over the snooty boffin's head.
Power corrupts and absolute power - a power which uses shame and disgust to silence dissent - corrupts absolutely.
Editor. Without realizing it, Michael has suggested a name - An Officer of Power.
From Peter UK
Nurse Ratched
The book and later film 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' features a nurse, Nurse Ratched, who is the tyrannical head nurse of a mental institution. She exercises near-total power over those in her care, including her subordinates. She does not hesitate to restrict her patients' access to medication, amenities, and basic human necessities if it suits her needs.
She controls the inhabitants of the mental ward through a combination of rewards and subtle shame. Although she does not normally resort to conventionally harsh discipline, her actions are portrayed as more insidious than those of a conventional prison administrator. This is because the subtlety of her actions prevents her prisoners from understanding that they are being controlled at all.
The novel's critique of the mental ward is of an instrument of the oppression of individuals encouraging them to censor aspects of themselves and their actions. The novel also subtly critiques the emasculation of men in society.
I therefore propose Nurse Ratched as the name of the distasteful character you are looking for.
Reader response:
I think that Peter has chosen a brilliantly apt literary figure, and his summary of Nurse Ratched's character clearly bears an uncannily deep resemblance to many of those petty officals in charge of 'protection and care' in our social moment. The mystifying deployment of personal malice and sadism behind the facade of 'caring professional' - the magnitude of the mendacious manipulation and sleight of hand involved - is truly chilling, and Nurse Ratched is a truly chilling figure.
From Irish reader
Rhinackeros. A rhinoceros with authority. A combination of ‘rhinoceros’ and ‘knacker’.
From S UK
Rhinakerous and Hippocriticus
Rhinakerous is often seen in the wild with Hippocriticus, a similarly thick-skinned mental health 'professional' who makes a mockery of his or her oath.
Both are natives of De Nile, a favourite haunt of creatures like these who lie in wait for others whom they fancy share their habitat. In fact, they occupy it almost alone, but should beware of the Crocodile!
Yours snappily, S.
From Gerard UK (He suggested Knackertrasher above)
I love the 'Rhinackeros' development. I wonder if it should be double-barrelled though - something like 'Sir Barnaby Gamble-Rhinackeros, Chief Executive of the 'Parental Exploitation Online Paranoia Service' or 'PEOPS'. The boot-boys who strut about in people's homes and spout vicious and ignorant interrogations might require a different kind of name: something like 'P.C. Kev Himmler' or 'P.C. Burt Skullcruncher.' Both have a budgie and an 'O' level in woodwork.
Perhaps we are being too light-hearted in this competition: these bastards have murdered too many people to raise a smile, although sometimes I believe that if you didn't laugh, you'd hang yourself! It would, however, be interesting to encourage people to share their reflections on the psychological profiles of the sex police - those attributes they have directly experienced - as well as offering polemical names. I think there is a wealth of experience to be collected on these ignorant, authoritarian thugs, and pooled personal observation might prove a rich and enlightening source of material in order to mount a robust critique of their methods.
Hippocriticus takes centre stage
While we were searching for the quintessential Rhinackeros, a new Hippocriticus burst upon the international scene. British Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, was caught with her 'methaphorically speaking' * husband's pants down when it transpired that the taxpayer was paying for the adult movies he watched while she campaigned against the sex industry and especially pornography. She has also been highlighting her perceived link between porn and the acting out of sexual fantasy in acts such as rape and child sex abuse.
Yes, indeed, another fine mess!
*As with many of our fine leaders, judges, policemen and therapists, he may indeed have been doing research for Jacqui as that is what he was on the payroll for. We must always remember the that there are two classes of individual - the offenders and those who are pure of mind who feel the need to censor what the rest of us see and do.
PS. Within weeks of this incident it transpired that her own Home Office web site inadvertently carried a link to a Japanese pornography web site.
The Rhinakerous lives by the dominant narrative.
Created on 04/09/2009 09:31 AM by Editor
Updated on 05/26/2010 07:55 AM by Editor
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