The Soviet system used psychiatry as a weapon by diagnosing political opponents as mentally ill in order to confine them as patients instead of trying them in court. Anyone who challenged the state such as dissidents, writers, would-be emigrants, religious believers, or human rights activists could be branded with fabricated disorders like sluggish schizophrenia. This turned normal political disagreement into supposed medical pathology and allowed the state to present dissent as insanity.
Once labeled in this way, people were placed in psychiatric hospitals where they could be held for long periods without legal protections. Harsh treatments were often used to break their resolve. The collaboration between state security organs and compliant psychiatrists created a system where political imprisonment was disguised as medical care, letting the Soviet regime suppress opposition while pretending it was addressing illness rather than silencing critics.
It’s basically a perfect example for the sociological model of disability.
We need a diagnosis instead for people who are needlessly authoritarian and intolerant.
It’s called being a “fascist”.
(But seriously, is there no diagnosis for it?)
There’s no direct diagnosis as such, because being a fascist is more a description of the outward effect than what is happening inside the person, and other factors have a very strong influence as to if a person becomes a fascist leader or not (in other situations that person would “only” be abusive to the people around them, for instance). But there are diagnoses such as psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder, which are often present in these cases.
Side note: ODD is a diagnosis that is only people under 18, so it’s explicitly not a political thing.
It fits in the authoritarian captalist system we’re living in. The system rewards this behaviour.