REVIEW: The Psychology of Totalitarianism
Kevin Ryan
Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet published his book The Psychology of Totalitarianism in June 2022. The book brings attention to the need to understand our own psychology in this time of global crisis.
It outlines the process of mass formation by which the masses find themselves to be hypnotized members of a totalitarian state. It also provides ideas about the evolution of scientific thought and how that evolution has led to an over-estimation of certainty and an oversimplification of living systems.
Overall, Desmet’s book is an ambitious work that focuses initially on his assessment of the evolution of mankind’s “mechanistic worldview,” particularly since The Enlightenment.
Basing his concepts on the work of others including philosopher Hannah Arendt and the social psychologist Gustav Le Bon, Desmet describes how it is this mechanistic worldview that sets the stage for a totalitarian state. This comes across as a call to step away from blind belief in scientific “fact” and toward a more harmonious resonating with a deeper understanding of the world.
Although Desmet’s larger thesis would benefit from more detailed support, the process of mass formation as described in the book rings true, particularly in terms of what people have experienced with the “coronavirus crisis.” The Covid crimes exposed the fact that many individuals in our society can be led to throw away everything they have always valued, including freedom and health, in order to gain security from an innocuous threat.
Studying the development of mass formation is therefore a very important component of understanding human psychology in our time.
Part I – Science and Its Psychological Effects
According to Desmet’s perspective, a mechanistic worldview brought society into a psychological condition that “degenerated into dogma and blind belief.” He notes that man has always had a mechanistic worldview, citing that Greeks invented the word atom. But the Enlightenment caused this to become dominant as people moved away from religion and toward science, with its extensive use of numbers, to represent theories and facts.
Desmet describes how the use of measured values to represent scientific fact in fields such as chemistry and physics has not caused a lot of trouble psychologically. However, problems studied in psychology and medicine cannot be so easily reduced to a matter of simple numbers. That’s because with all numbers there is an uncertainty that leaves an unexplained remainder.
Desmet says that this remainder, the difference between the model and reality, is the living component of systems otherwise thought to be dead. When studying living systems, equating numbers with precise facts is wrong.
Arendt suggested that the difference or remainder that is left after describing living systems is vitally important. Without it, she says, humans are reduced to atomized subjects. In other words, we begin to see ourselves and each other as objects. Desmet says the remainder is “the essence of the object, its living component.” The atomization of life leads to an inability to distinguish facts from fiction and ultimately to the problem of totalitarianism.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”Hannah Arendt
Objectifying involves simplifying and, as we simplify our concepts of other people and ourselves, we lose a lot of understanding. Desmet’s text focuses on numbers but it seems clear that words are misunderstood in the same ways. Desmet notes that the use of symbols can lead to the same problems and it’s evident that images should be included in the mix. These objects of our minds—numbers, words, symbols, and images—can be further oversimplified as we compare them and frame them in dualistic or binary ways.
According to Desmet’s theory, we build a false worldview by using numbers to represent aspects of the human condition, like thoughts and feelings, physiological health, or group identity. This leads to an increase in the superficiality of our understanding of the world, and the opportunities for being dangerously wrong, that such a worldview allows. He writes,
The almost irresistible illusion that numbers represent facts ensures that most people become increasingly convinced that their own fiction is reality.”
Desmet further suggests that,
Something in this narrative causes man to become isolated from his fellow man, and from nature. Something in it causes man to stop resonating with the world around him. Something in it turns human beings into atomized subjects. It is precisely this atomized subject that, according to Hannah Arendt, is the elementary building block of the totalitarian state.”
Science has itself become objectified through simplification. In the last few years, we have seen an increasing number of people speaking of how “Science” tells them they are right in whatever position they hold despite the fact that they either don’t know the actual science behind the subject or don’t know much about science at all.
Science has in many ways become a religion practised by people who put all of their faith in a generalized, objectified view of what they believe science represents. Those who do not agree with their view of science, whether it be “The Right,” or “anti-vaxxers,” or “super spreaders,” are the problem that needs to be solved.
As we saw with the Covid crimes, the hypnotized are easily led to believe that wrong thinkers need to be controlled, by force if necessary.
Desmet goes on to describe how the mechanistic worldview has proven insufficient for understanding our world, citing examples from Chaos Theory and Quantum Mechanics. He makes the point that patterns arise from physical and mathematical phenomena that are not seen or predicted in our simplified views of them. As a statistician, Desmet should know this well.
He describes the Lorenz strange attractor in which the rate of change of three variables related to a moving water wheel are graphed over time, revealing a pattern that has been used to demonstrate sensitive dependence on initial conditions (i.e. the butterfly effect).
We cannot predict the specific behaviors of the waterwheel (at least not in its chaotic phase), but we can learn the principles by which it behaves and learn to sense the sublime aesthetic figures hidden beneath the chaotic surface of those behaviors. Hence, there is no rational predictability, but there is a certain degree of intuitive predictability.”
Part II – Mass Formation and Totalitarianism
Desmet did not invent the term mass formation, which was used by Freud and others long before him. His main contributions to the subject are in providing:
- a more through description of mass formation as mass hypnosis
- his distinction between dictatorships, which are driven by fear, and totalitarian states, which are driven by the mass formation process
- his application of the mass formation process to the coronavirus crisis
As stated above, the book describes the “insidious process” of mass formation by starting with the evolution of mankind’s mechanistic worldview. Desmet couples with that a description of how we learn words and numbers as children.
Desmet states that we learn words and numbers to understand, and gain the approval of, The Other (e.g. our mother). Over time we learn that words and numbers cannot have definite meaning. This apparently is an early indication to us that mechanistic thinking is not sufficient for full understanding of our world. This learning either leads to isolation and anxiety through the fear of being left behind, or an appreciation for our own creativity and new ways to develop.
More commonly isolation and anxiety develop, initiating to the process of mass formation, the five primary states of which are as follows.
- Isolation and loneliness
- A lack of meaning in life
- Free-floating anxiety, which is not image bound. At this stage a person doesn’t know what they are anxious about.
- Free-floating frustration and aggression
- The appearance of a suggestive story, provided by “Leaders,” that establishes an object or image on which the anxiety can be focused
Desmet does not describe the exact cause and effect between each of these states, and certainly not the mechanism of action between each. But humans are social creatures and therefore it makes sense that removing social interactions (isolation and loneliness) leads to a lack of meaning in life and to anxiety. It also makes sense that long term anxiety leads to frustration and aggression that can be exploited.
Complicating this scenario is the fact that we cannot know our exact thoughts and feelings or the reasons for many of our decisions. This is because, as Timothy D. Wilson describes in his book Strangers to Ourselves:
Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious, due to the inaccessibility of the unconscious mind we have a very limited understanding of our own personalities, thoughts, and feelings and therefore also a limited understanding of our decision making. We understand things unconsciously as well as consciously, and our unconscious drives a lot of our decision making, which could explain how we can go through the multi-stage process of mass formation without being aware of it.
Nonetheless, Desmet emphasizes several important aspects of mass formation and of individuals affected by it. He states that mass formation is like hypnosis but the hypnotist (the Leader) may also be hypnotized. This, Desmet says, is an example of the banality of evil.
Those individuals who are hypnotized by mass formation exhibit the following otherwise inexplicable tendencies.
- They believe in the Leader’s story not because it’s true but because it creates a new social bond. This bond is not between individuals but between the individual and the collective.
- They act as if the rest of reality, apart from the story that relieves their anxiety, no longer exists.
- They must at all times show that they submit to the interest of the collective by performing self-destructive, symbolic (ritualistic) behaviors
- They have radical intolerance of dissenting voices
- Destroying dissenters becomes critical to them
- They lose interest in everything they value without noticing it, and are thereby willing to give up everything they value
- The most educated are the most vulnerable to mass formation
Readers will likely remember the experiments of Stanley Milgram, documented in his fine book Obedience to Authority. Milgram found that a majority of people from all walks of life, men and women, can be made to obey authority figures against their own better judgment and values, even to the extent of causing great psychological and physical harm to others. As Milgram summarized,
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moral factors can be shunted aside with relative ease by a calculated restructuring of the informational and social field.”
Desmet emphasizes several characteristics of Leaders involved in a mass formation process and, in doing so, leaves the reader confused. He writes that Leaders who “convey the story are usually in the grip of the story as well.” He says that the reason Leaders can be so fooled by their own story is that they possess a “morbid ideological drive.” In other words, Leaders believe in the ideology but not the discourse.
This point of the book needs to be clarified and better supported. Do the Leaders bring forth the story? Are they also hypnotized by the story but simultaneously they don’t believe the discourse? This appears to be a contradiction.
This contradiction grows larger in Chapter 8, with a discussion of conspiracy. In this chapter, Desmet somewhat ironically atomizes subjects who consider the possibility of conspiracy, reducing them to “confused spectators” who engage in “conspiracy thinking.”
He writes that mass formation “should be understood in terms of mass psychology rather than malicious, intentional deception (i.e., a conspiracy).” He gives a few very simplified examples of conspiracy thinking including the fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the highly dubious QAnon diversion, and suspicions of Russian control of US elections.
The common definition of a conspiracy is “a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.” Desmet adds that there must be a conscious intent on the part of the conspirators. In an argument we might see in a “fact-checking” article, he further claims that interpretation of phenomena in terms of a conspiracy is something of a coping mechanism that,
“reduces the enormous complexity of the phenomenon to a simple frame of reference: All anxiety is linked to one object (a group of people who intentionally deceives, the supposed ‘elite’) and thereby becomes mentally manageable… As such, in a certain sense, conspiracy thinking—the thinking that reduces all world events to one big conspiracy—fulfills the same function as mass formation. As with mass formation, conspiracy theorizing fills humans with a kind of enthusiasm.”
Of course, many people have found the opposite to be true. Suggesting that phenomena like the Covid crimes are the result of a conspiracy among rich, powerful people to achieve extraordinary gains at the expense of others is quite reasonable. That’s because the behavior and history of the rich and powerful people involved has exhibited a similar pattern throughout their lives and the results have brought them extraordinary gains. A conspiracy of the powerful is also the simplest explanation although in reality it instills greater fear instead of enthusiasm.
However, if we get past the atomization of complex phenomena like “conspiracy thinkers” and conspiracies we see the enormous complexity of those phenomena and the very reasonable response to the reality of something like the coronavirus crisis. With the coronavirus crisis, it is obvious that the stages of mass formation were intentionally brought upon the masses by the Leaders—and it was intentional.
- Isolation and loneliness were intentionally created through lockdowns, masking, and nonsensical mandates. This was a process of dehumanization, causing anxiety.
- Anxiety was stoked through the continuous reporting of deaths and “cases” of infection. The deaths were highly exaggerated through misuse of assignment of death, as Desmet concedes, and the “cases” were also highly exaggerated through false positive testing and mis-assignment of patients’ primary condition.
- Frustration and aggression toward those who would not comply with mandates was driven by propaganda. Those who were not willing to submit to “the interest of the collective” were ostracized, demonized, and censored.
In the minds of many dissenters all of this was clearly part of a design implemented by those who control politicians and corporate media as well as transnational entities like the WEF and WHO.
Although these Leaders might well be hypnotized by ideology, as Desmet suggests, they have also clearly been engaging in a conspiracy that has resulted in the greatest transfer of wealth in history as well as the greatest opportunity for a small few to control the global population indefinitely. Interestingly, the one reason why the Covid crimes do not meet the definition of a conspiracy is that they have largely not been secret. Through published plans, exercises, and interviews of the Leaders involved, the agenda of which the coronavirus crisis is a part has been transparent.
Desmet’s treatment of conspiracy reminds us of a similar approach taken by Naomi Klein in her otherwise excellent book, The Shock Doctrine. After going to great lengths to describe what can only be called a long-term conspiracy to economically exploit (and torture) a string of entire nations, Klein adds a small disclaimer section near the end of the book, saying, “No conspiracies required.”
It’s a bit like reading the Bible and struggling through a new section at the end claiming, “No deities required.” Both Klein and Desmet may be experiencing psychological dissonance when it comes to the idea of conspiracy, or it could be that they were asked to include such disclaimers as a condition for publication.
In terms of the Leaders intent, some of Desmet’s misunderstanding and contradictions on this point can be resolved through a better understanding of history. For example, a long-term conspiracy to terrorize the population of Europe was designed and implemented in Desmet’s own country of Belgium.
Operation Gladio is but one example of many throughout history in which secret, intentional plans to cause harm and deceive the public have been planned or carried out by Leaders. Desmet cites an example himself when he writes of the Holocaust:
“At a certain level there was also an intentional plan” behind the Nazi crimes. “There were approximately five people who neatly and systematically prepared the entire Holocaust destruction apparatus and they managed to make all the rest of the system cooperate with it in total blindness for a long time.”
Therefore, it is difficult to see the development of mass formation in the context of the coronavirus crisis as being without intent. And we must let authors like Desmet and Klein find their own way in correcting contradictions and reaching a better understanding.
Part III – Beyond the Mechanistic Worldview
In the book’s final section, Desmet returns to Chaos Theory and to an assessment of how science and spirituality (or religion) can coexist as part of a less atomized way of moving forward.
He states that Quantum Mechanics and Chaos Theory “initiate the reverse momentum necessary to move away from the dead mechanistic worldview and (back) toward vitalism.” Citing physicist Max Planck, he writes, “Science eventually arrives where religion once started, in a personal contact with the Unnameable.”
This reference, as well as other parts of Desmet’s book, is reflective of the ancient wisdom found in Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. The mechanistic worldview is described there in the first chapter where it says, “name is the mother of the ten thousand things.”
Although this naming is natural, we are later warned, “when names proliferate, it’s time to stop. If you know when to stop, you’re in no danger.”
The inability to stop naming (i.e. objectifying) leads to anxiety driven by oversimplification and false comparisons, the atomization and targeting of people, and a general misunderstanding of the world within and around us. Moreover, excessive objectifying is an insult to the basic truth that “being and non-being arise together” perpetually.
In terms of the cure, referring to anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, Desmet proposes that we must develop “a science that does not allow itself to be blinded by mechanistic ideology but which pushes the rational analysis of reality to the maximum, to the absolute limit of the rationally knowable, to the point where reason transcends itself.”
Desmet further writes that,
The antidote to totalitarianism lies in an attitude to life that is not blinded by a rational understanding of superficial manifestations of life and that seeks to be connected with the principles and figures that are hidden beneath those manifestations.” He calls for humanity to “vibrate in resonance with ultimate knowledge.”
These recommendations are, by nature of the problem, a bit ethereal and a follow-up volume that describes practical ways to correct the mechanistic worldview is needed. Perhaps a closer study of the Tao Te Ching would be helpful in this regard. It recommends to “abide in the kernel not the husk, in the fruit not the flower.”
In interviews, Desmet has called for dissenters to keep speaking out and he promotes non-violent resistance. He proposes that a parallel structure can be developed to oppose the state, although again without providing detail on how that might occur.
In summary, it is essential that people begin learning more about their own psychology and The Psychology of Totalitarianism is an important contribution to that effort. Considering our limited access to the unconscious, and the fact that many of us will obey authority to devastating ends, understanding the psychological processes that lead to totalitarianism is a vital need.
In this important book, Desmet describes the problem of a mechanistic worldview and how that leads to misunderstandings and superficiality in human thought. He also describes the process of mass formation and how this process is reflected in the ongoing coronavirus crisis. The processes Desmet describes may not be entirely fleshed out but discussion of them is likely to lead to a more truthful representation of psychological risks that continue to be exploited.
Understanding our own psychology is crucial at this time because it is being used against us in many ways. Through an extraordinary rise in propaganda and deception, and an extraordinary rise in self-deception, people are being manipulated toward ends that are entirely against their own interests. Anticipating that the evolution of manipulative powers has not reached its peak, it becomes imperative that humanity learn about its own psychology as quickly as possible.
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Hughes/Broudy/Kyrie latest on Desmet and his Irish proponent, John Waters: https://constitution.solari.com/global-class-war-and-the-politics-of-a-hatchet-job-a-reply-to-john-waters/
Read it and understand it because it is exactly what applies to you antivaxxer, MAGA, rashist and other morons!!!
Perhaps we have arrived at the point where Humanity must achieve a higher level of ” being ” to survive, a destiny many of us believe is in store.
Such a boost in our collective state will absolutely empower us, and must be conferred.
Such empowerment will not be conferred without the wisdom to use it for the benevolence of all; wisdom flouts the machinations of the mind and is accessible only through Thoughtless Awareness. In a quote attributed to Lao Tze ” To the one whose mind is silent the whole universe surrenders “. Those who wish to reach that state need only find another who’s achieved it and knows how to bring others to it ( a subset ), all other requirements now obsolete – so will that state also be conferred. A few million have reached it ( if briefly ) and many times that may be needed to usher in the Age of Truth ( Satya Yuga ) as foretold. These are held harmless from the tribulations wrought upon the rest meantime, one might even say pampered.
Awareness can lead to wisdom but must not be confused therewith.
Psychology and it’s authoritarian cousin psychiatry have only maimed and distorted the human experience (RD Laing, Thomas Szasz).
The narrow ‘personalistic’ salvation through ones suffering and afflictions, subjectivism as the apha & omega of human experience, and the quietism and accommodationist perspective psychology induces is very beneficial for authority.
Humans are made for a broader perspective as we are the quintessence that can bring all the other elements together (eg the gardener making compost). Psychology/psychiatry and the DSM manual diagnosis ‘mental health’ culture we live in is comparable in influence to the commanding time of early modern Euro Christianity (inquisition, indulgences, etc), but without any of the benefits of the (flawed, coercive) structure and community that the Church provided. At that time, the Church was ill suited to provide explanations for the ‘way things were’—psychology is even less so. As the legendary Off G commenter Maxwell says, these analyses without examination of root causes are “worse than worthless”.
Especially so to society wide phenomena that a small percentage of people ACTUALLY believed in (we know this from the fake injection statistics and many other sources), that was roundly rejected as it intensified (Eg, injections for children), and had ALL the material resources possible at its disposal to coerce and propagandize people, and still failed while meeting with sustained, determined, and in some places relentless resistance.
PoT lets the perpetrators and the cabal off the hook, projecting and conflating root causes into psychological afflictions that we all share the blame in. Desmet and Malone INC. are business partners in this ‘mass formation’ alphabet agency approved thesis that definitely support the narrative (read the links below) are the very definition of controlled opposition, and anyone STILL endorsing or writing about their bullshit conclusions is suffering from internalized cabalism, technocratic manic depression, and WEF induced psychosis.
https://www.americaoutloud.com/robert-malone-sues-the-breggins-for-25-million/
And one that has been linked several times below but is far more thorough than my available time and intellect allow:
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2022/11/investigative-reports/covid-19-mass-formation-or-mass-atrocity/
RD Laing is brilliant.
I think Desmet is correct to focus on the importance of the understanding of the self and to view outside influences with a certain skepticism or even disregard. And this means all outside influence from the UN/WHO/WEF to popular influencers like Neil Oliver or Jordon P. (People are still then looking for ‘leadership’). Why does this author for example need direction as to how to begin building a parallel universe? The point being, the strongest foundation is knowing thy self, finding your own voice. Everything else is white noise.
My review of Desmet’s book is here:
https://www.samizdat.qc.ca/cosmos/sc_soc/sc_po/PoT_PG.htm
Here is a peek: While Desmet does provide useful information about the totalitarian mindset of the Covid elites and some of the factors that produce this mindset, in the 2nd half he attempts to convince his readers that the ‘solution’ to this crisis is a new religion (no he does NOT use this specific term to describe his views). Generally speaking, I do NOT think Desmet is someone to be trusted…
Great essay! Looking forward to reading more of your articles.
I’m racked by anxiety for I stand poised on the horns of a dilemma: does The Psychology of Totalitarianism make very little sense…or no sense at all. Oh the pain, the pain!
(Or is totalitarianism merely a phase? An inevitable step of human development? Humanity starts out free and self-sufficient; then gradually works its way to enslavement and dependence. Then throws off the yoke and begins the process all over again.)
I’ve been watching listening these past 3 years and I can tell you alot of people that have had the shot have woken up to the bull.
As regards totalitarianism, the ultimate problem is collectivism, namely elevating the well-being of the collective above the well-being of the individual. Once an ideology to that effect is adopted, it can be easily hijacked by whatever motherfucker aspires to rule the world at the moment.
There are both individual and collectivist aspects to human life, and there is nothing wrong with the individual contributing to matters of common interest or helping weaker members of society. There are collectivist concepts that aim to do that, and they might appear noble. The problem is that any collectivist action must come from the individual, as opposed to being imposed top-down. When that happens, you can pretty much count on things being fucked. It’s just a matter of time before some opportunist takes advantage of whatever it is, however virtuous it is.
In the past, totalitarianism was imposed through economy (communism), nationalism, and other things of allegedly common interest. Presently, we’re seeing totalitarianism foisted on humanity through alleged health (contagion), climate, energy threats. Same old story – people are being forced to sacrifice their own good for the alleged good of others. This time, the pretext is complete bullshit – in the case of communism, it at least made some sense.
So, the way out of this mess is to focus on the individual – on self-reliance, self-sufficiency, introspection, personal freedom. If people want to be free, they have to act free. Instead of locking themselves in endless systems and outsourcing their lives to all sorts of prefabricated schemes and becoming “Borg”, humanity needs to work toward being an assemblage of individually strong, voluntarily cooperating individuals.
The mechanistic nature of people’s thinking outlined in the text, or Desmet’s book, is an excellent analysis, possibly to most to-the-point stuff I’ve seen. The focus is right on – we must examine the ways in which people’s thinking is fucked up, why we’re where we are. And come up with an antidote.
The antidote is Christ.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist. — ”Hannah Arendt.
As usual, Hannah Arendt has the last word on totalitarianism. And that last word includes religious totalitarianism: “those ideal sheeple for whom the distinction between true and false no longer exists”.
There is too much science-bashing in this review (and in OffG BTL nowadays), This science-bashing is as superficial as the current Russian-bashing. Knee-jerk science-bashing is a mere physiological reaction against the fact that nowadays the poor, confused, humble sheeple can be misled through their current belief in Science instead of their previous belief in God. In more profound philosophical treatises such as Platonism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Pantheism one reads that Science and God are not antagonistic but symbiotic.
“The hungry sheeple look up but are not fed” — Dante, Paradiso
A great comment, one I agree with very much. Thanks for this. A2
You’re mistaking science for technology. Science as a process of understanding the world is okay, insofar as it doesn’t become a dogma, its limits are recognized, and insofar as it’s acknowledged that it’s not to only way of understanding things. Technologies are okay too, insofar as they’re employed in areas where they can be beneficial, do not atrophy people’s natural abilities, and don’t do more harm than good.
What people object is the indiscriminate, injudicious application of technologies to just about every aspect of human existence and the fact that doing so, in turn, detrimentally affect people’s thinking patterns in a mechanistic way, imposes systems and schemes on their existence, and eradicates or renders unimportant human qualities that can’t be captured through science, technology.
Stuff like happiness, love, perseverance, dedication, joy, etcetera can’t be measured, captured, dissected and analyzed, possessed by science or technology. Yet, they’re of key importance in people’s lives.
In other words, there’s too much of the fucking science and technology horseshit and not enough of anything else.
Interestingly, Radio 4 interviewed a philosopher today who pointed out the inherent atrophy to people’s very minds that can ‘evolve’ as people depend on tech/safety governance etc. Although I’m only a reasonably adept navigator – I refuse SatNav for this very reason. If a Taxi driver’s brain is discernibly different from the average, then eventually a SatNavver may have trouble walking from A to B without Tech help.
Better to keep your wits about you.
To extrapolate… Talking devices in the kitchen = shrinking brain on how to cook. Of-organisations micromanaging business, education etc. means teachers don’t think.
Right now I feel annoyed and amused at how insidious all this is – how many generations before it’s just accepted? Don’t answer that – I have kids.
Hmm, you know, whenever telepathy is mentioned in pop culture there’s this idea that it works outside of the laws of physics, not that that proves anything, but I find it curious, I mean, according to the theory of relativity there is no such thing as the same moment in different places, so how then could there be instantaneous transmissions of thoughts between people or, well, revelations from God?
In other words: science as the pursuit of physical truth may not interfere with religion, but specific scientific theories very well might.
Of course, material determinism does interfere with free will and all religions that claim that there is free will. Another example.
I don’t think telepathy is well understood. You get me?
Anyway, today it’d just be reduced to a ‘mind text’. I reckon that happens.
Well, do you mean that there are only contradictions between explicit descriptions of phenomena? That is not exactly true. Of course, I wouldn’t discard a model because of some unclear objections. On the other hand: Clear models can have consequences outside of their intended application, and I would as a practical rule ignore them in such cases and study the phenomena in question as if they didn’t exist.
Many examples for this inside physics concerning the nature of light. Practical experience should never be overlooked because of a model.
At the risk of hubris, I consider myself one of the premier science bashers commenting in this forum.
The idea behind science is flawed: that everything can be discerned by following a few basic rules of evidence. “Basic” is a word that should be excised from every human language. There are no basics.
Reality is more like Chinese Boxes than anything else: a thing inside another thing inside another, unto infinity. The ultimate “box” will never be found because, like the Big Bang, it only exists for a split-second before it disappears into its opposite.
Without religion, there would be no modern science: its basic rules of evidence are akin to Aquinas’ five “proofs” for the existence of God, with slight variations.
Matter, unlike the supernatural, can never be fully known or fully defined. Because the human mind did not create and therefore cannot control matter.
Unlike the supernatural? Intriguing thing to slip in there.
The ways in which science is flawed: like most problematic human endeavours it can be limited, misguided, misleading or plain erroneous.
On the other hand it can be beautiful, revelatory, knowledge building within limits and useful/guiding.
Propaganda can manipulate science – saying it guides when it doesn’t, etc.
To hell with ‘mass formation’.
It might as well be ‘synchronized swimming’.
Just a handy phrase to describe people operating as a group – as if that was something new…
The formation of a group is of no importance.
It’s what the group does which matters.
Something weird went on back then – still now – although this feels more like a sticky fall out after things have gone wrong. Something weird does go on via propaganda – few people resist. Is that mass formation? Seems true from history no?
Perhaps mass formation really means ‘Isn’t it weird that if a powerful authority tells a load of people what to think and do, 70 odd % of them do it?’
Except, in this case, the “powerful authority” was neither political nor medical. It was the TV! The TV told ’em to do it. Again and again and again.
They might laugh at a Trump or a Biden or a Johnson or a Fauci or a Hancock – but laugh at their Idiot Box? Never!
I mean, are we just
like bored, spoiled children…
…who’ve just been lying
in the bathtub all day…
…just playing with their plastic duck…
…and now they’re just thinking,
“Well, what can I do?”
Okay. Yes. We’re bored.
We’re all bored now.
But has it every occurred to you, Wally,
that the process…
…that creates this boredom
that we see in the world now…
…may very well be a self-perpetuating,
unconscious form of brainwashing…
…created by a world totalitarian government
based on money…
…and that all of this is much more dangerous
than one thinks…
…and it’s not just a question
of individual survival, Wally…
…but that somebody who’s bored
is asleep…
…and somebody who’s asleep
will not say no?
—–
See, I think it’s quite possible
that the 1960s…
…represented the last burst of the human being
before he was extinguished…
…and that this is the beginning
of the rest of the future, now…
…and that from now on there’ll simply be
all these robots walking around…
…feeling nothing, thinking nothing.
And there’ll be nobody left almost
to remind them…
…that there once was a species
called a human being…
…with feelings and thoughts…
…and that history and memory
are right now being erased…
…and soon nobody
will really remember…
…that life existed on the planet.
–My Dinner with Andre
My only question regarding Chomsky and Klein, and I admired the insights of both at some points in my life though not for quite a while, is whether they were corrupt when they published the main body of their work, or whether they became corrupt after they gained substantial recognition.
To say that the WHO, Gates, et. al. along with “elected” world leaders are not guilty of criminal conspiracies because they are surprisingly open about some of their agendas simply does not hold water. While they were open about some of the end goals to their agenda, they were certainly not open regarding the means. For example, did they come out and say that SARS-CoV-2 and the rt-PCR test were total fabrications in order to depopulate and maim the world’s population through the injection of a vicious poison into their bodies? Or that the US government paid hospitals billions of dollars to list deaths from gunshot wounds, motorcycle accidents, cancer, and heart disease as cv-1984. Not then and not now. Exactly how did 150 plus nations voluntarily coordinate these highly destructive covid policies in total lock step? Why did an African president, a Ph.D. in chemistry, mysteriously die shortly after showing that motor oil and paw-paws could test positive for “the virus?”
While the apparatchiks might believe their own BS, the leaders cannot for the simple reason that they could not execute their plans or propaganda efficiently. For example, the leadership may believe that humans are a plague upon the earth, but conspiracy involves a lot more than this sort of “philosophy.”
As to Ryan’s limiting both Klein’s and Desmet’s problem to the two possibilities, one would need to be essentially braindead or hypnotized not to see that the entire cv-1984 OPS was a global conspiracy. So one must then conclude that either Desmet is a party to this conspiracy or ironically……….. himself hypnotized. And if he were a minor player in this conspiracy, what would be the motivation to write and publish this book. Perhaps as a very limited hangout to denigrate anyone who should see this shitshow as the obvious conspiracy that it is. However, having seen and heard him in many extended interviews, I tend to think that Desmet is himself hypnotized in this important regard.
Your comments reminded me of my previous doubts I had concerning Desmet’s sincerity. As I recall seeing him appearing in interviews, in the US 2021 or 22. At a time (up to present day) that non-US citizens and or permanent residents traveling there had to show proof of having taken the quackzine. If he were so much against all that had happened, then he could not done that. Just a tiny detail that, to me, speaks volumes. I too am also an ex-Naomi Klein/Chomsky fan. What phonies, those two.
FYI: Mattias Desmet emphatically denied taking the Vaxx in his Highwire in-person interview; he was asked that very question. He said there are ways to avoid it while gaining entry but did not divulge any, a considerate move as such loopholes would be slammed shut if revealed.
Whatever the collective factions to forms as it’s reality, I shall make my decisions as to what to accept and for what purpose I accept it.
But while I don’t engage psychology as such because it predicates making real the mind it then presumes to study, diagnose or fix from an intellectually presumed point of dissociation set over its object of study – It remains true to me that we each are a creative agency or mind relative to our own experience or perceptions and responses to a world that is clearly NOT something exclusively outside the mind that relates through its conditioning. For perception and memory are selective – even if mass-beliefs set narrative assertions as beyond questioning (for fear of penalty).
Insofar as I might adopt his terms, I suggest ‘mass formation’ runs the normalisation of hate set in division as a sense of separate self masked and normailised to unconsciousness of what it does, so as to assign the penalty of lawlessness to targeted ‘others’ – and socially normal.
That’s what I see going on as the ‘ego-script’ of an identity-fiction of power given to lies.
To be possessed by lies is to be dispossessed of the felt awareness of being.
Without a felt connection is the psychopathy that is so in vogue as the ‘new evil’ to flag to ‘targeted others’.
There’s nothing new in all this in terms of its principle themes. Such that trauma can be seen as our archetype instead of a living wholeness. yes I could have said God – but hatred of God is deep seated in the projection of a false creator from the mind that was phished by its own image.
I’m not so interested in controversial factions that perfectly prevent a ‘mass awakening’ to the lie within – by seeking and finding the sins in your brother as booster for a self vindicating identity.
This pattern extends to seeking and finding the conditions that can be lived as a mask of unconsciousness by which to either die or give up life to a hollow masking identity that protects from conscious disclosure.
But my offer of what I hold to be a discernment is for those who seek in the same purpose of healing or integration to wholeness of being. The drive to war of self vindication in vengeance cannot see or hear anything but as their narrative dictates. Love is seen as weakness undermining of war. Truth will give ammunition to the ‘enemy’ and so the only things worth ‘fighting for’ are aborted by the call to war & put on hold until the enemy is cancelled, eradicated or destroyed, and then from the wreckage a new world can build back better.
We become the thing we hate.
And what we resist, must persist in the minds that think to overcome it.
It’s just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.’ He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me… until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short… until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored… until I know his home village, town, or city… until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow… until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated… until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.’ He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.’ The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.
-Buddhist Parable
Never mistake motion for action.
-Ernest Hemingway
I (thankfully) haven’t bored myself with the reading of Desmet’s book…
Mr. Ryan does an excellent job of presenting the mental meanderings of an over-educated and hopelessly lost Mattias Desmet. How do these psychological masturbater’s get from one end of a room to the other? I don’t spend six months analyzing how I feel about my chair, or what’s motivating the other end of the room… I just get out of my chair and walk across the goddamn room.
Mr. Ryan closes the article with this spectacle: “Anticipating that the evolution of manipulative powers has not reached its peak, it becomes imperative that humanity learn about its own psychology as quickly as possible.” [End quote]
The elderly (and young) are being euthanized. Millions of persons have been injected with an mRNA cocktail that mutilates their genome, for life. Young adults are being intentionally sterilized. Athletes are dropping dead from heart attacks. So, let’s learn psychology in our spare time…
Idle minds are the devils workshop…
Thanks, Kevin, for a balanced review. There are many good things in Desmet’s book that should not be rejected because he gets the conspiracy/intentionality piece wrong.
With regard to your question, “Are [the Leaders] also hypnotized by the story but simultaneously they don’t believe the discourse? This appears to be a contradiction,” I guess this might be called classic DoubleThink. Orwell never did quite sell me on that. I believe that the Conspirators know they are lying and manipulating, but they really do believe in their ideology that reducing the world’s population is a good thing to do. The Great Flood is probably their favorite part of the Bible. Sometimes mass genocide is A-okay. This is not really DoubleThink. It’s just narcissistic evil, disregard for the feelings and worth of fellow human beings.
About the mechanism versus vitalism/spiritualism argument, I find Desmet to be terribly naive on this point. The “mechanism” of the globalist movement is just plain bad science. We can reject the pure determinism that ignores the findings of complex systems science (aka Chaos Theory) without going “back,” as Desmet says, to vitalism. I happen to be a card carrying teleologist (my PhD) and I can say that new developments in science (in the last century) provide perfectly naturalistic ways to understand the notions of purpose and meaning etc. I’m teaching a course on this topic (against transhumanism) at IPAK-EDU now, in response to those among us who want to go “back” instead of forward. We can’t keep swinging like a pendulum between contradictory philosophies. We have to move on to deeper understandings that resolve those conflicts.
Thank you for advancing things forward in our understanding of this issues. Your contributions are much appreciated.
U.S. Mockingbird media have been getting hysterical about a Chinese balloon. The strongly-evidenced surveillance in the country by a certain other country got slightly different coverage:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/trump-brushes-israel-dragnet-spying-of-d-c-under-the-rug/261913/
The whole thing reminds me of an old song from the 80s by Nena. Is that where the ‘elites’ get their ideas? From old German synth-pop songs?
me, I think this is all deep state garbage. there’s nothing new about getting a large majority of people to believe something pretty clearly untrue to the actual engaged and thinking mind – go back 100 years to the US propagandizing Americans into getting into WW1 mere months after they elected a president who promised he would NOT take them into WW2 – or the lies about the great evil of communism following the Russian revoluion, lies which have continued and expanded into utterly stupid hysteria in the ensuing 100 years, note current lies etc about Putin and Ukraine – unquestioning acceptance to today in the lies about the causes of the ‘great crash’; of 29 and the following depression, or the lies about the start of WWII, or the Korean war, or any of the US bombings and invasions of 3rd world countries since, the JFK takedown by the CIA, 911, etc etc etc. more about the lies we live under, and what we need to do to start a serious pushback here – Democracy Study Guide – https://www.rudemacedon.ca/DSG/0000-summary.html
I know about criticisms against Desmet e.g. on the “unlimited hangout” site and I remain wary. I suppose many will tell me to read Desmet himself and make up my own mind – though I get the impression of a load of psychobabble type stuff which repels me. However on looking at his substack I see this:
https://mattiasdesmet.substack.com/p/some-notes-on-the-tragicomic-attempt
“When do we know for sure if something is correct? That is a difficult question. In the end, we remain dependent on faith for most things. And it’s no different for those of us who rely on what’s published in peer-reviewed academic journals. In fact, most results are not reproducible by third parties.
But the press was mainly concerned with this: I had spoken to Alex Jones—a condemned conspiracy theorist. For shame. There are certain people you shouldn’t talk to: anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, climate deniers, virus deniers, extreme right-wingers, racists, sexists, and so on. (This list, incidentally, is getting longer and longer.) The curious thing is that it is precisely the same people who affix those stigmas who also warn the loudest about the danger of polarization in our society. Isn’t that, what . . . ironic? Isn’t it speaking that connects people as human beings? Isn’t speech the main antidote to polarization? This is my principle: the more extreme the position someone takes, the more we should talk to them. For some people, I have also become such a person you are no longer allowed to speak with. And when I see how this happened in my own case, it’s even more justification to let such figures tell their story directly before they are subjected to judgment.”
Now that’s excellent stuff. The problem of course is that the vast majority working in the media are paid up hacks whose entire instructed purpose is to keep the audience divided.
Incidentally – Desmet’s principle, “the more extreme the position someone takes, the more we should talk to them” is wonderful. And it indicates an increasing tendency in me: I now see the assumption of “scientific objectivity” as inherently suspicious. It is increasingly the “extreme” stuff that I am drawn to. This would be seized on by our liberal class as an indication that I am “drifting towards fascism” or some such. But I reckon the “extremists” actually have a firmer insight into what’s happening.
It’s a manufactured hall of mirrors. We are supposed to think controlled opposition Alex Jones is credible because he’s been ridiculed and condemned by the official establishment. And now we’re supposed to think Desmet is credible because he spoke to Alex Jones. It’s all staged theatrics – a play within a play within a play.
—
Three-Clown Circus
Andrew Neil, David Aaronovitch and Alex Jones
Uploaded: Jun 9, 2013
so desment says ‘In the end, we remain dependent on faith for most things.’- only the religious gang, me (and most other intelligent people I imagine) rely on our own intellectual capacities, and life experience, to decide what to believe. ‘faith’ is for people who don’t have a lot of actual cognitive ability, it seems to me.
By “extremist” I assume he meant those branded extreme. Bearing in mind that “the reasonable” is what is called such by the media.
I wonder – silly me! – how many words Mr. Desmet had to remove from his mouth after being interviewed by Alex Jones.
Anyway, to me that’s Alex Jones’ overriding fault: he won’t let his guests say anything; he’s too busy telling them what they’re saying. That’s even worse than being controlled opposition.
Apparently two thirds of a randomly picked section of the public, i think about 750, believed that Abiogenesis has been achieved in a lab by scientists.One third also believed that scientists had created a small living frog from ‘nothing’.We know the answer, but its a good example of how Atheism has been indoctrinated within standard education
https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/we-need-science-not-soup-dr-james-tour-on-origin-of-life-research
Warnings of imminent nuclear disaster – 90 seconds to midnight on the Doomsday Clock, can existentially make you aware of our apocalyptic reality as it really is.
Life is always fragile, everybody, every moment is potentially always in danger.
Just in ordinary times you are fast asleep, so you don’t see it, you go on dreaming, imagining beautiful things for the coming days, for the future.
But in moments when nuclear danger is imminent then suddenly you become aware that there may be no future, no tomorrow, that this is the only moment you have got.
So times of disaster are very revealing.
They don’t bring anything new into the world, they simply make you aware of the world as it is, they wake you up.
If you don’t understand this, you can go mad, if you understand this, you can become awakened.
What is happening to humanity?
It is a simple phenomenon.
All of our so-called leaders have repressed everybody so much that the whole energy of mankind is ready for a global suicide and to be vaporized any moment!
This disaster may be just the beginning of a chain of disasters.
It is like boiling a pressure cooker but not allowing the steam to escape from any outlet, and just sitting holding the lid tight.
That’s what is happening.
For thousands of years humanity has been sitting on repressed energies.
Now is it time to blow?
Either a nuclear ‘Third World War’ or the birth of a conscious new humanity.
Either a Third World War or a new style of life has to be introduced.
For millennia we have been made to function stupidly.
We need a totally different gestalt, a different social structure, a different world view, a different philosophy of life in which intelligence. is respected, in which intelligence is supported, individuality is nourished.
But we go on doing just the opposite.
It is simply beyond the capacity of any individual to prevent this calamity, this disaster, this global suicide that seems to be almost certain.
You may feel helpless because you think in terms of helping all other people to also understand this insanity, and that is an impossible job.
The world is so big, and people are so full of violence that it seems the calamity is not coming from outside, but it is the accumulated violence in people themselves that is going to explode this earth.
So don’t think in terms of helping.
Then you will not feel helpless and you will not feel tense.
Just raise your own consciousness to the highest peak possible, of which you are perfectly capable.
Anybody who wants to help the world should forget about the world and concentrate upon themselves.
Raise your consciousness to such a height that existence has to think a second time whether to destroy this planet or to save it.
The collective is so rotten that it will be an act of compassion to destroy it.
But we have to prove that out of this unconscious, almost dead humanity, a few lotuses can blossom.
This is the only way to save this beautiful planet earth.
Remember, intelligence and stupidity are not separate energies.
The same energy functioning in harmony is intelligence, functioning in contradictions is stupidity.
Your whole educational system exists to destroy intelligence or to divert you from intelligence towards memory.
Memory is useful, utilitarian.
Intelligence is dangerous, it has no utility for the status quo, it has no utility for the vested interest.
Intelligent people have always proved to be difficult people just because of their intelligence; they cannot bow down to any stupid thing.
And our society is full of superstitions, stupidities; all kinds of nonsense prevails in the name of religion, in the name of politics, net zero, equality, Marxist woke-ism, or in the name of literature, art.
They all condition you to remain stupid your whole life for the simple reason that stupid people are obedient.
Intelligent people start thinking on their own, they start becoming individuals.
They start having their own life, their own lifestyle, their own way of seeing, of being, of growing.
They are no more parts of the crowd, they cannot be.
They have to leave the crowd behind, only then they can grow.
And the crowd feels offended; the crowd does not want anybody to be more than the average person, it is against the average woke person’s retarded ego.
The crowd, the collective, has a great involvement, the involvement is that anybody becoming more intelligent, more individual, more aware, will not be any longer part of their mob psychology.
The stupid people are many, the majority, ninety-nine point nine percent.
They have a great power with them, the power of violence, and they show it whenever it is needed.
Stupid people will kill for no reason.
They cancel, censor, repress rather than try to understand.
They manipulate rather than try to relate, because to relate with somebody needs great understanding;, manipulation needs no understanding.
Repression is easy, very easy, any fool can do it.
Repression is a trick to cripple you.
It is a trick to destroy you, it is a trick to weaken you.
It is a trick to put you against yourself.
It is a way of creating conflict within you, and whenever a person is in conflict with themself, of course they are very weak.
The society has played a great stupid game, it has put everybody against themselves.
So you are continuously fighting within yourself.
You don’t have any energy to do anything else.
Can’t you observe it happening in you?
Continuously fighting.
The society has divided you into a split person, it has made you schizophrenic and it has confused you.
You have become driftwood.
You don’t know who you are, you don’t know where you are going, you don’t know what you are doing anymore here.
You don’t even know why you are here in the first place.
Repression has really confused you.
Repression is to live a life that you were not meant to live.
Repression is to do things which you never wanted to do.
Repression is to be the fool that you are not:
Repression is a way to destroy yourself.
Repression is suicide, very slow of course, but a very certain, slow poisoning.
Expression is life, repression is suicide.
Repression means a method of creating conscience instead of consciousness.
Consciousness is non-repressive; it depends on understanding, it depends on meditativeness, awareness.
Conscience is repressive, it simply goes on giving you orders, “Do this. Don’t do that.”
It does not change you but it poisons your life.
Repression is the greatest calamity that has happened to humanity.
Hello @lienChrist: I read your entire comment. There are quite a number of “truths” in what you’ve stated. However, many of these “truths” are your own personal truths. I don’t have a problem with that, because my “truths” are my own, and I have no interest in altering your’s. This quote rather defines one of my most artful conclusions: >
“The collective is so rotten that it will be an act of compassion to destroy it.”
Yup…
Sort of like the bit in Rocky Horror Picture Show where Frankenfurter brutally kills Eddie and then tells Rocky “It was a mercy killing!”
Medicine failed in it’s oath – Do no harm – when it became obsessed with statistics. John Snow [the sanctified medic, not the righteous tv guru] is the problem. The concept that analysing individuals is hard and error prone, so we should just total up results and average the result to decide for everyone, is the worst sort of communism. And I am a fan of social democracy in principle. Here are the 20+ jabs that clownworld believes in:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/nhs-vaccinations-and-when-to-have-them/
Note you would have 100+ if you had an annual flu jab
When I went to one of the huge London demos I met what I assume was probably a 77th brigader or someone associated with the security forces. He was with his young family. His wife worked in the nhs as a pharmacist and he had two beautiful little girls. They were a couple perhaps in their mid 30s. It was towards the end of the demo. It was at a restaurant just by Trafalgar Square. I sat down and had a drink and a snack. They were sat at the next table. I had my home made placard with me with the words ‘LOVE NOT FEAR’ that my daughter and her boyfriend had helped me make. I don’t think I will ever forget that demo or the music one that took place the following day. Not just because of the size of them but because of the incredible energy and the people I met which restored my faith in humanity. The couple saw the placard and started chatting to me about the demo which they had also been on as a family. The woman then began talking to me about her experience at the hospital, about how when it started it was almost fun at the hospital which was completely empty, the staff were relaxed and almost playful. Nobody really believed there was anything that deadly out there but then came the rules and masking and things became a little less fun for them and slowly as the weeks passed she realised that something sinister was happening and came on the demo to show her opposition to the fear that had been generated she felt unnecessarily. Then he spoke and started telling me that he was in the army and that he worked in the communication section mainly on social media getting certain messages “out there”. However he said that after a while they realised they had gone too far and people had become too scared. The banality of evil. I don’t think Desmet says anything new that Arendt hasn’t said before.
“THE MACHINE” devoid of human thinking and morality has the potential for untold evil.
Christmas
Your last xmas: SpaceBusters (bitchute.com)
Former Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, had himself appointed as co-minister to a number of Ministrries especially the Department for Health…He was no slouch…He realised that the minister in charge of the health portfolio, who had the power to declare “a pandemic”, had been granted the power by parliament to become a legal dictator…Scott must have realised the health minister might use the power to depose him, by declaring him ‘infected’ and thus needing (indefinite) quarantining…
Similarly in the USA. Congress has, over the years, given the Secretary of Human Health & Services (HHS) legally unassailable powers to declare ‘pandemics’, and exercise powers that were not Congresses to give to the HHS…
‘…..how did Congress “give away a power that they didnt have the power to give away ? Congress doesnt have the power to dissolve itself. Congress does not have the power to dissolve the federal judiciary under the US Constitution…You cant give away a power that wasnt yours to begin with.’ (Lifesite News):
https://www.lifesitenews.com/analysis/how-the-us-govt-built-a-shadow-structure-that-enabled-covid-vax-bioterrorism/
I know Desmets thoughts only from far and didn’t read his book.
Honest effort to really better and better understand, what the things are and how it is connected without ANY wishful thinking and without ANY false Messiases seems to me the only way to come to truth. As I read somethimes anywhere
Truth will set you free, but before you reach this freedom, truth will hurt you!
If this is, what Desmet means, then I think he’s right.
Why would anyone negotiate with NATO when they openly admit that past agreements were not made in good faith?….
As the indigenous people’s of North America apparently stated White Man speaks with forked tongue or in Scottish parlance they would steal the milk out of your tea !
A) NATO were not party to the MINSK agreement – being the title of the video.
B) The invasion and capitulation of Ukraine had been planned by Kissinger for over a decade.
C) German energy dependence on Russian gas was all part of the plan.
D) The defining moment for modern Ukraine is the 1991 referendum
E) The defining agreement is Budapest 1994
F) The Putin regime interfered in Ukrainian politics prior to 2014 by transferring “several billion dollars” to Kolomoisky.
—
https://genius.com/Vladimir-putin-press-conference-on-the-situation-in-ukraine-annotated
Press conference on the situation in Ukraine
President Vladimir Putin of Russia takes questions from the Russian media on March 3, 2014, following Russian military action in Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
Released: March 4, 2014
For example, Mr Kolomoisky was appointed Governor of Dnepropetrovsk. This is a unique crook. He even managed to cheat our oligarch Roman Abramovich two or three years ago. Scammed him, as our intellectuals like to say. They signed some deal, Abramovich transferred several billion dollars, while this guy never delivered and pocketed the money. When I asked him [Abramovich]: “Why did you do it?” he said: “I never thought this was possible.” I do not know, by the way, if he ever got his money back and if the deal was closed. But this really did happen a couple of years ago. And now this crook is appointed Governor of Dnepropetrovsk. No wonder the people are dissatisfied. They were dissatisfied and will remain so if those who refer to themselves the legitimate authorities continue in the same fashion.
—
https://www.timesofisrael.com/toxic-russian-oligarchs-come-under-increased-scrutiny-in-israel
March 14, 2022
Abramovich, who was described by the oligarchs researcher as “Putin’s wallet” and one of his moneymen charged with buying assets in Western countries, is no stranger to sanctions. . . . The researcher said that Abramovich and others are Putin’s “cash handlers where [he] has almost complete control,” and he “uses them to access Western systems.”
With his manufactured number one hit of the internet woke alt right tour of duty of the clown circuit.
I am surprised Desmet has had time to write a book. (ghost writers do come in handy)
Has it made New York Best Sellers list yet.?
Has Cia tuc tuk fox666 given him a guest slot.?
You can keep your internet manufactured woke psychology…
as the last internet manufactured alt right woke psychologist Patterson lead you all down the garden path.
Like we couldn’t see that happening.
💤
Exact same template.
You’re part of the asleep alt left of centre cult.
We need to ensure the asleep alt left of centre people like you are woken up and helped to become woke alt right of centre so that we can make everything good again.
“Psychopath” was Word of The Year last year.
“Narcissist” is making a good run to be Word
of The Year this year…
Everyone is a psychologist these days ?
‘Parasite’ is the word of our time.
Is it at all possible that some of the people who are being called victims of mass formation have become more passive and less flexible mentally as a direct consequence of being vaxxed? I mean, that stuff crosses the brain barrier and probably has SOME effect, no?
–
RELATED: Does anybody have that clip of Bill Gates presenting to a group about a chemical that could alter the minds of radical Islamists to get rid of their “God-obsession”? –something like that. Gates was addressing a group of CIA if I remember right.
Not Bill Gates, if you view a decent quality version of the video it is clearly not Gates plus the guy in the video is right handed where Gates is left handed.
See my above reply to Penelope.
Hello Penelope: You might be referring to this video as recorded by the Dept of Defense at the Pentagon. : >
FunVax: Fundamentalist Vaccine
Alert! DOD’s Virus Eliminates Spirituality | thx MrTakeBackAmerica – YouTube
Also this report from the Quarterly FunVax Review dated 6/01/ 2007
http://www.wanttoknow.info/health/funvax070601.pdf
Notice the “airborne” delivery systems mentioned in the brief…
Thanks Paul. Surely the attack of such a blunt instrument would be unable to confine itself merely to religiosity. One wd expect spillover against love, compassion, empathy– and ideals like freedom & justice.
I’m still looking at the 2nd link.
Btw thanks for Klinghardt; quite detailed– what a lot he knows about herbal alternatives.
Heh… ‘love, compassion, empathy’ work just fine in the bedroom. Other places? Not so much…
Since Damar had his collapse, there’s been another NFL collapse, but not during a game. Now one’s happened during the PGA Golf Tour:
‘PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — A caddie for an amateur player collapsed during the second round of the PGA Tour’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on Friday and received CPR before being taken to a nearby hospital.
Gary Young, the PGA Tour’s chief referee, said a spectator began the CPR and an officer from Cal Fire took over from there.
After the caddie was stretchered into an ambulance while still receiving CPR, players convened with a PGA Tour rules official.
Can’t believe the ‘bad guys’:
‘China has insisted the balloon was just an errant civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research that went off course due to winds and had only limited “self-steering” capabilities.
The United States says it was a Chinese spy balloon, without a doubt.‘
With more than 800 military bases spread across the planet, there’s no doubt who the bad guys are.
Comically political due to global circulating satellites under an outer permanent Web.
Yes, Clive, what a hoot: Your baloon is spying. Never mind all those satellites.
During World War 2, a few (of many launched) Jap balloons carrying bombs reached the US West coast, but did no harm.
One word: overthinking. When a house is on fire you don’t discuss the quality of the water. (my own saying) Meaning too much academic talk is no good, it will not actually and practically solve any real problem at hand.
And Desmet? Is trying to avoid the ‘difficult’ issues. Had he addressed them properly he wouldn’t have been invited by any mainstream media outlet. I’ve followed him casually for some time and he’ll join in wherever he’s welcome, it seems. Including the established press in my country (The Netherlands).
That, to me, is a sure sign. His own story, his own take on the whole affair, is considered ‘safe enough’ by those who defend the Consensus incessantly and mercilessly. And certain dissidents, who perhaps find the truth of the matter too harsh to swallow, follow the man like he’s the new prophet of the Great Understanding. While the Great Reset and all its implications is implemented top-down. Desmet is proposing complete denial of that which is apparent after three whole years.
Dr. David Hughes, Professor of International Relations (University of Lincoln), could enlighten Desmet, yet another psychologist who seems to need more direction and therapy than he can provide, as is often the case.
Enough of those scholars? Who are trying to analyse what’s already obvious to many after three years of this mess? That’s what I think.
Your alternative update on #COVID19 for 2023-02-04. #mRNA gene therapy – Moderna et al admitted it. Masks Do Nothing Stop CV & They Knew It All Along (blog, gab, tweet).
You obviously didnt.
This is very largely drawn from the pioneering “Political Ponerology” by Andrew Lobaczewski. First written in harrowing circumstances in the wake of WW2, it was retrieved and republished in 2006, 2nd edition 2022.
Yes, here’s the book:
https://www.survivorshandbook.com/wp-content/articles/political-ponerology.pdf
It’s easy to spot evil.
It wears a suit.
And a smug smile.
And yet, despite numbers, truth wins.
Sad but satisfying.
Like the few who saw Trump and the populist leaders as frauds
Circa 1950s-60s:
‘Australia rides on the sheep’s back’
(Long made quaint by the mining boom and polyester fibres).
Judging from that diagram Big pHarmer now rides on the Sheeple’s back.
Many of those people are in Europe. Where do you live? Imagine a world of constant moving Populations. Not something as a medical and unsciemtic convient map.
Its unrealistic and propagandist imo.
you don’t have an opinion, you’re a CIA disinfo bot.
WHO and others are trying to rectify that by donating jabs. Fortunately, some countries there bar them. Even if they get in, victims in parts of Africa and Asia will lynch them.
I took a psychology course once in college. Seems to be all I needed.
So, if we understand “our own” psychology better, what’s that going to get us?
This reminds me of wearing suits and ties. And getting haircuts every week.
K.I.S.S.
Desmet’s views have had other quasi-reviews (and relevant comments) on Off Guardian that are more intensely critical of him, but this seems to me a pretty good summary of his key points. I have not read his book, only followed these articles and comments, but it seems to me that — while some aspects of his thoughts are interesting — his refusal to hold those in power accountable for the many Covid falsehoods put out over the past 3 years is central to the weakness of his theory. Should we be so ready to excuse them as just not aware or at least not fully aware because they have somehow hypnotized themselves? I think not. But the real and more scathing question with regard to Desmet might be: does he have a hidden purpose in largely excusing them? Is he rather subtly putting down the idea of personal responsibility and evil motives (ie accumulating power, money and control etc) so we come to say “aw shucks, let’s just forgive ’em.” Maybe not forgive and totally forget — Desmet seems to be willing that we learn from what has happened. Or am I wrong there? Maybe someone who has read his full book with a skeptical eye can say more on this.
Desmet’s arguments have been artfully disassembled by the psychologists who wrote this paper. Nice to see psychologists with real brains in action:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/JJqHNcAICbY0/
Interesting I’ll take a look at that. Thanks for your comment 👍 A2
Pig Violence
I didn’t follow the commentary. Regardless of it’s merits and demerits and thesis, this video documents pig violence across the world. I wonder how many people were seriously wounded by the swine. I am sure at least a few were killed. Galling in the extreme is the fact that none of those violent cowards will ever be brought to justice.
These are the same people who wrote the critique of Desmet’s book linked below to Unlimited Hangout.
RE: Desmet’s treatment of conspiracy reminds us of a similar approach taken by Naomi Klein in her otherwise excellent book, The Shock Doctrine. After going to great lengths to describe what can only be called a long-term conspiracy to economically exploit (and torture) a string of entire nations, Klein adds a small disclaimer section near the end of the book, saying, “No conspiracies required.”
I read NK’s book when it came out, and I too thought the book was great until the last chapter, then she seemed to contradict what she had argued so persuasively in earlier chapters. I realized that – like Chomsky – she was a gatekeeper. It is not surprising that she now gets funding from the WEF.
Definitely a gate keeper. And very disappointing as I still have that book and it was a very good one for pointing out just how conspiracy really works. I am going to keep that one as an example of a limited hangout. I was very surprised she refused to see the covid as shock doctrine in action but then that was now a long time ago. I’m no longer shocked by her, or Chomsky, or Hedges, or so many others who I once thought were real dissidents who were not afraid to speak real truth. But real dissidents aren’t allowed to speak publicly, they aren’t on the main stream boob tube, and if they do make You Tube they usually do limit their criticisms to historical time periods, never touching the blatant conspiracy of their own times. Real dissidents don’t make best seller lists either.
I guess the lesson there is not to have heroes, ever. And that’s been a worthwhile lesson for me, despite the vomit worthy disgust at watching so many sell out so completely.
Agreed!
“With the coronavirus crisis, it is obvious that the stages of mass formation were intentionally brought upon the masses by the Leaders—and it was intentional.”
That’s the point that Desmet doesn’t clarify from the first time he started to speak for the mass formation.Which is the very truth of covid hysteria.
It is interesting that Off-G would publish this book review with it’s mild critique and not (re)publish the much more substantial and thorough and critical review done by David A. Hughes, Valerie Kyrie and Daniel Broudy (see link below) with expertise in psychological warfare, psychology on the topic of reality-perception and its manipulation and applied psycholinguistics (respectively).
It is a long and well argued critique of Desmet’s book. Here are some small excerpts:
“In this review of Desmet’s book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, we argue that it manifests the psychology of atrocity – and that “Mass Formation” paradoxically serves to legitimize the mass atrocity perpetrated during the Covid-19 era.
“The Psychology of Totalitarianism works to normalize key aspects of totalitarianism. Desmet announces early on that totalitarianism represents “the defining feature of the Enlightenment tradition”. Not liberation from the Divine Right of Kings. Not the birth of modern republicanism. Not the spirit of free and independent scientific inquiry. But totalitarianism, a politically and intellectually backwards phenomenon that did not emerge until the 1930s…
Desmet reads history backwards to make the technocratic totalitarianism currently seeking to install itself seem inevitable…
All societies, he argues, are at risk of succumbing to that ideology, for “There is an ever-present, totalitarian undercurrent that consists of a fanatical attempt to steer and control life in far-reaching ways on the basis of technical, scientific knowledge” (p. 176). The “mechanistic ideology” — and not a vampiric transnational ruling class apparently waging undeclared covert war against the people — is the enemy for Desmet. Blaming the ideology is the rhetorical move that divorces the responsibility of bad actors from their bad intent.[Emphasis mine]
It is entirely unclear why violence is the “inevitable” outcome of a line of reasoning that pins blame for Covid mass atrocity, not on the victimized and abused masses, but rather on a proportionately tiny ruling class responsible for worldwide crimes against humanity. The numerical odds are overwhelmingly in favor of humanity. Violence is not a prerequisite for emancipation: it simply takes a critical mass to see what is happening and to refuse to comply with its own enslavement. Note Desmet’s claim that “harsh repression” and “destruction of the opposition” by the “elite” is “justifie[d]” in case of insurrection. This sounds fascistic on its face. Extreme violence is permitted to the ruling class to defend itself, but Heaven forbid that the people, repeatedly subjected to the devices of mass atrocity, should entertain similar ideas about their own self-defense.
Solutions to totalitarianism do not lie in the philosophy of science. They lie in the outcome of class conflict. Desmet himself recognizes that, should leaders not be able to sustain the levels of manufactured “anxiety and aggression” necessary for Mass Formation, “the masses will wake up and become aware of the damage they have suffered, whereupon they will turn against the leaders in lethal fashion” (p. 116). Predictably, however, he leaps to the defense of the system:
This is true if the predatory practices of the present capitalist system remain intact. But given the world-historical events that have unfolded since 2020, this is far from certain. The ruling class appears intent on replacing present forms of capitalism with technocracy — a system of direct bio-digital enslavement that does not rely on secondary forms of control such as debt slavery…
In the opposite corner, a rapidly awakening global population will surely have other ideas.
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2022/11/investigative-reports/covid-19-mass-formation-or-mass-atrocity/
Solutions do not lie in the totalitarianism IN the philosophy of The Science; those who have inculcated millions into this philosophy and who have stamped out true scientific enquiry need to be acknowledged to exist and then have to be removed from power.
For that to happen the masses need to stop lying to themselves.
Desmet is right when he states that removing individuals from the system doesn’t change anything. Removing the system changes everything.
Problems can never be solved in the realm that created them. Evil can never solve the problem of evil. War can never be stopped by war. Slaves to the system do not see the system as slavery. Until they one day do. Everyone needs to open their own minds and eyes; it is not something another person can do. That’s why psychology, meaning science of the mind or soul, is important to know, but we really don’t need any books for it, because we can easily search our souls ourselves. Or the mind.
That’s where knowledge is.
Off-G does do woke alt right and this Desmet totally fits the criteria.
Maybe the audience is slightly woke as they do believe any old internet bullshit especially if its coming from the fake Christian conservative independent alt media financed by the oligarchy.
Your comment is better than the article. Imagine that.
totalitarianism represents “the defining feature of the Enlightenment tradition”
After reading that, a person who bought rhe book would realise he had been scanned.
That is a really impressive and compelling piece by (3) PHDs with copious references; once again Unlimited Hangout delivers thorough and profound perspective.
Desmet is not to be faulted for shifting the burden of our plight onto us; it’s not clear he’s absolute in this but may instead believe we actually have the power to reclaim our destiny for ourselves. We know that placing blame outside tends to disempower us and vice-versa. How else could we engage the ” middle ” cohort so urgently needed to turn the tide than to charge ourselves with the task?
I’ve not read his book ( no plans at this point either ) but Mattias has a kind and gentle aspect perhaps not surfacing in his writing; see the in person interview with Del Bigtree for a sampling.
Spy balloon underpant bomb.
badly draughted banjo? in some pics…?
also, what was that big-assed balloon meme from decades ago? lol
“Something in this narrative causes man to become isolated from his fellow man, and from nature. Something in it causes man to stop resonating with the world around him.”
Connectedness to nature is generally a good thing – but this is a red herring viz totalitarianism. Stalinism and Italian Fascism worshipped technology – but Nazism venerated nature (at least in its rhetoric). Don’t some modern environmentalists show distinctly totalitarian traits? I don’t have much time for Arendt and she seems to be barking up the wrong tree again.
I have some problems with Desmet’s claim of hypnosis. I’m well aware of, for example, George Estabrooks and I see the tale that people can’t be hypnotised against their will or made to do things against their moral code as deliberate falsehoods put out to cloak the potential dangers hypnosis poses. Various facets of modern living from TV to supermarket lighting seem designed to put people in a lightly hypnotic state. However the evasion of personal responsibility is concerning and it doesn’t explain why some can resist it and others break out of it. I find a paradigm that regards, for example, covidians as frightened children more convincing and more useful than a paradigm that regards them as hypnotised.
“the hypnotized”
“Covid-19 – Mass Formation or Mass Atrocity?”: https://unlimitedhangout.com/2022/11/investigative-reports/covid-19-mass-formation-or-mass-atrocity/
Milgram and other experiments were redone and had different results… Belief in them is to believe the propaganda that humans would do this in current society where prosperity is low and trust is low.
https://robc137.substack.com/p/the-milgram-experiment-and-how-we
Another good analysis here https://plagueonbothhouses.com/were-we-hypnotised-by-desmet-part-i-where-does-his-argument-fall-apart/