Communist Party cadres hang a placard on the neck of a Chinese man during the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
The words on the placard states the man’s name and accuse him of being a member of the “black class.” (Public Domain)
Posted on 09/15/2022 5:56:19 PM PDT by lightman
Professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University Mattias Desmet is the world’s leading expert in the phenomenon known as “mass formation,” which is a type of hypnotic state that occurs when people are isolated from one another and free-floating anxiety is prevalent, as in during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Desmet believes the world is now seeing a new form of totalitarianism, spawned in the last couple of decades and fostered by mass formation during the pandemic.
“What you’re dealing with now is not a communist or not fascist authoritarianism. It is the emergence, I think, of technocratic totalitarianism,” Desmet said during a recent interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. This new form of control will not be “led by gang leaders such as Stalin or Hitler, but by dull bureaucrats and technocrats,” added Desmet, citing the work of 20th century political philosopher Hannah Arendt.
This type of totalitarian technocracy believes the answer to the anxiety in society is more control. A “technocracy is a system led by technical experts and not by democratically elected politicians,” said Desmet.
The Origins of Technocracy
“What we see now during the last decades is the emergence of a technocratic ideology, the belief that the problems of society, the belief that the objects of fear and anxiety in a society—such as terrorism, or climate change, or the Coronavirus—that they should be controlled, or that we should fight these objects of anxiety by controlling them in a technological way,” he said.
As in the case of the pandemic, those in power thought it best that those with technical knowledge about viruses should decide policies, not democratically elected politicians, said Desmet.
“I believe that the technocratic system is the ultimate consequence of this rationalist ideology that emerged since the beginning of the tradition of enlightenment,” he added.
There are limits to this rationalist view of understanding life, and Desmet believes people must focus on ethical principles or the principles of humanity to create a harmonious and free society.
“If you follow rational understanding, and you’re not humble and honest enough to admit that at a certain moment, there is a limit that your rational understanding, that your rational mind will never be able to grasp the essence or the phenomenon that you’re studying, you lapse into complete radical, absurd irrationality,” said Desmet.
Mass Formation, Mass Media, Technocracy
This type of state control is “a desperate attempt to erase uncertainty from human existence, and to impose one state certainty, one shared certainty to every individual life,” said Desmet.
In addition, mass media plays a major role in solidifying this mass formation and thereby state control.
“This mass formation usually starts with a narrative that is being distributed through the mass media, indicating an object of anxiety, and at the same time providing a strategy to deal with the object of anxiety. What happens then, all this free-floating anxiety in the population suddenly connects to this object of anxiety provided in a narrative,” said Desmet.
And people are willing to go along with the irrational, faulty strategy, proposed by the authorities, he added.
When the general public doesn’t know why it feels anxious, frustrated, and aggressive, that is the perfect environment for mass formation, said Desmet.
“The root cause of the mass formation—which was always loneliness, the disconnectedness that existed before the mass formation started—seems to be solved. People seem to feel connected again. I say ‘seem,’ because they are not really connected again,” said Desmet.
People do not connect to each other but to the “collective ideal,” Desmet said. “All the psychological energy, all the love, you could say, between individuals is extracted from the individual social bonds and injected in the bonds between the individuals and the collective.”
At the end stage of mass formation, people are in a paranoid state where they “snitch” on their neighbors and colleagues for not following the rules and blindly go along with irrational policies, as in the case of the COVID lockdowns, he said.
These policies are reinforced by mass media and people go along with them “because it gives them a sense of control, they have the feeling that they know now what they were anxious for, and that they can control their anxiety by participating in the strategy to deal with the object of anxiety. For instance, lockdown to deal with the virus,” said Desmet.
“In a mass formation, people seem to choose to deal with uncertainty by just accepting everything the group believes in, they believe altogether, and the same dogmatic ideas and the same narratives that shouldn’t be questioned anymore,” said Desmet.
The isolation and dependency on technology can reinfuse people with the propaganda, causing the hypnosis to last a long time, said Desmet.
“With the emergence of the mass media, that mass formation can last for a long time because people can be constantly, time and time again, be reinfused by this same propaganda, the same narratives,” said Desmet.
Like all totalitarian control, technocracy does not tolerate dissent, he said.
“It is as if all the uncertainty disappears under a collective narrative, that should not be questioned anymore, and that leads to this famous intolerance for dissident voices,” said Desmet. “To what extent this totalitarianism will succeed in destroying everyone who doesn’t want to go along with it, that will depend on what those people do, who are not in the grip” of this mass formation.
Unhypnotized People Must Speak Up
Those who were not “hypnotized by the narrative” could see that many of the COVID-19 measures were “fundamentally and intrinsically irrational,” said Desmet.
The people who criticized these irrational policies and mandates and dissented were censored and in some cases punished, which is a hallmark of totalitarianism. In addition, totalitarianism requires “that society should be led on the basis of indoctrination, propaganda,” instead of “truth speech,” which is something a person genuinely believes and tries to share with others, said Desmet.
“From the First World War onwards, we’ve seen the emergence of an impressive propaganda machinery in the Western world through which a population was constantly manipulated without them knowing it,” said Desmet.
The remedy for this mass formation and to prevent atrocities from occurring is to speak out, he said.
“If you want to disturb the mass formation, then you have to speak out,” said Desmet. “The ancient Greeks called this parrhesia, like a kind of bold, courageous speech, practiced by individuals who refuse to go along with the narratives of a group or dominant narrative.”
Desmet urges all people to find the courage to speak out against irrational, totalitarian policies, not to convince anyone but to exercise their “inalienable rights.”
Communist Party cadres hang a placard on the neck of a Chinese man during the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
The words on the placard states the man’s name and accuse him of being a member of the “black class.” (Public Domain)
China’s history is full of all kinds of abuses against their own people. They can be a nasty bunch that make sadists look mild.
Bkmk
GREAT comments from the Epoch Times sidebar:
“Older ThanDirt
4 hours ago
−
The Bible tells us more than 360 times to “be not afraid” and so I choose not to be. Fear gets in the way of agency.
P
PPW
4 hours ago
−
Fear is NOT from GOD!
Fears are lies of satan!
M
mrsfoster2015
3 hours ago
−
Philippians 4:7
“And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
The banality of evil. Hannah Arendt told us.
“What you’re dealing with now is not a communist or not fascist authoritarianism. It is the emergence, I think, of technocratic totalitarianism.”
I’ve heard this argument before and it has some merit. But what is new is the methodology they want to use to implement authoritarianism, not the ideology driving it. Communism and fascism are ideologies, not methodologies, so this is an apples to oranges comparison.
You could have both a Communist technocratic authoritarianism (like China) or a Fascist technocratic authoritarianism (like Europe/US is heading towards). The underlying goals and psychological forces driving it still come from the same old ideologies though, and you won’t stop it by attacking the methodology, any more than you stop an addict by taking away one method of them getting high. They’ll just find another method as long as their goals are the same and the motivation is there.
There is already a term for this. It is called managerialism and it is the greatest malady afflicting the modern western world.
The underlying goals and psychological forces driving it still come from the same old ideologies though,<<
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
― Alexander Fraser Tytler
People like Robert Malone and Peter McCullough, great as they are, are taken in by “mass formation psychosis” because they were asleep for so long, just bobbing along in the mainstream, that they didn’t see what’s been happening for decades. FreeRepublic came online in the late 90’s just because the trends reached back at least to Watergate, though I think that’s when the media-D.C. complex coalesced. On a recent show, McCullough had a NHS doctor who has been speaking out about vaccine injuries in UK and the guy was blaming Thatcher and Reagan. Mccullough spoke about how he’d been a “moderate, voted both sides of the aisle,” etc., etc. obviously Bobby Kennedy Jr is another one, though I haven’t heard him talk about MFP. So , Malone and McCullough suddenly wake up as the mainstream current is drowning their very reasonable voices and they grasp for some explanation, “it has to be a sudden development caused by the extraordinary free floating anxiety of the pandemic isolation.” Baloney, you were just too busy doing worthy things with your lives, educations and abilities, to see the rapids and approaching brim of the waterfall we’re going over and the chaos below. Tucker teased his Tucker Carlson Today interview with Desmet as one of the smartest men he has ever interviewed. Maybe so ( I didn’t watch it), but his brilliance is in no way exemplified by his theories of mass formation psychosis being the root of this totalitarian outbreak.
Joe Rogan Experience with Guest Dr. Robert Malone (December 31, 2021)
https://odysee.com/@TruthHealthFreedom:1/Joe-Rogan-Dr.-Robert-Malone-JRE-1757-2021-12-31:e
Dr. Malone talks about mass formation in this excellent interview, and talks about Desmet. Malone gets it. The whole interview is worth listening to (yes, I know it’s 3h+), but the section where he talks about mass formation and Desmet starts at around 2h43m.
It’s social media, like twit and tictoc, fakebook. They are awful for humanity. Almost evil.
China (and the CIA psychology branches?) recognized it early on, and use it for mass manipulation. To great effect.
It’s a craziness amplifier and spreader.
FIE ping to this post.
+1
Thanks for the “2:43” heads up.
The prescription of rebuilding community is in fact what was being destroyed through the lockdowns, church closures, and anti”social distancing”.
Hibernating behind multiple masks feeding from the bottom of the MSM garbage can....
...Good Lord, deliver us!
Although he is not wrong, neither is he especially original. He seems to be unaware of or oblivious to the most pernicious quality of technology— which is, that technology has no soul. If you don’t believe me, compare the feelings you get from a handwritten love letter and the same letter typed out and sent by email. It says it all.
FIE ???
That quote from Tytler is a fav and so true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fraser_Tytler%2C_Lord_Woodhouselee
F acebook
I s
E vil
“From the First World War onwards, we’ve seen the emergence of an impressive propaganda machinery in the Western world through which a population was constantly manipulated without them knowing it,” said Desmet.
The remedy for this mass formation and to prevent atrocities from occurring is to speak out, he said.
“If you want to disturb the mass formation, then you have to speak out,” said Desmet. “The ancient Greeks called this parrhesia, like a kind of bold, courageous speech, practiced by individuals who refuse to go along with the narratives of a group or dominant narrative.”
Desmet urges all people to find the courage to speak out against irrational, totalitarian policies, not to convince anyone but to exercise their “inalienable rights.”
I've heard that... but it sure makes sense ... who ever said it..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.