|
Three
weeks ago, American psychiatrist Peter Breggin and his wife Ginger
Ross Breggin formulated some harsh criticism of my new book, The
Psychology of Totalitarianism. They did so in a book review
published in three parts (here,
here,
and here),
asserting that in describing the mass
formation that took place during the Covid-19 pandemic I was
blaming the victims and absolving the perpetrators. Even more,
Breggin and Breggin claim that there hasn’t been such a thing as a
mass formation during the corona crisis. People were not allowed to
meet – how could they have formed a mass?
I reached out to Peter Breggin and his wife immediately after their
review was published, proposing to have a constructive public or
private conversation about their review. It is about two months later
now, and it seems that they refuse to accept my invitation. That’s
why I will respond here.
Thanks for reading Mattias Desmet! Subscribe for free to receive
new posts and support my work.
This seems to be their core criticism: that I argue there was no
intentional manipulation at work in the crisis, and no
conspiracy—only a spontaneously-emerging mass formation from the
population itself. For Breggin and Breggin, that means I am blaming
the victims (the population) and psychiatrically labeling anyone who
thinks there was, in fact, conspiracy at play.
It is correct that in my
book, I describe the societal dynamics of the coronacrisis as an
emergent phenomenon, driven by a certain narrative of man and the
world—the mechanistic-rationalist-materialist ideology—which
created a certain elite and put the population in a certain state
that made it vulnerable to mass formation. In The
Psychology of Totalitarianism and numerous podcasts, I
describe that mass-formation can emerge in a more or less spontaneous
way (as happened in the first stages of Nazism in Germany) or that it
can be artificially provoked through indoctrination and propaganda
(as in the former Soviet Union). In this process, both the elite and
the population itself shoulder responsibility—the first because
they actively manipulate the population and the second because they
prefer to stay blind and, ultimately, commit atrocities towards those
who don’t join them.
However, I never claimed that there was no intentional
manipulation or planning. Quite to the contrary, on p.100 of my book,
for instance, I claim that long term mass formation, as it existed in
the coronacrisis, cannot be maintained withoug indoctrination and
propaganda distributed through the mass-media. Nor did I claim there
was no conspiracy. Consider the following paragraphs from my
book:
Is there any steering and manipulation at all
then? The answer is a resounding yes, there most certainly is
all kinds of manipulation. And with the means available to
today’s mass media, the possibilities are simply phenomenal. Such
steering, however, is rarely done by individual
persons; the most fundamental steering is
impersonal in nature. The steering is first and
foremost driven by an ideology—a way of
thinking. Ideologies organize and structure society
progressively and organically. As we have described in detail in
the previous chapters, the dominant ideology is mechanistic in
nature. This ideology derives its appeal from the utopian vision
of an artificial paradise (see chapter 3). The world
and mankind are a machine and they can be comprehended and
manipulated as such. The hitches in the machine that cause
suffering can be “repaired.” In the long run, it will
even be possible to eliminate death. Moreover, all
this can be done without man having to reflect on his role
in his own misfortune, without questioning himself as a moral and
ethical being. This ideology makes life easy in the short term.
The price for convenience will be paid in arrears
(see chapter 5).
It is at this fundamental level that we have
to situate the “secret” forces
that direct individuals in the same direction and
ultimately organize society as a whole. Remember drawing
the Sierpinski triangle; if everyone follows the same
rules, strictly regular patterns emerge. Like iron filings
scattered in the force field of a magnet, individuals arrange
themselves in a perfect pattern under the influence of these
forces. Man has always fallen prey to the
aforementioned “temptations”—the illusion of rational
understanding and control, the resistance to question oneself
critically as a human, the pursuit of short-term
convenience. Within the religious discourse, these temptations
were considered dangerous, but that changed with the rise of
mechanistic thinking. From then on, they became anchored in the
dominant narrative, which also became justification of such
temptations. Leaders and followers were captivated by the
limitless possibilities the human mind seemed to offer. The
evolution towards a hyper-controlled technological society—the
surveillance society—is unavoidable as long as the human mind
remains trapped in that logic and is (to a large extent
unconsciously) controlled by those attractors. It is
this ideology that redesigned society, created new
institutions, and selected new authority figures. The
transition from a democracy to a totalitarian technocracy, in which
the corona crisis was a Great Leap forward, formed part
of the logic of the mechanistic ideology from the very beginning. In
a mechanistic universe, it is inevitably the technical expert who has
the last word, based on his superior mechanistic knowledge.
Based on this ideology, institutions were created that
make plans about what future society should look like and how the
ideal future society should respond to crisis
situations. The Lockstep scenario of the Rockefeller
Foundation,12 Event 201 of the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation (in collaboration with John Hopkins and the Rockefeller
foundation),13 and The Great Reset by Klaus
Schwab14 are examples of such endeavors. For
many people, these events and publications are the
ultimate proof that the social developments we’re experiencing
are planned and the product of a conspiracy, since long before the
outbreak these “plans” described how society
would go into lockdown as the result of a pandemic, that a
biopassport would be introduced, and that people would be tracked and
traced with subcutaneous sensors.
If we keep in mind the definition of a conspiracy—a
secret, planned, intentional and malicious scheme—we immediately
notice two things: it’s not much of a secret since all
the aforementioned “plans” are available on the
internet. And whether those plans guide the discourse and action
of experts through targeted instructions is, at least,
questionable. The experts’ communication is full of
contradictions and inconsistencies, retractions and corrections,
clumsy wording and transparent errors. This is nothing
like a streamlined execution of a pre-established plan. If
these are conspiracy theorists, they are the
lousiest ones ever. Obviously, psychological
warfare may also make use of confusion and confusing
messages, but that does not explain experts trying to
correct their mistakes of the day before, or of feeling
visibly at unease and discomfortable.
The only consistency within the
experts’ discourse is that the decisions always move towards a
more technologically and biomedically controlled society, in other
words towards the realization of the mechanistic ideology. For
this reason, we see exactly the same problems in the corona crisis as
those revealed by the replication crisis in academic research: a maze
of errors, sloppiness, and forced conclusions, in
which researchers unconsciously confirm their ideological
principles (the so-called allegiance effect, see chapter 4).
In the process of exercising power—i.e. shaping the
world to ideological beliefs—there usually is no need to
make secret plans and agreements. As Noam Chomsky put it,
if you have to tell someone what to do, you’ve chosen the wrong
person.15 In other words: the dominant ideology selects who ends
up in key positions. Someone who does not share the ideology is
usually less successful in society, apart from a
few exceptions. Consequently, all people in positions of
power automatically follow the same rules in their thinking and in
their behavior and are under the influence of the same
‘attractors’ (to use a term from complex dynamical systems
theory). Furthermore, they all succumb to the same
logical fallacies and the same absurd behavior, independently of each
other, or at least without having to gather in secret
meetings. Compare it to computers running on the same,
wrong software: their “behaviour” and
their “thinking” will all deviate in the same
direction, without “communicating” with one
another. This is what the Sierpinski triangle shows
us: mind-blowingly precise and regular patterns can arise
because individuals independently follow the same simple rules of
behaviorand are attracted to the same set of
attractors. The puppet master is the ideology, not the
elite.
Plans and visions for the future are not so
much “forced” on the population. In many ways,
the leaders of the masses—the so-called elite—give the
people what they want. When fearful,the population wants a
more controlled society. For many people, the lockdowns
were a liberation from the unbearable and meaningless routine of
working life, the fragmented society was in need of a common
enemy, and so on. The “plans” do not precede
the developments, as a conspiracy logic suggest. They
follow them. Those who guide the masses are not
real “leaders”in the sense that they do not have the
capability to determine where the masses will go. Instead
they sense what people crave and they adjust their plans in that
direction. They may relish pretending to have control
and direct the chain of events, but they are more like a child
sitting on the bow of a ship and turning a toy steering
wheel every time the tanker changes direction. Or we can think
of King Cnut, who stood before the sea at low tide, ordered the waves
to retreat, and narcissistically beamed with
pride because it happened. Some of
those institutions have even adapted previously released
films, suggesting that they could predict the future (for example,
the Digikosmos16 film was adapted in such a way that it seemed
to predict the course of the corona crisis exactly as it
happened). Ironically, conspiracy thinking confirms
the leaders’ narcissism by taking them seriously, acting
as if they are steering the ship, or causing the waves to recede.
There are countless other examples that seem to point in
the direction of a plan being implemented, such as: the fact that the
definition of “pandemic” was changed shortly before the
corona crisis; the definition of “herd immunity” to
imply that only vaccines can achieve it;the counting method
for corona deaths was adjusted by the WHO so it was higher than the
number of flu deaths; that the registration
methodology of vaccine side effects led to serious
underestimation (by, for example, labelling those that
become apparent during the first fortnight after
vaccination as not vaccine-related); that all key political
positions when the crisis started were held by politicians who were
pro-technocracy (all people referred to as the World
Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders).
These are examples of how an ideology gets a grip on
society, not evidence of the execution of a conspiracy. For
instance: similar things happing during almost all major
re-organisations in large companies and
government institutions. Indeed, anyone who would like to
reorganize a company or institution and holds
the right position(s) will try to adjust the rules, in
ways that they are conducive to their goals. And
they will do their best to install the right people in the right
positions on the beforehand and will try to mold their minds for the
reorganization and restructuring through all kinds of formal and
informal influence. Anyone who experiences this up close at a
company or institution will probably not experience this as a
conspiracy. We could even say that every biological organism
does the same: it tries to adjust its environment in the desired
direction.
At certain points, however,
the aforementioned practices may turn into
something that does have the structure of a conspiracy. Large
institutions use all kinds of questionable strategies to impose their
ideals on society, and the means to do so have increased
spectacularly in recent centuries. The whole mechanization,
industrialization, “technologization” and “mediatization”of
the world has indeed led to the centralization of power
and no sane person can deny that this power is being
exercised with scrupulous attention to ethics and
morality. It is well documented:
whether in governments, the tobacco industry, or the
pharmaceutical lobby, there is bribery, manipulation, and fraud. If
you don’t partake in these practices, it’s hard to remain at
the top.
In their endeavors to impose their ideals on
society, institutions and people do indeed cross ethical boundaries,
and when things get out of hand, their
strategies may indeed devolve into a conspiracy:
a secret, intentional, planned, and malicious project. It is
also well known that, as the process of totalitarianization
continues, the totalitarian regime is increasingly organized as a
fully-fledged “secret society.”17 We have seen that
the Holocaust came about through a mind-boggling process of mass
formation that blinded both the perpetrators and the victims and drew
them into an infernal dynamic (see chapter 7). However, there
was also an intentional plan, which had as its
purpose to systematically optimize racial purity
through sterilization and elimination of all
impure elements. There were apprxoimately five people
who patiently andsystematically 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. Those who did see what was going
on—namely that the concentration camps were in fact extermination
camps—were accused of being a ... conspiracy theorist.18
The preparation and implementation of such plans are
by no means the exclusive privilege of totalitarian
regimes. Throughout the twentieth century, large numbers of men
and women whose genetic material was considered “inferior”
have been sterlized under the the doctrine of eugenics. By
1972, the term eugenics had taken on a too negative
connotation and was replaced by “social biology,” but the
practice remained the same and continued into the 21st century (for
example, the sterilization of California inmates without informed
consent)19 . Do we have good reason to believe that, in
recent years, such practices have ceased?
—The
Psychology of Totalitarianism
I just wonder: did Peter and Ginger Ross Breggin really look over
these and other paragraphs in my book? Do they really believe that I
claim that long term mass-formation arises in a completely
spontaneous way, without someone ever intentionally steering and
manipulating the masses? Did they really overlook that there is an
entire chapter in my book about the leaders of the masses? I leave
open all possible interpretations of their response. The onus to
answer these questions rests upon them.
Does this mean that Breggin and Breggin have no point at all? It
depends. If the aspect of intentional planning in this crisis is
extremely important, then you could say that it makes no sense and is
even counterproductive to continue to focus on mass formation.
Further, have I been cowardly to suggest such a thing?
I was very careful, indeed. It wasn’t easy to speak out as
a professor. Focusing on conspiracy would have meant silmultaneously
pushing the boundaries of my expertise as a professor in clinical
psychology and putting myself at risk of being cancelled so
thoroughly that my speech would not have an effect anymore. I
acknolwedge that this is hardly an excuse. If crimes happen, if large
numbers of people die, it doesn’t matter what your expertise is.
Every decent human being will recognize as his or her duty to simply
articulate what everyone can see. But there are other reasons why I
was careful not to interpret what happened too much in terms of
conspiracy.
I believe we always have to be careful with interpretations in
terms of intentional, malevolent planning. Before we accuse people of
conspiring and evil intent, we must eliminate the other
possibilities. Otherwise, we make a grave ethical mistake.
Furthermore, I think it is a mistake to believe that evil is the
province of only the elite. Without those of us who bring our money
to the bank—willfully blind to how that money is used to speculate
and create famine and war—there would be no ultra-rich and powerful
bankers.
The rich and the poor, and everyone in between, struggle with
evil. As Solzhenitsyn said, ‘‘If only there were evil people
somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, it were necessary only
to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line
dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being,
and who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Unlike Breggin claims, I do not blame the victims; I simply try to
show that we all carry a certain responsibility and that, in this
sense, we don’t have to remain passive. I try to show people that
they have agency, in the firs place because they can tackle that part
of evil that resides in their own hearts.
It's not only an ethical mistake, it also an intellectual mistake
to hold the elite and only the elite responsible. Systems theory
teaches that the flapping of butterfly wings in Brazil can cause a
tornado in Texas. In other words: the cause of things can be situated
everywhere. Some causal explanations make sense, and others don’t.
But there is never a compelling argument to situate causality at one
and only one level.
Does it, after all, matter how exactly we analyse the situation?
Yes it does. Dependent on our analysis, we will make different
strategical choices, or, in other words, we will act differently. If
you analyse a situation only in terms of conspiracies, in which an
evil elite is the one and only cause of the misery, then the
inevitable conclusion is that this elite must be destroyed through a
violent revolution. Such a revolution, however, would most probably
lead to the radical destruction of the ‘freedom movement’ itself.
It would, indeed, rather be a Godsent gift for the elite, as it
justifies destruction of the opposition through harsh repression.
And maybe even more important, even if the violent revolution
against the elite would be succesful and the elite be destroyed, the
problem wouldn’t be solved. Not at all. the population would
immediately recreate another elite with the same totalitarian
tendencies if they continue to be in the grip of the same
mechanist-rationalist ideology. That’s is what I explain about mass
formation in The
Psychology of Totalitarianism: The enemy is not another
human being, the enemy is primarily a certain view of man and the
world, a mechanist-rationalist-materialist way of thinking; not
another human being.
My desire for the future is more ambitious (and more optimistic)
than that. We have to finally cut this
mechanistic-rationalist-materialist ideology off at the root. What we
need is a new consciousness, a new awareness of what the essence of
life and the essence of our human existence is, a new awareness of
the central importance of ethical principles; a new awareness of the
irreplacable function in society is of what the ancient Greeks called
Truth Speech and what I sometimes call ‘The art of good
speech’. This is what I explained in my book The psychology of
totalitarianism; this is what we will explore here on this Substack:
If we practice that art, if we continue to practice it no matter what
it might cost us, then totalitarianism makes no chance and the
Freedom Movement will be victorious, without any violence needed.
|
Three
weeks ago, American psychiatrist Peter Breggin and his wife Ginger
Ross Breggin formulated some harsh criticism of my new book, The
Psychology of Totalitarianism. They did so in a book review
published in three parts (here,
here,
and here),
asserting that in describing the mass
formation that took place during the Covid-19 pandemic I was
blaming the victims and absolving the perpetrators. Even more,
Breggin and Breggin claim that there hasn’t been such a thing as a
mass formation during the corona crisis. People were not allowed to
meet – how could they have formed a mass?
I reached out to Peter Breggin and his wife immediately after their
review was published, proposing to have a constructive public or
private conversation about their review. It is about two months later
now, and it seems that they refuse to accept my invitation. That’s
why I will respond here.
Thanks for reading Mattias Desmet! Subscribe for free to receive
new posts and support my work.
This seems to be their core criticism: that I argue there was no
intentional manipulation at work in the crisis, and no
conspiracy—only a spontaneously-emerging mass formation from the
population itself. For Breggin and Breggin, that means I am blaming
the victims (the population) and psychiatrically labeling anyone who
thinks there was, in fact, conspiracy at play.
It is correct that in my
book, I describe the societal dynamics of the coronacrisis as an
emergent phenomenon, driven by a certain narrative of man and the
world—the mechanistic-rationalist-materialist ideology—which
created a certain elite and put the population in a certain state
that made it vulnerable to mass formation. In The
Psychology of Totalitarianism and numerous podcasts, I
describe that mass-formation can emerge in a more or less spontaneous
way (as happened in the first stages of Nazism in Germany) or that it
can be artificially provoked through indoctrination and propaganda
(as in the former Soviet Union). In this process, both the elite and
the population itself shoulder responsibility—the first because
they actively manipulate the population and the second because they
prefer to stay blind and, ultimately, commit atrocities towards those
who don’t join them.
However, I never claimed that there was no intentional
manipulation or planning. Quite to the contrary, on p.100 of my book,
for instance, I claim that long term mass formation, as it existed in
the coronacrisis, cannot be maintained withoug indoctrination and
propaganda distributed through the mass-media. Nor did I claim there
was no conspiracy. Consider the following paragraphs from my
book:
Is there any steering and manipulation at all
then? The answer is a resounding yes, there most certainly is
all kinds of manipulation. And with the means available to
today’s mass media, the possibilities are simply phenomenal. Such
steering, however, is rarely done by individual
persons; the most fundamental steering is
impersonal in nature. The steering is first and
foremost driven by an ideology—a way of
thinking. Ideologies organize and structure society
progressively and organically. As we have described in detail in
the previous chapters, the dominant ideology is mechanistic in
nature. This ideology derives its appeal from the utopian vision
of an artificial paradise (see chapter 3). The world
and mankind are a machine and they can be comprehended and
manipulated as such. The hitches in the machine that cause
suffering can be “repaired.” In the long run, it will
even be possible to eliminate death. Moreover, all
this can be done without man having to reflect on his role
in his own misfortune, without questioning himself as a moral and
ethical being. This ideology makes life easy in the short term.
The price for convenience will be paid in arrears
(see chapter 5).
It is at this fundamental level that we have
to situate the “secret” forces
that direct individuals in the same direction and
ultimately organize society as a whole. Remember drawing
the Sierpinski triangle; if everyone follows the same
rules, strictly regular patterns emerge. Like iron filings
scattered in the force field of a magnet, individuals arrange
themselves in a perfect pattern under the influence of these
forces. Man has always fallen prey to the
aforementioned “temptations”—the illusion of rational
understanding and control, the resistance to question oneself
critically as a human, the pursuit of short-term
convenience. Within the religious discourse, these temptations
were considered dangerous, but that changed with the rise of
mechanistic thinking. From then on, they became anchored in the
dominant narrative, which also became justification of such
temptations. Leaders and followers were captivated by the
limitless possibilities the human mind seemed to offer. The
evolution towards a hyper-controlled technological society—the
surveillance society—is unavoidable as long as the human mind
remains trapped in that logic and is (to a large extent
unconsciously) controlled by those attractors. It is
this ideology that redesigned society, created new
institutions, and selected new authority figures. The
transition from a democracy to a totalitarian technocracy, in which
the corona crisis was a Great Leap forward, formed part
of the logic of the mechanistic ideology from the very beginning. In
a mechanistic universe, it is inevitably the technical expert who has
the last word, based on his superior mechanistic knowledge.
Based on this ideology, institutions were created that
make plans about what future society should look like and how the
ideal future society should respond to crisis
situations. The Lockstep scenario of the Rockefeller
Foundation,12 Event 201 of the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation (in collaboration with John Hopkins and the Rockefeller
foundation),13 and The Great Reset by Klaus
Schwab14 are examples of such endeavors. For
many people, these events and publications are the
ultimate proof that the social developments we’re experiencing
are planned and the product of a conspiracy, since long before the
outbreak these “plans” described how society
would go into lockdown as the result of a pandemic, that a
biopassport would be introduced, and that people would be tracked and
traced with subcutaneous sensors.
If we keep in mind the definition of a conspiracy—a
secret, planned, intentional and malicious scheme—we immediately
notice two things: it’s not much of a secret since all
the aforementioned “plans” are available on the
internet. And whether those plans guide the discourse and action
of experts through targeted instructions is, at least,
questionable. The experts’ communication is full of
contradictions and inconsistencies, retractions and corrections,
clumsy wording and transparent errors. This is nothing
like a streamlined execution of a pre-established plan. If
these are conspiracy theorists, they are the
lousiest ones ever. Obviously, psychological
warfare may also make use of confusion and confusing
messages, but that does not explain experts trying to
correct their mistakes of the day before, or of feeling
visibly at unease and discomfortable.
The only consistency within the
experts’ discourse is that the decisions always move towards a
more technologically and biomedically controlled society, in other
words towards the realization of the mechanistic ideology. For
this reason, we see exactly the same problems in the corona crisis as
those revealed by the replication crisis in academic research: a maze
of errors, sloppiness, and forced conclusions, in
which researchers unconsciously confirm their ideological
principles (the so-called allegiance effect, see chapter 4).
In the process of exercising power—i.e. shaping the
world to ideological beliefs—there usually is no need to
make secret plans and agreements. As Noam Chomsky put it,
if you have to tell someone what to do, you’ve chosen the wrong
person.15 In other words: the dominant ideology selects who ends
up in key positions. Someone who does not share the ideology is
usually less successful in society, apart from a
few exceptions. Consequently, all people in positions of
power automatically follow the same rules in their thinking and in
their behavior and are under the influence of the same
‘attractors’ (to use a term from complex dynamical systems
theory). Furthermore, they all succumb to the same
logical fallacies and the same absurd behavior, independently of each
other, or at least without having to gather in secret
meetings. Compare it to computers running on the same,
wrong software: their “behaviour” and
their “thinking” will all deviate in the same
direction, without “communicating” with one
another. This is what the Sierpinski triangle shows
us: mind-blowingly precise and regular patterns can arise
because individuals independently follow the same simple rules of
behaviorand are attracted to the same set of
attractors. The puppet master is the ideology, not the
elite.
Plans and visions for the future are not so
much “forced” on the population. In many ways,
the leaders of the masses—the so-called elite—give the
people what they want. When fearful,the population wants a
more controlled society. For many people, the lockdowns
were a liberation from the unbearable and meaningless routine of
working life, the fragmented society was in need of a common
enemy, and so on. The “plans” do not precede
the developments, as a conspiracy logic suggest. They
follow them. Those who guide the masses are not
real “leaders”in the sense that they do not have the
capability to determine where the masses will go. Instead
they sense what people crave and they adjust their plans in that
direction. They may relish pretending to have control
and direct the chain of events, but they are more like a child
sitting on the bow of a ship and turning a toy steering
wheel every time the tanker changes direction. Or we can think
of King Cnut, who stood before the sea at low tide, ordered the waves
to retreat, and narcissistically beamed with
pride because it happened. Some of
those institutions have even adapted previously released
films, suggesting that they could predict the future (for example,
the Digikosmos16 film was adapted in such a way that it seemed
to predict the course of the corona crisis exactly as it
happened). Ironically, conspiracy thinking confirms
the leaders’ narcissism by taking them seriously, acting
as if they are steering the ship, or causing the waves to recede.
There are countless other examples that seem to point in
the direction of a plan being implemented, such as: the fact that the
definition of “pandemic” was changed shortly before the
corona crisis; the definition of “herd immunity” to
imply that only vaccines can achieve it;the counting method
for corona deaths was adjusted by the WHO so it was higher than the
number of flu deaths; that the registration
methodology of vaccine side effects led to serious
underestimation (by, for example, labelling those that
become apparent during the first fortnight after
vaccination as not vaccine-related); that all key political
positions when the crisis started were held by politicians who were
pro-technocracy (all people referred to as the World
Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders).
These are examples of how an ideology gets a grip on
society, not evidence of the execution of a conspiracy. For
instance: similar things happing during almost all major
re-organisations in large companies and
government institutions. Indeed, anyone who would like to
reorganize a company or institution and holds
the right position(s) will try to adjust the rules, in
ways that they are conducive to their goals. And
they will do their best to install the right people in the right
positions on the beforehand and will try to mold their minds for the
reorganization and restructuring through all kinds of formal and
informal influence. Anyone who experiences this up close at a
company or institution will probably not experience this as a
conspiracy. We could even say that every biological organism
does the same: it tries to adjust its environment in the desired
direction.
At certain points, however,
the aforementioned practices may turn into
something that does have the structure of a conspiracy. Large
institutions use all kinds of questionable strategies to impose their
ideals on society, and the means to do so have increased
spectacularly in recent centuries. The whole mechanization,
industrialization, “technologization” and “mediatization”of
the world has indeed led to the centralization of power
and no sane person can deny that this power is being
exercised with scrupulous attention to ethics and
morality. It is well documented:
whether in governments, the tobacco industry, or the
pharmaceutical lobby, there is bribery, manipulation, and fraud. If
you don’t partake in these practices, it’s hard to remain at
the top.
In their endeavors to impose their ideals on
society, institutions and people do indeed cross ethical boundaries,
and when things get out of hand, their
strategies may indeed devolve into a conspiracy:
a secret, intentional, planned, and malicious project. It is
also well known that, as the process of totalitarianization
continues, the totalitarian regime is increasingly organized as a
fully-fledged “secret society.”17 We have seen that
the Holocaust came about through a mind-boggling process of mass
formation that blinded both the perpetrators and the victims and drew
them into an infernal dynamic (see chapter 7). However, there
was also an intentional plan, which had as its
purpose to systematically optimize racial purity
through sterilization and elimination of all
impure elements. There were apprxoimately five people
who patiently andsystematically 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. Those who did see what was going
on—namely that the concentration camps were in fact extermination
camps—were accused of being a ... conspiracy theorist.18
The preparation and implementation of such plans are
by no means the exclusive privilege of totalitarian
regimes. Throughout the twentieth century, large numbers of men
and women whose genetic material was considered “inferior”
have been sterlized under the the doctrine of eugenics. By
1972, the term eugenics had taken on a too negative
connotation and was replaced by “social biology,” but the
practice remained the same and continued into the 21st century (for
example, the sterilization of California inmates without informed
consent)19 . Do we have good reason to believe that, in
recent years, such practices have ceased?
—The
Psychology of Totalitarianism
I just wonder: did Peter and Ginger Ross Breggin really look over
these and other paragraphs in my book? Do they really believe that I
claim that long term mass-formation arises in a completely
spontaneous way, without someone ever intentionally steering and
manipulating the masses? Did they really overlook that there is an
entire chapter in my book about the leaders of the masses? I leave
open all possible interpretations of their response. The onus to
answer these questions rests upon them.
Does this mean that Breggin and Breggin have no point at all? It
depends. If the aspect of intentional planning in this crisis is
extremely important, then you could say that it makes no sense and is
even counterproductive to continue to focus on mass formation.
Further, have I been cowardly to suggest such a thing?
I was very careful, indeed. It wasn’t easy to speak out as
a professor. Focusing on conspiracy would have meant silmultaneously
pushing the boundaries of my expertise as a professor in clinical
psychology and putting myself at risk of being cancelled so
thoroughly that my speech would not have an effect anymore. I
acknolwedge that this is hardly an excuse. If crimes happen, if large
numbers of people die, it doesn’t matter what your expertise is.
Every decent human being will recognize as his or her duty to simply
articulate what everyone can see. But there are other reasons why I
was careful not to interpret what happened too much in terms of
conspiracy.
I believe we always have to be careful with interpretations in
terms of intentional, malevolent planning. Before we accuse people of
conspiring and evil intent, we must eliminate the other
possibilities. Otherwise, we make a grave ethical mistake.
Furthermore, I think it is a mistake to believe that evil is the
province of only the elite. Without those of us who bring our money
to the bank—willfully blind to how that money is used to speculate
and create famine and war—there would be no ultra-rich and powerful
bankers.
The rich and the poor, and everyone in between, struggle with
evil. As Solzhenitsyn said, ‘‘If only there were evil people
somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, it were necessary only
to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line
dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being,
and who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Unlike Breggin claims, I do not blame the victims; I simply try to
show that we all carry a certain responsibility and that, in this
sense, we don’t have to remain passive. I try to show people that
they have agency, in the firs place because they can tackle that part
of evil that resides in their own hearts.
It's not only an ethical mistake, it also an intellectual mistake
to hold the elite and only the elite responsible. Systems theory
teaches that the flapping of butterfly wings in Brazil can cause a
tornado in Texas. In other words: the cause of things can be situated
everywhere. Some causal explanations make sense, and others don’t.
But there is never a compelling argument to situate causality at one
and only one level.
Does it, after all, matter how exactly we analyse the situation?
Yes it does. Dependent on our analysis, we will make different
strategical choices, or, in other words, we will act differently. If
you analyse a situation only in terms of conspiracies, in which an
evil elite is the one and only cause of the misery, then the
inevitable conclusion is that this elite must be destroyed through a
violent revolution. Such a revolution, however, would most probably
lead to the radical destruction of the ‘freedom movement’ itself.
It would, indeed, rather be a Godsent gift for the elite, as it
justifies destruction of the opposition through harsh repression.
And maybe even more important, even if the violent revolution
against the elite would be succesful and the elite be destroyed, the
problem wouldn’t be solved. Not at all. the population would
immediately recreate another elite with the same totalitarian
tendencies if they continue to be in the grip of the same
mechanist-rationalist ideology. That’s is what I explain about mass
formation in The
Psychology of Totalitarianism: The enemy is not another
human being, the enemy is primarily a certain view of man and the
world, a mechanist-rationalist-materialist way of thinking; not
another human being.
My desire for the future is more ambitious (and more optimistic)
than that. We have to finally cut this
mechanistic-rationalist-materialist ideology off at the root. What we
need is a new consciousness, a new awareness of what the essence of
life and the essence of our human existence is, a new awareness of
the central importance of ethical principles; a new awareness of the
irreplacable function in society is of what the ancient Greeks called
Truth Speech and what I sometimes call ‘The art of good
speech’. This is what I explained in my book The psychology of
totalitarianism; this is what we will explore here on this Substack:
If we practice that art, if we continue to practice it no matter what
it might cost us, then totalitarianism makes no chance and the
Freedom Movement will be victorious, without any violence needed.
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