It may feel like anything you can do to stand up against the encroachment of our liberties is so little as to be worthless. Your pebble of resistance cannot hold back the flood. Perhaps not. Yet your pebble is absolutely crucial.
Mattias Desmet, a PhD in clinical psychology and a masters in statistics, working at Ghent University in Belgium, has studied the psychology of the masses and makes very interesting points about the consequences (and perhaps purposes) of the Coronavirus pandemic. He believes that the response to Covid is a mass formation event. Basically, that people are behaving as if they have been group hypnotized and cannot think logically for themselves on this topic. The percentage given is that 30% are under that mass hypnosis, 40% are going along to get along and the remaining 30% are the dissenters. That means this mass formation is made up of 70% of the population.
From a psychological perspective, there were two major red flags of a mass-formation event. First, the models (which were predicting catastrophe long before they had the details of the impact of the disease) were far too exaggerated and in only one the direction. Second, the toll on human life by the Coronavirus policies (such as the lockdowns) is enormous. Yet, these people who claim to care about saving human lives from Covid, ignore the deaths caused by the Coronavirus policies (starvation in 3rd world countries and suicide in 1st world countries). That hypocrisy doesn’t make rational sense and should be a red flag of mass formation happening.
According to Desmet, in order for a mass formation to happen, there are four requirements. First, there has to be a lack of social ties for the participants. Second, the people have trouble coming to sensible conclusions. Third, the people have anxiety but don’t know why. Fourth, the participants in the mass formation lack meaning in their lives.
Quite naturally, when these people’s fear is focused on one issue, they begin to form a bond over it and form social ties with one another over this issue. This explains why people wear masks to “signal” where they are at on Covid. This group identity, which is working together to fight against whatever they are afraid of, gives meaning to their previously meaningless lives. The truth is, these people don’t want to return to the “old normal,” they like the feeling that this mass formation gives them.
The importance of being part of this new, important group means more to these people than other things that should be important to them. It is more important than their own comfort, their own health, their own freedoms. It is more important than the unequal suffering these policies are causing other people.
This irrational devotion to the narrative was demonstrated through the Nazi regime and in the Soviet Union under Communism. People were willing to sacrifice so much for the “good” of their society. The perfect example is the young men in the Hitler Youth who were sent to fight at fourteen and fifteen without their parents’ complaint. Or when the Germans and Russians overlooked so much violence and injustice around them.
This mass formation cannot bear to hear dissension of its beliefs, but at the same time, it must have enemies to fixate upon. This reminds me of how in the book “1984” the government always had to be at war with someone and would occasionally announce that they were going to war with a new country that was now, suddenly, their enemy.
And here we get to the part that is vital to us. Dictatorships and totalitarianism are different. A dictator is feared by his followers, but totalitarian leaders mesmerize their followers. In a dictatorship, when the opposition finally falls silent, the dictator can become milder and friendlier to win the loyalty of his followers. In a totalitarian regime, when the opposition finally falls silent, the totalitarian regime usually goes crazy. The regime can commit whatever atrocities it wants against anyone – whether its enemies or its supporters without opposition. And it does.
The Coronavirus regime is not a dictatorship. It is a totalitarian one and we serve an absolutely vital function. We, the dissenters, are what stands in the way of a deepening of the hypnosis which would allow atrocities to be committed without the hypnotized members of society noticing. Those who are part of the mass formation are not yet so deeply committed because we haven’t allowed that to happen. If we cease resisting, the regime will be free to solidify their hold on that 30% of humanity. Perhaps more of the 40% will be pulled under as well. But regardless, those 40% have already been compromised and they know it. It is us, that small, rebellious faction of 30% that need to stand firm. We are all that stands in the way of atrocities being committed. If we can continue to resist, in time, we may be able to hold out until the regime loses its edge. If we can’t, our world will collapse into a global totalitarian system and that will be far worse than the regional totalitarian regimes throughout history.
Desmet recommends building a way for dissenters to connect with one another and to find a way to survive outside of the totalitarian society and then to wait for the totalitarian regime to collapse, as is inevitable for all such societies because they are destructive and can ultimately do nothing else.
I highly recommend reading this article (it is in German but the webpage translation is pretty good) or other articles featuring Mattias Desmet. He has an important perspective and I was highly encouraged (and horrified!) by his analysis.
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It’s horrifying how one man, Joseph Goebbels, back in the thirties took this idea and mesmerized an entire population. It’s also horrifying how a modernday version of a political party took the damage he did, and further weaponized it, to destroy our country. Wherever Goebbels got his ideas from, maybe Desmet has those answers, the Democrat Party, in the USA, took them and have run our country into the ground.
The good thing that happens, sometimes too late in the game is that people do eventually rise up in protest, and sometimes more than simple protest, and make the effort to undo the damage, by dissent.
I like dissent, myself. With what we have to face, just with our current government, it is all we have, until it grows into a movement. Without dissent, we are not free. Great article, Maeve!