LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

U

Search

Many Voices, One Freedom: United in the 1st Amendment

March 28, 2024

M

Menu

!

Menu

Your Source for Free Speech, Talk Radio, Podcasts, and News.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

We have examined three of the many interviews given by Desmet before his book came out. Each time, he dismisses “conspiracy theories” without elaborating further. 

In these three interviews, Desmet does not use psychology to analyze and discredit people who write about conspiracies — that will come out in the book. That makes his book a bait and switch. The back cover of his book has endorsements from several heroes from the freedom movement whom I hold in very high regard, including professionals who have done excellent research and writing about the conspiracies behind COVID-19. I am guessing, and I hope I am right, that my respected colleagues, who are extremely busy, based their endorsements on Desmet’s interviews and his personal contacts with them — and they had no idea what he was going to write in his book about the emotionally disturbed people who make up or believe in “conspiracy theories.” From the number of endorsements from within the freedom movement, Desmet clearly targeted the group.

A THREE-PART SERIES – Mass Hypnosis Expert or Trojan Horse

One – Mattias Desmet Demoralizes the Freedom Movement
Two – Mattias Desmet Diagnoses Researchers as Mentally Disturbed
Three – Mattias Desmet Blames the Victims and Absolves the Perpetrators

The Bait and Switch

In an interview on De Nieuwe Wereld TV on October 11, 2021, Desmet gave a verbose dismissal of any conspiracy in COVID-19, stating in the process with clarity, “there is no reason whatsoever to say that they have the structure of a conspiracy theory.” 5

In an interview with the Daily Skeptic in March 2021, Desmet discussed the inconsistency of data reporting during COVID-19 and then specifically said:6

Together, this means that the inaccuracies of the figures distributed daily by the media is so great that some people understandably suspect conspiracy, albeit apocryphally, in my opinion.

On July 30, 2021, Desmet was interviewed by attorney Reiner Fuellmich and his associates. Here Desmet more specifically warned about focusing on “intentional processes” — that is, people with bad intentions. He continued to criticize “extreme conspiracy theories:” 7

And other people try to reduce everything to intentional processes and end up in extreme conspiracy theories which are also wrong. And so I think we have to acknowledge the complexity of the situation and try to build an image that is as realistic as possible. I know everybody tends to try to reduce the complexity of reality and either believes in the mainstream narrative or ends up in radical conspiracy theories. 

Can we say that Desmet makes a reasonable warning about “radical conspiracy theories”? I don’t think so. In his book, one of his illustrations of conspiracy thinking is “during the coronavirus crisis; many people started to think that the experts intentionally misled the population…” (p. 129). Desmet wants to dissuade us from investigating the authorities and influencers behind COVID-19 policies and practices. He considers all that bogus.

Desmet’s Book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism

In “Chapter 8: Conspiracy and Ideology,” Desmet tries to psychoanalytically undermine anyone who makes a critique of the powers at work behind COVID-19. They are supposedly motivated by severe “anxiety” and are “bewildered” and “confused.” To escape from that painful emotional state, according to Desmet, these critics take flight into imaginary “conspiracy theories” to fulfill their own “needs” to believe in something (p. 127):

In this state, the confused spectator typically develops an intense need for a simple frame of reference, which allows him to mentally master the complexity, and in which to place and control the anxiety and other intense emotions that arise. An interpretation in terms of conspiracy meets that need. It 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. All blame can be placed outside oneself, with the Other and, subsequently all frustration and anger can also be directed at that singular object. (Pp. 127-128)

We used to call this “psychologizing” — dismissing threatening ideas as emanating from a person’s psychological disturbances. And Desmet is a psychoanalyst. He’s a member of the Freudian cult — the masters of outrageous psychologizing, whom almost no one pays attention to anymore.

Notice that he even dismisses the existence of the “supposed elite.” Earlier, he similarly dismissed the concept of “an evil elite” (p. 123). Desmet wants to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil on the part of people with power, wealth, and the ability to manipulate and control events within society.

If we are to believe Desmet, the systematic terrorizing that characterized public health totalitarianism at the height of COVID-19 must be interpreted as well-meaning people making mistakes or displaying poor judgment. 

Desmet not only psychologizes individuals who examine the causes for disastrous COVID-19 policies and practices, but he also puts entire societies on the couch: “something caused society to collectively continue reacting in the same, frenetic way, as if it were acting out a pressing, psychological need” (italics in original, p. 55).

But how does the “collective” communicate their distress to each other and in such a uniform manner? Now he becomes mystical: “For instance, there seems to be a real physical resonance [sic] among individuals who form a mass that cannot be explained solely on the basis of sharing the same narrative” (P. 125). It is as if, “all the individuals are connected to one another like cells in the same body” (p. 126). We human beings, in Desmet’s speculations about so-called mass formation, have no more sovereignty, self-determination, free will, choice, or even values than cells in a greater body.

Desmet: COVID-19 Plans Were Not Secret, So There’s No Conspiracy 

Desmet defines a conspiracy in lay terms that set up his argument: “a secret, planned, intentional and malicious scheme.” But I have bad news for Desmet and his associates if they are trying to discredit the conspiracy charges being brought in courts. Secrecy plays no role whatsoever in the legal definition of conspiracy or in prosecution of conspirators. Under American law, “Conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement’s goal.” 8 There is no mention of secrecy as a part of conspiracy charges. Catherine Austin Fitts alerted me to this fact while interviewing me about Desmet’s book.9

Desmet tries to advance his definition by arguing that COVID-19 cannot be a conspiracy because “It’s not much of a secret since all the aforementioned ‘plans’ are openly available on the internet” (p. 133). Actually, it took me and my wife Ginger more than a year of working seven days a week before we finally found a PowerPoint presentation of Bill Gates’ plan for the coming pandemic made to the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2017. It describes the contents of a signed agreement in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Gates group and WHO — and we still have not found the MoU itself.  

A few months later, we found Gates’ 2015-2016 Preliminary Business Plan — the real master plan for COVID-19 —for an organization called, CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. We had to stop the presses to get it into our book. CEPI is a  mammoth complex organization through which Gates, Schwab, Fauci, numerous federal agencies, the drug companies, UN, WHO, the Chinese CDC, and dozens of others worked together on the future management of COVID-19.  

Our book, COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey, which describes the CEPI Preliminary Business Plan and the PowerPoint summary of the plan, has sold over 100,000 copies. It might be even more widely read if YouTube had not permanently taken us down less than 45 minutes after I put up a short video announcing the book. Desmet, is the mass censorship of everyone who discusses the forces behind COVID-19 a simple mistake by authorities or a mass formation somehow generated by the people being censored?

As for the breaches in secrecy surrounding the COVID-19 plans, there are reasons why people commonly signal their more egregious and violent crimes ahead of time. We see signaling from Hitler, who wrote Mein Kempf about his hateful plans to the Iranian leaders who constantly threaten to annihilate Israel. We see it in mass murderers who announce their intentions on Facebook. This signaling may be a form of grandiose bragging. In some cases of conflicted individuals, it may be a plea to be stopped. But in regard to COVID-19, the organizers needed to plan with other people, and they had to seek investors from around the world. Therefore, most of their signaling occurred in the context of planning sessions for the upcoming pandemic or in conferences where they tried to inspire colleagues to join them. 

Desmet does some not-so-subtle early signaling of his own. For example, on page two, he favorably cites Yuval Noah Harari, the transhumanist pseudo-historian and court jester for Klaus Schwab, who demonstrates an utter disregard for individual or political freedom, writes panoramic history books without mentioning the founding of the United States as a major event, and looks forward to the coming technological transformation of humans into cyborgs. Harari is more than a signal—he’s a glaring red flare — that Desmet is currying favor with the super-elites of the World Economic Forum who adore Harari. Desmet is so desperate to signal, that he does so at the risk of losing credibility with the worldwide anti-globalist freedom movement, which he is currently courting and infiltrating.     

On the same second page of his book, Desmet signals once again his reliance on emotionally and politically twisted individuals when he cites Hannah Arendt, the famous historian of the holocaust. We shall evaluate her blaming-the-victim ideology, which Desmet quotes favorably, later in this report.   

Explaining Mass Formation as Group Self-Hypnosis

Desmet believes that the “mass” of people during COVID-19 actually created their distressed inner state of mind on their own and that they communicated this distress to each other through “mass formation” or group hypnosis. He believes there are no “elites” or other human influencers who should be held responsible for the ongoing psychological torment, physical illness, and death inflicted upon hundreds of millions by COVID-19 policies and practices. His book is filled with indictments of the “masses” rather than indictments of the totalitarian forces that overwhelmed them. His approach to the “masses” is elitist in itself. The covert purpose of Desmet’s book is to head off any indictments, moral or legal, of the elite global establishment. 

By the bottom of page one, in italics, Desmet states his central thesis that totalitarianism somehow “emerged from within the population itself.” On the next page, he describes the process as “in essence, a kind of group hypnosis that destroys individuals’ ethical self-awareness and robs them of their ability to think ethically.” So the people are unethical and lacking in self-awareness — not the global powers and their governmental agents who are tormenting and oppressing them. Desmet’s entire book is a classic example of victim blaming.

How did these “masses” of citizens of the Western constitutional democracies manage to hypnotize themselves in such a methodical and similar manner? There is no known scientifically verified concept of societal self-hypnosis. Group hypnosis, occasionally used as a method of psychotherapy, requires an authoritarian leader, such as an army medical officer, and compliant subjects, such as emotionally distressed soldiers.10 Groups cannot hypnotize themselves.

A somewhat similar concept to group hypnosis is the more malevolent use of brainwashing, such as conducted by Chinese Communists and North Koreans. That process requires the systematic and extreme total control and manipulation of captured soldiers, confined together under wretched conditions, who have been removed from their officers.11

Desmet’s concept of mass formation or mass hypnosis is a mythical and mystical speculation that will require a great deal of intellectual squirming around as Desmet proceeds in his book. Meanwhile, its absurdity seems to have bamboozled many readers who, unable to make sense out of the concepts, decided they must have some deeper meaning outside their academic or professional specialties. 

Crushing Free Will and Blaming It on the Victim

I am a psychiatrist and psychotherapist with a lifelong concern about the dangers of brainwashing and other methods of controlling people, including totalitarianism. One of my earliest medical articles, “Coercion of Voluntary Patients in an Open Hospital,” was published in the AMA Archives of General Psychiatry in 1964 while I was still in my training as a psychiatrist.12

My book, Beyond Conflict: From Self-Help and Psychotherapy to Peacemaking (New York, St. Martin’s Press), is an examination of what I call the three dynamics of human relationship: love, liberty, and coercion. I observe that both the abuser and the abused lose their humanity in coercive situations. Abusers lose their sense of empathy and treat their victim like an object devoid of value or free will. The victims, in turn, lose their own sense of value and free will and become helpless and eventually docile.  

Desmet abuses both individuals and humanity with his concepts of mass formation and mass hypnosis by treating humans as objects with no value or free will. Then, by denying the existence of the abusers, he rejects the reality that people are often driven to feel that helpless — lacking in value or free will — when subjected to totalitarian regimes such as those systematically imposed under COVID-19 policies and practices. Then Desmet draws the noose tight by attacking anyone who tries to unmask the forces behind totalitarianism.  

Hidden in all the disconnected verbiage is the agenda of Desmet’s book — to stop people from examining the globalist forces behind COVID-19. He is dismissing precisely what I, with my coauthor Ginger, have documented in depth in 650 pages with over 1,000 citations in COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey. It is what courageous attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has written about in convincing detail in The Real Anthony Fauci. Both of us provide enough facts for a prosecutor to bring criminal charges of conspiracy against Fauci, Bill Gates, and a few dozens of their conspirators. 

Mass formation, group hypnosis, mass psychosis, mass hysteria, the madness of crowds. Desmet swims among these concepts and never gives a genuinely scientific description or explanation of his so-called mass formations. Instead, Desmet throws explanations as people throw mud against a wall hoping it will stick. Here is Desmet’s hypnosis explanation: 

Both the masses and their leaders are gripped by an ideologically colored narrative, the masses are hypnotized, the leaders are under a form of self-hypnosis. Both, so to speak, are in the grip of a voice (see the importance of indoctrination and mass media propaganda described in chapter 7). Mass formation, as a form of hypnosis, is a phenomenon where individuals are in the grip of the resonance of a voice—the voice of the leader of the crowd. P. 140

First, notice that Desmet gets around the problem of blaming a leader by stating that the leader, too, is hypnotized. This raises an obvious question, “Who hypnotized all of them?” Depth hypnosis, sufficient to significantly modify behavior, requires an authoritarian leader or guide, so there must be someone to blame somewhere, other than the victims themselves. Desmet does not even want to hold Hitler and the Nazis morally responsible. While admitting to some minimal planning leading up to the Holocaust, he ignores the long history of intense antisemitism in Europe, the depth and complexity of conspiracies surrounding Hitler, and summarizes, “For example, 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” (p. 136). In this concept, the Holocaust is like a hypnotic tornado that drags everyone to destruction, including Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann, Mengele, and the rest of the Nazis. We shall find that he shares this view with his favorite resource person, philosopher Hannah Arendt. 

Second, Desmet does mention “indoctrination and mass media propaganda,” but if he went too deeply in that direction, he would have to account for the entire major media being so lockstep, so lacking in variation, and so monolithic in support of the establishment COVID-19 mantra that there would have to be a very powerfully organized plan behind it. He would also have to account for the amazingly consistent censoring of alternative views in the major media, including radio and television, and on social media like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Desmet specifically rejects the reality that this degree of vast, uniform, and effective censoring requires behind-the-scenes authoritarian planning that smacks of a conspiracy. He believes “there was no systematic, planned steering of the reporting” (p. 130).

One way Desmet repeatedly avoids attributing malevolent intention is by speaking of “unconscious” motivations, an obvious specialty of Freudian therapists. From more than 60 years of experience as a therapist and in psychiatric forensics, I have found that much of what people say they cannot remember, including their motives and actions, often amounts to lying, conscious avoiding of the truth, or its near equivalent “denial.” In therapy, it is amazing how often people cannot remember abusing a family member until the family member reminds them of the details in the relative safety of couples therapy, at which time all those details come back to the abuser, who then begins to justify his or her abusive actions. When a therapist relies heavily on attributing unconscious emotions and motives to people, including those who openly disagree with him, he risks becoming irresponsibly self-serving. Unless clients or patients trust a therapist enough to cooperate by honestly exploring their own memories, emotions, and motives, a therapist’s conclusions about their unconscious often become abusive speculations. 

Desmet continually acts like an elite, authoritarian therapist who makes psychological interpretations of other people about their “unconscious” needs and motivations, while utterly failing to explore his own “unconscious” needs and desires. 

What are Desmet’s needs and desires? To understand them does not require analyzing his unconscious. In his book, Desmet uses every intellectual trick and subterfuge he can to discredit the freedom fighters and their research allies, while exonerating the elite authorities and globalists who are bent on taking away their freedom. 

There is no need to speculate about Desmet’s motives because his book tells it all. Desmet wants to deny the systematic oppression that continues to crush “the masses” and their advocates and defenders, while exonerating those who are to blame for continuing to spread so much misery and death throughout the world.

A THREE-PART SERIES – Mass Hypnosis Expert or Trojan Horse

One – Mattias Desmet Demoralizes the Freedom Movement
Two – Mattias Desmet Diagnoses Researchers as Mentally Disturbed
Three – Mattias Desmet Blames the Victims and Absolves the Perpetrators

References:

5 De Nieuwe Wereld TV. (October 11, 2020). https://youtu.be/YOLhF9fyjkk
6 Dewals, Patrick. (March 4, 2021). The Emerging Totalitarian Dystopia: an Interview with Professor Mattias Desmet. https://dailysceptic.org/interview-with-mattias-desmet-professor-of-clinical-psychology/
7 Reiner Fuellmich and others from the Eye of the Storm Corona Committee interview Mattias Desmet. (July 30, 2021). Mass Formation and Totalitarian Thinking in This Time of Global Crisishttps://ratical.org/PandemicParallaxView/EyeOfTheStorm-ProfMattiasDesmet.html
8 https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/conspiracy
9 Catherine Austin Fitts interviews Dr. Peter Breggin. Special Solari Report: Mass Formation with Dr. Peter Breggin. July 15, 2022. https://home.solari.com/special-solari-report-mass-formation-a-decoy-for-digital-concentration-camps-with-dr-peter-breggin/
10 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207140008415250  and https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/167/11/898/4819713?login=true
11 https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/167/11/898/4819713?login=true
12 Breggin, Peter (1964). Coercion of Voluntary Patients in an Open Hospital, AMA Archives of Psychiatry, 10, 173-181. https://breggin.com/article-detail/post_detail/coercion-of-voluntary-patients-in-an-open-hospital-1964 Reproduced with a new Author’s Note in Edwards, R.B. (Ed.). (1983). Psychiatry and Ethics, New York: Prometheus Books. 

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

Join our community: Your insights matter. Contribute to the diversity of thoughts and ideas.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
7 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Linda
Linda
1 year ago

Instead of dissing a very intelligent man & using his material to make YOUR point, why don’t you simply share your psychological viewpoints?
I find your ripping apart of his excellent work unethical and unoriginal.

Sharon Rondeau
Sharon Rondeau
1 year ago

As the editor of an online newspaper, I find your three-part evisceration of Desmet’s work extremely troubling. What is the purpose of criticizing someone else’s work so aggressively while promoting one’s own…or is that the purpose?

To me, such harsh, lengthy and insulting excoriation of someone else’s work is unprofessional and backhanded, and I am now disinclined to finish reading your book, “COVID-19 and the Global Predators” which I downloaded some months ago and of which I read the first few chapters. In my opinion, anyone who insults, belittles and defames others is revealing an inner meanness requiring considerable introspection, a change of heart and an apology.

Bringing into your criticism the January 6 prisoners and accusing Desmet of disregarding the “Freedom Movement” seems to me a bit of an overreach. As a European, he might not be as focused on those issues as many Americans are. From reading the passages of his book he presented in his Substack response to your “review” today, I do not get the impression that he is blaming victims nor dismissing that someone orchestrated the COVID-19 panic worldwide. Just because he does not stress the “conspiracy” aspect of the “pandemic” does not mean his ideas do not have merit.

In his post today, Dr. Desmet states he asked both of you about two months ago for a public or private meeting to discuss your examination of his book but that you did not respond. If that is true, it is quite revealing.

There is room in the world for all types of opinions, personalities and interpretations, and no one person or group can have all the answers. Let everyone have his say, and let the people decide what they want to believe.

Saaa
Saaa
1 year ago

Hi. Fascinated to have found your review of this book and his interviews. I became ‘curious’ when he didn’t answer a direct question (asked twice) from Australian independent journalist Maria Zee who asked what explained the individual free will/critical thinking in those of us that have defied the mass formation. He didn’t answer this and I haven’t seen it answered elsewhere. What’s his response to your review?

Sharon Rondeau
Sharon Rondeau
Reply to  Saaa
1 year ago

The system apparently does not allow links to be posted, but Desmet issued a response on his Substack today titled, “Am I an expert in Mass Formation or a Trojan Horse?”

Garrett
Garrett
1 year ago

I certainly hope you reached out to him to discuss this prior to rating your articles. If not WOW!

If not this reminds me of what Alex Berensen did to Dr Robert Malone on Fox News.

Jon Dhoe
Jon Dhoe
1 year ago

You have to be brain dead not to see through this Desmet character. His other major goal is to discredit rational thinking, one of few effective tools available to the individual; and by extension Enlightenment principles, the only thing that separates Western countries from those like China, Russia or Nigeria.

Gerald Lindner
Gerald Lindner
1 year ago

If I read it correctly, you indirectly infer that during Covid 19 lockdown no “fomenting group cohesion and paranoia toward outsiders” occurred? Please elaborate, as I know many people who personally experience hostility towards them inflicted on them by normal people of the public. 

This brings me to Mattias’s references to Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil. Every day people become the active enablers of the system of oppression. Doing so, give it legitimacy, making the dynamics of resistance even more difficult. Where does your “psychodynamics of abuse and submission to authority” place this behaviour exactly?

Sitewide Newsfeed

More Stories
.pp-sub-widget {display:none;} .walk-through-history {display:none;} .powerpress_links {display:none;} .powerpress_embed_box {display:none;}
Share via
Copy link