The Witch, the War and the Virus (part one)

a story of social psychosis... and hope

I may be rushing in where angels fear to tread with this one. So let me start by saying that those who are most deeply committed to aligning with the 'official covid narratives' and those most deeply opposed to them both have good reasons for their positions. (I'll clarify some different kinds of 'good' shortly). People died and institutions lied. Whichever of those two facts any of us is most focused on however, and whatever we believe about why, it is essential to recognise that human beings are dangerously susceptible to believing things without knowing why they believe them.

To give notice of where I'm going with this, I'm going to to suggest that a loss of contact with reality is taking place, and that this constitutes a greater threat to the world than any of the individual crises and issues which are in progress. I'm going to suggest that the pandemic was a smaller problem than the unreal and distorted social context into which it emerged. And that the ongoing conditions of that distorted social context carry with them grave danger of a serious, destructive and very much bigger social conflagration.

Most importantly however – and here is the 'hope' part – I'm also going to draw upon recent ground-breaking work which offers comprehension of the dynamics which have led to this. And thus of how such dynamics might be broken.

The Ideas in Which we Swim

Back for a moment to the issue of human beings believing things without knowing why they believe them: Some years ago, in front of a large studio audience, Professor Richard Dawkins won enthusiastic and extended cheers by drawing attention to the high percentage of people who follow the religion of the country they were born in. (Think Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan or Bangladesh, Buddhists in Thailand, Vietnam or Bhutan, Christians in many African and Latin American countries). His implication clearly being that these people are not able to think for themselves but are brainwashed by religion. Both Dawkins and his cheering audience however seemed oblivious to the fact that they in turn had grown up in a world where media, school, the general environment and their universities had taught them to be atheist.

Who has the best claim to truth in that story really doesn't matter here. The point is that we are all powerfully susceptible to the ideas in which we swim. Most of the time, rather than being a huge problem, that is just a fact of human psychology. But under certain social conditions it can intensify to the point that populations become wholly and literally blind to reason, rationality and fact, and on a wide scale. Truly hideous social consequences can result: Witches are burned across Europe and North America (17th century). Twenty thousand French citizens have their heads cut off in a single year (18th century). And the German people come to believe first that the Jews are spreading tuberculosis and later that their national vision for a scientifically superior society in the long term justifies all manner of barbarities in the short term (20th century). On varying scales, it turns out, such episodes have been a cyclical feature of human societies more or less forever: In the 1970's psychiatrist Henri F Ellenberger traced smaller and larger examples back through centuries.¹ The Greeks knew of the problem. Tribal societies before them knew of it. And in the 21st century, convincing ourselves that we are no longer susceptible to it because we are 'advanced' and 'post-modern' is the surest way to fall victim to it.

So that is the Witch and the War. But such things surely cannot drive pandemics, can they? Well, with regard to the 'Virus' part of my title, I would like at this point to say two things: Firstly, that it is certainly possible for collective madness to shape reactions to pandemics, and secondly that some of the indicators for a 21st century 'psychotic wave' have nothing at all to do with covid: 'Virus' is a very relevant part of the story we have lived in the past couple of years, but by no means the whole of it.

Even having qualified my position thus, I'm going to guess that one part of my audience is going to need a fair bit of convincing that such things have any real bearing on the events of the 'covid years'. And that another part is already fully convinced that they do, and is waiting to see whether I have anything useful to say about how we might deal with the problem. I aim to address both.

A Disturbed Society

So what are these 'certain social conditions' which can lead an ever-present attribute of humanity to burst its banks and engulf whole societies in grotesque self-destructive behaviour? According to a well-studied and well-established dynamic, what happens is that cumulative anxiety in a population can eventually take on a life independent of its multiple original sources. If at the same time people feel psychologically isolated and have lost the sense of community with others, circumstances become ripe for a mass movement or mass reaction against some emergent issue (unrelated) which can be seen as a 'potentially fixable' point of focus for all the anxiety, and which can in the process, by offering something over which people can unite, temporarily alleviate the feelings of aloneness and social fragmentation. The 'emergent issue' arises, and a kind of hypnotism takes place, in which the mind is taken over by the hunger of the unconscious to release some of the anxiety and to regain some sense of social cohesion and common purpose. In extreme circumstances, this can become so intense that there is a spontaneous emergence (again from the unconscious) of whatever rationales and stories are needed to justify a path which can be imagined to lead to those results.

There is nothing shocking or controversial in suggesting that we could be living in such conditions now: The new millennium opened with the immolation of the Twin Towers in New York and war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then the 'sub-prime crisis' launched a severe global recession, from which we have never entirely recovered. Whistle-blowers who revealed illegal surveillance and even war crimes by our governments went into long-term hiding to avoid retribution.² Vile terrorist attacks became common-place in cities all over the world. The problem of 'fake news' emerged, as did grave uncertainties over artificial intelligence and employment, troubling evidence of globally organised paedophilia, and numerous other matters. At the same time, psychological isolation and loss of sense of community have grown. Work patterns have become more alienating. Human communication is increasingly taking place remotely – to the point that the expression 'digital depression' recently came into usage. Exploding levels of regulation have increasingly disempowered social participation. Loneliness has become such an issue in society that the governments of U.K. and Japan recently became the first to formally appoint 'ministers for loneliness' in an attempt to deal with the problem. And even a small country like Belgium with a population of 11 million people, consumes 300 million doses of anti-depressants every year.

Not only were such anxiety and fragmentation well established before covid arrived, but their consequences were visible everywhere – even beyond the epidemic of mental health problems in progress around the world: The biggest public protests in human history (against going to war in Iraq), were later followed by the 2011 'England Riots', the 15th May movement in Spain, the world-wide 'Occupy' movement, and major sustained or repeated unrest in Turkey, Brazil, Romania, Sweden, Greece, Hong Kong, France and elsewhere. Politics had become vitriolic and crisis-torn, even compared to historical standards. France had been torn apart for over a year by the 'Yellow Jackets'. Britain had been torn apart for several years over 'Brexit'. Right-wing populism was rising strongly, for example in U.S.A., Hungary, France, Italy, Holland, and Brazil. The left had become increasingly radicalised, for example in Greece, Spain, U.S.A., Venezuela and New Zealand.

The Spark

Into that tinder-box stepped covid. It was a potent trigger – while fear of witches, Jews, economic strife, homosexuals and other demons can also work, mass-infection has always been a special source of primal fear.³ Suddenly allowing elderly relatives to die in isolation, destroying tens of thousands of businesses and depriving millions of needed medical treatment for other problems became acceptable. Western governments put together teams of psychologists who calculated how best to terrify the population into obedience.⁴ 'Collateral damage' was ignored by the public, the media and governments equally. Issues which were 'disinformation' (and therefore a 'bannable' offence) one month were no longer disinformation later - which means they never were. Here are but three examples:

• 'The virus may have begun in a lab'.

• 'Natural immunity is more potent and longer lasting than that from mRNA shots'.

• 'Levels of vaccine death and injury are far higher than any historical vaccine'.

Significant numbers of the best qualified virologists and immunologists in the world were banned from social media⁵ and the public, without knowing it was happening, ended up believing the newspapers over the real experts. Numbers were wildly manipulated – for instance by reporting deaths with covid rather than deaths from covid, and later by adjusting the official numbers of covid deaths in some countries to match the total excess deaths for the period.⁶ (Insane given that it is now very clear that large numbers of excess deaths have been happening for other reasons). Numerous senior government officials demonstrated that they did not believe their draconian measures were actually necessary - by themselves disregarding the laws they had imposed on others.)⁷

In the long run much of the public overlooked these and a thousand other anomalies in their wish to have one agreed narrative to sign up to, one agreed enemy to fight, one agreed way to fight it.

Once the anxiety-based reaction starts it is never limited only to the issue that triggered it. Thus the world became hysterical on a broader level: For the first time in history a U.S. Presidential inauguration was surrounded by barbed wire and armed soldiers instead of a viewing public. There was a public invasion of the U.S. Capitol building. American cities were set on fire.⁸ Gender dysphoria exploded into a hyper-sensitive political issue. People were fired from their jobs or vilified in the media for even the lightest remarks about it. Unimaginable in recent Western history, there were increasing incidences (and still are) of people banning and even burning books – for a range of reasons and on a range of topics. It is not an exaggeration to say that in the end it is a drift in the direction of totalitarianism – nor that this is how it has happened before. People were banned from going to church and to school.(But allowed to go the MacDonald's). Well-qualified doctors were fired for disagreeing with central diktats. What were effectively experimental medical procedures were imposed on unwilling subjects. The Canadian government suspended the bank accounts of protestors.

This drift to totalitarianism is a serious issue: As political consultant Naomi Wolf has pointed out,⁹ the path to totalitarianism has always consisted of the same ten steps – which include 'create a terrifying internal and external enemy', 'control the press', and (step 10) 'suspend the rule of law'. All of those have happened during the covid years.

Historical, and Evolving, Perspectives

The process by which anxious, confused and disenfranchised populations and governments can be hypnotised into absurd behaviours by some specific and exceptional trigger was well charted by three post-WW2 researchers: Carl Jung, who focused particularly on the element of 'buried anxieties' and their consequences, called it 'mass psychosis'. (He declared it to be infinitely more dangerous than both natural disasters and outbreaks of physical disease). Hannah Arendt, a holocaust survivor who became a respected political theorist, focused on the way that everyday circumstances can accumulate into what she called 'the banality of evil'. Dutch/American psychologist Joost Meerloo spoke of how 'the perception of some enemy in our midst' was central to catalysing what he called 'collective psychosis'. Strikingly, all of them asserted that such dynamics are not led by governments and big institutions. They are led by the public: Rising anxiety and the need for some unifying story lead the public to demand 'measures' from the government until, in the worst cases, the public ends up supporting levels of heavy-handedness and distortion which could not happen without that support.

In the summer of this year, psychologist Mattias Desmet offered a masterful update on that work,¹⁰ both extending understanding and looking specifically at how such dynamics may have helped create the deep divisions of public opinion which emerged in relation to the science, politics and sociology of covid. Concerned that the adjective 'psychotic' may be prejudicial, he prefers to speak of 'mass formation': That is, the process by which a society made up of many individuals comes to think and act as a single mass - the process by which large sections of society come to put conformity with a shared narrative ahead of any factual evidence which contradicts that narrative, no matter how much destruction may result, even for themselves. (For myself, I have used the term 'social psychosis' in my title as it seems to me to make more immediately comprehensible what is the theme at issue. And because the meaning of the word 'psychosis' is 'a loss of contact with reality', and it seems to me that is what we are dealing with).

Desmet sets the scene for understanding the process by describing a 'conformity experiment’ conducted by Solomon Asch as he sought to understand how the absurdities of Nazism and Stalinism had exerted such a grip on entire populations. In the experiment four lines, vertical and parallel, are drawn. Two of them are exactly the same length and the others differ significantly and obviously from that length:

A group of subjects are asked which two are the same length. All but one of those subjects has been primed to give an absurd answer, identifying two lines which are clearly far from being the same length. In repeated tests, the last subject agrees with the absurdity in 75% of cases. More instructive yet, when the experiment is repeated many times it becomes apparent that there are in fact three responses going on. About 25% lose confidence in their judgement completely and become convinced that the answers given by others must be have been right. Another 25% of people challenge the repeated wrong answer and correctly identify the two lines which are the same length. And a third group (usually somewhere around 50%) know that the answer they have heard from everyone else present is wrong, but do not want to rock the boat by saying so.

There is both horror and hope in Desmet's message and the key to understanding both lies in the way that entire societies can split into three groups, along the lines of Asch's experiment.

Building on Jung, Meerloo, Arendt and others before him, he notes that when some extreme circumstance is dropped on a population already suffering long-term anxiety and social fragmentation, a false narrative, based on the principle of 'one narrative, one enemy, one way to fight the battle' begins to coalesce. In response, typically 20 to 30 percent (usually including the political leadership) develop a literally hypnotic conviction in the false narrative (or false parts of the narrative). Let's call them 'the aligned'. Then 20 to 30 percent see that something is wrong and openly challenge it. Let's call them 'the outspoken'. And 40 to 60 percent see that something is wrong but do not feel ready to speak out, or simply feel too unsure of their ground. Let's call them 'the reserved'. In the various different dynamics which can occur between these three groups lies the potential for catastrophe and also the 'hope' referred to in my title. Catastrophe threatens because history shows that, at worst, 'the aligned', those who fall fully into hypnosis, blinded by a deep existential need for a socially cohesive narrative and a 'winnable battle' to be surrogate for all the other unresolved battles, cannot be convinced by any amount of evidence. On the contrary, presenting more evidence provokes intensified urgency for the 'one narrative', and growing 'hostility toward dissenters'. Worse, since it is too late to change the circumstances which began the schism, a powerful momentum exists: The escalation of public demand for tougher measures (whether on the same issue or further emerging ones) tends to rise until a full-blown social horror story develops. In parallel, governments, now loaded with guilt at the excesses and inexcusable actions they have been led into, realise that once the public is no longer in a hypnotic state of fear, they will be in big trouble. So they are obliged to keep presenting new fears, or intensifying old ones. Thus we are regaled with impending doom from economic collapse, war in Ukraine, global warming, polio and monkey pox, (When a team of highly qualified medical doctors at the W.H.O. advised their boss Tedros Adhanom that monkey pox should not be declared a Public Health Emergency, Tedros, not a medical doctor, decided it best to ignore them, and declared a global emergency). In total, more fears, more demands for 'measures', more demonisation of those who insist that the emperor is wearing no clothes. More 'collateral damage' and more denial of collateral damage. In short, catastrophic self-inflicted harm and a more sterile, repressive and bureaucratically brutal world. On top of people dying from covid.

Breaking the Spell

'Social psychosis' is a real phenomenon and has happened cyclically throughout history. We are given on this occasion the gift of understanding how it works. Sensitively and respectfully, we must do our best to use it – and thankfully, increasing numbers of people are doing so. Through Desmet's extension of the work of his predecessors comes the potential to further that through understanding the dynamic between the three groups. (And also through re-framing society's relationship to science, but more of that in Part Two). This really must be seen as one of the jewels of Desmet's work: First, it should be clear that those who fully embrace the 'official narrative', even when facts contradict it, have their own form of 'good reason'. Marvelling at their perceived 'stupidity' is incorrect, hugely counter-productive, and will intensify the problem. Second, while this group (initially) have the greatest influence on the way things develop, they are in the end a minority. No disrespect intended in that, but it does mean that in the end they do not necessarily get it all their own way.

By far the biggest group (the studies apparently show that the proportions of the groups are usually similar) are those whose viewpoint is moveable – those who I have called 'the reserved'. This group of people, somewhere around half of the population, sense that something is wrong, and have either (wrongly) perceived a very substantial majority to be 'fully aligned with official narratives', or for other reasons not wanted to rock the boat. Or maybe they simply not have found the time for, or sensed the urgency of, taking a deeper look at the facts. These people are amenable to being swayed by clear, respectful arguments, and the presentation of emerging evidence. Which means that the number of people who actively question what is happening can potentially be changed into a sizeable majority. And that, in turn, and beyond doubt, will change what it is that is happening.

Let me say here that I recognise that some people may be inflamed by my assumption that those who question the official narrative are right to do so, even if they are often not right in all the detail. But what can I do? That is what I believe to be the case. Nonetheless, direct but sensitive and mutually open dialogue, and respect for those who differ, is the only way forward. All of us, in all groups, might keep in mind as such dialogue develops, a principle perhaps better known than the work of the various psychologists I have cited: That of 'cognitive dissonance'. It is the principle in which any of us can simultaneously hold multiple views which are inherently contradictory, or can live in ways which contradict beliefs we profess to hold. Anyone taking a look at how this works will know that the only productive way to deal with that in another person (which naturally means potentially all of us), is to have the greatest respect and sensitivity for why it has occurred.

Regardless of what happens next with covid itself, the risk of much greater disaster is far from over. It is manifestly a reality that in response society has broadly divided into three groups as described, and will likely continue to do so as further calamities and 'fear stories' emerge. The message to each of them might be summarised as follows:

To the aligned: All of us (nearly) can agree that there is a real problem going on. There are good reasons that you are anxious and that you hunger for some social cohesion. But please be careful of demonising those who don't see the cause and the cure as you do.

To the outspoken: What you do can make a huge difference, even if it doesn't always feel like it. But focusing on the apparent stupidity (that's not actually what it is) of 'the aligned' is seriously counter-productive. Quietly persist in getting a reasoned and verifiable message to 'the reserved'. But know that while your chances of getting 'the aligned' to change their position are effectively zero, an environment in which a reasoned counter-view merely exists and is circulated may soften a little their animosity at dissenters, and the extremity of measures they might support to deal with the dissent.

To the reserved: You are in a sea of potential. Or rather, you are a sea of potential. Far from being irrelevant, public dialogue and exchange of information and viewpoints is the only real motor of societal change there is, or can be. Without your engagement, the default direction of development will be the one driven by a synergistic mix of media misrepresentation, government reactivism, and the 'significant minorities' who are justifiably terrified, and who passively empower such institutional maladies.

The Hard Reality, and the Consequences of Failing:

If we fail to recognise and unwind some of the social dynamics which are in progress (emanating both from the pandemic and its aftermath, and from other matters) we will continue into a tightening spiral which has been in progress (especially) since 9/11, and will keep us moving toward the kind of hideous consequences which have occurred when society has lost contact with reality before. This is too horrible to imagine. So I will finish by emphasising once more some of the circumstances at play which are leading us that way – in the hope of winning a little more recognition for the reality of our situation, and the need to cultivate the kind of dynamic between the three groups which Desmet has sought to encourage:

Circumstances were already in progress as the 'corona-crisis' began in March of 2020 which subsequently added fuel to the emerging fire: A social media environment which had already been making society 'institutionally stupid' for some years. Some dubious moves regarding ownership of the media. And a science which was already degenerate in its institutions and ideological in its outlook. This last will be taken up in part two. The others we can look at here:

According to Jonathan Haidt, the problem of confusion and fragmentation was being intensified by a specific developmental shift in the world of social media. Strikingly, when he presented an argument in May of this year¹¹ that our behaviour has become 'uniquely stupid' in recent years, he qualified it by saying that he does not think we have become more stupid as individuals, but that we have as a society. That's a pretty strong echo of the mass psychosis / mass formation position.

Around 2012 through 2014 something went wrong, says Haidt, with the expectation that the growth of internet connectivity would lead to a more openly democratic society and a strengthened civilisation. He attributes that divergence from expectation to the rise of 'like', 'share' and 'retweet', plus feedback algorithms which then present new content likely to generate yet more likes and shares. This leads to what he calls 'enhanced virality'. Polarisation and outrage get quickly amplified, trends are increasingly led by small numbers of activists, usually at the two political extremes. Eventually the success of high profile viral 'strikes' on dissenters leads to a situation in which nobody dare disagree. Not even governments. Platforms censor people for expressing 'unacceptable' views. People, again, are fired from their jobs. Public debate on crucially important matters is severely limited. Yet as John Stuart Mill said “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that”. Once again like in mass psychosis, there is a gravitation to positions which pacify public sentiment – a gravitation that is, to positions arrived at not by reason, but by fear, anger and 'system dynamics'. We become 'institutionally stupid'.

Regarding media ownership: From 1996 ownership of virtually all of the media in the world was consolidated to a small handful of mega-corporations.¹² Those in turn are owned, for the most part, by just two giant investment funds. Which have, let us say, 'interests'. Not only do the same big investment funds which control media also control the big pharmaceutical companies, but every big media corporation in the U.S.A. except one actually shares a board director with one or more big pharmaceutical company.¹³ Suddenly, believing the media and not the experts they have banned looks very alarming.

The resulting hypnosis is everywhere, and serious. Systems naturally emerge which reinforce the problems: The urgent need in part of the population for 'one narrative' gets translated into a willingness on the part of institutions to shut down dissenting messages even when they come from the most qualified possible sources. Institutions become compelled to deliver 'measures' and action that a population demands even when those institutions don't believe in the measures they are imposing. The alienation of people from each other gets further intensified. Hospitals are paid substantial fees for every 'covid' admission, encouraging exaggeration of what constitutes such an admission. (e.g. somebody admitted for cancer, but who was 'positive but asymptomatic' on a covid test – or even who only 'had contact with somebody who was positive'). Official positions are proven to be wrong, and nothing is done to realign them (For one of many examples, when the predictions of Imperial College London were in the first two months of the pandemic proven wildly wrong – overstated by more than a thousand percent - neither public health officials nor the public changed their beliefs). As Desmet put it, it seemed like reality was being over-ridden by some kind of deep-rooted psychological need to continue believing the worst possible case. Debate and dissent gets construed as 'mis-information' while genuine mis-information from governments and 'approved' institutions is routinely overlooked. (You will not get infected, you will not get sick, and you will not transmit to others, if you are vaccinated). Collateral damage is ignored and even used to further distort other data.

The new found cohesion of collective purpose for the public will not lightly be let go of, and nor will the exceptional powers seized by governments. A situation is set up wherein all messages get aligned whether right or not, and the broader public feels, well, 'they can't all be wrong'. In fact they can. In short, an interlocking set of dynamics is created which reinforce each other and lead inexorably to disaster.

Thus Desmet argues that mutually-reinforcing systemic problems can produce dysfunctionality, disinformation and disaster without any deliberate institutional wrong-doing. Doubtless that is true. But that doesn't mean there wasn't any. Brett Weisntein, a professor of evolutionary biology, now participating widely in the debate in his new role as a recognised 'public intellectual', expressed concerns on this more eloquently than most: In an interview in June of this year, he referred to the CDC, the Gavi Vaccine Alliance, the Associated Press, the Trusted News Initiative, the W.H.O. and Anthony Fauci as examples of organisations and individuals who represent 'the enemy', and noted that they had slandered scientists and misled the public. Questioned on his use of the word 'enemy', he replied:

“Here's the problem: I don't want to consider them the enemy, but what we got during covid was not an inept response. It was the inverse of a good response – and you can't get there through incompetence. Had they simply failed that would be one thing, but what they gave us was a recipe for disaster. And to the extent that they were willing to do that, for whatever reason, and allow the harm to flow from it that did, I have to think of them that way. These people must be removed from power lest this happen again”.¹⁴

Similarly, fearful populations - fertile ground for Desmet's 'mass formation' - can certainly occur purely by co-incidence of circumstance. But again that doesn't necessarily mean it happened that way: During the first year of the pandemic journalist Laura Dodsworth published 300 pages of evidence¹⁵ on how British governments and institutions alone had worked methodically, deliberately, and with great effect to raise their population's fear levels as high as possible. (Without doubt similar activities took place in numerous other countries).

To bring all this to a conclusion: A friend who reviewed this piece before I posted it found it 'interesting and well argued but pessimistic-feeling'. Well, for sure it paints a dark picture of where we are. And if I've put that across well, that's a goal achieved. But for me the biggest point of all, the single thing that motivated me to write it, is that we now have the possibility of understanding how we got there. And simply striving for and spreading understanding has an osmotic power for positive change which is greater than (and a good precursor to) any other form of action.

A closing and more universal message is perhaps appropriate, in addition to those made above more individually to 'the aligned', 'the reserved', and the 'outspoken': If any of the arguments here resonate with you and seem useful in understanding our situation, please consider sharing this post with all who might be receptive. If they do not resonate with you, please let's disagree respectfully. We are all of us, whatever we believe, doing our best to get through difficult times.

Part Two of The Witch, The War and The Virus – subtitled ‘Transcending the Technocratic Fallacy’ will continue into deeper, more potent and longer-term ways of working to break the tightening crisis-cycle.

1. The Discovery of the Unconscious, Henri F. Ellenberger, 1970.

2. Edward Snowden, who revealed among other things large scale illegal surveillance of citizens by the American N.S.A. was granted asylum in Russia and Julian Assange, who published the now infamous 'collateral murder' video of American crimes in Iraq, was granted asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

3. Research has shown considerable historical precedent for the affinity between contagion and totalitarianism. Hitler for example was initially obsessed with sanitation (and with 'purity' in general). Thus he early on began eradicating rats and insects which were spreading tuberculosis, using Zyklon-B gas. And later used the same gas against those elements of society he found 'unclean', in the concentration camps. After World War 2, a great deal of study on authoritarianism took place – and it showed such affinity between infection-fears and totalitarianism to have been historically widespread. That may be in part for good reasons (infections are dangerous and people want them under control) and in part related to 'psychosis', wherein the primal unconscious fear of ´contaminants´ over-rides the normally stronger fear of authoritarianism. See: 'Jordan Peterson ~ The Correlation Between Prevalent of Infectious Diseases & Authoritarian Belief', 2021.

4. Members of a scientific committee advising the UK government admitted to a journalist, without wishing to be named, that they regretted having been involved in the deliberate generation of fear in a way which was unethical. The strategy of the committee had been based on targeting people who were thought “not to feel sufficiently personally threatened.” One of their repenting members later declared that “The way we have used fear is dystopian”. See 'State of Fear', Laura Dodsworth, 2021.

5. Professors Sucharit Bhakti, Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, John Ioannidis, Martin Kulldorff, Paul Marik and Brett Weinstein, and Doctors Byram Bridle, Geert Vanden Bossche, Vernon Coleman, Simone Gold, Pierre Kory, Tess Lawrie, Robert Malone and Peter McCullough are just a few of the highly qualified people who have been smeared, attacked or actively censored for sharing their professional views and research. Go to Wikipedia or the press if you want politicised opinions on their work. Otherwise go directly to the credentials, papers and reports of the scientists themselves.

6. During 2022, countries including Peru, Germany and Sweden revised their official covid death numbers to match the total excess deaths for the pandemic period, reflecting an assumption that there could not have been any excess deaths from any ohter cause. (People being denied treatment during lockdown, depression, suicide, increased alcohol and drug use - or even unknown causes which certainly seem to be at work in 2022, and reported covid deaths have massively declined, but excess deaths in countries around the world continue to be alarmingly high).

7. Senior government and health institution figures who disregarded the restrictions they imposed on others include: Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College London professor who generated massive fear stories and then, while we were all confined to our houses and prevented from visiting each other, took a long drive to see his girlfriend. California state governor Gavin Newsom, who imposed one of the harshest lockdowns seen anywhere, and in the middle of it had an intimate dinner party with a dozen or so friends at the exlusive 'French Laundry' restaurant, with no masks, and no distancing. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who allowed and attended parties within 10 Downing Street while restrictions were in place. UK Health Minister Matt Hancock, who got rather closer to his secretary than the 2 metres he was imposing on the rest of us. And UK opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer, who shared beers and takeaways with a group of colleagues, again while the rest of the country was 'locked down'. (Starmer was officially cleared by police, but many controversies remain around the event).

8. American cities set on fire during 2020 include Minnesota, Portland and Atlanta.

9. Wolf, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, documented the findings of her investigation into the origins of totalitarianism in her 2007 book 'The End of America'. Originally motivated by concerns about actions, including the 'Patriot Act' under the George W. Bush administration, in the wake of 9/11, she more recently expressed a strong concern that the pandemic years were bringing governments everywhere much closer to fulfilling all ten steps.

10. ‘The Psychology of Totalitarianism’, Mattias Desment, May 2022.

11. See 'Why the Last 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid', by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic magazine, May 2022.

12. The reach of seven media giants alone spans every continent and a breath-taking number of the world's newspapers, television stations, radio channels, movie studios, online information sources, publishing houses and education rescources. These are AT&T/Time Warner, News Corporation, GE/Comcast, Disney, CBS/Viacom, Pearson and Bertelsmann. Six investment funds which control all of the above, plus two American power families (the Newhouse and Hearst families) further control between them The Lancet, Elsevier scientific publishing - which publishes half a million scientific papers every year in more than 2,500 journals world-wide, and many hundreds of radio stations, magazines and newspapers in literally scores on countries.

13. Every big media company in the USA shares a board director with a big pharmacuetical company. See here and here and here. Moreover, the same companies (see 12. above) that own the media in the U.S.A. own the media in your country. This will be the subject of a future ‘World in Transition’ post.

14. See 'Brett Weinstein: I Will be Vindicated Over Covid' – an interview with Freddy Sayers on Unherd T.V., June 2022.

15. See 'State of Fear', Laura Dodsworth, 2021.