“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.” — Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind
Diseases of the body can spread through a population and reach epidemic proportions, but so too can diseases of the mind. And of these epidemics of the latter variety, the mass psychosis is the most dangerous. During a mass psychosis madness becomes the norm in a society and delusionary beliefs spread like a contagion. But as delusions can take many forms, and as madness can manifest in countless ways, the specific manner in which a mass psychosis unfolds will differ based on the historical and cultural context of the infected society. In the past, mass psychoses have led to witch hunts, genocides and even dancing manias, but in the modern era it is the mass psychosis of totalitarianism that is the greatest threat:
“Totalitarianism is the modern phenomenon of total centralized state power coupled with the obliteration of individual human rights: in the totalized state, there are those in power, and there are the objectified masses, the victims.” — Arthur Versluis, The New Inquisitions
In a totalitarian society the population is divided into two groups, the rulers and the ruled, and both groups undergo a pathological transformation. The rulers are elevated to an almost god-like status which is diametrically opposed to our nature as imperfect beings who are easily corrupted by power. The masses, on the other hand, are transformed into the dependent subjects of these pathological rulers and take on a psychologically regressed and childlike status. Hannah Arendt, one of the 20th century’s preeminent scholars of this form of rule, called totalitarianism an attempted transformation of “human nature itself”. But this attempted transformation only turns sound minds into sick minds for as the Dutch medical doctor who studied the mental effects of living under totalitarianism wrote:
“… there is in fact much that is comparable between the strange reactions of the citizens of [totalitarianism] and their culture as a whole on the one hand and the reactions of the…sick schizophrenic on the other.” — Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind
The social transformation that unfolds under totalitarianism is built upon, and sustained by, delusions. For only deluded men and women regress to the childlike status of obedient and submissive subjects and hand over complete control of their lives to politicians and bureaucrats. Only a deluded ruling class will believe that they possess the knowledge, wisdom, and acumen to completely control society in a top-down manner. And only when under the spell of delusions would anyone believe that a society composed of power-hungry rulers, on the one hand, and a psychological regressed population, on the other, will lead to anything other than mass suffering and social ruin.
But what triggers the psychosis of totalitarianism? As was explored in the previous video of this series, the mass psychosis of totalitarianism begins in a society’s ruling class. The individuals that make up this class, be it politicians, bureaucrats, or crony capitalists, are very prone to delusions that augment their power, and no delusion is more attractive to the power-hungry, than the delusion that they can, and should, control and dominate a society. When a ruling elite becomes possessed by a political ideology of this sort, be it communism, fascism or technocracy, the next step is to induce a population into accepting their rule by infecting them with the mass psychosis of totalitarianism. This psychosis has been induced many times throughout history, and as Meerloo explains:
“It is simply a question of reorganizing and manipulating collective feelings in the proper way.” — Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind
The general method by which the members of a ruling elite can accomplish this end is called menticide, with the etymology of this word being ‘a killing of the mind’, and as Meerloo further explains:
“Menticide is an old crime against the human mind and spirit but systematized anew. It is an organized system of psychological intervention and judicial perversion through which a [ruling class] can imprint [their] own opportunistic thoughts upon the minds of those [they] plan to use and destroy. — Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind
Priming a population for the crime of menticide begins with the sowing of fear. For as was explored in the first video of this series, when an individual is flooded with negative emotions, such as fear or anxiety, he or she is very susceptible to a descent into the delusions of madness. Threats real, imagined, or fabricated can be used to sow fear, but a particularly effective technique is to use waves of terror. Under this technique the sowing of fear is staggered with periods of calm, but each of these periods of calm is followed by the manufacturing of an even more intense spell of fear, and on and on the process goes, or as Meerloo writes:
“Each wave of terrorizing . . . creates its effects more easily – after a breathing spell – than the one that preceded it because people are still disturbed by their previous experience. Morality becomes lower and lower, and the psychological effects of each new propaganda campaign become stronger; it reaches a public already softened up.” — Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind
While fear primes a population for menticide, the use of propaganda to spread misinformation and to promote confusion with respect to the source of the threats, and the nature of the crisis, helps to break down the minds of the masses. Government officials, and their lackies in the media, can use contradictory reports, non-sensical information and even blatant lies, as the more they confuse the less capable will a population be to cope with the crisis, and diminish their fear, in a rational and adaptive manner. Confusion, in other words, heightens the susceptibility of a descent into the delusions of totalitarianism, or as Meerloo explains:
“Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot—it confuses those who think straight. The Big Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal … than logic and reason. While the [people are] still searching for a reasonable counter-argument to the first lie, the totalitarians can assault [them] with another.” — Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind
FULL TRANSCRIPT AT The Manufacturing of a Mass Psychosis – Can Sanity Return to an Insane World?
Comments on this entry are closed.
“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
well, this follows in step with what I’ve experienced for the last three years- and the agreements with what I’ve thought and experienced, and what is described in the video, are many.
Not enough people getting punched in the face, and too many people squawking about “my pussy hurts”.
An urban conversation:
Fag 1: “My pussy hurts.”
Fag 2: “My pussy hurts worser.”
A rural conversation:
Fag 1: “My pussy hurts.”
Man 1: (the fags brain hitting the concrete wall @ lightspeed)
If conversation 2 happened about 10,000 times per day, in about 2 years things would start to be normal again in this country.
OK, where is it?
Ghost, I’ve got tears running down my cheeks from laughing at your comment. And I agree with you but let’s step it up, shall we? Instead of 10K, let’s start this cleansing off with 20K….:)
Maybe we could ship loads of them off to the countries they are always extolling as being unsullied and pure, not like the Evil USA.
Ghost, outstanding!
Life is the lesson, what I’ve learned over the past thirty years is this, WE won’t do shit, to change the narrative. Yet my old associates continue to participate in right wing propaganda, half truth, innuendo, ashamed really.
While these people continue to talk shit, make a living spewing propaganda, allowing a platform of angry old men to vent, nothings going to change.
When the chickenshit noise stops,,,,, silence on the right happens, then and only then will I believe a group in say DC or State Capitals, universities, and democratic field offices oooo left out republican field offices,,,,are about to get spanked!.
If/When that happens it won’t be the knuckleheads who talk shit day in day out, whom will start the parade, will be those who remain silent, Vigilante, working dads and moms with EVERYTHING to loose.
Don’t misunderstand, these are good men, I use to believe in. After the stolen election, I finally for perhaps the first time see the forest thru the trees. We’ve grown tired of The Sky Is Falling, from people who pound the war drum daily, who market themselves are visionaries, receiving info directly from gods lips to their ears only. The Enlighten ones. Amusing really.
Yet make a living peddling this nonsense. These guys are literally self licking Lolly pops!.
Any of you ever read the book titled Turner Diaries? I hate the book, perhaps the closest fiction book in the world which is a realistic working model. I’ve purchased and gifted maybe 15 copies to people, interestingly enough most were Dr’s Lawyers, RNs, and PoliceOfficers. Men and women who do see the forest thru the trees, haven’t got stuck in tough talk, silly articles.
“Delusions carefully planted” The truth, when you realize propaganda is a two edged knife.
VI
This must be spread everywhere. Explains very simply what is happening,and how to deal with it.
(Although Ghost summed it up much more succinctly. Well done,sir.)
Good to see Vaclav Havel’s thoughts again;he survived and triumphed over this similar evil decades ago. The evil remains unchanged,it’s just the delivery systems that morph with times.
I’ve been surprised at how placid too many people are about what’s taking place in this country.
Menticide is a must-read,thanks Mr V.
This is simply History repeating itself.
VI
“It was a monstrous and ironic fact that the very men who had created the world in which every value was false and theatrical saw themselves, not as creatures tranced by fatal illusions, but rather as the most knowing, practical, and hard-headed men alive. They did not think of themselves as gamblers, obsessed by their own fictions of speculation, but as brilliant executives of great affairs who at every moment of the day ‘had their fingers on the pulse of the nation.’ So when they looked about them and saw everywhere nothing but the myriad shapes of privilege, dishonesty, and self-interest, they were convinced that this was inevitably ‘the way things are.'” – Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again
“What George began to see was a picture of a great people who had been psychically wounded and were now desperately ill with some dread malady of the soul. Here was an entire nation . . . that was infested with the contagion of an ever-present fear. It was a kind of creeping paralysis which twisted and blighted all human relations. The pressures of a constant and infamous compulsion had silenced this whole people into a sweltering and malignant secrecy until they had become spiritually septic with the distillations of their own self-poisons, for which now there was no medicine or release.” – Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again
In the first quote Wolfe writes of the American elite of 1929, yet his words apply to all ruling elites.
In the second quote Wolfe’s character, George Webber, speaks not of the U.S.A. but of Nazi Germany (Wolfe died quite young in 1938, at age 37). Yet the quote rings true of what’s left of what used to be the United States of America. My point in proffering that quote is that one ought not to get hung up on the names of totalitarian regimes or on their proclaimed or implicit ideologies and those ideologies’ cant, that one ought instead to discern that all totalitarian regimes are just that: totalitarian, wherein the few manipulate and exploit, and dictate to, the many.
Check the voice (full of mincing and prancing) and the smugitude of this little prick.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/06/colorado-mayor-bans-pledge-allegiance-board-meetings-gets-triggered-members-recite-anyway-threatens-remove-video/
video— https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVN3VQ-JxLc
Patriots at these mini-fascist meetings ought to come to the podium with a gallon can of roofing tar in one hand and a feather-filled pillow in the other.
And then smile nicely at the committee.
“Uh, what’s that for?”
“Keep it up and you’ll see. Just say (racism, equity, social justice, white privilege, white fragility, diversity) one more time! We got the rails outside.”
Lance, why bother with the full tarring and feathering? Rails are heavy and it’s much easier and far more economic to shove a hot pint of the stuff down their throats and let them choke to death on it.
Lance ment 2 say: “Patriots at these mini-fascist meetings ought to come to the podium with a 36″ crowbar in hand and a threatening pace to their stride.”