Mattias Desmet’s The Psychology of Totalitarianism is available today. Let’s get to it by first taking a short detour. Take 37 seconds to watch a video:
You're definitely onto something here. While I continue to see mask-wearing despite all local mandates having been dropped, that's entirely amongst that subset of the professional classes who are most desperately eager to signal their liberal virtue. Even most of the professors I know have stopped wearing masks.
That this mass formation event was fairly isolated to the liberal and professional classes speaks to the cultural schism that's taken place. We don't live in a society with people at all levels doing various jobs. We live in parallel societies, in which one part - the managerial component - holds all institutional power, but is entirely emotionally severed from the rest of society. That's the origin of much social conflict, but it also has a silver lining: it inhibits universal mass formation.
I think you also see this in that remark from the WEF woman that while global elites (her term) trust each other more and more, their people in their respective countries trust them less and less. They've become their own tribe, rather than elite representatives of their various tribes; and the tribes of the world correctly perceive this.
"We live in parallel societies, in which one part - the managerial component - holds all institutional power, but is entirely emotionally severed from the rest of society."
How large is an interesting question. But if it is in a sense a “spiritual class” consisting of actual elites and also the part of the “masses” who desperately strive to see themselves as being worthy in then eyes of elites, it definitely includes doctors who as a group are mostly rigidly orthodox in their thinking; strivers dripping with contempt for the dummies they deign to serve.
GREAT point! The Oligarchs are in lockstep solidarity. The rest of us get the bill. And the Liberal's virtue signaling has no limiting principle. This is hubris. Pride cometh before a fall and a haughty spirit before destruction....
Yep. They get the virtue while everyone but them pays the cost.
Since keeping them around as elites is now more trouble than they're worth, and since we now have a large number of renegade elite who are making common cause with normal people and would be only too happy to replace the current elite, I don't fancy their chances in the long run.
Who are these "renegade elite who are now making common cause with normal people," as you put it? Serious question. I really have no idea what kind of people you're referring to.
More or less the same group that you'd find in any societal upheaval. Society can be divided into top, middle and bottom. Top are composed of the most capable, and those with access to the most resources. Middle are also highly capable but have access to the fewer resources. Bottom generally have the lowest level of capability and the least resources. Elite turnover happens when groups from the top and middle make common cause with the bottom to remove a problematic top.
So, in the modern context, you've got all sorts of people, from every walk of professional life, who are thoroughly disgusted with the current state of things. Very much including members of the professional classes, who are increasingly frozen out of direct participation in the formal power process. For instance, medical professionals who got unpersoned during COVID; tech developers and scientists who got unpersoned by the Great Awokening; bright young white guys who got denied a place in the system because muh intersectional diversity trumped their natural ability. All of those groups and more are full of highly capable people, who are extremely dissatisfied with the state of affairs. That situation is currently fermenting away and the most likely outcome is that the current elites ultimately get replaced.
There's a phrase that I despise that goes like this (I've heard in medical and religious contexts): "People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care."
Walter Lippman, who wrote the book Propaganda a century ago after his experience on the Creel Commission during WWI, claimed the easiest people to control were the middling intelligent, the ones in his day that read the news, and today watch CNN.
We have now had over a century of conditioning into mass psychological manipulation. The zombie NPCs struggle to break out of their programming, but quickly upload the latest version, as seen by all the people suddenly concerned by Ukraine. They didn't care about Ukraine 6 months ago, but suddenly it is vital to their lives.
Our news is propaganda, our commercials are propaganda, and our government pushes propaganda. They are creating illusions and lies all around us, attempting to change our world views to align with the latest narratives.
The outbreak of the Ukraine war seemed eerily similar to the 20 year old political satire movie Wag The Dog, in which a war narrative is fabricated for propaganda purposes -- to distract from scandal. Ghost of Kiev = Old Shoe. It felt blindingly obvious at the time, yet few people around me seemed to grasp the parallels so quickly.
To see the immediate, mass, lockstep movement among the *exact* same people from Covid concern to Ukrainian flag waving was all the demonstration I needed that Desmet's "Mass Formation Psychosis" is a valid sociological phenomenon, and who cares what the APA and the "fact checkers" say against it.
Of course the ‘Rona is far more dangerous while in line! And especially getting up from your table at the restaurant and walking to the bathroom. Geeesh, I thought everyone knew this. 🤷🏻♂️
By far the most baffling of the mass formation I witnessed was in my religious congregation. I’m literally still trying to process the behavior I witnessed the last two years. The message of doing things like masking and vaxxing in the spirit of caring for your fellow men was issued and issued hard. As if it came from God himself.
Going to Disneyland, I expected strange masking requests. Insert eye roll. But local congregational leaders insisting that the small children remain masked at all times at church? Even when performing music for an event?
My daughter and I attended a church meeting back in February with several hundred people. We were told that masks were required. We brought masks in hand, in case my courage failed. But when I looked at the huge crowd of masked people, and the strange fear I saw in some of them that their masks might slip in the presence of church leaders (or God himself?) I decided in that moment that I was teaching my kid something. I deeply feel the importance of supporting my religious leaders. But they were wrong about this. We threw our masks in the garbage and went in.
My faith in humanity, even good people who just want to do the right thing, has taken a massive hit. People I thought were good, solid humans caved to fear so fast it was breathtaking. It’s going to take awhile to put all that back together. If it even can be.
Framing our recent history as "totalitarian" seems misguided. While there were malevolent actors involved, most of the grief inflicted upon us was by the dull, plodding mandarins of the administrative state. In any case, the speed with which they apparently brainwashed us all has been matched only by the speed with which we dispensed with the containment idiocy and life got back to normal. Omicron was a blessing in this regard.
I dunno. We're not talking Soviet levels of red terror here, but there was a lot of lead-up to that. Then again most commentators describe the current state as proto- totalitarian, rather than a fully developed pathocracy, and I'm inclined to agree.
Colin and Chris, Totalitarians are not always malevolent creatures, in fact they rely on the mindless bureaucrats to carry out their plans. Recall Hannah Arendt’s description of the Nazi’s and their war crimes as “the banality of evil.” Fits Fauci perfectly.
I strongly disagree with that. Just remember, what they did. They closed everyone at home, they use police and army to control movement of people, they excluded the unvaccinated from social life, banned them from restaurants, banned gathering, closed schools, closed churches, they started with huge censorship, propaganda campaign, give everyone stupid QR code to show that they are complaining with the new totalitarian regime. They did it on purpose and they use behavior changing tactics to force people to obey. This was not normal and all it had very close to totalitarian regime.
And, in the good old USA, the regime promoted mail-in ballots and sent their minions to collect them, as in-person voting became far too dangerous. So considerate.
I've no idea where you live, but I can tell you that where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, life has not "gone back to normal" by any stretch of the imagination.
Most people here are still wearing masks, many of them N95s covered by a second cloth mask - the second mask being for cosmetic purposes, they claim, which sounds pretty funny to me - as though wearing a second cloth mask over an industrial-strength mask makes one look any less freakish than just the N95 alone!
The slavish acceptance on the part of the majority of the people here of the "need" to mask up is bad, but worse than that is the fact that in order to participate in civic and cultural life here, one must not only be double vaxxed but also "up-to-date" on booster shots. Either that, or double vaxxed plus one booster shot plus have taken a covid test within the last 24 hours which resulted negative. Kids must be vaxxed in order to return to school, etc. etc. etc. The rules and restrictions are endless.
As far as I can see, covid has simply been a trial balloon, a test run, in preparation for imposition of even more egregiously totalitarian edicts and laws. I hope I'm wrong. And I hope that more and more people will wake up out of their hypnotized state. But I doubt this will happen anytime soon, and for many people, I'm certain it will never happen.
"While there were malevolent actors involved, most of the grief inflicted upon us was by the dull, plodding mandarins of the administrative state."
So your premise is that as long as it's just dull plodding bureaucrats forcing the death shots and the lockdowns and the businesses to close, that's not totalitarianism?
Ok Chris, I just became a paying subscriber. You just get better and better! Your ability to analyze a complex matter and break it down to something so simple and obvious is just really fantastic. Keep it coming!
That's been my experience too, whenever I get out of my state, or, really, out of certain (university, government or otherwise woke) neighborhoods in certain cities in my state. In most places I've been, there are a few masks, but no one gives a flying rat's ass whether I wear one or not.
The folly of this short sighted logic is that any example of ongoing madness is now due to a "few pro management class" dolts and it whistles right past the graveyard that there are still schools, universities pushing toxic drugs. Workplaces. New Normalized acceptance of civil liberty removal and lockdowns.
That not ONE elected politician will stand in front of a camera and mic and say directly:
"These injections do not work and are very dangerous. They should be banned."
264 planes fell out of the sky with corrupted rivets and the pilots have Mad Cow Disease, but golly those folks in Wyoming are living their lives..."
My comment was purely observational. It is not a prescription for action or inaction. I'm well aware of schools, etc, and of being locked out of most of the venues I used to perform or teach in for the past 2 years. And I haven't been passive about it at all.
"Planned compliance of three in ten isn’t evidence of the psychology of totalitarianism."
A summary premise that I disagree with.
And since Chris buttresses his theme with a very similar "regular Joes don't wear masks at sportsball games!" I thought I would pick up where that logic falls apart within the premise of the piece.
Apologies. I was trying to discuss it within the larger context or theme of the post.
The premise of the piece also had to do with class. And it has been my experience that compliance does go along class lines. As do most things in the US (and elsewhere). So that's a discussion worth having.
“ My impression is that a quarter to a third of the population locked arms with them and fought proudly for their fear performance, while another third-plus went along to get along, and the balance — especially outside the Blue Zones — just completely ignored the whole mess.”
That’s pretty much in line with the population sorting Desmet finds.
Creepy counter argument: here in the UK we had for several months an event every Thursday where people would come out at 8 p.m. and clap, bang pots and so on. That was very popular.
Converting 1/3 of society to a new mania -- not necessary a majority -- accords well with some formulations of "mass formation psychosis" that I've read.
But it is relevant and helpful to add your point that selection into this group during Covid was not very random, but follows pre-existing class, cultural and political divides fairly closely.
Was the Jonestown cult also more likely to recruit from specific parts of society, or was that more of a mix?
I have also noted in the D.C. area a lot of residual mask wearing among working class black people. Strength of D party affiliation might be a key factor. The white educated Chevy Chase crowd still worships at the alter of Covid.
Interesting; in my affluent blue state suburb the remnant of mask wearers (under 5%) tend to be 50+ women. I have had a special interest in African American covid response - particularly after they had the good sense to martial, by far, the lowest vax uptake among any ethnic demographic. Seemed to me that they were very slow to "accept" the covid op - back in the spring of 2020; about a year later there was that hip hop female artist who made a big stir by strongly urging people to NOT vax; however she did at the same time urge mask wearing; and it was at that point that I observed a big surge in Af Amer mask wearing that continued for a long period. That could be more "key" tho, DC may be a special case.
I totally agree with you--formation psychosis with all its malignant forms of expression is a class phenomenon not a mass phenomenon. I had similar experiences to yours in the summer of 2020 driving from Northern CA to Pennsylvania, and I've traveled constantly by car and air since then. It's not ordinary Americans who are generating what you aptly call a "calculated, organized campaign to inculcate fear", it's a top-down phenomenon. I was amused in the summer of 2020 to be forced by the State of Indiana to "risk my life" by pushing the filthy button on their turnpike cash collection machines to pay the pitiful 50 cent toll (or whatever it was) in order to drive through the state on its very badly maintained road. Thousands of other motorists had touched that button in the last hour, but the State of Indiana was willing to spread "deadly" Covid across the entire United States by making us touch those buttons so they could collect their miserable pittance of a toll? What a complete joke. The Covid Emperor has had no clothes from the very beginning.
Bud Lite is like making love in a canoe. It's fucking close to water. Congratulations on still being able to get trashed on Bud Lite. It means you're not a lush probably, or that you could box 103 lbs. in Mexico if you wanted.
Excellent points! But I do believe that some countries and localities fell further into the mass formation hole than others. Perhaps Desmet’s experience in Belgium resembles more what he describes in his book. I am placing his book onto the to-read list.
Enjoyed this post. Once a very tall friend and I went to a Cubs game and sat in the outfield bleachers with our two girlfriends between us. The center fielder finished his warmup and gently threw the ball directly at my forehead (not intentionally of course). My tall friend leaped over the two girls between us and the ball hit his palm in front of my hands and dropped back out onto the field. Unforgivable. Regarding the mass formation, why is there such a strong correlation between being brainwashed and exhibiting authoritarian behavior? Are the easily brainwashed defaulted to authoritarian tendencies or are the authoritarians more susceptible to brainwashing? I guess it could be both.
You're definitely onto something here. While I continue to see mask-wearing despite all local mandates having been dropped, that's entirely amongst that subset of the professional classes who are most desperately eager to signal their liberal virtue. Even most of the professors I know have stopped wearing masks.
That this mass formation event was fairly isolated to the liberal and professional classes speaks to the cultural schism that's taken place. We don't live in a society with people at all levels doing various jobs. We live in parallel societies, in which one part - the managerial component - holds all institutional power, but is entirely emotionally severed from the rest of society. That's the origin of much social conflict, but it also has a silver lining: it inhibits universal mass formation.
I think you also see this in that remark from the WEF woman that while global elites (her term) trust each other more and more, their people in their respective countries trust them less and less. They've become their own tribe, rather than elite representatives of their various tribes; and the tribes of the world correctly perceive this.
"We live in parallel societies, in which one part - the managerial component - holds all institutional power, but is entirely emotionally severed from the rest of society."
You said it better than I did. It's this.
How large is this "managerial class" severed from the "rest of the country"?
And is murdering the worker bees a sign of totalitarianism?
How about banishing effective treatments and hunting down doctors who try to use them?
In that latter scenario, are the doctors the "rest of the country" working class?
How large is an interesting question. But if it is in a sense a “spiritual class” consisting of actual elites and also the part of the “masses” who desperately strive to see themselves as being worthy in then eyes of elites, it definitely includes doctors who as a group are mostly rigidly orthodox in their thinking; strivers dripping with contempt for the dummies they deign to serve.
GREAT point! The Oligarchs are in lockstep solidarity. The rest of us get the bill. And the Liberal's virtue signaling has no limiting principle. This is hubris. Pride cometh before a fall and a haughty spirit before destruction....
Yep. They get the virtue while everyone but them pays the cost.
Since keeping them around as elites is now more trouble than they're worth, and since we now have a large number of renegade elite who are making common cause with normal people and would be only too happy to replace the current elite, I don't fancy their chances in the long run.
Who are these "renegade elite who are now making common cause with normal people," as you put it? Serious question. I really have no idea what kind of people you're referring to.
More or less the same group that you'd find in any societal upheaval. Society can be divided into top, middle and bottom. Top are composed of the most capable, and those with access to the most resources. Middle are also highly capable but have access to the fewer resources. Bottom generally have the lowest level of capability and the least resources. Elite turnover happens when groups from the top and middle make common cause with the bottom to remove a problematic top.
So, in the modern context, you've got all sorts of people, from every walk of professional life, who are thoroughly disgusted with the current state of things. Very much including members of the professional classes, who are increasingly frozen out of direct participation in the formal power process. For instance, medical professionals who got unpersoned during COVID; tech developers and scientists who got unpersoned by the Great Awokening; bright young white guys who got denied a place in the system because muh intersectional diversity trumped their natural ability. All of those groups and more are full of highly capable people, who are extremely dissatisfied with the state of affairs. That situation is currently fermenting away and the most likely outcome is that the current elites ultimately get replaced.
All of which is a giant professorial diversion as to whether we had a global mass formation explained and fueled by the psychology of totalitarianism.
B/c I, John Carter, like to talk about class stratification.
Touch grass, bro.
Shhh....don't think about it. Just let the "renegade elite" model wash over you.
I think of Elon Musk, but he’s surely not the only one who’s waking up.
I’ve noticed that it’s mostly anal-retentive, controlling women looking down their masked noses who are wearing them.
And then a few people who need to show that they “care” for others.
There's a phrase that I despise that goes like this (I've heard in medical and religious contexts): "People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care."
Yeah, that’s pretty barf-y.
See also:
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/danish-national-board-of-health-admits
"danish national board of health admits vaccinating kids for covid was a mistake"
Is that how totalitarianism works?
These are Taleb's IYI, intellectual yet idiots.
Walter Lippman, who wrote the book Propaganda a century ago after his experience on the Creel Commission during WWI, claimed the easiest people to control were the middling intelligent, the ones in his day that read the news, and today watch CNN.
We have now had over a century of conditioning into mass psychological manipulation. The zombie NPCs struggle to break out of their programming, but quickly upload the latest version, as seen by all the people suddenly concerned by Ukraine. They didn't care about Ukraine 6 months ago, but suddenly it is vital to their lives.
Our news is propaganda, our commercials are propaganda, and our government pushes propaganda. They are creating illusions and lies all around us, attempting to change our world views to align with the latest narratives.
Makes me want to revisit these 2 books:
• The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America by Daniel J. Boorstin
• Class: A Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell
make sure to throw some eric hoffer and chris lasch on the pile
You know it! The Culture of Narcissism is right there on the third shelf from the top.
The outbreak of the Ukraine war seemed eerily similar to the 20 year old political satire movie Wag The Dog, in which a war narrative is fabricated for propaganda purposes -- to distract from scandal. Ghost of Kiev = Old Shoe. It felt blindingly obvious at the time, yet few people around me seemed to grasp the parallels so quickly.
To see the immediate, mass, lockstep movement among the *exact* same people from Covid concern to Ukrainian flag waving was all the demonstration I needed that Desmet's "Mass Formation Psychosis" is a valid sociological phenomenon, and who cares what the APA and the "fact checkers" say against it.
I gotta watch that again.
Of course the ‘Rona is far more dangerous while in line! And especially getting up from your table at the restaurant and walking to the bathroom. Geeesh, I thought everyone knew this. 🤷🏻♂️
By far the most baffling of the mass formation I witnessed was in my religious congregation. I’m literally still trying to process the behavior I witnessed the last two years. The message of doing things like masking and vaxxing in the spirit of caring for your fellow men was issued and issued hard. As if it came from God himself.
Going to Disneyland, I expected strange masking requests. Insert eye roll. But local congregational leaders insisting that the small children remain masked at all times at church? Even when performing music for an event?
My daughter and I attended a church meeting back in February with several hundred people. We were told that masks were required. We brought masks in hand, in case my courage failed. But when I looked at the huge crowd of masked people, and the strange fear I saw in some of them that their masks might slip in the presence of church leaders (or God himself?) I decided in that moment that I was teaching my kid something. I deeply feel the importance of supporting my religious leaders. But they were wrong about this. We threw our masks in the garbage and went in.
My faith in humanity, even good people who just want to do the right thing, has taken a massive hit. People I thought were good, solid humans caved to fear so fast it was breathtaking. It’s going to take awhile to put all that back together. If it even can be.
Framing our recent history as "totalitarian" seems misguided. While there were malevolent actors involved, most of the grief inflicted upon us was by the dull, plodding mandarins of the administrative state. In any case, the speed with which they apparently brainwashed us all has been matched only by the speed with which we dispensed with the containment idiocy and life got back to normal. Omicron was a blessing in this regard.
Agree with this. Extremely malevolent, extremely damaging, not totalitarian.
I dunno. We're not talking Soviet levels of red terror here, but there was a lot of lead-up to that. Then again most commentators describe the current state as proto- totalitarian, rather than a fully developed pathocracy, and I'm inclined to agree.
Colin and Chris, Totalitarians are not always malevolent creatures, in fact they rely on the mindless bureaucrats to carry out their plans. Recall Hannah Arendt’s description of the Nazi’s and their war crimes as “the banality of evil.” Fits Fauci perfectly.
Fits most upper-admins on hospitals and universities.
I strongly disagree with that. Just remember, what they did. They closed everyone at home, they use police and army to control movement of people, they excluded the unvaccinated from social life, banned them from restaurants, banned gathering, closed schools, closed churches, they started with huge censorship, propaganda campaign, give everyone stupid QR code to show that they are complaining with the new totalitarian regime. They did it on purpose and they use behavior changing tactics to force people to obey. This was not normal and all it had very close to totalitarian regime.
And, in the good old USA, the regime promoted mail-in ballots and sent their minions to collect them, as in-person voting became far too dangerous. So considerate.
Having forgone participation in that grand medical experiment, I remember all too well the many indignities visited upon us, small and large.
"Indignities"?
Oh my goodness.
I've no idea where you live, but I can tell you that where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, life has not "gone back to normal" by any stretch of the imagination.
Most people here are still wearing masks, many of them N95s covered by a second cloth mask - the second mask being for cosmetic purposes, they claim, which sounds pretty funny to me - as though wearing a second cloth mask over an industrial-strength mask makes one look any less freakish than just the N95 alone!
The slavish acceptance on the part of the majority of the people here of the "need" to mask up is bad, but worse than that is the fact that in order to participate in civic and cultural life here, one must not only be double vaxxed but also "up-to-date" on booster shots. Either that, or double vaxxed plus one booster shot plus have taken a covid test within the last 24 hours which resulted negative. Kids must be vaxxed in order to return to school, etc. etc. etc. The rules and restrictions are endless.
As far as I can see, covid has simply been a trial balloon, a test run, in preparation for imposition of even more egregiously totalitarian edicts and laws. I hope I'm wrong. And I hope that more and more people will wake up out of their hypnotized state. But I doubt this will happen anytime soon, and for many people, I'm certain it will never happen.
Glad to know there are like-minded people in San Francisco, just not enough.
“most of the grief inflicted upon us was by the dull, plodding mandarins of the administrative state.”
But that IS totalitarianism.
"While there were malevolent actors involved, most of the grief inflicted upon us was by the dull, plodding mandarins of the administrative state."
So your premise is that as long as it's just dull plodding bureaucrats forcing the death shots and the lockdowns and the businesses to close, that's not totalitarianism?
No screaming Hitler, no totalitarianism?
You are familiar with the Banality of Evil?
Ok Chris, I just became a paying subscriber. You just get better and better! Your ability to analyze a complex matter and break it down to something so simple and obvious is just really fantastic. Keep it coming!
Thanks!
No, thank you!!!
That's been my experience too, whenever I get out of my state, or, really, out of certain (university, government or otherwise woke) neighborhoods in certain cities in my state. In most places I've been, there are a few masks, but no one gives a flying rat's ass whether I wear one or not.
The folly of this short sighted logic is that any example of ongoing madness is now due to a "few pro management class" dolts and it whistles right past the graveyard that there are still schools, universities pushing toxic drugs. Workplaces. New Normalized acceptance of civil liberty removal and lockdowns.
That not ONE elected politician will stand in front of a camera and mic and say directly:
"These injections do not work and are very dangerous. They should be banned."
264 planes fell out of the sky with corrupted rivets and the pilots have Mad Cow Disease, but golly those folks in Wyoming are living their lives..."
My comment was purely observational. It is not a prescription for action or inaction. I'm well aware of schools, etc, and of being locked out of most of the venues I used to perform or teach in for the past 2 years. And I haven't been passive about it at all.
Sure. Let me explain.
"Planned compliance of three in ten isn’t evidence of the psychology of totalitarianism."
A summary premise that I disagree with.
And since Chris buttresses his theme with a very similar "regular Joes don't wear masks at sportsball games!" I thought I would pick up where that logic falls apart within the premise of the piece.
Apologies. I was trying to discuss it within the larger context or theme of the post.
The premise of the piece also had to do with class. And it has been my experience that compliance does go along class lines. As do most things in the US (and elsewhere). So that's a discussion worth having.
Okay, Great!
So Chris's premise seems to be that b/c class war, "planned compliance" and stuff that totalitarianism did not happen.
And also, because they backed off, that somehow erases what did happen.
And that b/c it didn't happen in Wyoming as opposed to say Australia or Canada, that see? No totalitarianism.
Do you concur?
To me this like saying, The Ford Pinto is dangerous because it only has an AM Radio.
It feels like a giant diversion.
I don't think he's saying "totalitarianism didn't happen." And if he is, why don't you take it up with him?
Fantastic!
I’m looking forward to reading stories of another 120 million vaccines ordered just for the babies ends up in our land fills.
Oh dear god yes. Although Moderna and Pfizer will still get paid for the trash, sadly.
“ My impression is that a quarter to a third of the population locked arms with them and fought proudly for their fear performance, while another third-plus went along to get along, and the balance — especially outside the Blue Zones — just completely ignored the whole mess.”
That’s pretty much in line with the population sorting Desmet finds.
Creepy counter argument: here in the UK we had for several months an event every Thursday where people would come out at 8 p.m. and clap, bang pots and so on. That was very popular.
Converting 1/3 of society to a new mania -- not necessary a majority -- accords well with some formulations of "mass formation psychosis" that I've read.
But it is relevant and helpful to add your point that selection into this group during Covid was not very random, but follows pre-existing class, cultural and political divides fairly closely.
Was the Jonestown cult also more likely to recruit from specific parts of society, or was that more of a mix?
I have also noted in the D.C. area a lot of residual mask wearing among working class black people. Strength of D party affiliation might be a key factor. The white educated Chevy Chase crowd still worships at the alter of Covid.
Interesting; in my affluent blue state suburb the remnant of mask wearers (under 5%) tend to be 50+ women. I have had a special interest in African American covid response - particularly after they had the good sense to martial, by far, the lowest vax uptake among any ethnic demographic. Seemed to me that they were very slow to "accept" the covid op - back in the spring of 2020; about a year later there was that hip hop female artist who made a big stir by strongly urging people to NOT vax; however she did at the same time urge mask wearing; and it was at that point that I observed a big surge in Af Amer mask wearing that continued for a long period. That could be more "key" tho, DC may be a special case.
I totally agree with you--formation psychosis with all its malignant forms of expression is a class phenomenon not a mass phenomenon. I had similar experiences to yours in the summer of 2020 driving from Northern CA to Pennsylvania, and I've traveled constantly by car and air since then. It's not ordinary Americans who are generating what you aptly call a "calculated, organized campaign to inculcate fear", it's a top-down phenomenon. I was amused in the summer of 2020 to be forced by the State of Indiana to "risk my life" by pushing the filthy button on their turnpike cash collection machines to pay the pitiful 50 cent toll (or whatever it was) in order to drive through the state on its very badly maintained road. Thousands of other motorists had touched that button in the last hour, but the State of Indiana was willing to spread "deadly" Covid across the entire United States by making us touch those buttons so they could collect their miserable pittance of a toll? What a complete joke. The Covid Emperor has had no clothes from the very beginning.
Bud Lite is like making love in a canoe. It's fucking close to water. Congratulations on still being able to get trashed on Bud Lite. It means you're not a lush probably, or that you could box 103 lbs. in Mexico if you wanted.
Excellent points! But I do believe that some countries and localities fell further into the mass formation hole than others. Perhaps Desmet’s experience in Belgium resembles more what he describes in his book. I am placing his book onto the to-read list.
Enjoyed this post. Once a very tall friend and I went to a Cubs game and sat in the outfield bleachers with our two girlfriends between us. The center fielder finished his warmup and gently threw the ball directly at my forehead (not intentionally of course). My tall friend leaped over the two girls between us and the ball hit his palm in front of my hands and dropped back out onto the field. Unforgivable. Regarding the mass formation, why is there such a strong correlation between being brainwashed and exhibiting authoritarian behavior? Are the easily brainwashed defaulted to authoritarian tendencies or are the authoritarians more susceptible to brainwashing? I guess it could be both.