Hoe Oekraïense- en Amerikaanse 'Hofjoden' Gebruikt Worden 24

De Vlaamse hoogleraar klinische psychologie Mattias Desmet schrijft in zijn opzienbarende boek The Psychology of Totalitarianism (2022) dat hij  na 2017 toen hij voor het eerst notities opschreef over wat hij rondom zich zag gebeuren:

more and more references to totalitarianism appeared in my diary. They spun into longer and longer threads that organically connected with other areas of my academic interests. For example, the psychological problem of totalitarianism touched upon a crisis that had erupted in the scientific world in 2005, a theme that I explored extensively in my doctoral dissertation.

Sloppiness, errors, biased conclusions, and even outright fraud had become so prevalent in scientific research that a staggeringly high percentage of research papers — up to 85 percent in some fields — reached radically wrong conclusions. And the most fascinating thing of all, from a psychological point of view: Most researchers were utterly convinced they were conducting their research more or less correctly. Somehow, they failed to realize that their research was not bringing them closer to the facts but instead was creating a fictitious new reality. 

This, of course, is a serious problem, especially for contemporary societies that place their faith in science as the most reliable way of understanding the world. Furthermore, the foregoing problem is directly related to the phenomenon of totalitarianism. In fact, this is precisely what Arendt exposes: The undercurrent of totalitarianism consists of blind belief in a kind of statistical-numerical ‘scientific fiction’ that shows ‘radical contempt for facts’: ‘The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.’ 

Het desastreuze feit dat voor de massamedia het verschil tussen 'fact and fiction' niet meer bestaat blijkt uit het werk van bestsellerauteur Geert Mak, die meer dan eens publiekelijk heeft gesuggereerd dat hij en zijn mede-chroniqueurs niet de 'moed' bezitten om te streven naar de waarheid, niets dan de waarheid. Als multimiljonair begeert hij geld en roem, die voor hem uiteindelijk belangrijker zijn dan integriteit en persoonlijke verantwoordelijkheid. Maar omdat zijn geboorteland en het milieu waarin hij opgroeide kleinburgerlijk waren en nog steeds zijn, én de taaie middenklasse zijn publiek vormt, is hem zijn opportunisme en conformisme nooit kwalijk genomen, zelfs niet zijn halve waarheden en aperte leugens. Mak’s beschrijvingen schampen de werkelijkheid, en missen daardoor de kern van de zaak. Het leest allemaal lekker weg, maar laat geen blijvende impressie achter, zo valt mij op wanneer ik lezers van zijn boeken daarnaar vraag. Hij bespeelt de gevoelens van het publiek, en bevredigt  de verlangens naar hoop, rust en orde in deze chaotische eindtijd van het neoliberale consumptiesysteem, waarin het individu van alles en iedereen vervreemd is geraakt, en wel omdat het geen moraliteit meer bezit, geen houvast. De functie van Mak, en alle andere Makkianen van de mainstream, werd driekwart eeuw geleden als volgt gekenschetst door de grote Amerikaanse socioloog C. Wright Mills in diens essay De massamedia en de publieke opinie:

Het doel van de opinie-organisatoren is om de bevolking in een voortdurende staat van emotionele onderworpenheid te houden; dit is belangrijker dan het opdringen van bepaalde overtuigingen. Immers, als het maar eenmaal gelukt is om een mentaliteit van volgzaamheid en gehoorzaamheid te kweken, is het niet moeilijk meer om de mensen te doen geloven en te doen voelen wat men maar wil. Het gaat de organisatoren om méér dan bepaalde opvattingen en emoties: zij proberen de fundamentele ideologische gerichtheid van de mensen gelijk te schakelen. En zij willen dit op massale schaal bereiken; zij willen de hele bevolking ideologisch gelijkschakelen, opdat iedereen maar zal denken zoals van hem verlangd wordt dat hij denkt. De op die manier uitgeoefende druk werkt ‘verdovend’ — het geïsoleerde individu ondergaat die druk aan alle kanten en in alle mogelijke opzichten. Alle macht en al het maatschappelijk initiatief werkt in één richting: van boven naar beneden. 

Met de massamedia alleen is nog geen massamaatschappij gegeven. Het idee impliceert dat massa’s mensen deel hebben aan maatschappelijke activiteiten, maar dat die deelname alleen formeel en passief is. Actie en opinie zijn weer één, maar beide worden streng gecontroleerd door de gemonopoliseerde media. De machthebbers verschaffen de opinies en de middelen waarmee die gerealiseerd kunnen worden. Mensen bestaan in de mediamarkten alleen als massa; hun acties verlopen parallel omdat hun opinies parallel verlopen, en hun opinies zijn parallel omdat ze alle uit één bron afkomstig zijn: die van de media. 

Maar de waanzin van het systeem is momenteel zo hoog opgelopen dat er overal en op elk niveau als het ware tectonische verschuivingen optreden. Niet allereerst op politiek gebied, maar juist op sociaal, economsich en cultureel gebied. Professor Desmet:

The poor quality of scientific research reveals a more fundamental problem: Our scientific worldview has substantial shortcomings, the consequences of which extend far beyond the field of academic research. These shortcomings are also the origin of a profound collective unease, which, in recent decades, has become increasingly palpable in our society. People’s view of the future is now tainted with pessimism and lack of perspective, more so everyday. Should civilization not be washed away by rising sea levels, then it certainly will be swept away by refugees. The Grand Narrative of society — the story of the Enlightenment — no longer leads to the optimism and positivism of yesteryear, to put it mildly. Much of the population is trapped in almost complete social isolation; we see a remarkable increase in absenteeism due to mental suffering; an unprecedented proliferation in the use of psychotropic drugs; a burnout epidemic that paralyzes entire companies and government institutions. 

In 2019, this predicament was clearly perceptible in my own professional environment. I saw so many colleagues around me drop out from work due to psychological problems, hindering the capacity to perform even basic day-to-day work. For example, that year, it took me nearly nine months to obtain a signature on a contract that was required for me to get started on a research project. The university departments that had to review the contract and grant their approval were dealing with so much absenteeism that there was always someone on sick leave due to mental suffering, so that the contract simply didn’t get finalized. During that period, all social stress indicators rose exponentially. Anyone familiar with systems theory knows what this means: The system is heading for a tipping point. It is on the verge of reorganizing itself and seeking a new equilibrium. 

At the end of December 2019... I ventured to make a small prediction in the company of friends: One of these days, we will wake up in a different society. This intuitive premonition even enticed me to take action. A few days later, I went to the bank to pay off the mortgage on my house. Whether or not that was a wise thing to do depends entirely on your perspective. Maybe it wasn’t wise from a purely economic or tax point of view, but that was of no concern to me. First and foremost, I wanted my sovereignty back; I did not want to feel indebted to and complicit in a financial system that, in my view, played a part in the social impasse that was about to occur. The bank manager listened to my story; he even agreed with me. But he insisted on knowing why I felt so determined about it. Even after we spoke for an hour and a half, it wasn’t enough to fill the emptiness of his question. I ended up leaving him wondering, well past the closing time of his branch office, which was to be shut down forever shortly thereafter.

Desmet wijst erop dat de al lang geleden voorspelde ‘tectonische verschuivingen,’ opgeroepen door de heersende technocratie zelf, natuurlijk ingrijpende gevolgen heeft waardoor: 

in February 2020 — the global village began to shake on its foundations. The world was presented with a foreboding crisis, the consequences of which were incalculable. In a matter of weeks, everyone was gripped by the story of a virus — a story that was undoubtedly based on facts. But on which ones? We caught a first glimpse of ‘the facts’ via footage from China. A virus forced the Chinese government to take the most draconian measures. Entire cities were quarantined, new hospitals were built hastily, and individuals in white suits disinfected public spaces. Here and there, rumors emerged that the totalitarian Chinese government was overreacting and that the new virus was no worse than the flu. Opposite opinions were also floating around: that it must be much worse than it looked, because otherwise no government would take such radical measures. At that point, everything still felt far removed from our shores and we assumed that the story did not allow us to gauge the full extent of the facts. 

Until the moment that the virus arrived in Europe. We now began recording infections and deaths for ourselves. We saw images of overcrowded emergency rooms in Italy, convoys of army vehicles transporting corpses, morgues full of coffins. The renowned scientists at Imperial College confidently predicted that without the most drastic measures, the virus would claim tens of millions of lives. In Bergamo, sirens blared day and night, silencing any voice in public space that dared to doubt the facts. From then on, story and facts seemed to merge and uncertainty gave way to certainty. 

The unimaginable became reality: We witnessed the abrupt pivot of nearly every country on Earth to follow China’s example and place huge populations of people under de facto house arrest, a situation for which the term ‘lockdown’ was devised. A surreal silence descended — ominous and liberating at the same time. The sky without airplanes, traffic arteries without rushing blood; the dust of chasing vain desires settling down, and in India, the air became so pure that, for the first time in thirty years, in some places the Himalayas became once more visible against the horizon.

It didn’t stop there. We also saw a remarkable transfer of power. Expert virologists were called upon as George Orwell’s pigs — the smartest animals on the farm — to replace the unreliable politicians. They would run the animal farm with accurate (‘scientific’) information in a time of plague. But these experts soon turned out to have quite a few common, human flaws. In their statistics and graphs, they made mistakes that even ‘ordinary’ people would not easily make. It went so far that, at one point, they counted all deaths as coronavirus deaths, including people who had died of, say, heart attacks. 

Nor did they live up to their promises. These experts pledged that the Gates to Freedom would reopen after two doses of the vaccine, but when the time came, things didn’t change and they came up with the need for a third. And just like Orwell’s pigs, they sometimes changed the rules overnight, inconspicuously. First, the animals had to comply with the measures because the number of sick people could not exceed the capacity of the health care system (flatten the curve). But one day, everyone woke up to discover writing on the walls stating that the measures were being extended because the virus had to be eradicated (crush the curve). Eventually, the rules changed so often that only the pigs seemed to know them. And even that was not so sure. 

Some people became suspicious. How is it possible that these experts make mistakes that even laymen wouldn’t make? Aren’t they scientists, the kind of people who took us to the moon and gave us the internet? They can’t be that stupid, can they? What is the endgame? Their recommendations take us further down the road in the same direction: With each new step, we lose more of our freedoms, until we reach a final destination where human beings are reduced to QR codes in a large technocratic medical experiment. 

That’s how most people eventually became certain. Very certain. Yet of the most opposing things. Some people were convinced that we were dealing with a killer virus, others that it was nothing more than the seasonal flu, and still others believed that the virus did not even exist and that we were dealing with a worldwide conspiracy. And there were also a few who continued to tolerate uncertainty and kept asking themselves: How can we adequately understand what is going on in our society?

The coronavirus crisis did not come out of the blue. It fits into a series of increasingly desperate and self-destructive societal responses to objects of fear: terrorists, global warming, coronavirus. Whenever a new object of fear arises in society, there is only one response and one defense in our current way of thinking: increased control. The fact that the human being can tolerate only a certain amount of control is completely overlooked. Coercive control leads to fear and fear leads to more coercive control. Just like that, society falls victim to a vicious circle that inevitably leads to totalitarianism, which means to extreme government control, eventually resulting in the radical destruction of both the psychological and physical integrity of human beings.

We have to consider the current fear and psychological discomfort to be a problem in itself, a problem that cannot be reduced to a virus or any other ‘object of threat.’ Our fear originates on a completely different level — that of the failure of the Grand Narrative of our society. This is the narrative of mechanistic science, in which man is reduced to a biological organism. A narrative that ignores the psychological, symbolic, and ethical dimensions of human beings and thereby has a devastating effect at the level of human relationships. Something in this narrative causes man to become isolated from his fellow man, and from nature; something in it causes man to stop resonating with the world around him; something in it turns the human being into an atomized subject. It is precisely this atomized subject that, according to Arendt, is the elementary building block of the totalitarian state. 

Totalitarianism is not a historical coincidence. In the final analysis, it is the logical consequence of mechanistic thinking and the delusional belief in the omnipotence of human rationality. As  such, totalitarianism is the defining feature of the Enlightenment tradition. Several authors have postulated this, but it hasn’t yet been subject to a psychological analysis. This book fills that gap. We will analyze the symptom of totalitarianism and situate it within the broader context of the social phenomena of which it forms a part.

De lezers van mijn weblog weten dat Mattias Desmet niet de eerste is geweest die waarschuwde voor de huidige demasqué van de westerse consumptiebeschaving, maar hij is wel één van de weinige academici in de lage landen die tracht het gevaarlijk lage niveau van de Makkianen omhoog te krikken. Dat dit absoluut noodzakelijk is, blijkt uit onder andere het feit dat het 'weke sentiment' in Geert Mak’s werk, zoals Michaël Zeeman dit noemde, niet langer meer de toon zal blijven bepalen in wat in Nederland doorgaat voor het ‘publieke debat,’ dat geen debat is, en al helemaal niet publiek, gezien dezelfde ‘talking heads’ van de ‘corporate media.’ Er  is weinig te verwachten van de Nederlandse journalistiek wanneer de VPRO-televisie-redacteur Chris Kijne al in 2008, op  het hoogtepunt van de kredietcrisis, liet weten dat:

Voor ons journalisten was het natuurlijk niet nieuw dat Wouter Bos ons niet altijd de waarheid vertelde. Wel is het nieuw dat ik op dit moment even niet meer weet of ik wel even hard als vroeger mijn best moet doen om hem die waarheid te laten vertellen. Of er inderdaad niet even een hoger belang is dan 'de waarheid, niets dan de waarheid.'

Bovendien is het typerend dat de Nederlandse commerciële pers nooit aandacht heeft besteed aan bijvoorbeeld het boek Pandemie van de angst. Op stap naar een totalitaire maatschappij? dat al medio 2021 verscheen. Dit boek, geschreven door de politicoloog Kees van der Pijl, oud hoogleraar internationale betrekkingen aan de Universiteit van Sussex, begint met de stelling:

dat de maatschappij zoals we die kennen, het mondiale kapitalisme met zijn thuisbasis het Westen, in een revolutionaire crisis is beland. De heersende oligarchie, die inmiddels in alle landen van de wereld de macht uitoefent, heeft na jarenlange voorbereiding de uitbraak van het SARS-COV-2-virus en de eraan toegeschreven luchtwegaandoeningen Covid-19 aangrepen om begin 2020 een wereldwijde noodtoestand uit te roepen. 

https://deblauwetijger.com/product/kees-van-der-pijl-pandemie-van-de-angst/

Maar omdat dit een dissidente visie is moet die gecensureerd blijven, ook al heeft Van der Pijl als gerenommeerd academicus zijn stelling met talloze feiten toegelicht. Meer dissidente informatie de volgende keer.  

De EU en de VS steunen Oekraïense neo-nazi-troepen.