Do I have to once again talk about Mattias Desmet? It seems so.
Kevin Barrett interviewed John Waters and Mr. Waters once again stated that the idea that Desmet is blaming the victims is nonsense. This is somewhat ironic in that Barrett was talking about how the deep state wants to suppress conspiracy theories and therefore there was an idea to infiltrate the conspiracy thinkers by putting out “beneficial cognitive diversity” to dilute conspiracy inquiries. This actually explains what The Psychology of Totalitarianism is.
I think where Waters misses the mark is that he supposes that Desmet agrees that propaganda is being used to make people fearful and willing to tattle on their neighbors for not obeying medical directives. Yes and no. Because the trick Desmet pulls— and if we see his book as an example of “beneficial cognitive diversity,” then we can see this as a psychological trick to steer the reader— the trick he pulls is to say that the propaganda originated from we, the people. We in a sense wanted it and created it and enabled the manipulators.
Let’s see if we can unravel this.
Notice that Part I of Desmet’s book in entitled, “Science and Its Psychological Effects.” It’s in this part that Desmet works to establish that we’re all mechanistic thinkers, and this propensity has lead to our atomization and confusion and fear, prior to any propaganda and prior to any Covid. In the Introduction, on page 3, Desmet says, “Much of the population is trapped in almost complete social isolation….” This is due, he says, to the Great Narrative of society, the story of the Enlightenment, and it’s been happening for decades if not centuries.
Are you trapped in almost complete social isolation? Are any of your friends, family, or acquaintances trapped in it? No? Then why is Desmet setting this up? Because, frankly, he wants to blame the victim: us. We did it.
On page 7 Desmet says,
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.
I wonder if people, when they read Desmet, pay attention to what he’s saying? First of all, we haven’t established that everyone is a mechanistic thinker, as Desmet will go on to “prove,” and secondly exactly who believes in the omnipotence of human rationality? I don’t. I know reason has its limits and can’t provide real meaning for our lives; we discover that meaning in the many relationships we have with others, some of which can be quite profound. And then: “totalitarianism is the defining feature of the Enlightenment tradition.” What? America was founded by brilliant people who were steeped in the Enlightenment tradition and the supreme value for them was individual liberty and freedom from undue state control: the opposite of totalitarianism. Perhaps some readers of Desmet don’t understand that here Desmet is confusing Arendt’s analysis of the logic of a single idea— such “as purity of race”— with so-called Enlightenment ideology, which he then morphs into “mechanistic thinking.” Is this confusion deliberate?
In his chapter on “Science and Ideology” Desmet says that we blindly trust in scientific ideology, but is this really true? In a healthy science there’s debate over data, over theories, over experiments, etc. It’s only when this debate becomes censored— as it has, for example, in the area of vaccines and regarding CO2 warming theory— that the general population is steered toward “official” narratives and don’t have access to other perspectives. This isn’t caused by we, the people. It’s caused by censorship that stifles free and open debate, whose purpose is to rationally arrive at the truth. But wait— won’t this Enlightenment rationality lead to totalitarianism?
Perhaps some are beginning to see the insidiousness of Desmet’s ideas, if they haven’t already.
On page 46, Desmet states that mankind is hopelessly seduced by the mechanistic ideology. This is part of his program: to prove that we are, all of us, mechanistic thinkers. Are we? We use technology, yes, and it’s provided many benefits as well as perils. We all recognize this; virtually every one of us knows that we have to get a grip on the sane use of technology. None of us here below in “the masses” is a starry-eyed technocrat. But Desmet has to say we are because he has to prove that the mechanistic thinking lead to fear and anxiety and that’s what really lead to mass formation; furthermore, the fear and anxiety weren’t induced by a massive censorship and propaganda campaign but arose naturally from our own fear and anxiety that lead us to, for example, call upon the “smartest pigs in the room” (as Desmet says,) the virologists, to save us from Covid. But this isn’t what happened at all. What happened is that safe and effective early treatment for Covid was deliberately and viciously censored, and not because we, the people, “asked for it” because we put our faith in mechanistic thinking.
On page 55, he writes, of the Covid modelling:
The interesting thing is that you’d expect the public narrative and measures to be adjusted … as soon as the models they’re based on are proven incorrect beyond doubt. But that’s not what happened at all. Neither public health officials nor the population dialed it back. Something caused society to collectively continue reacting in the same, frenetic way, as if it were acting out a pressing psychological need. [Emphasis in original.]
See what’s happening? Did Desmet forget about the huge protests against the restrictive measures? Did he forget that it was the public health officials who continually insisted on restrictive measures? Did he forget about the wide support for the Canadian trucker’s protest? Yes, he did, because he says it was as if society itself, even independent of health dictates from above, were acting out “a pressing psychological need.”
I don’t want to beat a dead horse but I believe that many people are reading the words Desmet says but not looking at the underlying arguments. Desmet needs to prove that we’re all mechanistic thinkers and therefore defective, and that’s what caused mass formation. There was no conspiracy to induce fear and anxiety! Chapter 8, which argues against conspiracy, isn’t an anomaly: it’s the very heart of the book. Desmet’s book is the very “beneficial cognitive diversity” inserted to convince us of no conspiracy that Barrett spoke of.
I could go on but to end, listen to this passage from page 63. Remember, Desmet has already demonstrated that we’re all mechanistic thinkers and have been long before Covid. Thus, the fear and anxiety and obedience during Covid were of our own making. Don’t believe he says that?
The fanatical belief [fanatical?] in the objectivity of measurements and numbers, which is typical of the mechanistic ideology, is not only unfounded, it is also dangerous. There arises a kind of mutual reinforcement between subjective biases and numbers …. Applied to the coronavirus crisis: A society saturated with fear and unease [prior to any Covid] selects from the myriad of numbers those that confirm its fear. The chosen numbers then reinforce the fear.
So then, there was no conspiracy: we merely chose the data that confirmed our fears. There was no massive censorship/propaganda campaign to induce fear and destroy livelihoods and liberty, or if there was, it was because we, the people, asked for it because we wanted our fear to be controlled.
Read the book.
Well-reasoned, Jim. I was noticing that Political Ponerology has several episodes analyzing PT. Here are some quotes he includes, which I think prove your point but he seems to agree with:
For Desmet, “The whole of society has a part in [totalitarianism’s] rise in one way or another; every person bears a responsibility in it” (PT, p. 139). "... the people most responsible for the early stages of ponerogenesis are not evil per se. They are just weak. And that weakness provides the opening for unimaginable evil." (PP)
"Finally, a note on the utopian attractor function of ideology, as the motivating force for the “change agents” bringing totalitarian revolution. The vagueness of the notion is its greatest strength—like a societal Rorschach test. The masses latch on to it as the means to end their anxiety, vent their aggression, and achieve the “justice” they feel they have been denied. The attractor is simple: a better world, otherwise undefined." (PP)
Thought these were interesting for making your point more pointed. https://ponerology.substack.com/p/the-psychology-of-totalitarianism-8a8.
Please read Rene Girard and the Traditionalists for a deeper analysis of why Desmet is right about Enlightenment rationalism producing the conditions he describes. (The conspirators are hyper-rationalists duping the spiritually-bereft multitudes.)