Mass Formation Hypnosis Disorder
Well, gosh, this is kind of embarrassing. For approximately the last two and a half years, I have been documenting, analyzing, and occasionally satirizing the so-called “New Normal,” i.e., the new, pathologized, official ideology that has been rolled out all across the planet by the global-capitalist ruling classes under the pretext of combating an apocalyptic pandemic … or at least that’s what I thought was going on.
As it turns out, I was totally wrong.
Apparently, the global-capitalist ruling establishment (or “GloboCap,” as I often refer to the unaccountable, supranational network of global corporations, banks, governments, and non-governmental governing entities that unaccountably govern our world) has not been rolling out a new official ideology, or pathologized form of totalitarianism, or not intentionally in any event.
No one has been methodically gaslighting anyone, or terrorizing anyone with propaganda, or censoring or segregating anyone, or coercing anyone to get needlessly “vaccinated” with any sort of dangerous experimental drugs, or consciously conspiring with anyone to do anything.
Everyone has simply been suffering from Mass Formation Hypnosis Disorder!
I know, you probably find this hard to believe, especially because I have been making precisely the opposite case for over two years now, but I saw it on the Alex Jones show! Mattias Desmet, a professor from Belgium, and “the world’s leading expert” on this new disorder, explained it all in meticulous detail.
According to Desmet, the way this disorder works is, people feel “lonely and isolated,” which makes them feel angry, but they don’t have anything or anyone to unleash their anger on, so they form a mass and hypnotize each other, and invent a new fanatical ideology that they all fanatically hypnotically believe in, which, at that point, their rulers, who are also hypnotized, have no choice but to go full-totalitarian, and hypnotize everyone even more, because that is what the hypnotized mass demands, so that they can finally unleash their anger on someone, i.e., those who have managed to avoid being hypnotized (one assumes with some special anti-hypnosis technology, but I don’t think Professor Desmet explained that part).
And, OK, before you hypnosis deniers start sending me emails denying the power of hypnosis to totally totalitarianize society, listen to Professor Desmet explain how surgeons in Belgium are routinely performing open-heart surgery on hypnotized patients without any anesthetic whatsoever! They saw right through their breastbones with a sternum saw, ratchet open their rib cages with a sternal retractor, and start slicing into the patients’ hearts … and these patients don’t even flinch or anything!
He has witnessed this with his own two eyes!
Or, all right, it seems he hasn’t actually witnessed this with his own two eyes. It seems he was actually just lying when he said that, which he confessed to in a lengthy Facebook post (after people pointed out that he had lied) in which he publicly wondered why he had lied, and then rationalized his lie with various excuses, and posted several misleading links in an attempt to suggest that he hadn’t actually lied, despite the fact that he had just admitted he did, and just generally tried to muddy the waters with a lot of awkward psychobabble.
But I don’t mean to cast aspersions. Professor Desmet is, after all, “the world’s leading expert” on “Mass Formation Psychosis” or simply “Mass Formation” or whatever you want to call this fairy tale that he and others have been peddling, not just on clown shows like Alex Jones’, but to massive audiences like Tucker Carlson’s …
Seriously now, I have been aware of Desmet’s theory for some time, but I had mostly held my tongue about it because (a) I considered it relatively harmless, and (b) I’m generally reluctant to tear another vocal opponent of the New Normal a new asshole. We get enough of that from the New Normal “fact checkers.” However, unfortunately, this “mass hypnosis” gibberish has gained enough traction that it has now become dangerous, so I need to do a little new-asshole-tearing. (Fanatical fans of Professor Desmet will probably want to navigate away at this point.)
Ready? OK, here we go.
What we’ve been experiencing for the past two and a half years — and arguably the last six and a half years — is not the result of “mass hypnosis.” The global-capitalist ruling establishment is destabilizing and restructuring societies, globally. The people that staged and published this photograph in January 2020 and lied to the masses about the Covid death rate (i.e., 3.4%) a few months later were not mass-hypnotized. They knew what they were doing.
Likewise, the people who went New Normal (i.e., the vast majority of most societies) were not “mass hypnotized” or in some kind of trance. They were simply looking out for themselves by conforming to the new official “reality.” This is standard behavior in totalitarian systems, and cults, and even non-totalitarian systems. I explained it this way in a recent interview …
“Totalitarianism can be imposed on any society if the government, or whatever structure rules it, controls the essential elements of power (i.e., the military, the police, the media, the culture industry, etc.). Once the transition to totalitarianism begins, you can count on roughly two thirds of the society either embracing it or acquiescing to it, not because they are in some vulnerable psychological state, but rather because they correctly perceive which way the wind is blowing and they don’t want to challenge the totalitarian regime and be punished for doing so. They are not hypnotized or under any other kind of spell. It’s pure survival instinct. … Not to put too fine a point on it, but most people are either perfectly content to conform to whatever type of society those in power impose on them as long as their basic needs are met, or they are not content [to do so], but they are cowards, so they stand by in silence. I don’t mean that as a judgment or an insult. Cowardice and the ability to abandon one’s principles (or not having any principles in the first place) are very positive traits to have if your goal is survival. When a society goes totalitarian or is otherwise occupied and radically transformed, it’s the rebels and dissidents who get lined up against the wall and shot, not the cowards and collaborators.”
I realize how harsh that sounds. It’s meant to, and at the same time, it isn’t. We are, all of us, capable of such cowardice and betrayal of our fundamental principles, given the right set of circumstances. Everyone has a breaking point. If you haven’t experienced yours yet … well, I hope you never do.
The point is, we are dealing with questions of power, not a psychological condition. Desmet’s theory pathologizes the political essence of totalitarianism, just like the official New Normal narrative pathologizes and displaces its political character, rendering it immune to political opposition, and rendering its opponents “conspiracy theorists,” or “paranoid,” or otherwise divorced from “reality,” thus stripping us of political legitimacy.
In this “Mass Formation” fairy tale, the political conflict disappears. The totalitarian system and those who resist it are replaced by a psychiatrist and a psychiatric patient. In this story, there is no one and nothing to fight. We just need to find a “cure” or a “treatment” for this bizarre new psychiatric disorder that keeps causing the masses to hypnotize each other and invent some new fanatical totalitarian ideology in order to alleviate the pent-up frustration caused by their loneliness and isolation by unleashing their rage on unhypnotized persons!
Or whatever … maybe I don’t understand the nuances of “Mass Formation” theory. I’m not a professional psychologist or anything. I’m sure one or two of Professor Desmet’s fans will be happy to explain it all to me, if they’re not too busy undergoing open-heart surgery without anesthetic. I wouldn’t want to interfere with that!
Addendum, September 12, 2022 — It appears Professor Desmet has been telling the “doctors performing open-heart surgery on hypnotized patients with no anesthesia” lie for some time, or at least trying to. This video is purportedly from 2020. An English translation, provided by a Dutch colleague, is below.
Desmet: At the University Hospital in Liege you can see, if they let you in, you can see how, with a relatively simple hypnotic procedure, a patient is rendered so desensitized to his own pain that they can cut into his body with no problems. Professor [Marie-Elisabeth] Faymonville conducts a couple of hundred of these surgeries annually.
Q: But heart surgeries?
Desmet: Sometimes … very extensive.
Q: This is not a small incision.
Desmet: No, if someone is allergic to chemical, biochemical sedatives, then they can [unintelligible] perform surgeries. I thought that they indeed sometimes performed open-heart surgeries where they cut through the breastbone. Under hypnosis. But I wrote about this in an article and someone challenged it. They thought that at least a local anasthetic is needed. I do not think so. I tried to contact Marie Faymonville, but I wasn't able to reach her. But, in any case, one can perform very extensive surgeries, purely under hypnosis.
Links:
Professor Marie-Elisabeth Faymonville, European Society of Hypnosis Congress, 2017
Health: Mind over Medicine, TIME Magazine, 2006
I've added an addendum to this essay (see above) as it appears Professor Desmet has been telling the “doctors performing open-heart surgery on hypnotized patients with no anesthetic” lie for some time, or at least trying to. I'm sorry, it is clear from the comments that many of my readers are devoted fans of Professor Desmet, but when a person lies like this, gets caught lying, weasels out of it, then tells the same lie two years later on the Alex Jones Show (and who knows where else), gets caught lying again, confesses, tries to weasel out of it again, and posts a bunch of misleading links in a desperate attempt to convince people he wasn't lying in the first place (whenever that was, exactly) ... well, I think there is probably a professional-psychology-type term for such a person.
I realize and appreciate that many people are avid fans of Prof. Desmet and have become adherents of "Mass Formation" theory. But try to exert a little intellectual discipline. When Desmet and Malone talk about the masses being hypnotized (which Desmet does repeatedly), they mean what they say. The most common definition of hypnosis is "a mental state like sleep, in which a person's thoughts can be easily influenced by someone else." (Look the word up. It means what it means.) Of course mass hysteria, mob behavior, and other such phenomenon are real. But that is not hypnosis. I will provide one more example of what is not hypnosis. Here in Berlin, hardly anyone is wearing masks currently. In the Autumn, when the new "restrictions" go into effect, the majority of people will put their masks back on and resume harassing people not wearing masks ... not because they will have been re-hypnotized, but rather, because they will be following orders. They will conform to official "reality" again, despite that fact that they just spent the Summer living in a different, contradictory "reality." They will repeat the official propaganda that "makes sense" of why they have to wear the masks again. They will do this in order to not be punished, fired from the jobs, ostracized by their friends, and called horrible names by the government and the media. This is not the behavior of hypnotized people. It is, however, the behavior of people in cults and totalitarian societies. Their behavior is motivated by fear, and they are absolutely right to be afraid. If they disobey, they'll be punished, and they know it. They are not in a trance or a sleep-like state. They are perceiving the dynamics of their society accurately. They will conform to the changing, contradictory "realities" because they understand the penalties for refusing to do so. There is nothing wrong with these people's minds. At the moment, they are not wearing their masks because they have not been ordered to wear their masks. When they are ordered to wear their masks again, they will do so, because they have been ordered to do so. Just like we let ourselves and our families be x-rayed, fondled, and humiliated by the "security personnel" at the airport, not because we have all been hypnotized into believing that these procedures keep us safe, but because we want to get on the fucking plane.