Our Collective Trauma is the Road to Tyranny

Posted on September 17, 2023 by Reid Mukai

American society spawns trauma and this trauma expresses itself in a variety of self-destructive pathologies, including the erosion of democracy and rise of neo-fascism.

By Chris Hedges

Source: ScheerPost

Corporate capitalism, defined by the cult of the self and the ruthless exploitation of the natural world and all forms of life for profit, thrives on the fostering of chronic psychological and physical disorders. The diseases and pathologies of despair — alienation, high blood pressure, diabetes, anxiety, depression, morbid obesity, mass shootings (now almost two per day on average), domestic and sexual violence, drug overdoses (over 100,000 per year) and suicide (49,000 deaths in 2022) — are the consequences of a deeply traumatized society.

The core traits of psychopaths — superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, manipulation and the inability to feel remorse or guilt — are celebrated. The virtues of empathy, compassion and self-sacrifice, are belittled, neglected and crushed. The professions that sustain community, such as teaching, manual labor, the arts, journalism and nursing, are underpaid and overworked. The professions that exploit, such as those in high finance, Big Pharma, Big Oil and information technology, are lavished with prestige, money and power.

“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane,” Eric Fromm writes in The Sane Society.

The classic works on trauma by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Gabor Maté and Dr. Judith Herman state bluntly that what is accepted as normal behavior in a corporate society is at war with basic human needs and our psychological and physical health. Huge segments of the American public, especially the tens of millions of people who have been discarded and marginalized, endure chronic trauma. Barbara Ehrenreich in “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” describes the life of the working poor as one long “emergency.” This trauma is as destructive to us personally as it is socially and politically. It leaves us in a state of dysphoria where confusion, agitation, emptiness and loneliness define our lives. Whole segments of American society, especially the poor, have been rendered superfluous and invisible. As Dr. van der Kolk writes, “trauma is when we are not seen and known.”

“Our culture teaches us to focus on our personal uniqueness, but at a deeper level we barely exist as individual organisms,” Dr. van der Kolk notes.

Trauma numbs our capacity to feel. It fractures our self. It disconnects us from our bodies. It keeps us in a state of hyperarousal. It makes us confuse our desires, often artificially implanted by the consumer society, with our needs. Traumatized people view the world around them as hostile and dangerous. They lack a positive image of themselves and lose the capacity to trust. Many replace intimacy and love with sexual sadism, which is how we became a pornified culture. Trauma creates what the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton calls a “counterfeit” world defined by phantom enemies, lies and dark conspiracies. It negates a sense of purpose and a life of meaning.

Trauma, Dr. Herman writes, “impels people both to withdraw from close relationships and to seek them desperately.” It induces feelings of shame, guilt, and inferiority, she writes, “as well as the need to avoid reminders of the trauma that occurs in daily life. Trauma severely compromises the capacity for intimacy. Trauma can dramatically reduce focus to extremely limited goals, often a matter of hours or days.”

“If trauma entails a disconnection from the self, then it makes sense to say that we are being collectively flooded with influences that both exploit and reinforce trauma,” Dr. Maté writes. “Work pressures, multitasking, social media, news updates, multiplicities of entertainment sources — these all induce us to become lost in thoughts, frantic activities, gadgets, meaningless conversations. We are caught up in pursuits of all kinds that draw us on, not because they are necessary or inspiring or uplifting, or because they enrich or add meaning to our lives, but simply because they obliterate the present.”

Trauma also drives many to flee into the arms of those who are orchestrating the abuse.

Systematic and repetitive trauma, whether by a single abuser or a political system, destroys personal autonomy. The perpetrator becomes omnipotent. Resistance is accepted as futile. “The goal of the perpetrator is to instill in his victim not only fear of death but also gratitude for being allowed to live,” Dr. Herman writes. This trauma lays the foundation for the most insidious characteristic of all tyrannies, large and small. Total control. Prolonged trauma reduces its victims to a state of psychological infantilism. It conditions them to plead for their own enslavement.

“We are not content with negative obedience, not even with the most abject submission,” George Orwell wrote of the ruling “Inner Party” in his novel “1984.” “When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul.”

Christian fascism, the subject of my book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America,” preys on this trauma. It replicates systems of control common to all tyrannies, including cults. Christian fascists skillfully break down adherents, severing them from their families and communities. They manipulate their shame, despair, feelings of worthlessness and guilt – the byproducts of their trauma – to demand total obedience to the church leadership, who are almost always white and male. These leaders, supposedly spokespeople for God, cannot be questioned or criticized. The connecting tissue among the disparate militia groups, QAnon conspiracy theorists, anti-abortion activists, right-wing patriot organizations, Second Amendment advocates, neo-Confederates and Trump supporters that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 is not only this Christian fascism but trauma.

“Totalitarian governments demand confession and political conversion of their victims,” Dr. Herman writes. “Slaveholders demand gratitude from their slaves. Religious cults demand ritualized sacrifices as a sign of submission to the divine will of the leader. Perpetrators of domestic battery demand that their victims prove complete obedience and loyalty by sacrificing all other relationships. Sex offenders demand that their victims find sexual fulfillment in submission. Total control over another person is the power dynamic at the heart of pornography. The erotic appeal of this fantasy to millions of terrifyingly normal men fosters an immense industry in which women and children are abused, not in fantasy but in reality.”

Donald Trump is a perpetrator and savior. He personifies the callous indifference of patriarchy, wealth, privilege and power towards the vulnerable, as well as the promise that once his cultish followers surrender to him they will be protected. He inspires in equal measure fear and solace.

“People who embrace the small tyrannies are much more susceptible to embracing the large ones,” Dr. Herman told me. “When you have a political party that embraces the subordination of women, the subordination of people of color, the subordination of gender non-conforming people, and the subordination of non-Christians, then it’s not a party that embraces democracy. It’s a party that is looking for a fascist leader and is going to find one.”

In Dr. van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma,” he opens with stark statistics compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that “one in five Americans was sexually molested as a child; one in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body; and one in three couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grew up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of eight witnessed their mother being beaten or hit.”

The endemic trauma in American society, which is getting worse under the onslaught of the gig economy, pronounced social inequality, indiscriminate police violence, the climate crisis and the seizure of the political process and most institutions by corporations and the ruling oligarchs, is our most serious public health crisis. It has grave individual, social and political consequences.

“If trauma is truly a social problem,” Dr. Herman in “Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice” writes, “then recovery cannot simply be a private individual matter. The wounds of trauma are not merely those caused by the perception of violence and exploitation. The actions or inactions of bystanders, all those who are complicit in or who prefer not to know about the abuse or who blame the victims, often cause deeper wounds.” “Full healing,” she adds, “because it originates in a fundamental injustice, requires a full hearing within the community to repair through some measure of justice the trauma survivors have endured.”

You can see my recent two-part interview with Dr. Herman here and here.You can see my interview with Dr. Maté here.

“Recovery has to take place in relationships,” Dr. Herman said in my interview. “When people feel reconnected to their communities and re-accepted in their communities, then the shame is relieved and the isolation is relieved, and that really creates the platform for healing.”

The key is community. Not virtual communities. But communities where we can reconnect and see in our wounds the wounds of others. It requires access, without onerous medical bills, to mental health professionals. It requires dismantling the corporate structures of oppression. It demands a new ethic, one that values empathy and self-sacrifice. We must reject the cynicism, indifference and cult of the self that all tyrannies inculcate in those they dominate to keep them passive. We must reach out to our neighbors, especially those in distress and those who are demonized. We must uncouple from consumer society and turn away from the allure of our cultural narcissism.

The moral philosopher Bernard Williams argues that resentment and indignation are as important as empathy and connection to solidify social bonds. It is not only our own dignity we must protect, but the dignity of others. These “shared sentiments” he writes “bind people together in a community of feeling.” Acts of resistance around these “shared sentiments,” this “community of feeling,” establish ourselves as distinct, autonomous beings. We may not defeat these tyrannies, but by battling against them we free ourselves from the grip of the small and large tyrannies that deform American society.

The Covid narrative is insane and illogical…and maybe that’s no accident

Posted on January 14, 2022 by Reid Mukai

Maybe forcing people to believe your lies, even after you admit you’re lying, is the purest form of power.

By Kit Knightly

Source: Off-Guardian

Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.”
George Orwell, 1984

The “Covid pandemic” narrative is insane. That is long-established at this point, we don’t really need to go into how or why here. Read our back catalogue.

The rules are meaningless and arbitrary, the messaging contradictory, the very premise nonsensical.

Every day some new insanity is launched out into the world, and while many of us roll our eyes, raise our voices, or just laugh…many more accept it, believe it, allow it to continue.

Take the situation in Canada right now, where the government has enforced a vaccine mandate on healthcare workers, meaning in British Columbia alone over 3000 hospital staff were on unpaid leave by November 1st.

How have local governments responded to staff shortages?

They are asking vaccinated employees who have tested positive for Covid to work.

Whether or not you believe the test means anything, they notionally do. In the reality they try to sell us every day, testing positive means you are carrying a dangerous disease.

So they are requesting people allegedly carrying a “deadly virus” work, rather than letting perfectly healthy unvaccinated people simply have their jobs back.

This is insanity.

But could anything more perfectly illustrate the priorities of those running the game?

We already know it’s not about a virus, it’s not about protecting the health service and it’s not about saving lives. Every day the people running the “pandemic” admit as much by their actions, and even their words.

Rather, it seems to be about enforcing rules that make little to no sense, requiring conformity at the price of reason, drawing arbitrary lines in the sand and demanding people respect them, making people believe “facts” that are provably untrue.

But why? Why is the story of Covid irrational and contradictory? Why are we told on the one hand to be afraid, and on the other that there is nothing to be afraid of?

Why is the “pandemic” so completely insane?

You could argue that it’s simple happenstance. The by-product of a multi-focused evolving narrative, a story being told by a thousand authors all at once, each concerned with covering their own little patch of agenda. A car with multiple drivers fighting over a single steering wheel.

There’s probably some truth to that.

But it’s also true that control, true control, can only be achieved with a lie.

In clinical psychology one of the diagnostic signs of the psychopath is that they tell elaborate lies, compulsively. Many times they will tell a lie even if the truth would be more beneficial.

Nobody knows why they do this, but I have a theory, and it applies to the swarming groups of little rat minds running the sewers of power as much as it does any individual monstrosity.

If you want to control people, you need to lie to them, that’s the only way to guarantee you have power.

If you are standing in the road, and I yell “look out, there’s a car a coming”, and you move just as a car whips past, I will never know if you moved because I said so, or because there actually was a car.

If my interest is in making sure you don’t get hurt, this would not matter to me either way.

But, what if my only true aim is the gratification of watching you do what I say, simply because I said it?

…well, then I need to scream out a warning of a car that does not exist, and watch you dodge an imaginary threat. Or, indeed, tell you there is no car, and watch you get run over.

Only by doing this can I see my words mean more to you than perceivable reality, and only then do I know I’m truly in control.

You can never control people with the truth, because the truth has an existence outside yourself that cannot be altered or directed. It may be the truth itself that controls people, not you.

You can never force people to obey rules that make sense, because they may be obeying reason, not your force.

True power lies in making people afraid of something that does not exist, and making them abandon reason in the name of protecting themselves from the invented threat.

To guarantee you have control, you must make people see things that are not there, make people live in a reality you build around them, and force people to follow arbitrary, contradictory rules that change day by day.

To truly test their loyalty, their hypnosis, you could even tell them there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore, but they need to follow the rules anyway.

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe the story isn’t supposed to be believable. Maybe the rules aren’t meant to make sense, they are meant to be obeyed.

Maybe the more contradictory & illogical the regulations become, the more your compliance is valued.

Maybe if you can force a person to abandon their judgment in favour of your own, you have total control over their reality.

We started with an Orwell quote, so let’s end with one too:

Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

Isn’t that what we’re seeing now? What we’ve been seeing since the beginning?

People being mind broken into being afraid of something they are told isn’t frightening, following rules they are told are not necessary, taking “medicine” they are told does not work.

Maybe forcing people to believe your lies, even as you admit you are lying, is the purest expression of power.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MASS PSYCHOLOGY & FALSE SOLIDARITY

Posted on December 19, 2021 by Reid Mukai

By Kingsley L. Dennis

Source: Waking Times

It is always necessary to critically question our assumptions and the information that informs our social behaviour. In this light, I intend to cast a glance over current social manifestations regarding how the pandemic has been redefining our social patterns and relations. I will also be examining these patterns from the perspectives of mass psychology, mental intoxication, and a reprogrammed solidarity. According to Prof. Mattias Desmet,[i] the four conditions that allow mass formation – popularly referred to as crowd psychology – to emerge are: a lack of social bonds; people experiencing life as meaningless or senseless; free-floating anxiety; and free-floating frustration and aggression. In recent years, going back decades, these conditions have been building up within our modern societies. As I mentioned in a previous essay,[ii] social anxiety and psychological suffering were already growing exponentially even before the pandemic outbreak of 2020. The foundations for establishing a mass psychology were existent in many, if not most, of our industrialized societies and cultures before the traumatic experience of the current pandemic. At such junctures of psychological vulnerability, a shift of attachment – that is, a transference of identification – can be achieved rapidly. What has likely occurred within the past 18 months has been a widescale process of reprogrammed solidarity.

Prof. Mattias Desmet believes the world has experienced a huge, global ritual that has established a new form (a recalibrated form) of social bonding. Desmet also states that this newly arrived mass psychology is a manner of compensation for many years of extreme individualism where people felt they needed to seek out new and different collective bonds of solidarity. This new solidarity frees people from their prior isolationism and atomization. It is a socially programmed and managed method of social re-gathering. And it is being accomplished on a worldwide scale. Also, it is being brought into being through a form of ritual. Rituals are not only for religious or sacred circumstances. By definition, a ritual is ‘a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to a set sequence.’[iii] That is, they are a range of actions performed according to a prescribed order. And that ‘prescribed order’ can come through agreement or imposition – or a mixture of both. Participation in rituals also develop a degree of loyalty to the group/grouping through adherence to and the performing of acts that support the main narratives. These acts of obedience (behaviour sets) can be regarded as rituals, similar to how more familiar religious rituals are performed to denote loyalty to a specific religious faith. When social acts are performed through an emotional attachment of ritual, a form of ‘hypnotic allegiance’ is established that is then extremely hard to break away from. This can then lead to a form of misplaced ethics that can cause people to engage in acts of self-sacrifice in order to uphold what they have been led to believe is their ethical position. People caught up within the mass hypnosis are made to sincerely believe that the mainstream narratives are correct and that they are right to be following and supporting them – even when the evidence points to the contrary. In other words, such people strongly believe in the moral rightness of their position, and this gives them a more powerful sense of solidarity and justification. Similarly, during the Crusades each side felt they were doing ‘God’s work’ by engaging in mass slaughter. What we see here is a condition of misplaced ethics.

People swept up within a mass or crowd psychology tend to protect and maintain it whether consciously or unconsciously. This is why they are most likely to reject any contrary information when it is presented to them; or will reject even the chance for such information to be presented. This amounts to a state of mild induced hypnosis which has shifted from an external identification to a self-maintained state. That is, people engage in the process of their own induced hypnosis. This may sound implausible to some people, yet we need to observe the conditions that were present to allow such states of hypnosis. Part reason for this is that many of the people who accepted the slippage into the formation of a mass psychology were already experiencing psychological discontent. This could come from perceiving a lack of life purpose and meaning; a dislike of their jobs; general restlessness and anxiety; and similar issues related with their previous life status. In such cases, the way to break the hypnosis is not by trying to persuade such people to return to their ‘old normal’ ways, which they were not happy with previously, but by searching out ways to alleviate the source of their psychological discontent. And this suggests a radical transformation in our social and cultural systems and ways of living. Furthermore, it points to a shift away from increasing materialism, automation, and technological dependency into a path that celebrates more the beauty and meaning in being human.

Mass Hypnosis of Solidarity

Persons susceptible to mass psychology are less likely to be responsive or sensitive to rational argument and debate. It is because they did not fall into line with the main narrative through reasoning but rather through a form of ‘mental intoxication’ that triggered a transference of social bonding to the newly established mass solidarity. Such triggers are generally most effective when they are presented through emotional states – these are often based upon fear; (in)securities; and mortality. When such fear-related triggers are heightened and expanded through widescale media coverage, then most, if not all, alternative narratives are discredited, discarded, and ignored. When within such heightened emotional states, cognitive decisions become overruled by inter-personal circumstances. Importantly, the state-supported narrative (the new consensus) gives people an object to connect their anxiety with. They have a mental representation of what is the cause of their anxiety. Their previous condition of free-floating anxiety has now become anchored, and people feel they are then better able to control their frustrations. To take away their belief in the dominantly imposed narrative would confront the person with their initial unease and psychological discontent. For this reason, it is difficult to break or stop such collective psychological formations once they have been established. Once the psychological patterning and emotional identification has been constructed it is then difficult to deconstruct – a significant collective solidarity has been established that imprints the mass mind.

Another factor that strengthens the mass psychology is that the imposed mainstream narratives appear to speak in one collective voice. They are clearer in what they represent and appear to come from a place of unified agreement (i.e., all state actors and state-affiliated actors are showing public agreement). It is important that there is no public disagreement on the narratives. This sense of external clarity further strengthens the issue as a ritualistic act – a hypnotic formation. The other voices that speak out against the dominant imposed narratives are not regarded or seen as coherent because they speak in many, varied voices. This is usually because they come from many and varied sources that have liberty to say things in different ways. Yet this seeming lack of narrative coherency is weaker at confronting or opposing the hypnotic collective. Those people who remain uncertain and not yet fully decided are then more liable to choose the ‘crowd narrative’ because the mass storyline falsely appears as more solid. Those people caught within the mass programming believe themselves to be expressing their own opinions when in fact there has been a clever sleight-of-hand in that they have been provided with a set of pre-formed ‘opinion bundles’ that they can then put forward as their own. Such people are therefore not expressing personal opinions arrived at through individual critical questioning but rather conditioned ‘thought bundles’ provided through the programming techniques built into the establishment of the psychological collective mass. The mass hypnosis of solidarity comes with a pre-prepared collection of opinion sets for bulk dispersal. However entrenched this situation appears, there is always the possibility for counteracting the collective hypnosis.

Regathering our Unity

It is important that those people who see, perceive, and understand the contradictions and falsity in the mass narratives continue to speak out. Hypnosis can be lessened or weakened through continual exposure to rational information, even when that information opposes the narratives of the mass psychology.

The first step in countering the mass psychosis is to disconnect people’s anxiety from the ‘object’ that people were persuaded to transfer their identification to. This can be understandably difficult when the mainstream media is not at your availability but is working to maintain the hypnotic imprinting of the mass narratives. One way, however, that works to make this disconnect is by presenting a scenario – an ‘object threat’ – that may be greater than the one used in the original collective imprinting. For example, if people realized that the current ‘health crisis’ could lead to a condition of totalitarianism, then this realization could be sufficient to awaken people from their hypnosis as they still have the cognitive capacity to grasp that the social condition of totalitarianism is a graver threat than a biological agent with low mortality rate.

The real issues, and the one that creates a fertile ground for inducing a mass psychology in the first place, is the lack of social bonding in our societies and a perceived lack of meaning. This perceived lack of meaning and purpose in everyday life is what produces the feeling of ‘free-floating’ anxiety. The danger here is that a populace under the sway of mass psychology – mass induced hypnosis – is more likely to support or go along with a totalitarian regime that maintains this mass hypnosis. This was one of the reasons why Germany’s National Socialism (the Nazi regime) was so successful in its aims.

The people who were less susceptible to hypnosis of mass psychology tended to be those who disagreed with the ideology behind it or had more experience in using critical analysis of social phenomena, and/or were more aware of the processes of social conditioning and the uses of mainstream propaganda. They were much more capable of spotting from the onset how the narratives of the mass psychology were treating people as mere biological units to be moved around the board. The question that now needs to be asked is: how can those people who stand apart from the mass hypnosis be able to unify? Those who can speak out against the mass hypnosis need to connect together. And their advantage is that they are unified through an understanding whilst remaining diverse in their backgrounds, belief structures, identities, etc. Such people can find cohesion in perspectives whilst remaining as diverse and independent individuals. This diversity and individual independence bring greater strength than a collective mass that has been unified through the programming of a false solidarity.

It is important that those people with perceptive cognition recognize that a global ritual has been set into motion that has as its goal the ‘retraining’ of the populace into welcoming upon them a new civilizational model. The willing compliance to adopt this new model of order, at the local, regional, national and global level, will sever humanity from its own biological and constitutional roots. In order to move forward as human beings, we will likely need to reject certain materialistic futures offered to us. These offers will come with promises of comfort and convenience; yet they will hide an underbelly of human disconnect and the loss of the human spirit. If a deal is made with the devil, then we can be sure that our souls will be collected without delay. And the great truth that gives humanity its strength is that the human soul and spirit can never be taken without our willing compliance. In that, by denying them our willing compliance we strengthen our unity by default. The unity established through conscious awareness is always greater energetically than the perceived unity through unconscious programming. If the fewer are aware, and conscious of what is being attempted by the mass hypnosis, then this shall energetically give us a stronger unity. And the way to break the mass hypnosis is by aligning with a greater truth that shall gradually resynch and recalibrate the energetic vibration of the collective.

RESISTING TYRANNY DEPENDS ON THE COURAGE TO NOT CONFORM

Posted on November 21, 2021 by Reid Mukai

By Barry Brownstein

Source: Waking Times

Social psychologist Roy Baumeister begins his book Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, with a proposition that will be counterintuitive to many: “Evil usually enters the world unrecognized by the people who open the door and let it in. Most people who perpetrate evil do not see what they are doing as evil.”

Dismissing evildoers as “insane” is an attempt to absolve both them and you of responsibility. Baumeister observes, “People do become extremely upset and abandon self-control, with violent results, but this is not insanity.” If only “insane” people commit “evil” acts, you might reason there is no need to strengthen spiritual and moral muscles. You might skip the reflection, study, and practice that builds spiritual and moral strength.

Would you, Baumeister asks, “obey orders to kill innocent civilians? Would you help torture someone? Would you stand by passively while the secret police hauled your neighbors off to concentration camps?” Baumeister writes, “Most people say no. But when such events actually happen, the reality is quite different.” Today, to the point, will you obey orders to fire upon people who refuse to comply with mandates?

In one of the most instructive books about Nazi Germany, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, historian Christopher Browning explores why most people say yes and commit heinous acts even when given latitude to say no.

The men of Police Battalion 101 were not specially selected psychopathic killers. Initially, the Battalion was set up to enforce Nazi rule in occupied Poland. Eventually, their mission changed, bringing them to be the genocidal murderers of Jews they were charged with rounding up. Browning explains, “The bulk of the killers were not specially selected but drawn at random from a cross-section of German society, and they did not kill because they were coerced by the threat of dire punishment for refusing.” Mostly they were “middle-aged reserve policemen.” Battle had not driven these men to depravity, “they had not been fired on nor had they lost comrades.”

Browning explores one of their initial murderous actions, “shooting some 1,500 Jews in the Polish village of Józefów in the summer of 1942.” Major Wilhelm Trapp addressed his men before the shooting began: “Pale and nervous, with choking voice and tears in his eyes, Trapp visibly fought to control himself as he spoke. The Battalion, he said plaintively, had to perform a frightfully unpleasant task. This assignment was not to his liking; indeed, it was highly regrettable, but the orders came from the highest authorities.”

Trapp provided a “justification” for the coming slaughter—Jews were damaging Germany and threatening German troops—but then Trapp “made an extraordinary offer: if any of the older men among them did not feel up to the task that lay before him, he could step out.” The task, Trapp outlined, was the immediate killing of all women, children, and the elderly.

Only twelve of the approximately 500 in the Battalion initially took Trapp’s offer to “step out.” Browning estimated “10 to 20 percent of those actually assigned to the firing squads” extricated themselves “by less conspicuous methods or asked to be released from the firing squads once the shooting had begun.” Yet for most of the police, killing became second nature: “Many reserve policemen who were horrified in the woods outside Józefów… subsequently became casual volunteers for numerous firing squads and ‘Jew hunts.’”

Browning’s research provides insights into the mindsets that fueled obedience: “Who would have ‘dared,’ one policeman declared emphatically, to ‘lose face’ before the assembled troops.” Another said, “No one wants to be thought a coward.”

Not all who followed orders lacked moral consciousness: “Another policeman—more aware of what truly required courage—said quite simply, ‘I was cowardly.’”

Some rationalized their atrocities: “It was possible for me to shoot only children. My neighbor then shot the mother and I shot the child that belonged to her, because I reasoned with myself that after all without its mother the child could not live any longer.”

To escape moral culpability, others offered the excuse of what difference could they make: “Without me [shooting] the Jews were not going to escape their fate anyway.” How many managers are saying today, what difference can I make? If I don’t fire the unvaccinated, someone else will.

Browning explains, “The men’s concern for their standing in the eyes of their comrades was not matched by any sense of human ties with their victims. The Jews stood outside their circle of human obligation and responsibility.” Today, hospital administrators are firing workers with robust natural immunity who faithfully served during the pandemic and refuse the vaccine. Like the men in the Battalion, these administrators are just following orders.

What would have happened that terrible day in 1942 if more policemen recognized the humanity of the “other” and had the courage to not conform? Today, what would happen if more businesses, like In-N-Out Burger, refuse to obey government edicts? In October, Stephen Davis, a Florida fire battalion chief, “was fired for refusing to discipline department employees listed as unvaccinated.” What would happen if more managers had the courage of Chief Davis? Without obedience, tyranny fails.

During this time of Covid, we can learn lessons from Browning’s book about how we treat people who make choices different from our own. We can notice when we fail to see the humanity in others. We can become aware when we justify an us vs. them mindset. We can question our perceptions. To wait for Biden or Fauci to change first is to ignore our power of choice.

Lessons Learned

Browning reflects on the actions of the Battalion and asks, “If obedience to orders out of fear of dire punishment is not a valid explanation, what about ‘obedience to authority’ in the more general sense used by Stanley Milgram?”

Browning wonders if there is “a ’deeply ingrained behavior tendency’ to comply with the directives of those positioned hierarchically above, even to the point of performing repugnant actions in violation of ‘universally accepted’ moral norms.” Browning explains,

The notions of ‘loyalty, duty, discipline,’ requiring competent performance in the eyes of authority, become moral imperatives overriding any identification with the victim. Normal individuals enter an ‘agentic state’ in which they are the instrument of another’s will. In such a state, they no longer feel personally responsible for the content of their actions but only for how well they perform.

Browning recounts, “Milgram made direct reference to the similarities between human behavior in his experiments and under the Nazi regime. He concluded, ‘Men are led to kill with little difficulty.’”

Importantly, “Milgram himself notes that people far more frequently invoke authority than conformity to explain their behavior, for only the former seems to absolve them of personal responsibility.” Yet, in the Battalion case, “Many policemen admitted responding to the pressures of conformity—how would they be seen in the eyes of their comrades?—not authority.” Based on his research, Browning concludes, “Conformity assumes a more central role than authority at Józefów.”

The Covidocracy demands we all conform and shames those who make different choices. Browning explains the dangers of a culture of shame: “The shame culture, making conformity a prime virtue, impelled ordinary Germans in uniform to commit terrible crimes rather than suffer the stigma of cowardice and weakness and the ‘social death’ of isolation and alienation vis-à-vis their comrades.”

The segregation of Jews was an enabler of evil actions. Browning points to pervasive banishment of Jews from German society “and the resulting exclusion of the Jewish victims from any common ground with the perpetrators made it all the easier for the majority of the policemen to conform to the norms of their immediate community (the battalion) and their society at large (Nazi Germany).”

For some policemen who did not shoot, their commercial ties shaped their view of human beings. One said, “Through my business experience, especially because it extended abroad, I had gained a better overview of things. Moreover, through my earlier business activities I already knew many Jews.”

Harvard social psychologist Gordon Allport developed his famed contact hypothesis in the 1940s: “Increasing exposure to out-group members will improve attitudes toward that group and decrease prejudice and stereotyping.” Commercial ties bring people together.

Today, politicians work overtime demonizing, mocking, and punishing “out-group members” who won’t obey their dictates.

A Story of Nonconformity

Recently Tim, a reader and business owner from New Zealand, sent me his powerful testimony in an email:

Fifty odd years ago, as a young child I went to Ranui Primary School in suburban Auckland. There were two Māori boys in my class of 9-year-olds. Sometimes through the day they would make short comments to each other in Māori.
If the teacher heard them do it, he would keep our entire class in detention after school for 15 to 30 minutes. I always hated it because one of the boys was my friend, and a regular playmate of mine after school. The other one, used to walk home from school with me too, they were my friends.
But most of the class blamed these two Māori boys for us all being locked in after school. The majority of the kids disliked and bullied them in my class.
I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t dislike them because they were my friends. Perhaps even then as a boy I could see what our teacher was doing.
Our teacher was using the rest of the class as a weapon against those two young boys by encouraging the spiteful and discriminating attitudes towards them.

Tim’s choice to not conform to social pressure made all the difference to his Māori friends. Did Tim’s ability to see the humanity in others help him become a successful entrepreneur? After all, entrepreneurs succeed when they help serve the needs of others.

Tim continued his testimony:

Today, 50 years later, I am again feeling the same way as I did back in my Ranui Primary School class. The teacher is telling us all that we will continue to be locked in until 90% (or whatever) of the country is vaccinated. And further, we are told that it is the fault of the 20% (or so) that have so far chosen not to accept the two shots in the arm.
As a country, we are all encouraged to heap blame and hate towards anyone who has decided to not vaccinate.
Regardless of my own vaccination status, I have friends and family who I refuse to hate or blame.
I lay the blame exactly where it belongs. At the feet of my Primary School teacher for our detentions, not my two boyhood friends.
And at the feet of our Prime Minister for her lockdown rules, not my friends and family who have chosen to decline an injection that they don’t trust, rightly or wrongly.

Be like Tim. Be like the 10-20% of Battalion 101 who didn’t conform. Our scorn should be towards those who demand our obedience and split America into an in-group and an out-group. Become more aware when you allow your thinking to be hijacked by propaganda.

Many in the Battalion didn’t understand their crimes until decades after the war ended. Don’t wait to reflect until a future historian writes a book about how you supported tyranny by placing conformity above human rights.

Today Charles Eisenstein points out, “Many people trust the authorities and willingly comply with their rules. They face no dilemma, no initiatory moment, no self-defining world-creating choice point, not yet.”

Conforming, lacking courage, will not spare you from choices that life will demand of you. Eisenstein challenges us: “As the authorities’ narratives devolve into absurdity and their rules devolve into oppression, more and more of us face this choice: … To do what you know is right, or to cave in to the pressure, consoling yourself with words you don’t believe. ‘I had no choice.’”

We all have a personal responsibility for preserving freedom. The price of abdicating our responsibility is high. As Browning puts it, Germans paid a high price for “placing uncritical trust in the ‘firm leadership’ of seemingly well-intentioned political authority between 1933 and 1945.”

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Posted on June 6, 2021 by Reid Mukai

By Stephen Parato

Source: Waking Times

“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth–certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Obedience is the connective tissue of oppression.

In other words, any form of control on a collective level can only be carried out through obedience. A dictator can’t arrest or kill an entire population himself; he needs mindless minions to do the dirty work. This principle applies across all forms and degrees of systematic control, even the most subtle.

The desires of any wannabe controller can only come to fruition through the compliance of others. And that’s been the case throughout recorded history (his-story). The desire for control becomes a virus, driven by fear and infecting more and more people, until there are enough drones to oppress an entire population.

This phenomenon isn’t just the case with large-scale atrocities; it applies to anything which is an impediment to freedom or love; be it a person, group, system or idea.

Everything is held up by belief. Laws are merely words written on paper, only legitimized by collective acquiescence. Laws need people to enforce them. And if laws are unjust (as most are), those who carry them out must unquestioningly submit to authority and go against their own inner knowing.

The only way control or oppression works on any scale is through compliance. Too many people do the work of ‘the man’ for ‘the man.’ That’s the problem. The solution lies in civil disobedience.

Freedom Cannot Be Granted

“Freedom cannot be granted. It must be taken.” ~Max Stirner

Asking for freedom is oxy-moronic. If you have to ask for freedom, you’re already a slave.

How is freedom taken? The simple decision to be the master of your own body and mind.

It really is as simple as that, though difficult to apply. It’s easy to blame problems on others, it’s easy to neglect our health and think “the doctor can fix me.” We’ve been conditioned to externalize our power since childhood. We’ve been taught to not trust ourselves. We’ve been taught to submit to authority without question.

This is a recipe for a control system to stealthily and slowly permeate society (the totalitarian tiptoe).

When you attain a degree of self-mastery, you do not acquiesce to the will of destructive people or disharmonious institutions. Which leads to the next point…

Fear-Based Programming

“The pioneers of a warless world are the youth who refuse military service.” ~Albert Einstein

The covert means by which oppression takes over is through fear-based programming.

If you have people in fear, you can easily control them. Fear activates the part of the brain known as the amygdala (the center for emotional behavior/motivation) and inhibits neocortex function (our “thinking brain”). This means that rationality and intellect are thrown out the window, the perfect storm for brainwashing. There’s even a term for this fear response; amygdala hijack.

The media is one big amygdala hijack, perpetually programming the population with which boogeyman to fear next. This is a massive ritual of fear-based programming that insidiously shifts entire populations into thinking and acting irrationally out of fear. Television is called programming for a reason.

Remember the whole weapons of mass destruction fiasco with Iraq in 2003? US military action in Iraq and massive destabilization of the middle east (which continues to this day) was predicated on that lie. There were no weapons of mass destruction. But lingering fear from 9/11 resulted in a string of irrational behavior and many people blindly believing the hype.

The holocaust took place because German soldiers were thoroughly conditioned to carry out orders. They didn’t carry out orders because they liked doing it, but because they feared the wrath of their higher ranking officers, or even because they were conditioned to fear jewish people. These abominations only occur when fear is the driving force.

Fear is hard to pin down. It’s slippery, and ultimately illusory (False Evidence Appearing Real). Yet it’s the undercurrent of all “negative” emotions. Fear is what stops us from saying no to evil. Fear might actually distort our perceptions to support evil. That’s why it’s so dangerous.

When you cultivate self-mastery, you’re able to break the cycle. The spread of fear stops before you and is transmuted by the omnipotent force of unyielding love.

Love Over Fear

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” ~John Lennon

Strive to choose love over fear in every situation. You can never go wrong if you act from a place of compassion. This is the fulcrum of change, and it starts within you.

The change we all yearn to see in the world will only happen in the wake of a fundamental change in consciousness. Everything we see in this world starts in the realms of imagination before coming into manifestation.

The change begins within and ripples outward. Embodying the change is the first step, the prerequisite. Without inner transformation, humanity will be stuck on the same merry-go-round of madness.

When a critical mass of people create positive inner changes, it will open up doors we never could’ve imagined before and will provide possibilities far beyond our current limited perspective. Solutions will spontaneously emerge.

Go within and stop the momentum of fear. Learn to listen to and trust your intuition. Have the courage to follow your heart instead of cowardly bowing to fear.

“Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor – the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant ‘To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.’” ~Brene Brown

Compliance with destruction, hatred, oppression, violence and fear is cowardice, while noncompliance is courageous. In the depths of your being, in your heart of hearts, you know what is right.

Choose love over fear.

Have the courage of heart and freedom of mind to disobey oppressive forces.

Be the change.

Why Do Most People Believe Propaganda and False Flag Attacks?

Posted on November 12, 2020 by Reid Mukai

By Robert J. Burrowes

In his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World Carl Sagan lamented as follows:

I have a foreboding of [a] time when… awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

The dumbing down… is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media… but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance…. The plain lesson is that study and learning – not just of science, but of anything – are avoidable, even undesirable.

We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements… profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. See The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

While it is 25 years since these words of Sagan’s were published a year before his death, one can only lament the ongoing decline of what might simply be labeled the capacity for critical thinking, whether in relation to society and politics, or the science and technology that so concerned Sagan.

At a time in human history when so much is at stake, why is it so difficult to engage most people in anything resembling a thoughtful investigation, consideration and analysis of what is taking place? Why is it that more people do not question what they are told, what they read and what they are shown? In short, why is it that most people do not seek out the evidence for themselves rather than simply believing what is presented to them?

In one sense, the answer to this question might seem simple. People are daily bombarded with ‘information’, in various guises, and a lifetime of submissively accepting what they are told leaves few with any inclination, or energy, to question anything. But let me offer a fuller explanation given the critical importance of this issue if we are to mobilize an effective response to the challenges confronting humanity.

So first: What is propaganda? A false flag attack? Why do most people simply believe what they are told without investigating, carefully, for themselves? And why are those who challenge the elite-driven narrative often labeled ‘conspiracy theorists’ or, depending on the issue, some other pejorative such as ‘peddling debunked science’, ‘anti-vaxxer’ or ‘anti-semitic’ for example?

What is Propaganda?

Propaganda is the deliberate and systematic effort, using a variety of means, to manipulate people into believing and behaving in accordance with something that is not true. For one comprehensive explanation of how this is done, see Trust Us, We’re Experts! How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, a book which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. observes ‘shows how giant corporations employ sophisticated psychiatric techniques, unscrupulous public figures, junk science, tainted studies and clever PR mercenaries in a relentless effort to market products that routinely kill, maim, deform and poison consumers and our environment’. See ‘Trust Us, We’re Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future’.

While some people argue that propaganda can be used for good, the fact is that something that is simply true should appeal to people anyway, even if it is unpleasant. This is because the truth is the only powerful place from which to start to address any circumstance, including unpleasant and difficult ones.

Propaganda is delivered by a variety of means. Aside from that issued, in various ways, by governments and corporations, propaganda is delivered by education systems as ‘knowledge’, by the corporate media as ‘news’ and by the entertainment industry as films, television programs, video games, music, literature and in other forms. But all propaganda is designed to instill and reinforce a limited set of fears, approved beliefs and endorsed behaviours so that the ‘individual’ responds submissively within the carefully managed system of elite political, social and economic control.

For example, education is designed to teach the individual a limited range of technical functions intended to help create, maintain but essentially serve the emerging technocratic tyranny (as it supersedes the existing version of industrial capitalism), make the individual a passive consumer and politically submissive, while ensuring that an intelligent mind capable of seeking out relevant evidence for themselves, critiquing society and responding powerfully does not develop. See ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

What is a False Flag Attack?

A false flag attack occurs when a government carries out a terror attack against its own population and then falsely blames an enemy to justify a political course of action, such as going to war against the country or countries it blames. While, again, those who question false flag attacks are often denounced by elite propagandists as ‘conspiracy theorists’, in fact the documentation of false flag attacks that have later been admitted is quite long. For one list, see ‘53 Admitted False Flag Attacks’. Of course, plenty of false flag attacks have not been admitted, even when the evidence is overwhelming, as in the case of 9/11 for example.

So Why Do Most People Believe Propaganda?

In an early book on propaganda written in 1928 by Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, he opened with this paragraph:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an

important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. See Propaganda.

As Bernays makes clear from the outset, his preoccupation is the manipulation of people to do the bidding of others: clearly, a debased and cynical view of the human individual on which many of humanity’s less morally committed characters have capitalized since Bernays wrote the book.

For example, Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945 and an avid reader of Bernays’ work, observed that ‘Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.’

But to understand why the approach of Bernays and his disciples such as Goebbels even works, we need to consider why it is that most people are so gullible in the first place. Why don’t more people ask deeper questions about what is taking place rather than simply accepting, without serious question, whatever is presented to them (whether by parents, teachers, religious figures, doctors, propagandists, marketing agents, governments or the corporate media)?

The fundamental problem is simply this: parents, teachers, religious figures and other significant adults in the child’s life require obedience. And obedience means that the child not only behaves as directed by the adult but also that the child believes what the adult believes. This latter point is easily overlooked but is actually the key issue. Why? Because a child who does not believe what the adult believes might think and behave in a way that scares the adult. And demanding obedience is essentially about eliminating beliefs (and their consequent behaviours) that would frighten the parent, teacher or other adult.

Parents require obedience virtually from the moment of birth, doing everything from comforting a child to stop them crying – see ‘Comforting a Baby is Violent’ – to punishing them for acting contrary to parental will once they start moving independently. Of course, once the child starts to think or believe differently, especially if this ‘difference’ is too far from a belief of the child’s parents, teachers or religious leaders (or a widely-accepted belief within their society), the child is quickly pulled back into line with some combination of inducements and/or violence. See ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’.

Despite legal conventions meaninglessly affirming versions of it – such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 18 declaring ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of thought…’ – the freedom to think for oneself is not a human right in any meaningful sense of the term and, even if it were, it would really only mean the freedom to think for oneself within certain clearly defined and narrow parameters. And only if you are an adult.

This is why, for example, a child who decides not to go to school does not emerge. Such a possibility would be frightening to virtually every parent, so no child is given that option, let alone allowed the opportunity to come up with, consider and act on that option for themself. Why? Because attendance at school, wherever it exists, is legally compulsory (meaning punishment will be inflicted for failure to comply), and only the rarest parent has the vaguest concept of freedom themselves, let alone the courage to defend their child’s freedom, including the freedom to choose how they spend the bulk of their time for the 8-13 years of ‘school age’.

Consequently, the freedom to think for oneself and act accordingly is strangled at a very young age and certainly by the time a child is compelled to attend a prison for children, also known as ‘school’. As a result the child’s concept of freedom, should they ever come across the notion, can only be a parody of the real thing. And the adult who emerges from this childhood is simply incapable of comprehending what freedom might mean for the obvious reason that to be meaningfully understood, freedom must be experienced.

Of course, is it not just parental authority and school that denies any child the experience of liberty. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau noted in his treatise The Social Contract in 1762, ‘Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains’. Every institution in society is designed to circumscribe freedom, one way or another. It is just that a childhood spent living under the control of their parents and then teachers and religious figures leaves all children devoid of the experience of freedom and so any subsequent limits are not even noticed. In fact, they are expected and ‘taken for granted’.

So with parents, teachers and religious figures endlessly inflicting ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence on the child in the name of ‘socialization’ (which includes requiring obedience under threat of violence for non-compliance), the child progressively and rapidly loses several innate capacities, notably including a sense of their own Self-will, the capacities to think and feel for themselves, as well as conscience. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’. Anything that is too far from the dominant narrative simply becomes ‘unthinkable’ because the child’s innate capacity to perceive the truth is suppressed along with other mental capacities.

But soon it is not just parents, teachers and religious leaders that are the accepted ‘authority figures’ in the child’s life. No longer able to seriously question the imperatives of parents, teachers and religious figures because they have been terrorized out of doing so, the child has also unconsciously ‘learned’ that virtually any information with which they are presented must be true, even when the source is simply a government or corporate media outlet presenting elite propaganda. For the vast bulk of adult humans, the idea of questioning a dominant narrative does not even occur to them and it is certainly not something they can do with any intelligence, persistent research effort or courage.

So just as Hitler, ably supported by his Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, was able to direct most Germans prior to and into World War II, it is quite straightforward for the global elite to be able to direct the bulk of the human population to believe, for example, that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the ‘lone gunman’ Lee Harvey Oswald, that the ‘Gulf of Tonkin incident’ justified the United States war on Vietnam, that a ‘virus’ labeled HIV caused a ‘disease’ labeled AIDS, that the three buildings 1,2 and 7 of the World Trade Center were destroyed by two aircraft flown by novice pilots into the top stories of the Twin Towers and justified the subsequently launched US ‘War on Terror’, that a ‘virus’ labeled SARS-Cov-2 exists and causes a ‘disease’ labeled Covid-19 that has justified the destruction of everything from a range of human rights to the global economy while accelerating four distinct paths to human extinction, that we live in a democracy in which each adult has a say in how they are governed, or even that ongoing effort is being made to bring a greater degree of shared prosperity to the people of the world.

For just a taste of the extensive evidence to debunk each of these propaganda-driven delusions, see these respective analyses of what the evidence actually demonstrates: On the Trail of the Assassins: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Murder of President Kennedy, the Pentagon Papers, AIDS Inc.: Scandal of the Century, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, ‘Unmasking the Lies Around COVID-19: Facts vs Fiction of the Coronavirus Pandemic’, ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup to Destroy Humanity that is also Fast-Tracking Four Paths to Human Extinction’, ‘America After the Election: A Few Hard Truths About the Things That Won’t Change’ and ‘The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families’.

In essence: my point is that is it is not the power of the propaganda, increasingly sophisticated though it has become, that makes people believe it, but a ‘socialization’ model designed to produce submissively obedient ‘individuals’ who gullibly interpret what is happening, and even their own ‘experience’, in terms of the information or scenario (that is, propaganda) with which they are presented. And because of the deeply-seated and unconscious fear of holding a divergent view, most people simply believe the widely-promulgated propaganda narrative with which they become familiar and, hence, comfortable. Moreover, those who challenge the elite-driven narrative frighten them, particularly when elite agents in government and the corporate media label them ‘conspiracy theorists’. For one explanation of why the term ‘conspiracy theorist’ emerged to denigrate those who challenge elite orthodoxy, see ‘In defence of conspiracy theories (and why the term is a misnomer)’.

And so this combination of dysfunctional parenting, education and religious exposure leaves the child devoid of their intuitive ‘truth register’ as well as the other mental faculties that would make them question explanations that obviously lack credibility while investigating and analyzing the evidence for themself. In fact, the idea of doing so never even occurs to them. Hence, a terrorized, gullible and easily manipulated individual enters adulthood. And, as the elite intends, galvanizing an effective response by such people to the truth hidden behind the propaganda is very difficult.

Resisting Propaganda

There is no point hoping that the global elite will discontinue their use of propaganda to shape the course of human events. This is largely because the global elite is insane. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’. Moreover, attempts to curb the use of propaganda must inevitably run into the institutions and organizations that the elite controls. And while we can strategically resist these if we choose, the most powerful defence we have against elite propaganda is the human mind that can perceive and critique it. Hence, as a priority, I would profoundly alter our parenting model to achieve this outcome. See ‘My Promise to Children’.

If you are uncertain of your own capacity to critique propaganda, you can expand your capacity to do so by feeling the fear (to release it) that limits your mental faculties. See ‘Putting Feelings First’.

If you are interested in planning or participating in a strategy to achieve a peace, environmental or social justice outcome (particularly in relation to those issues that threaten human extinction), or to resist the elite coup currently taking place under cover of Covid-19, you can read sets of strategic goals for doing so in Campaign Strategic Aims or Coup Strategic Aims.

Moreover, if you wish to tackle the environmental threats to human existence while also strengthening your self-reliant capacity to resist the latest elite onslaught to take (much) greater control of your life, consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. The greater your dependence on elite systems and processes of any kind, the less power you will have to resist as the noose tightens.

If you are interested in participating in the worldwide effort to resist elite and other violence, you are also welcome to sign the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

More simply, if you like, you might consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

I will listen deeply to children. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
I will not travel by plane
I will not travel by car
I will not eat meat and fish
I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
I will not buy rainforest timber
I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

The world is complex: it is difficult to understand and requires enormous effort.

Propaganda is designed to give people information that is easy to understand (and sometimes frightening) while distracting them from the truth and offering a simple ‘choice’ (or command) designed to mobilize action in support of an elite-driven narrative.

For example, by telling people they are threatened by a virus, most will be scared into focusing their attention on the ‘virus’. They will pay no attention to the many more complex and dangerous things that are taking place under cover of the ‘virus’: a technocratic/transhumanist coup that is utterly transforming the very essence of human society, economy and even the human individual. See ‘Beware the Transhumanists: How “Being Human” is being Re-engineered by the Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’ and ‘Klaus Schwab and His Great Fascist Reset’.

Only a tiny proportion of the human population has even the vaguest idea of how the world actually works. But not even a tiny proportion of these people recognize that terrorizing children into obedience is the fundamental explanation of why the world works in the way that it does.

Unless we can mobilize greater recognition of our responsibility for giving the global elite the control over us that it has, and tackle this problem at its core – by fundamentally revising existing parenting and education models so that we produce powerful individuals – it will continue to be enormously difficult to mobilize sufficient strategic response to the challenges that confront humanity.

And while we are now fast-tracking four distinct paths to human extinction, there is an urgency about our predicament that accelerates daily.

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Contemplating Human Extinction Terrifies Most People: A Strategy for Survival

Posted on July 17, 2020 by Reid Mukai

By Robert J. Burrowes

Any serious study of the relevant scholarly literature reveals at least four possible paths to imminent human extinction, that is, human extinction within five years: nuclear war, the climate catastrophe, the deployment of 5G and biodiversity collapse.

Moreover, as I have documented previously, under cover of the non-existent ‘virus’ labeled COVID-19, the global elite is conducting a coup against humanity. That is, by bombarding us with fear-mongering propaganda to focus our attention on the ‘virus’, the capacity of virtually all people, including activists, to devote attention to the coup, and to resist it, has been effectively eliminated. See ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup: Fighting for Our Humanity, Our Liberty and Our Future’.

Unfortunately, it has also meant that, despite the extensively documented evidence of the four paths to imminent human extinction, it is even more difficult than usual to get people to focus on this point. This means that engaging people to consider the evidence for themselves is extremely difficult: it is easier to live in delusion, reassured by elite-driven narratives promulgated through education systems and the corporate media which effectively convey the message that there is either no serious cause for concern (yet) or, perhaps, that the timeframe allows for an adequate official response in due course. In either case we, as individuals or groups, do not really need to do anything differently; going along with the elite-driven narrative, including timeframe, will ensure our survival.

Of course, as those paying attention to the evidence already know, being obedient to the elite-driven narrative is a recipe for extinction. We have already exceeded 2°C above the pre-industrial temperature, the ongoing and rapid deployment of 5G will be catastrophic, biodiversity is already collapsing (and will be seriously accelerated by the rising temperature and deployment of 5G) – for just the latest in the ongoing stream of disasters, see ‘Calls for swift action as hundreds of elephants die in Botswana’s Okavango Delta’ – and, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, nuclear war is now a greater possibility that at any previous time in human history. For summaries of the evidence and further documentation in each case, see ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup to Destroy Humanity that is also Fast-Tracking Four Paths to Human Extinction’.

In this article I would like to explain why people are so terrified of the truth and what we can do about it so that an effective response to each of these threats can be implemented (assuming, problematically, that there is enough time).

Why are Most Human Beings so Terrified?

Virtually all human beings are terrified and they are terrified for the same reason: the child-raising process that sociologists like to label ‘socialization’ should be more accurately labeled ‘terrorization’. Why? Because from the moment of a child’s birth, parents, teachers, religious leaders and adults generally regard themselves as responsible for terrorizing the child into obedience of the commands, rules, conventions and laws that define the nature of permissible behaviour in their society.

This means that provided the child responds obediently to parental (or other adult) commands, obeys any rules imposed (by the parents, teachers and religious figures in the child’s life), learns all relevant social conventions for their society and, ultimately, obeys the law, they are allowed to live, recognized as compliant citizens, in their society.

Unfortunately, from society’s viewpoint, evolutionary pressures over vast time scales have led to each human individual being given Self-will to seek out and fulfill their own unique destiny: evolutionary pressures do not predispose any individual to obey the will of another for the simple reason that obedience has no evolutionary functionality.

Consequently, it takes enormous terrorization during childhood to ensure that the child surrenders their Self-will at the alter of obedience. To achieve this outcome and largely unknowingly, parents use a large range of behaviours from the three categories of violence that I have labeled ‘visible’ violence, ‘invisible’ violence and ‘utterly invisible’ violence. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

A common element of this terrorization is that the child is frequently threatened with, and/or actually suffers, violence for being ‘disobedient’. Of course, this violence, assuming it is even recognized as such (given that ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence are just that to virtually everyone), is invariably labeled ‘punishment’ so that we can delude ourselves that our violence is not harmful. See ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’.

This means that virtually every single individual has been successfully terrorized into being submissively obedient. And, fundamentally, this obedience includes accepting the elite-driven narrative delivered by education systems and the corporate media in relation to issues crucial to human survival.

So despite our preference for believing otherwise, those individuals in our societies who survive the education system capable of thinking for themselves, or even of ‘clear thinking’, are rare. And then they must also survive (preferably by refusing to access it) the propaganda (that is, lies) presented as ‘news’ by the corporate media. Given that another outcome of being terrorized throughout childhood means that most people are very gullible, perceiving lies is a huge challenge in itself. See ‘Why do People Lie? And Why do other People Believe them?’

Of course, this powerless imperative to believe the lies we are told and to behave obediently in response is always reinforced by the fear of violence (‘punishment’), including the fear of social ostracism for resisting elite narratives, but it is also reinforced by other fears: for example, the fear that makes people feel powerless to respond in any meaningful way, the fear of changing their behaviour, and the fear of feeling out of control of their own destiny. After all, if extinction is imminent and we are to avert it, we will need to do some fundamental things – including thinking and behaving – very differently. But we are not allowed to think or behave differently, are we? That would be disobedient.

This can be readily illustrated. When a young child does not get what they need, the child will have an emotional reaction. This will always include fear, it will probably include anger and it will probably include sadness, among other feelings. However, almost invariably, parents behave in a manner intended to prevent the child from having their emotional response (and using this information in formulating the appropriate behavioural response in the circumstance). They do not listen to the child while they express their feelings. Instead, they act to make the child suppress awareness of their feelings.

At its simplest and apparently most benign, the parent might comfort the child in the misguided belief that this is helpful. But it is not, unless you want a submissively obedient child. See ‘Comforting a Baby is Violent’.

Another simple and common way in which we suppress the emotional awareness and, hence, capacity for emotional expression of a child is by giving them food or a toy to distract them from how they feel. The fundamental outcome of this act is that we unconsciously ‘teach’ the child to seek food and/or material items as substitutes for feeling and acting on how they feel. But this is absolutely disastrous.

The net result of this behaviour is that virtually all people in industrialized societies have become addicted to material consumption, and the direct (including military), structural and ecological violence that makes excessive consumption in these societies possible. All so that we can suppress how we really feel. See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

And, therefore, the very notion of substantially reducing consumption – a central part of any strategy for human survival by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from industrial production and transport, checking the collapse of biodiversity by halting the destruction of habitat such as rainforests, denying financial incentive to deploy technology for 5G, ending wars (and the threat of nuclear war) for resources – becomes ‘unthinkable’.

Because the fundamental imperative of materialist societies is ‘Consume!’ (so that corporations can profit). And we do not have the emotional power to disobey that imperative because deep in our unconscious remains the childhood terror of resisting the offered food or toy and insisting on expressing how we feel and behaving powerfully in accord with that. It is far simpler to just put something more in our mouth or use one of our ‘toys’. Who wants to feel scared, sad or angry instead?

In essence, the individual who has been terrorized into obedience is no longer capable of thinking for themself and then behaving in accord with their own Self-will. This means that imperatives of the global elite – mediated through its agents such as governments, education systems and the corporate media and enforced by legal systems, the police and prison cells (see ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’) – are readily obeyed by the vast bulk of the human population.

And because the global elite is insane – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – this obedience means that we are submitting to the elite coup and complying with its imperatives that are fast-tracking humanity to extinction on four separate paths, as noted above.

To reiterate: At this most critical moment in human history, when a coup is being conducted against us and four separate threats to human existence and all life on Earth require our engaged attention and powerful response, it is almost impossible to get people to even acknowledge these threats, let alone to consider the evidence and act strategically in response.

Which means that profoundly altering our approaches to parenting and education, so that we produce powerful individuals, is critical to any strategy to fight for human survival.

So what can we do?

Well, if you would like to fight for human survival, it would be useful to start by giving yourself time to focus on feeling your emotional responses – fear, anger, sadness, dread…. – to the elite coup and the four most imminent threats. See ‘Putting Feelings First’.

If you do not do this, you are unlikely to be able to engage meaningfully and strategically in the effort. You will, most likely and unconsciously, simply put your attention elsewhere and go back to what you were doing. See ‘The Disintegrated Mind: The Greatest Threat to Human Survival on Earth’.

So once you have a clearer sense of your emotional reactions to this knowledge and have allowed yourself time to focus on feeling these feelings, you will be in a far more powerful position to consider your response to the situation. And, depending on your interests and circumstances, there is a range of possible responses that will each make an important difference.

Fundamentally, you might consider making ‘My Promise to Children’ which will include considering what an education for your children means to you, particularly if you want powerful individuals who can resist violence. See ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

You might consider supporting others to become more powerful. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

If you wish to strategically resist the elite coup against humanity, you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals for doing so, from here: Strategic Aims.

If you wish to powerfully resist the primary threats to human existence – nuclear war, the deployment of 5G, the collapse of biodiversity and/or the climate catastrophe – you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals to focus your campaigns, from here: Strategic Aims.

You might also consider joining those who are powerful enough to recognize the critical importance of reduced consumption and greater self-reliance as essential elements of these strategies by participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

In addition, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Or, if you want something simpler, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

1. I will listen deeply to children. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
2. I will not travel by plane
3. I will not travel by car
4. I will not eat meat and fish
5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
7. I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
8. I will not buy rainforest timber
9. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
10. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
11. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
12. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
13. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
14. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

Given that submissive obedience is the primary behavioural characteristic of all ‘good citizens’, it is going to take a monumental effort to defeat the elite coup and avert the now imminent extinction of Homo Sapiens. This is because most common human behaviours – from parenting to consumption habits – have been shaped to serve elite interests, and it is these behaviours that must change.

Of course, this is also why lobbying elite agents – such as governments and corporations – cannot work. Apart from the fact that they exist to serve elite interests and obey elite directives accordingly (rather than respond to grassroots pressure which they function superbly to dissipate), governments and corporations cannot meaningfully impact the crises that confront us.

That power is ours but we must use it, and deploy it strategically.

The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup: Fighting for our Humanity, Our Liberty and Our Future

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Reid Mukai

By Robert J. Burrowes

We are being utterly transformed. And the world is being utterly transformed around us.

Ostensibly, this is to tackle a simple virus. In reality, it is to achieve an elite design at staggering cost to humanity and to life generally.

If you have not been carefully following what is taking place, let me highlight some recent developments and what we can do about them.

On 26 March 2020, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) granted Microsoft a world patent. Titled ‘1. WO2020060606 – Cryptocurrency System Using Body Activity Data’, this patent gives Microsoft (that is, Bill Gates) extraordinary power over our lives.

As Professor Vandana Shiva evocatively explains in her latest article, ‘My Earth Journey in defence of Biodiversity, Life and Freedom over 5 decades’, this development is ‘robbing us of our deep humanity’:

The patent is dramatically changing the meaning of being human.

Firstly, it is redefining us as ‘mines’ for data – robbing us of our autonomy, our sovereignty, and control over our bodies and minds…. And just being connected through their ‘server’ is giving consent….

Secondly, it is erasing our humanity – as sovereign, living beings, spiritual, conscious, intelligent beings, making our decisions and choices with wisdom and ethical values about the impacts of our actions on the natural and social world of which we are a part; and to which we are inextricably related. We are being reduced to being ‘users’ of tasks assigned to us by the extractive digital mega machine. A ‘user’ is a consumer without choice in the digital empire. Human creativity and consciousness disappear in the world imagined in #patent060606.

Thirdly, the patent is redefining human values, and the value of being human. Human values include ethical, ecological, spiritual values….

Patent 060606 is aimed at robbing us of our deep humanity. We are being transformed from self organised, conscious, creative, autopoetic beings, into external input “users” whose value will be assigned in cryptocurrency through algorithms, by the very machine that gave us the task in the first place.

But it is not just our humanity that is at stake, horrific though this may be. The world, too, is being transformed so that the humanoids who are not killed off or marginalized into extreme poverty and desperation will perform their assigned roles to serve the global elite within the new techno tyranny that is being created around us.

For just a taste of the evidence in this regard, see ‘Global Capitalism, “World Government” and the Corona Crisis’, ‘The Farce and Diabolical Agenda of A “Universal Lockdown”’ and ‘Techno-Tyranny: How The US National Security State Is Using Coronavirus To Fulfill An Orwellian Vision ’.

And if you would like greater insight into the role that individuals like Bill Gates are playing in all of this, see these three recent documentaries produced by James Corbett: ‘How Bill Gates Monopolized Global Health’, ‘Bill Gates’ Plan to Vaccinate the World’ and ‘Bill Gates and the Population Control Grid’. In addition, this article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is instructive: ‘Gates’ Globalist Vaccine Agenda: A Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination’.

Given the monumental undertaking for global control that this represents, you might wonder how this transformation can be achieved. And, unfortunately, the answer is ‘very simply’. This is because the bulk of the human population has been terrorized into a state of being submissively obedient. And this state is effectively permanent. As a result, mobilizing strategic resistance to what is happening is very difficult.

Why do I write this?

Because the evidence that COVID-19 is a minor health risk, particularly if dealt with appropriately, is overwhelming and extensively documented: ‘According to data from the best-studied countries and regions, the lethality of Covid19 is on average about 0.2%, which is in the range of a severe influenza (flu) and about twenty times lower than originally assumed by the WHO.’ See ‘A Swiss Doctor on Covid-19’.

Having noted that, however, if you want to watch a thoughtful and detailed explanation of why COVID-19 is a ‘fake virus’, try watching molecular biologist Dr Andrew Kaufman’s two hour interview by Brian Rose: ‘Unmasking the Lies Around COVID-19: Facts vs Fiction of the Coronavirus Pandemic’. In this interview, Dr Kaufman carefully explains:

The scientific procedures that have been utilized in all of these scientific studies… it wouldn’t be possible using those techniques to isolate the virus and purify it and prove that it exists…. Taking into account all of the evidence I have looked at which has been almost entirely from peer-reviewed scientific papers and official government websites, my opinion is that this entire pandemic is a completely manufactured crisis. In other words there is no evidence of anyone dying from any novel illness…. And so what I think is going on… is in line with what might be known as a globalist agenda…. All of these things seem to be moving towards control of the people.

There is not very much about vaccines that makes a lot of sense because if you actually go back and look for the evidence that vaccines have prevented disease you are not going to find any…. Smallpox is an interesting example…. In the mainstream history books the smallpox vaccine has been touted as a major success but that’s not really accurate. If you go back and look at data from the Royal Academy of Sciences what you will see is that the mortality increased substantially while these vaccines were widely used and then when they stopped being used the numbers went back down again.

So it is really difficult to trust what is in a general textbook or mainstream history book without going and looking at the actual data yourself because all of the textbooks that were in medical schools say that vaccines are responsible for preventing many of these major illnesses that people were suffering from and worried about in the first part of the twentieth century. But if you look at some of the same diseases that did not have a vaccine, such as scarlet fever for example, you will find that scarlet fever also went away with all of the other diseases even though there was no vaccine for it.

And when you look at the number of cases of the various illnesses like polio or measles or diphtheria, you’ll see that the prevalence or incidence of those diseases and mortality from those diseases, which in some was substantial, went down almost to the current levels before a vaccine was even available for use so you couldn’t possibly attribute a vaccine for causing that reduction in the illness if it wasn’t even around at the time that the illness was reduced….

If you create a vaccine for an illness [such as COVID-19] that has not been proven to even exist, then the vaccine couldn’t possibly work. But if you do a clinical study and have an imaginary disease and give the vaccine to people and then they never get the imaginary disease it would give the appearance that its very successful.

So this is a real win-win strategy for anyone making these vaccines and which is why there have been companies all over the world racing to be the first one to have a vaccine that’s been proven to be safe or effective using the limited criteria that they require. Because whoever gets there first, according to the plans or proposed policies, they’re going to be selling billions of vaccines. Billions! So they’re going to make billions of dollars as a result of this. So there is such a strong financial incentive.

Some of the technological strategies that they are using to make these vaccines are quite scary and unprecedented…. But obviously it couldn’t prevent a disease that doesn’t exist so there must be some other purpose for it.

Remember, the words quoted above are taken from a two hour interview. If any of these words leave you wondering, watch the interview to consider the evidence that Dr Kaufman cites or check his website: Dr Andrew Kaufman.

In another video Dr Kaufman explains how early scientific papers on the subject suggested an association (not causation) between a novel coronavirus ‘with human to human transmission and severe human infection’ whereas a subsequent key ‘scientific’ paper that made a claim which helped drive the global response to COVID-19 ‘flat out lied’ about their results: ‘Following the first outbreaks of unexplained pneumonia in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, a new coronavirus was identified as the causative agent in January 2020.’ See ‘Identification of Coronavirus Isolated from a Patient in Korea with COVID-19’. In fact, Dr Kaufman points out: ‘they cannot reference any science to back that up whatsoever’. Moreover, subsequently to this paper, another article – see ‘I study viruses: How our team isolated the new coronavirus to fight the global pandemic’ – declared ‘The emergence of a new coronavirus in a market in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 set in motion the pandemic we are now witnessing in 160 countries around the world’. But again, Dr Kaufman counters, ‘no evidence was provided at all’ to support this claim: ‘just flat out lies’. For the details and citation of all the scientific sources for this explanation of how the COVID-19 ‘rumour mill’ got started, see ‘The Rooster in the River of Rats’.

If you wish to watch a more scientifically-oriented lecture, explaining more of the technical detail of what Dr Kaufman argues ‘is really going on’ and which is consistent with the evidence, then you can view it here: ‘Special Report: Humanity is NOT a virus!’

So while the evidence that there is neither a virus nor a pandemic is grounded firmly in the science, the evidence that the global elite is using COVID-19 as ‘cover’ to implement its coup against humanity is rather overwhelming. In addition to the articles cited above, see these two articles which cite many other extensively-documented sources as well: ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup Against a Terrified Humanity: Resisting Powerfully’ and ‘COVID-19: Breaking the Lockdown, Defeating the Coup, Averting Extinction’.

But while this evidence is readily available, it requires someone who has not lost the capacity to investigate and think for themself. And that is a huge problem.

Of course, little of the evidence in these regards is available through education systems or the corporate media, given that the purpose of these institutions is to serve elite interests. And controlling access to, and manipulating perception of, the evidence is vital in both regards.

So if, for example, you believe that the corporate media is reporting the ‘news’, you might like to reflect on these words of David Rockefeller spoken at the highly secretive elite Bilderberg meeting held in Germany in 1991 but subsequently leaked:

‘We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government…. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.’ See ‘David Rockefeller at Bilderberg meeting in Baden 1991’ and ‘David Rockefeller’s Chilling 1991 Speech at a Bilderberg Meeting’.

The motto of The Washington Post is ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’. What it does not proclaim is that the Post, along with the other corporate media outlets, has long played its part in the global elite’s program to ensure that democracy – and hence any meaningful role in how we are governed – cannot flourish. But for a detailed critique of the corporate media exposing its role in perpetrating elite power by distributing elite propaganda as ‘news’, see Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

Hence, while increasing numbers of people are lamenting the submissive response to elite initiatives to imprison us in our own homes (and strip us of rights and freedoms that it took centuries to win) – see, for example, ‘A Nation of Sheep’ and ‘To All Cowards Who Meekly Succumbed To the Unlawful Lockdown… Hang Your Heads In Shame’ – and some authors have written commentaries illustrating and explaining the ways in which people’s fear is manifesting in response to a simple virus – see Dr. Rudolf Hänsel’s explanation in ‘The Diabolical “Game” with Fear as an Instrument of Domination. The Reflex of Obedience’ and Dr. Pascal Sacré’s thoughts in ‘COVID-19: An Ocean of Fears and Lies’ – my own interest lies in explaining why people are fearfully and submissively obedient in the first place and how we can go about restoring agency to the individual’s life so that they can use their own investigatory and analytical capacities to track down and consider the evidence, and to then act sensibly and powerfully in response.

While, regrettably, this cannot be done quickly, it is an essential component of any strategy to effectively resist elite encroachments on our rights, freedoms and economic security while also acting powerfully to deal with the genuine threats to human survival such as those posed by war, the environmental and climate catastrophes, biodiversity loss and the deployment of 5G, among others. See ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’ and, for astute insight into the disastrous impact that the global industrial shutdown is having on the aerosol masking effect and hence the global climate, see ‘Will COVID-19 Trigger Extinction of All Life on Earth?’

This is because fear suppresses (other) emotional responses (including the anger that would mobilize resistance), distorts sensory perception (so that people disbelieve, rather than consider carefully, evidence that contradicts the elite-driven narrative), inhibits analytical capacity, falsifies memory (to conform with explanations that are less frightening) and thwarts powerful behavioural responses. As a consequence of being victims of their own fear, most people live in a world of delusion and projection and are quite incapable of being anything but submissively obedient.

In brief, fear makes people want to believe, and hence to actually believe, that there is ‘nothing wrong’ with elite directives distributed by international organizations (such as the World Health Organisation), governments, the medical industry, education systems and the corporate media. This means that they do not have to feel and think for themselves, consult their conscience or change their own behaviour, each of which is particularly frightening when their fear and the (unconscious) imperative to obey already have them paralyzed.

So how have we ended up with a population of ‘individuals’ who are so devoid of any sense of Selfhood that they are submissively obedient as Drs Hänsel and Sacré discussed above and which we are now witnessing on a global scale as people are imprisoned in their own homes?

Fundamentally, this has occurred because our parenting and education models are based on terrorizing children into obedience using a combination of ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence. For the details of how we do this, see ‘Why Violence?’, ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’ and ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

Hence, while we pay lip service to the notion of ‘the individual’, the reality is that we prefer ‘individuals’ who follow the orders of ‘the authorities’, whether at home, school, work, in the military, at a religious gathering or as ‘citizens’ in society generally. After all, our definition of ‘individuality’ long ago ceased to mean any more than that the person clothes themself differently and has their own combination of interests to while away their spare time.

The genuine individual who has an integrated mind, trusts their own (emotional and intellectual) judgment, articulates the truth and behaves powerfully in accord with their conscience, whatever the cost, is only supposed to appear as a fictional character in novels or films. We certainly do not want them in real life. Just ask Mahatma Gandhi, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, for example. Shot dead or imprisoned for having the qualities of a genuine individual.

For further explanations of how we systematically destroy the individuality in our children, see ‘The Disintegrated Mind: The Greatest Threat to Human Survival on Earth’, ‘Most Attitudes and Beliefs are Outcomes of Fear’ and ‘The Psychology of Projection in Conflict’.

So here we are at the most important moment in human history. At the brink of precipitating our own extinction – again, see ‘Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth’ and ‘Will COVID-19 Trigger Extinction of All Life on Earth?’ – and now imprisoned in our own homes (for those who have them) while the global elite implements more of its plan to reduce us from human individuals to digital identities that are readily tracked and controlled while playing our robotic role in the techno tyranny that is almost upon us.

Even those two writers of the classic dystopian novels of the twentieth century, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, would be horrified that we participated so obediently, so submissively, in the destruction of our ‘free’ world (whatever its limitations). And I doubt they would get any solace from knowing just how well they truly understood the terrified and submissive nature of the human condition.

So with virtually everyone ‘distracted’ from the ‘main game’ – the coup in which the global elite is taking vastly greater control of our lives and even dramatically increasing the risk of imminent human extinction – while we sit back, or even ask for, greater restrictions on our rights and freedoms, the only important question remaining is this:

Can we mobilize sufficient people, even at this late moment, to strategically defend our humanity, defeat the elite coup and avert the imminent threats to human survival?

Unfortunately, as recent evidence clearly indicates, with even most activists obviously deceived by the use of COVID-19 as ‘cover’ for the coup and oblivious to its catastrophic environmental consequences, this is proving far more difficult than I originally hoped.

Nevertheless, in the hope that we can build on the existing resistance, such as that being documented by Professor Chenoweth and her colleagues – see ‘The global pandemic has spawned new forms of activism – and they’re flourishing’ – while sharpening its focus for greater strategic impact, let me reiterate a previously outlined strategy below, particularly taking into account the insanity of the global elite – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – and the emotional health issues (including anxiety and depression) that are arising during the lockdown that are now complicating people’s existing compulsion to be obedient in the belief that compliance with COVID-19 (that is, coup) measures will make them ‘safe’.

A Nonviolent Strategy to Fight for our Humanity, Liberty and Future

So, if you wish to address your own emotional health issues arising during the COVID-19 coup, consider ‘Putting Feelings First’ and/or, if you wish to support others, including children, to do so effectively, see ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

In relation to the coup itself, I have identified the appropriate political purpose – obviously ‘To defend humanity against a political/military coup conducted by the global elite’ – and set out a basic list of (now) 28 strategic goals for achieving this purpose (which will also play a vital role in tackling key threats to human survival). The first thirteen of these strategic goals are as follows:

(1) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by wearing a global symbol of human solidarity, such as an image of several people of different genders/races/religions/abilities/classes holding hands.

(2) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by boycotting all corporate media outlets (television, radio, newspapers, Google, Facebook, Twitter…) and by seeking news from progressive news outlets committed to telling the truth.

(3) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by refusing to download the COVID-19 ‘contact tracing’ surveillance app.

(4) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by ending their ownership and use of a mobile (cell) phone. See ‘EchoEarth: End Cell Phones on Earth’ and ‘Cancel Your Cellphone Account Day, 20-21 June 2020’.

(5) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by withdrawing all funds from the corporate banks that are supporting the coup and to deposit their money in local community banks or credit unions.

(6) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by boycotting the medical and pharmaceutical industries – including by conscientiously refusing to submit to vaccination – and by seeking health advice and treatment from natural therapists. (If you are unfamiliar with the different philosophies underpinning these approaches, and hence why many natural therapies are so much more effective, there is a straightforward explanation here: ‘Pasteur vs. Bechamp: An Alternative View of Infectious Disease’.)

(7) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by boycotting corporate supermarkets and by supporting small and family businesses, and local markets.

(8) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in other locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For this item and many subsequent, see the list of possible nonviolent actions in the document ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’.

(9) To cause the workers [in trade unions or labor organizations T1, T2, T…] all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For example, this might include withdrawing labor from an elite-controlled bank, media, pharmaceutical or other corporation operating in your country.

(10) To cause the small farmers and farmworkers [in organizations F1, F2, F…] all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For example, this might include distributing farm produce through (existing or created) grassroots networks to small and family businesses as well as local markets rather than through corporate supply chains.

(11) To cause the indigenous peoples [in organizations IP1,IP2, IP…] all around the world to join the resistance strategy by participating in locally relevant nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities. For example, this might include utilizing indigenous knowledge to improve local self-reliance in food production and in other ways.

(12) To cause the soldiers and military police [in army units AU1, AU2, AU… and MP1, MP2, MP…], wherever stationed around the world, to refuse to obey orders from the global elite and its agents to arrest, assault, torture and shoot nonviolent activists and the other citizens of [your country].

(13) To cause the police [in police units P1, P2, P…], wherever stationed around the world, to refuse to obey orders from the global elite and its agents to arrest, assault, torture and shoot nonviolent activists and the other citizens of [your country].

You can read all 28 of the ‘Strategic goals for defeating a political/military coup conducted by the global elite against humanity’ by scrolling down the page at ‘Strategic Aims’.

Remaining pages on the website fully explain the twelve components of the strategy, as illustrated by the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel, as well as articles and videos explaining all of the vital points of strategy and tactics, such as those to help you understand ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’.

Given the complexity of the configuration of this conflict, however, which involves the need to fight simultaneously to retain our ‘deep humanity’, defeat the elite coup and avert near-term human extinction, it is important that our tactical choices are strategically-oriented (as the examples I cite in the thirteen strategic goals above illustrate). Hence, three further considerations assume importance.

First, choose/design tactics that have strategic impact, that is, they fundamentally and permanently alter, in our favor, the power relationship between the elite and us.

Second, when tactical choices are made, focus them on undermining the elite coup, not just features of it, such as ‘social distancing’ or the lockdowns. At its most basic, this can be achieved by using tactical choices that mobilize people to act initially, as is happening, but then inviting them to consider taking further, more focused, action as well (such as those nominated in the 28 strategic goals listed or referenced above). This is important because existing actions will have little impact on key underlying measures, such as those being taken by the elite to advance the fourth industrial revolution, which includes reducing us to a ‘digital identity’.

Third, I would choose/design tactics that also have strategic impact on the greatest threats to human survival, including the collapsing biodiversity on Earth, the threat of nuclear war, the climate catastrophe and the deployment of 5G. Given the incredibly short timeframe in which we are now working to avert human extinction, while people are mobilizing it is important to use this opportunity to give them the chance to perceive the ‘big picture’ of what is taking place – beyond lockdowns and other measures supposedly being used to tackle COVID-19 – and to act powerfully in response.

Equally importantly, the Nonviolent Strategy website explains how to prepare, frame and conduct any nonviolent action to minimize the risk of violent repression and, as some nonviolent activists are concerned, to contain any risk of damage to their cause by association with, or disruption by, those groups and provocateurs with a very different and possibly violent agenda. See ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

Fortunately, as more people become aware of the deeper strands of what is taking place, the energy to break the lockdowns and resist the coup will gather pace. As I have previously outlined, using a locally relevant focus, or perhaps several, for which many people would traditionally be together – a cultural or sporting event, a community activity such as working to establish a community garden to increase local self-reliance, a birthday celebration and/or a return to work – we can mobilize people to collectively resist.

In addition, as I mentioned above, given the pressing (and, possibly, now uncontainable) threat of human extinction but also because becoming more self-reliant is vital to our ongoing capacity to resist elite encroachments on our rights, freedom and economic security, consider accelerated participation in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

And for those nonviolent activists concerned about tackling the climate and/or other threats to human survival – including those in relation to the environment and war – you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals to focus your campaigns, from here: Strategic Aims.

Or, if you want something simpler, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

I will listen deeply to children. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
I will not travel by plane
I will not travel by car
I will not eat meat and fish
I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
I will not buy rainforest timber
I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

Conclusion

Using COVID-19 as ‘cover’, the global elite is conducting a coup to take vastly greater control of our lives and, in fact, to neutralize our humanity. This is being made very easy by the compulsion to obey that most people acquire in response to the ‘socialization’ experience they suffered as a child.

As a result, there is very little resistance to the coup, and none of which I am aware that is strategically focused. Consequently, the coup is readily measured by the destruction of our rights, freedoms, emotional health, political participation and economic security as well as its devastating impact on the Earth, further complicating the already grave series of interrelated threats to our survival and that of vast numbers of other species with which we share this planet.

As you ponder your response to this coup and the vastly increased threat to our survival, it might be worth remembering the words of David Rockefeller in his autobiography Memoirs, published in 2003:

Some even believe [the Rockefeller family is] part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.

If you believe that Rockefeller’s vision is benign from the viewpoint of people like you and me, it might be worth reading more about the Rockefeller family’s interests in our well-being, starting with the report from 2010 titled ‘Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development’ which discusses four scenarios for the human future in which one is based on ‘Lock Step’ following a pandemic: ‘A world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback’.

Hence, if you share my concern that the time to act powerfully in defence of our humanity, to defeat this elite coup and to fight vigorously and strategically on the many interrelated crises that threaten human extinction, then you are welcome to become involved in one or more of the ways suggested above.

Whatever we do, however, it is vitally important that we do not submissively obey the global elite and its agents such as international organizations, governments, corporations and the mainstream media. The elite and its agents might wear a benign smile at times but their loyalty is not to us or to the Earth. They are too insane to have loyalty to either; their loyalty is to themselves exclusively and we are expendable.

So I gently encourage you to have a good look at the evidence for yourself and to act while we still have some personal autonomy and political space to do so. If we do not act now, we will not have this autonomy and space for much longer and human extinction will follow imminently.

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After the Crash

Dispatches From a Long Recovery (Est. 10/2024)

Tag Archives: obedience