00:05:22.000most important difference is situated at the psychological level so a classical dictatorships
00:05:32.720to put it in a nutshell or are based on a very uh simple psychological mechanism so there is a small
00:05:41.040a small group in the in the in society a small group in the population which is experienced as or or which
00:05:48.480is perceived as being a very a group which disposes of a very uh impressive aggressive potential and
00:05:57.680because people are scared of this small group of people they just accept that the small group of
00:06:03.120people unilaterally imposes its its social contract to the to society and that's how a classical
00:06:11.680dictatorship functions at psychological level people are scared of dictatorial regime and that's why they
00:06:17.920accept that this dictatorial regime imposes its will to the population to society um in a in a totalitarian
00:06:26.240state uh is something completely different in a totalitarian state uh an impressive psychological
00:06:35.440process happens before the totalitarian state emerges and that that process the psychological process
00:06:42.720is a specific type of group formation called mass or i i i i i use the term mass formation or crowd
00:06:51.920formation to indicate that that that that that kind of group formation and it's it's a it's a group
00:06:56.880formation which has very specific effects at the level of individual mental functioning if a mass emerges in
00:07:06.240society um then the people who are in the grip of this mass formation the individuals who are in the grip of
00:07:19.280it typically lack any capacity to take a critical distance of what the group believes in that's the
00:07:27.120first major major effect at the level of individual psychological functioning second people who are in the
00:07:34.320grip of mass formation typically um become willing to sacrifice everything that used to be important for
00:07:43.040them as individuals before the mass formation started so they are willing to sacrifice their future their
00:07:49.920health their wealth no matter what um as soon as they were in the grip of this of this mass formation and
00:07:57.680third when a mass formation emerges individuals typically individuals who are in the grip of the
00:08:03.840mass formation typically become radically intolerant for dissonant voices so this process and to the extent that
00:08:12.240in the end they start to think that it is their ethical duty to eliminate everyone who doesn't
00:08:19.920go along with the masses with the mass formation so that's in a nutshell what the mass formation is at
00:08:24.480the phenomenological level it's a kind of group formation in which a group of people starts to
00:08:33.440believe fanatically in a certain ideology or a certain narrative such as
00:08:38.560um the race theories of hitler or the uh historical materialism of marx of marx and the soviet union
00:08:46.960um so people start to fanatically believe in a certain narrative usually we are talking about
00:08:53.20020 to 30 percent of the population not much more which is in the grip of the mass formation and they
00:08:58.080believe so fanatically in it that they uh
00:09:01.280do not succeed anymore and taking a critical distance of this narrative no matter how absurd
00:09:10.320it is for instance in iran during the the revolution in iran people started to believe that the portrait
00:09:16.560of their leader the ayatollah was printed on the surface of the moon and when there was a full moon in
00:09:21.120the sky they were typically standing in the streets showing each other where exactly this portrait of the
00:09:25.760ayatollah was printed on the surface of the moon and we are we were talking about the highly educated population
00:09:30.960and um uh and in the end they believe so fanatically in and in the narrative of their leaders and the
00:09:41.120ideology of their leaders um that they start to become extremely intolerant towards everyone who
00:09:48.000doesn't go along with them and and then and this typically leads to a strange state of being where
00:09:54.160even mothers report their children to the state or the other way around children report their parents to
00:09:59.920the state uh uh knowing that they will probably um uh be sentenced to death uh that happened again i i
00:10:10.080there is this conversation with of me within where the woman of iran on the internet her name is
00:10:15.600shorif ishtali where where this uh uh woman iranian woman described to me how she she lived in iran
00:10:24.720during the revolution which was like a huge uh mass formation um and how she witnessed the uh that a
00:10:33.760mother who reported her son to the state hung the rope around his neck when when when he was on the
00:10:38.640scaffold and when he when he died um when he was hung she claimed to be a heroine for what she did so
00:10:45.600that's typically the end stage of a mass formation people become so convinced of the narrative of the
00:10:53.760ideology that they report everyone who doesn't follow it to the state and they do so as if it
00:10:59.520is their ethical duty to do so so that's that can seem very strange but once you understand the
00:11:05.520psychological mechanism of mass formation you understand why it has this strange effect at the
00:11:11.440level of individual mental functioning and you also understand
00:11:14.320what you can do against it you cannot solve the problem immediately but you know what uh
00:11:23.520ethical and strategical principles you have to follow if you understand the mechanism
00:11:28.000so you've defined what mass formation is it's basically it sounds like it's a form of group
00:11:33.840thing that becomes so incredibly powerful that it makes you believe certain things um even if you
00:11:41.120are a rational-minded individual uh and i think a lot of us went through that during the pandemic
00:11:46.960um but how does it uh lead to the emergence of totalitarian systems in other words i'm wondering
00:11:53.200what direction does this go in uh you know you have people who are um you know bought into a certain
00:11:59.840narrative and then you have the political system uh on the other side um and uh you know so i'm just
00:12:06.640wondering it's it's you know the case of iran for example people were reporting uh their family
00:12:12.080members to the state but you also had a very authoritarian state in place that made people very
00:12:18.800fearful yes but um well you know uh totalitarian states can emerge in in in slightly different ways
00:12:27.440but in the end the essence and the backbone of a totalitarian state is always what uh what uh hannah
00:12:34.800are rent you probably know the german philosopher yeah probably the most important philosopher of
00:12:42.240the 20th century hannah arend said that um the core and the essence of a totalitarian system is always
00:12:50.880a diabolic pact between the elite and the masses and the crowd and this diabolic pact can emerge in
00:13:01.120slightly different ways for instance in nazi germany it seems that the masses first got in the grip
00:13:08.240of of all kinds of race theories and once the masses emerged uh there soon were a few uh leaders
00:13:19.920talented speakers who used the masses to seize control of the state apparatus and
00:13:28.880and something similar happened in a soviet union but then a differently in a slightly different way
00:13:34.160in the soviet union it seems that the mass formation was provoked from the beginning in in an artificial
00:13:41.600way through propaganda and indoctrination so um mass formation can emerge more or less spontaneously
00:13:49.280but it will soon disappear if it is not uh supported and continued through propaganda and indoctrination so a
00:13:58.080mass formation might emerge spontaneously but it won't last very long if there is if there is another
00:14:03.840if there are no leaders who who who time and time recirculate the same narratives through the mass media
00:14:13.120so if there are no leaders who use propaganda and indoctrination to to make sure that the mass
00:14:17.600formation continues so but but but sometimes uh it is provoked from the beginning in an artificial way
00:14:23.600through propaganda and indoctrination but no matter what the end effect is always the same uh there is
00:14:29.840a kind of a pact between uh an elite and the masses uh which together succeed in ceasing control of the
00:14:38.880state apparatus and uh in that way a a a a a completely new kind of state emerges which doesn't does not
00:14:49.760only control a public space and political space as a classical dictatorship does but which also
00:14:56.720controls private space because it has a huge secret police at its disposal namely all these people who
00:15:05.760are in the grip of the mass formation and who believe so fanatically in the state narrative that
00:15:11.040they want to report all their family members if necessary if they do not follow the narrative so that's
00:15:16.400why a totalitarian state has a much more suffocating impact at the level of the population than a
00:15:21.360classical dictatorship and interesting no right yeah sorry go ahead yes i i think we we see something
00:15:31.840similar now a totalitarian state um emerges in a sneaky way very often very often people don't
00:15:40.880really notice it and even the elite itself doesn't only does not always really
00:15:46.400uh uh uh be aware of what they are doing it's it's it's always a process in which um both the elite
00:15:57.440let's say the institutions that govern society and the population start to become more and more
00:16:04.160fanatically convinced that a certain ideology will is necessary and not only necessary but has the capacity
00:16:14.640to create a new kind of society which is always um portrayed as a new paradise for the for for
00:16:24.720for mankind and uh and they become so fanatically convinced of it that they believe it is justified to
00:16:34.800transgress all ethical rules and all uh moral rules in order to realize this new paradise
00:16:43.280and that's uh that's of course where the the the essence of totalitarianism the essence of totalitarianism
00:16:50.320is that that that there is a uh there are certain leaders supported by a major part of the population
00:16:58.640who so fanatically believe in their ideology that they think it is justified to
00:17:05.840uh lie and cheat and and and uh kill and murder in the end uh in order to
00:17:12.880to impose this ideology and to create this utopian new ideological paradise which according to hannah arend
00:17:19.760hannah arend said there is only one problem with this totalitarian paradise and it is that it always
00:17:27.680looks suspiciously lost like hell that's the problem yeah it kills the essence of the human yeah well
00:17:36.320that's that's uh that's well said and um you know of course the covet 19 uh crisis and the public
00:17:44.240response to it um the the pandemic is replete with examples of what you describe um what to your mind stands
00:17:52.400out as this one thing that you think can think of from the pandemic that uh fits this um fits your uh
00:18:00.000fits your thesis you know well it's clear i think that we were dealing with the with the with the
00:18:06.960with the mass formation uh like from the beginning um it was clear to me and to and to
00:18:16.080many other uh academics i think that there was something wrong with the narrative i mean the
00:18:24.800statistics from the first week onwards i started to write opinion papers trying to show people that
00:18:31.520the statistics were wrong or at least i warned them in certain opinion papers and after a few months
00:18:40.080it was proven beyond doubt that the initial statistics had been wrong because the initial
00:18:45.680models the initial models predicted that that's the best example i can give i i i i always give the
00:18:50.880same example the initial models predicted that in a country such as sweden uh sixty to eighty
00:18:57.840thousand people would die if the country didn't go into lockdown would not go into lockdown uh so
00:19:03.040sixty to eighty thousand people would die by the end of may 2020 and by the end of may 2020 speden
00:19:09.040hadn't gone into lockdown and only six thousand people died and um um so and even then uh the narrative
00:19:18.720just continued and there were so many other examples so many other examples that that all showed
00:19:23.120uh that that that that the narrative was absurd it had been completely wrong and still the narrative
00:19:29.360continued and and people continued to buy into the narrative and even accepted that um they lost their
00:19:38.560uh their freedom they were locked away in their houses that they they they had to wear masks that they
00:19:45.760they they they lost many of their most elementary uh civil rights uh and and and they still the people
00:19:52.880accepted it uh even in an enthusiastic way and i also like like people accepted that um
00:20:01.440this dissonant voices were censored on a on a scale that was that had never been seen before uh uh uh
00:20:10.800so there were all kinds of signs that showed that a mass formation was going on and um and um um
00:20:20.080um i think that that that that this in itself like but we also to give another example like suddenly we
00:20:31.040all accepted that the democratically elected politicians actually um didn't take the decisions
00:20:38.960and decisions anymore in society it were the experts technocratic experts technical experts who decisions
00:20:45.680uh and uh and there's the i i i i i think that that that numerous things showed us that we actually at
00:20:56.480least temporarily replaced democracy with a technocratic system and um um um um so um and even after the
00:21:10.400we look ravel you know i don't i don't actually don't believe that at this moment uh the corona measures
00:21:17.760uh are really over we still see uh how vaccination campaigns are prepared um we see how um uh parliaments um
00:21:31.520um prepare to um um make many of the corona measures i think actually permanent yeah well here in canada the
00:21:45.680vaccine mandates um were last year suspended not completely dropped and we're never gonna yeah so
00:21:55.840it's you know they could always uh bring them back if uh if necessary and uh yes you're right that the
00:22:02.000vaccine campaigns are still ongoing um canada seems to be a special case of uh paranoia and mass formation
00:22:10.560because um we're still tracking things like wastewater signal uh signals uh you know the what's the level of
00:22:18.480uh cobit 19 in our wastewater for example and uh um and you know many of these experts just simply refuse to
00:22:27.200move on and uh and as a result i think the public is still in in in the grip of this fear um and and
00:22:36.480it's it's you know it's actually quite disturbing to see young people um you know so afraid uh to step out
00:22:43.600of their homes without wearing a mask and uh and that's quite uh fascinating to see one of the one
00:22:50.000of the elements in your book matthias um you know you talk about the presence of a charismatic leader
00:22:56.480in totalitarian movements and um you know what are the psychological factors that uh that make uh
00:23:04.160individuals and you know susceptible to charismatic leaders and and how do these leaders uh exploit these
00:23:12.000vulnerabilities uh yes yes uh well um in order for a large scale mass formation to emerge you need
00:23:26.320indeed you need very specific psychological conditions in a population um and it is exactly these conditions
00:23:34.480that were more were more and more met throughout the last few centuries and which made the population
00:23:41.840more and more vulnerable for mass formation which made that the mass formations became bigger and
00:23:47.920lasted longer in which in the end in the beginning of the 20th century made that the masses became so
00:23:53.760strong that they could seize control of the state apparatus so that's that's uh so and then
00:23:58.800everything starts i think with these psychological conditions of the population so uh the first condition
00:24:04.240is that in order for a mass formation to emerge a large-scale mass formation many people have to
00:24:10.080feel lonely and disconnected so that's the most crucial condition uh it's it's what it's what um the
00:24:16.560frankfurt school and hannah arendt and even earlier hegel called the atomization of society atomization of
00:24:24.640society meaning that people start to feel disconnected from each other and from nature so that that that's
00:24:30.160that's actually in itself that's a consequence i think of the industrialization and the mechanization of the
00:24:34.800world i i won't go into this now but you can see how almost the invention of every mechanical device
00:24:43.040to a certain extent disconnects people a little bit of their environment and the use of technology as well
00:24:48.640we all think that uh communication technology connects people to each other and that's true
00:24:54.560but only at the level of the exchange of information um at a certain level they also disconnect
00:25:00.320people because if you talk with someone in a technological in a digitalized way then uh maybe
00:25:07.600you will be able to exchange information in a very efficient way but at the level of uh the physical
00:25:14.880experience of the conversation it will not be comparable to a real conversation and in a real
00:25:20.000conversation the the bodies of people constantly resonate with each other and that's why we
00:25:25.520have a very efficient empathic uh uh feeling when we meet someone in person uh while we have it less
00:25:34.480when we meet someone uh in the digital world so i i could i describe certain examples in my in my in
00:25:41.120the first chapters of my book but anyway it's it's this is the industrialization the in the mechanization
00:25:47.920of the world and the use of technology with which uh increased loneliness and disconnectedness
00:25:54.160throughout the last few centuries and just before the corona crisis uh the number of lonely people
00:25:59.760really peaked like like in northern america uh um the u.s surgeon general warned that there was a
00:26:08.480an epidemic of loneliness and and then in the uk teresa may appointed the minister of loneliness
00:26:15.040because she recognized how many people felt lonely up to somewhere in between 40 and 60 percent of the
00:26:20.880people of the population worldwide uh um re in in certain surveys reported um that they that they
00:26:28.720that they uh felt lonely to the extent that they didn't have one meaningful um uh real contact real um
00:26:38.560social bond with someone so that that shows us the proportions of the problem was huge
00:26:42.240and then once people feel lonely and disconnected they are easily confronted with uh lack of meaning
00:26:48.320making in life so uh that's that's that's a psychological consequence uh people feel in
00:26:54.080a spontaneous way that their life is meaningful every time they see that they have that they have
00:26:59.280an effect on someone else and if you feel lonely you don't see that anymore you don't experience
00:27:03.440anymore that your life that you that that you as a human being has an effect on another human being
00:27:08.720so that's the reason why this loneliness usually leads to lack of uh uh purpose lack of meaning making
00:27:15.040in life and then in the next step and that's crucial in the next step once people feel lonely um and um
00:27:24.640once they are confronted with lack of meaning making they will typically be confronted with something
00:27:29.520very specific at the level of their affective emotional life they will be confronted with so-called
00:27:36.080free-floating anxiety frustration and aggression that means a kind of anxiety frustration and aggression
00:27:42.960uh in which people don't know what they feel anxious frustrated and aggressive for and
00:27:58.160when they are in that condition people typically are extremely vulnerable for propaganda and that's
00:28:05.360important because if under these conditions a narrative is distributed through the mass media
00:28:14.480that indicates an object of anxiety and the strategy to deal with that object of anxiety something very
00:28:22.880specific might happen all this free-floating anxiety might suddenly connect to the object of anxiety for
00:28:32.560for instance a virus or the jews or the aristocracy and the soviet union doesn't no matter what or the
00:28:39.200witches during the witch lands all this free-floating anxiety might connect to the object of anxiety
00:28:46.400and people might be willing on a large scale to participate in the strategy to deal with that object of anxiety
00:28:54.000even if that strategy is utterly absurd why just because in that way they feel they can control their anxiety
00:29:04.560if you're anxious but you don't know what you're anxious for
00:29:10.080then you feel completely out of control and that's an extremely aversive mental state and as soon as you can connect your anxiety to something
00:29:18.400you can and someone provides you with a strategy to deal with that something with that object of anxiety
00:29:26.320then you might be willing to participate in that strategy because it makes you it gives you the
00:29:30.880feeling that you're in control of your anxiety and it's exactly the same in exactly the same way individual psychological functions in
00:29:37.600symptoms emerge usually for instance a classical phobia emerges in exactly the same way someone is confronted with
00:29:47.280uh free floating anxiety which he cannot connect to something and suddenly for us in a strange way
00:29:55.760the person the person is scared of spiders just because without being aware of what happened he
00:30:03.040connected his anxiety to a certain object because in that way he can control his anxiety be it only by avoiding
00:30:11.920that phobic object so and then that that can also happen at the level of a society where where people
00:30:19.92020 to 30 percent of the population connects its anxiety all to the same object an object that is provided
00:30:29.520in a narrative that is disseminated through the mass media and so and that's the first so the first
00:30:34.320psychological advantage advantage symptomatic advantage is that people can control their anxiety second
00:30:41.280they can take their frustration and aggression out on something they know now what the cause of the
00:30:48.080problem is or they believe they know and they they have a an excuse now to uh take their anger the
00:30:57.280frustration aggression out on someone or something that's a that's a second psychological advantage and then the
00:31:02.720third and the most important psychological advantage of the mass formation is that because so many people
00:31:10.960at the same time participate in the strategy to deal with the object of anxiety they feel connected again
00:31:18.640they don't feel lonely anymore so they feel as if they fight a collective heroic battle with the object of
00:31:25.120anxiety and this is if they got rid of their loneliness i said as if because they are not really
00:31:34.160because because a mass is a group that emerges not because individuals connect to other individuals no
00:31:43.520the mass is a group that emerges because each individual separately connects to a collective ideal connects to
00:31:51.520a collective so the famous solidarity of the masses is never a solidarity of individuals with other
00:31:59.600individuals it's a solidarity of an individual with a collective meaning that the longer the mass formation
00:32:07.680exists the less solidarity people feel for each other and the more they feel for the collective and in
00:32:14.080the end the solidarity and the love for the collective becomes much stronger than the solidarity with other
00:32:21.360individuals and that's why in the end even the strongest bonds between people such as the bond between
00:32:26.720the mother and a child becomes weaker than the bond of the mother with the collective and that's why in the
00:32:33.840end mothers report their children to the state if they are not loyal enough to the state narrative so
00:32:38.400that's what happens in a in a in a mass formation and that's why it has these strange effects at the
00:32:44.480level of individual mental functioning um yeah i'm uh very interested in this link you make between um
00:32:53.520you know the psychological dynamics of totalitarianism and uh populism um you know what are the psychological
00:33:01.920factors um you know um that um that are part of totalitarian totalitarianism uh that that could
00:33:11.040bring about populist movements for example um well you know it depends of course how you define populism
00:33:23.360but if you define if you define populism as the manipulation of the masses through speech um through um
00:33:31.920well through through through propaganda then then then then um populism or at least then every
00:33:44.960kind of totalitarianism is populism but not the other way around that thing not the other way around
00:33:50.480not all populism is totalitarianism because there are there are other characteristics of uh of
00:33:55.280totalitarianism which are necessary to to uh to consider something as totalitarianism for instance there
00:34:00.880must be a strong ideological motivation totalitarian systems uh always have this strong ideological
00:34:08.240drive they try to create a new society a new society which is always um um conceived as a kind
00:34:19.360of a paradise which will free the human being of all its suffering and all its um all its uh limitations
00:34:27.760all the limitations of the human condition and now nowadays so that was the case in the soviet unit
00:34:32.480was the case in nazi germany and nowadays i think um what some people what what drives this system
00:34:40.240is the transhumanist ideology i think it's the idea that um the human being can um
00:34:49.280that we need to create a digital environment a digital society a technological society
00:34:54.880uh uh uh in which if you read the the works of for instance juval noah harari the human being
00:35:03.360will live forever in a in a biochemically induced state of eternal happiness that's about what
00:35:11.040the the transhumanist ideology believes and i think what certain people uh believe has to be imposed to
00:35:21.120society no matter at what price yeah you've talked about uh the sense of powerlessness and loss of um
00:35:30.240autonomy these are fundamental uh uh elements in totalitarian systems um and you know how this
00:35:37.280loss of individual agency contributes to the um to to you know how people are uh psychologically
00:35:44.320manipulated and within such systems uh and you also mentioned fear uh fear was definitely a very
00:35:51.280important component and central component of the pandemic and um you know how how is fear used as
00:35:58.240a tool of control and where you find individuals like the people that i mentioned earlier who are still
00:36:04.160masked and getting their sixth or seventh boosters booster shots uh you know how do you ex you know
00:36:10.240they're now stuck in a chronic state of fear yes fear is often used yeah by people who who want to
00:36:21.280manipulate the population uh i think people have always people of all times have been confronted with
00:36:28.560anxiety in medieval europe people were anxious as well maybe even more than now but the most important
00:36:36.000thing is that um is this free floating uh quality of the anxiety if people are anxious and they don't know
00:36:44.080what they feel anxious for then you can very easily uh uh uh connect their anxiety to an object of anxiety
00:36:54.240and make them follow your strategy to to fight that object of anxiety so and that's what i think that's
00:37:00.800that's the characteristic state of the 20th century population is that they are very often confronted
00:37:07.200with with a kind of unease a kind of psychological suffering a kind of um aversive affect without really
00:37:18.560knowing what uh they are scared of what they are anxious for and that's the ideal state in which people are
00:37:26.960very easily um get very easily in the grip of propaganda so um um you know about some something
00:37:36.800also very something that is also very important is uh before the french revolution there was no such
00:37:44.240thing as modern propaganda the church sometimes used propaganda but that was of a completely different
00:37:50.320nature than the kind of propaganda we use now that are used now and after the french revolution uh the
00:37:56.800the the elite the new elite um which had to be democratically elected started to realize that
00:38:04.000they could no longer impose their will to the population as the um as a as as the elite before
00:38:12.160the french revolution did so they had to find a solution for that and they actually found one
00:38:18.000they decided that if they could no longer overtly impose their will to the population they would
00:38:23.200make the population do what they wanted without them realizing that they do what they wanted and
00:38:27.520that was the moment when the modern institutes institutes of propaganda were born the first institute
00:38:32.720of propaganda was established by napoleon immediately after the french revolution or shortly after the
00:38:37.680french revolution and it was called uh the bureau d'opinion public uh um the office for uh public opinion
00:38:47.600and after the french revolution um so the the propaganda became more and more and more important to the
00:38:53.600elite it became their privileged way to have a grip on the population um and uh and that at the same time
00:39:03.760in a strange way at the same time the population more and more got in the state where they became
00:39:11.200sensitive for propaganda so on the one hand you had the development of an elite which
00:39:16.080uh used more and more propaganda and on the other hand you had the population which became more and
00:39:21.920more vulnerable for propaganda and and then that together led to the emergence of the so-called lonely
00:39:28.000masses and you you know mass formation has always existed but the ancient masses were physical masses
00:39:35.040the individuals that constituted the mass met physically otherwise there could be no mass formation
00:39:41.440but now we can uh now the mass is often
00:39:46.080uh uh consists of individuals who all live isolated in their houses but who are all infused
00:39:56.880by the same narratives the same mental representations through the mass media and in this way they are
00:40:03.680mentally a mass or a crowd but they never physically meet or usually do not physically meet and this
00:40:10.240lonely mass is a mass that can continue to exist for a very long time and that can be governed and
00:40:17.440steered and manipulated in a much more efficient way than the physical mass so um uh oh well that that's
00:40:25.520the state that's what the the the situation where we find ourselves in now i think uh there is a uh there are
00:40:34.000a set of global institutions who think it's their ethical duty to use nudging and all kind of
00:40:43.440manipulation techniques psychological manipulation techniques to make the people accept that society is
00:40:49.920reshapen from a democracy into a technocracy um and they use all kinds you know the leaders of the masses