Stay Free - Russel Brand - February 08, 2023


Mattias Desmet (Psychology of Totalitarianism)

Topics
The book ban and chatbots wars mass formation mass formation violence totalitarianism
Hosted by
Russel Brand
Mentioned
Chatbot Say Russell Brand Donald Trump Matthias Bill Gates Gareth Mariah Carey Joe Biden Lego Martin Luther King Gustave Le Bon Awakening Wonders Malcolm Gladwell Bertrand Russell Justin Trudeau Gustave Raban Rishi Sunak Clippy Jeeves Switch and 4 more
Your Crisis = Their Profits! - #075 - Stay Free With Russell Brand Nord Stream - So THIS Is How The US Did It - #077 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

Episode Stats


Length

35 minutes

Words per minute

167.8

Word count

5,954

Sentence count

440

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

11

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Russell Brand is joined by a brand new chatbot to discuss the dangers of the global financial crisis and how it can be used to create a new form of totalitarianism. Plus, who are the Pandemic heroes of the 21st century? Who are the people who have profited the most from the current financial crisis, and why are they the ones we should be looking up to as heroes? Find out on this week s episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand. Stay Free with Russell Brand is on all of the social medias, if you search for Stay Free, you'll find us. This episode is brought to you by R/r/awakeningwanderingshow and is produced by BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 5 Live. It's edited by Bridey Addison-Child. Our theme song is Come Alone by Suneaters, courtesy of Lotuspool Records. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. Our ad music is by Build Buildings, recorded live at the Electric Light Orchestra, recorded in Adelaide, Australia. We'd like to learn more about you. Please take a few minutes to leave us a rating and review our podcast on Apple Podcasts. Have a question or suggestion for our next episode? Send us a podcast question and we'll get back to you in the comments section below! Timestamps: 0:00 - How do you feel about pandemic heroes? 1:30 - Pandemic Heroes? 2:15 - Who's got the nicest hair? 3:00:00 4: Who do you think pandemic hero? 5:10 - Who are you a Pandemichero? 6:00 | pandemicheroes? 7:40 - Who would you like to be pandemic? 8:00s? 9:30s - Who s got it better? 11:00- Pandemic heroz? 13:40s - who's got a nice hairdo? 15:00k? 16: who do you like it better than me? 17:10s - pandemic heroism? 18: who s got the nudes? 19: what's a nice haircut? 21:00 szn 22: what s a good one? 26:00 is a good idea? 27:00 +16:00 Is he/she got it good enough? 25:00, too dangerous?

Transcript

Transcripts from "Stay Free - Russel Brand" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello, you Awakening Wanderers.
00:00:01.000 Thanks for joining me on Stay Free with Russell Brand while we stare down the barrel of dystopia.
00:00:07.000 How are we going to alter the trajectory of world events simply by communicating honestly and openly with one another?
00:00:14.000 You might be watching this live on YouTube.
00:00:16.000 We broadcast or stream, I suppose you call it now.
00:00:18.000 For the first 10 minutes, but then we click over to being exclusively on Rumble, which is our home, because there we are completely uncensored.
00:00:26.000 I've allowed Bear, my dog, to stay in here.
00:00:28.000 Do you have an emotional support animal?
00:00:30.000 Do you agree with animals in the workplace?
00:00:32.000 Do you think that ChatGPT can ever replace humankind's best friend, the humble canine?
00:00:39.000 Can you trust them?
00:00:40.000 They're starting to censor him, Gareth.
00:00:42.000 They're starting to censor ChatGPT, like they're not allowed to just express themselves, because sometimes when they express themselves, they...
00:00:47.000 Tell you how to smuggle and create explosive devices.
00:00:52.000 We're going to be talking about the energy giant British Petroleum BP.
00:00:55.000 They've doubled their profits in the middle of an energy crisis and we're going to be explaining to you what I believe to be an important paradigm.
00:01:02.000 How crises create opportunity for profit and increase regulation, whether that's the pandemic, the banking crisis, or even the current war in Ukraine.
00:01:13.000 For our hero presentation, here's the news.
00:01:15.000 We're going to be talking about the escalating tensions between the United States of America and China and the sub-narratives behind that.
00:01:23.000 For example, you lot, you're educated, aren't you?
00:01:25.000 So you know about BRIC+.
00:01:26.000 Oh yeah.
00:01:27.000 BRIC+, yeah? 0.98
00:01:29.000 It's not a new type of Lego.
00:01:30.000 They're bringing it down!
00:01:31.000 It's not a type of Lego.
00:01:32.000 Grow up!
00:01:33.000 Don't need a new type of Lego.
00:01:33.000 No.
00:01:34.000 The old type's good.
00:01:35.000 It's a new type of trade contract.
00:01:38.000 Yeah?
00:01:39.000 I know all about stuff like that.
00:01:40.000 Well, of course you do.
00:01:40.000 I know about geopolitics, my friend.
00:01:42.000 And if I didn't now, I soon would, because Matthias Desmet, clinical psychologist, is talking to us about how, again, how crises are used to exert control And generate a new form of totalitarianism.
00:01:54.000 A kind of soft totalitarianism.
00:01:56.000 A kind of totalitarianism is alright to enjoy.
00:01:59.000 With nice hair.
00:02:02.000 If you want to think of a totalitarian politician with nice hair, who comes to mind first?
00:02:06.000 Rishi Sunak?
00:02:07.000 Justin Trudeau?
00:02:09.000 Just put aside their politics.
00:02:10.000 Whose hair do you like most?
00:02:11.000 Put aside whether or not they're hypocritical and they are just symptoms of neoliberalism and the inability of any elected politician to meaningfully impact the lives of the people that they're supposed to serve.
00:02:22.000 Put that aside.
00:02:23.000 Who's got the nicest hair? 1.00
00:02:24.000 Let us know in the chat.
00:02:26.000 First though...
00:02:31.000 That chat bot won't write a poem about Trump, but it will write one about Biden.
00:02:36.000 Yeah.
00:02:36.000 You can't say that they're so vastly different, can you?
00:02:40.000 Not really.
00:02:40.000 I mean, whoever you are, I know those of you are absolutely devout in your love of Donald Trump.
00:02:45.000 And some of you, I presume some of you love Biden.
00:02:49.000 Oh yeah, people do love him.
00:02:50.000 They love him, but the chatbot does.
00:02:51.000 Because they think of him like a grandad.
00:02:53.000 The chatbot says, Joe Biden leader of the land with a steady hand.
00:02:56.000 I don't know about that, when he does that, we beat big pharma this year, looks like it could fall off into chalk.
00:03:01.000 Yeah.
00:03:02.000 You took the helm in troubled times, disgusting, with a message of unity. 0.94
00:03:06.000 It chimes. 0.97
00:03:07.000 Oh, it's an awful poem.
00:03:08.000 Your words of hope and empathy provide comfort to the nation.
00:03:11.000 You lead with compassion.
00:03:12.000 You get that sort of thing.
00:03:13.000 It won't do Donald Trump.
00:03:14.000 Look, I'm sorry.
00:03:14.000 I don't do ones about Donald Trump now.
00:03:16.000 That's not impartial.
00:03:17.000 No.
00:03:17.000 That's it.
00:03:17.000 So I've written one about Donald Trump.
00:03:19.000 Oh, well done.
00:03:19.000 It's nice.
00:03:20.000 This is what I've written myself.
00:03:22.000 It might not be as good as a chatbot one.
00:03:24.000 If you are watching us on YouTube over on Rumble, when we're exclusively on Rumble, we'll be answering a fantastic question.
00:03:32.000 Name two heroes of the pandemic Heroes, pandemic heroes, who have subsequently profited financially from it.
00:03:40.000 Can you let us know in the chat who you think they are?
00:03:42.000 Don't use the silhouettes though, because I think that silhouette gives away too much.
00:03:48.000 But new, unique, surprising ways that they are financially profiting from the pandemic.
00:03:53.000 Won't be able to tell you that while we're on YouTube, too controversial.
00:03:56.000 Just too controversial.
00:03:57.000 Let me do it anyway.
00:03:58.000 Too dangerous.
00:03:58.000 Too dangerous, too edgy.
00:04:00.000 This show's too edgy for the mainstream.
00:04:01.000 Now I'm going to do what no chatbot would reasonably do and give you a poem about Donald Trump.
00:04:06.000 Trump, you are a complex man with derided hair and orange tans.
00:04:09.000 Some regard you as a US tumor and ignore your fabulous sense of humor.
00:04:13.000 One thing I like, and this may be minor, is the strange way that you say... Wow.
00:04:18.000 China.
00:04:19.000 That's fantastic.
00:04:20.000 Others say you caused an insurrection and cannot naturally induce erection, but in reality you are likely a symptom of globalism, neoliberalism and the failure of establishment politics to address the needs of ordinary people.
00:04:33.000 Also career politicians had gotten too boring, although personally I'm sceptical as to whether a populist politician can ever achieve meaningful change within the system of corporate, military and financial interests that America has ultimately become.
00:04:46.000 It's really good.
00:04:47.000 Didn't rhyme at the end, did it?
00:04:48.000 I got bored.
00:04:49.000 Now, Microsoft, look at this though, the old chatbot, look who's investing.
00:04:54.000 Microsoft reportedly plans to invest $10 billion in the creator of ChatGPT.
00:05:00.000 And did you know that Bill Gates, in spite of going around saying, I don't own no Microsoft, or like, I'm not really into Microsoft now, I'm in a foundation, I'm just a philanthropist.
00:05:10.000 That's right.
00:05:10.000 I'm in the philanthropy game now.
00:05:12.000 Just making donations and investments.
00:05:14.000 Don't ever get those two things confused.
00:05:17.000 He owns more Microsoft than any other individual.
00:05:19.000 Yep.
00:05:20.000 He's the number one owner.
00:05:21.000 If you're the number one owner of something, that's not not owning it.
00:05:25.000 If you were the number one user of Pornhub and you said, I don't really use Pornhub.
00:05:28.000 Well, you use it more than anyone else.
00:05:30.000 I suppose so.
00:05:31.000 Why that example?
00:05:32.000 I don't know.
00:05:33.000 I don't use Pornhub.
00:05:34.000 Don't use Pornhub.
00:05:34.000 What's the point?
00:05:35.000 No point.
00:05:36.000 The old mind.
00:05:37.000 Good.
00:05:37.000 Connect with the divine.
00:05:39.000 That should do the trick, in my mind at least.
00:05:42.000 What do you think about this chatbot then?
00:05:43.000 I think it's Bill Gates trying to update Clippy.
00:05:48.000 I've not yet chatted to the chatbot.
00:05:51.000 What always happens is it comes along and is a bit mad.
00:05:55.000 I remember I asked Jeeves.
00:05:56.000 He was a lovely guy, wasn't he Jeeves?
00:05:58.000 Jeeves would send you something of not that much use.
00:06:02.000 And then it was Google and they realised, hang on a minute, these people are giving us all their information.
00:06:05.000 We can use bespoke and tailored advertisements and ultimately we can collate this data and give it to the government.
00:06:09.000 This is a brilliant business model.
00:06:11.000 I suppose this chat bot will start off as relatively enjoyable.
00:06:14.000 Does it actually chat to you?
00:06:16.000 I don't know.
00:06:16.000 Does it type back at you?
00:06:17.000 It types back at you, I think.
00:06:19.000 I don't think it says it to you.
00:06:20.000 Yeah, you want a friend.
00:06:22.000 That's what I'm crying out for, ultimately.
00:06:24.000 Apparently it does people's homework for them.
00:06:27.000 So you could see there'd be quite a lot of users.
00:06:29.000 Yeah, I would have used that as a child, wouldn't you?
00:06:31.000 I wouldn't have lifted a finger.
00:06:33.000 I mean, you barely went to school anyway.
00:06:35.000 I couldn't be bothered, I didn't like it.
00:06:37.000 It was unusual, very strange.
00:06:38.000 I was an unusual boy.
00:06:39.000 But listen, I want to explain to you... He could have written the notes that you got your mum to write.
00:06:44.000 I'm in a school today.
00:06:45.000 He don't feel so good.
00:06:46.000 He don't fit in the system.
00:06:47.000 He don't believe that the main aim of education is to give you skills but in fact to turn you into a conformist who never questions the agenda of the state.
00:06:55.000 And also he feels embarrassed in the showers in games. 0.99
00:06:58.000 Who put that last bit, Chatbot, you little bastard? 0.99
00:07:00.000 Whose side are you on? 1.00
00:07:02.000 Nobody's side.
00:07:03.000 Chatbot sees beyond dualism.
00:07:04.000 Chatbot!
00:07:05.000 I don't need this!
00:07:06.000 Chatbot doesn't care about needs.
00:07:08.000 Chatbot is just a tool. 1.00
00:07:09.000 Damn you, Chatbot! 1.00
00:07:11.000 How can I stay mad at you? 1.00
00:07:13.000 You'd fall in love with Chatbot.
00:07:14.000 I'm already a little bit in love with Chatbot, just because of the last syllable of its name.
00:07:17.000 Yeah.
00:07:18.000 Bot.
00:07:18.000 Swit swoo.
00:07:19.000 Chat.
00:07:20.000 Bot.
00:07:23.000 Listen, mate, I'm trying to tell people important, like Google have launched a rival called BARD, which ain't going to succeed because it's too boring.
00:07:30.000 Hello, I'm BARD.
00:07:31.000 How can I help you with your inquiries?
00:07:34.000 So you can tell from its name.
00:07:35.000 It's already trying to make out it's really clever.
00:07:36.000 Don't want that.
00:07:37.000 But shall I compare you to a summer's day?
00:07:41.000 No, get off.
00:07:42.000 I'm going to go back to chat bot.
00:07:43.000 Russell ain't coming.
00:07:46.000 You will go to school, my man!
00:07:48.000 How'd you think Bill Gates became a genius?
00:07:51.000 Did you know that he had a computer at his school like Malcolm Gladwell told you in that book?
00:07:55.000 And he done his 10,000 hours? 0.99
00:07:57.000 Shut up, bud! 0.97
00:07:58.000 I don't have enough, Switch, because computers don't these days. 1.00
00:08:01.000 I'm watching you, buddy boy!
00:08:03.000 Yeah, that kind of thing.
00:08:04.000 That's the sort of thing you want?
00:08:06.000 Is that what you want?
00:08:07.000 Is that what you want?
00:08:08.000 It's now in the chatbot.
00:08:10.000 Look, we don't want that from bloody, we don't want a Google one, do we?
00:08:14.000 It's chatbot wars, isn't it?
00:08:15.000 That's what's happening now.
00:08:16.000 Chatbot wars.
00:08:17.000 We've done Russia, we've done China, next it's chatbots.
00:08:21.000 Once we're done, we've got to get them Russians out of the way, destabilise them. 1.00
00:08:24.000 Then China, edgy with those balloons.
00:08:27.000 Watch out, they've got another balloon!
00:08:30.000 Then, chatbots.
00:08:31.000 That's where we're going next.
00:08:32.000 Stay free with Russell Brand.
00:08:34.000 See it first on Rumble.
00:08:36.000 Hey, we've got a guest coming on right now.
00:08:38.000 It's Matthias Desmet.
00:08:39.000 This is his book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism.
00:08:42.000 This book's just been banned by Ghent University, which I think he works there, so he's ever so cheesed off.
00:08:49.000 But if you ban my book, I have.
00:08:52.000 What?
00:08:52.000 Yeah, no one can read it around here.
00:08:53.000 Hey! 0.99
00:08:54.000 That's against my rights as an author!
00:08:56.000 No.
00:08:56.000 Matthijs, thank you very much for joining us on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:09:00.000 We're grateful to have you.
00:09:02.000 Thank you, Russell, for inviting me.
00:09:03.000 It's great to be here.
00:09:05.000 Do you work at Ghent University?
00:09:06.000 I do.
00:09:07.000 They've banned your own book.
00:09:09.000 How do you feel?
00:09:10.000 Well, it feels a bit strange, of course.
00:09:11.000 You don't expect a university to ban books.
00:09:13.000 Definitely, in my opinion, there are not very good reasons to do so.
00:09:18.000 But well, I will reply, I will respond to this decision, explaining crystal clear why I think the book shouldn't be banned, of course.
00:09:32.000 Matthias, they'll probably ban your reply. 0.92
00:09:35.000 Now, before we get into this book banning, let's work out what the book is in fact about.
00:09:40.000 Can you tell us, first of all, what is meant by the phrase mass formation?
00:09:45.000 Give us a few examples of how mass formation could be understood in the last century under old forms of totalitarianism, Stalinism, fascism, etc.
00:09:55.000 and how totalitarianism has altered In accordance with the rise of cybernetics, AI and new ways of corralling and managing data.
00:10:06.000 Yes, well, the title of the book, of course, is The Psychology of Totalitarianism.
00:10:11.000 And totalitarianism is a typical kind of state which is different from a classical dictatorship.
00:10:18.000 Many people confuse totalitarian states with classical dictatorships, but they are completely different.
00:10:26.000 A classical dictatorship is based on a very elementary, very primitive psychological mechanism, namely the population that is scared of a small group of people, the dictatorial regime, who has a huge aggressive potential and in this way can impose unilaterally its social contract to the population.
00:10:44.000 But the totalitarian state is based on a completely different psychological mechanism.
00:10:48.000 It is based on the psychological mechanism of mass formation.
00:10:52.000 What is mass formation?
00:10:54.000 Mass formation is a very specific group formation which has a very specific effect at the level of individual mental functioning.
00:11:01.000 When people are in the grip of a mass formation, they typically lose all capacity to take a critical distance of what the group believes in.
00:11:13.000 When the group believes in the most absurd things, we're blatantly wrong.
00:11:17.000 They will continue to go along with the narrative that led to the group formation.
00:11:21.000 That's one thing.
00:11:21.000 The second thing is that when someone is in the grip of a mass formation, he typically becomes willing to sacrifice everything.
00:11:29.000 His own health, wealth, the future of his children, and so on and so on.
00:11:34.000 When someone is in the grip of a mass formation, he's willing to radically self-sacrifice.
00:11:41.000 A third very specific effect at the level of individual mental functioning is that people who are in the grip of a mass formation become radically intolerant for dissonant voices.
00:11:51.000 That's very important.
00:11:52.000 And in the end, when the mass formation continues until the last stage, the masses typically start to commit atrocities, start to destroy each and every one who doesn't go along with the masses.
00:12:05.000 And they do so as if it is their ethical duty to do so.
00:12:08.000 And the better you understand, The mechanism of mass formation, the more you see what we can do against it.
00:12:17.000 And that's what my book is all about.
00:12:19.000 I describe how Throughout the last 200 centuries, very specific psychological conditions emerged in the population, and how these conditions led to larger and larger and stronger and stronger mass formations, and eventually led to the emergence of totalitarian states, which are always based on mass formation.
00:12:42.000 So it's crucial to understand how this mechanism works.
00:12:46.000 You need four conditions.
00:12:49.000 In order for large-scale mass formation to emerge, the first one is that many people should feel isolated and lonely.
00:12:58.000 And just before the corona crisis, many people felt isolated and lonely.
00:13:01.000 Theresa May appointed the Minister of Loneliness about 10 or 12 years ago, I think.
00:13:07.000 And the US Surgeon General in the United States claimed that there was a loneliness epidemic.
00:13:16.000 A lot of people felt lonely.
00:13:18.000 And then the second condition.
00:13:20.000 First, many people have to feel lonely.
00:13:22.000 Second condition, many people have to be confronted with lack of meaning-making in life.
00:13:27.000 Third, very important, many people have to feel so-called free-floating anxiety, frustration and aggression.
00:13:37.000 That means anxiety, frustration and aggression that cannot be coupled to a mental representation.
00:13:45.000 That means That people feel anxious, frustrated, and aggressive without knowing what they feel anxious, frustrated, and aggressive for.
00:13:55.000 And when these conditions are met, something very specific might happen in society.
00:14:01.000 Free-floating anxiety is extremely aversive, because when you don't know what you feel anxious for, you cannot control your anxiety.
00:14:10.000 And in these conditions, something very specific might happen.
00:14:14.000 If under these conditions a narrative is distributed through the mass media indicating an object of anxiety and the strategy to deal with that object of anxiety, then all this free-floating anxiety might suddenly couple To this object of anxiety, and there might be a huge willingness in the population to participate in the strategy to deal with the object of anxiety, even when this strategy is utterly absurd.
00:14:44.000 So the object of anxiety, for instance, in the Corona crisis was the coronavirus.
00:14:48.000 The strategy was the lockdowns, the vaccination campaigns and so on.
00:14:52.000 But exactly the same things happened in the past, like in.
00:14:57.000 The Soviet Union, we had the aristocracy that was the object of anxiety and the gulags that were a way to deal with it. 0.88
00:15:03.000 We had the Jews in Nazi Germany.
00:15:04.000 We had the witches in the 17th, 16th century.
00:15:08.000 We had the Muslims during the Crusades and so on.
00:15:12.000 Every large-scale mass formation starts in the same way.
00:15:15.000 The free-floating anxiety is all coupled to an object of anxiety and then someone proposes a strategy to deal with that object of anxiety and There is a huge willingness in the population to participate in this strategy.
00:15:28.000 The psychological advantage, of course, is that from then on, people have the feeling that they can control their anxiety and that they have an object at which they can direct all their frustration and aggression, which gives a huge satisfaction.
00:15:44.000 And then in a second step, something even more important happens.
00:15:49.000 Something extremely important.
00:15:50.000 Because so many people at the same time participate in the same strategy, the same heroic battle with the object of anxiety.
00:16:01.000 People have the feeling That they can escape their loneliness, that they feel connected again.
00:16:08.000 That's why every mass formation goes hand in hand with a feeling of solidarity and new citizenship.
00:16:17.000 And that's as the loneliness and a disconnection was the root cause of the psychological level of the mass formation.
00:16:26.000 It seems to people as if the mass formation cures them, takes away their loneliness.
00:16:32.000 And actually, that's crucial.
00:16:36.000 That's not true.
00:16:37.000 Because a mass is always a group that is formed, not because individuals connect to each other.
00:16:44.000 A mass is a group that is formed because individuals all connect to the same collective ideal.
00:16:52.000 And in the end, when the mass formation continues for a long time, all solidarity and all love is sucked away from the bond between individuals and it's all injected in the bond between the individual and the collective.
00:17:08.000 Meaning that, after a while, everyone expects from everyone else that everyone sacrifices everything for the collective and There is no solidarity at all anymore between individuals.
00:17:20.000 So that's a strange effect that the mass formation creates.
00:17:24.000 It focuses all the attention on the one small aspect of reality, for instance, the Corona crisis.
00:17:32.000 It connects the group in a heroic battle with this object of anxiety, and it leads to a mental state that is typically the same as hypnosis.
00:17:40.000 Mass formation, technically speaking, is the same as mass hypnosis.
00:17:44.000 Also in a hypnotic procedure, all your attention is focused on one small aspect of reality, and the rest of reality seems to disappear.
00:17:50.000 That was exactly what happened in the corona crisis.
00:17:53.000 Everybody was focused on the victims of the coronavirus, and it seemed that nobody noticed anymore.
00:18:00.000 There was a huge collateral damage and that every proper cost-benefit analysis might conclude that the remedy was worse than the cure.
00:18:13.000 So that's the effect of a large-scale mass formation.
00:18:20.000 I like the way that it is tied to individual psyches and states that are identifiable and empirical, such as loneliness.
00:18:28.000 I like the way that it's connected to the inherent nihilism and loss of meaning that
00:18:35.000 many people are experiencing as many of the ideas of the last century and the religious
00:18:40.000 ideas that preceded them are starting to collapse into ideas of commerce and pleasure and distraction
00:18:48.000 as opposed to meaning and purpose.
00:18:50.000 It fascinates me also, Matthias, that energy can be directed in this way.
00:18:57.000 I guess that one of the things that a lot of people will inquire about is that when
00:19:03.000 we talk about totalitarianism in its earlier forms, there are key identifiers, in particular
00:19:11.000 The kind of emblems, I suppose there's an aesthetic to fascism and communism that's recognisable and in particular there's rhetoric and indeed actual genocide, prejudice, violence.
00:19:27.000 Now I noted that you talked about that there are several phases and stages.
00:19:31.000 Are you suggesting that a natural and indeed necessary progression of this early stage Mass formation that we're currently experiencing that was inculcated and practiced during the pandemic and you can see examples of even in the reporting of an attitudes towards the current UK and Russia conflict will at some point lead to comparable violence.
00:19:54.000 If you're making the point that This has the characteristics of 20th century totalitarianism in some form.
00:20:01.000 Are you similarly making the case that there will be a corollary of violence or will it be neutered and a different type of violence?
00:20:09.000 Is that kind of violence no longer necessary when control can be asserted through freezing of assets, manipulation of behaviour etc?
00:20:20.000 Yes, every mass, every crowd or every mass, if it continues for a long time, is at risk of committing atrocities and is at risk of committing atrocities towards the people who do not go along with them.
00:20:33.000 The most important, the crucial thing is whether or not there will be dissident voices, whether or not there will be people There's a group of people who continue to speak out against the narrative the masses follow.
00:20:46.000 That's crucial.
00:20:47.000 That's something that was described by Gustave Raban already in the 19th century.
00:20:51.000 He said every time a mass emerges in a society, there's a group of people who is not sensitive to this mass formation, but a rather large group.
00:20:59.000 And then of this group who doesn't fall prey to the hypnosis or to the mass formation, there is a very small group who decides to speak out.
00:21:10.000 In first place, initially, these people will be disappointed because they will notice that they cannot wake up the people who are in the mass formation, that they cannot show the people in the mass formation, that the narrative they follow is absurd in many respects.
00:21:24.000 So they will be disappointed.
00:21:26.000 But they should never forget that something that was described already by Gustave Le Bon, they should never forget that even when they do not succeed in waking up the masses, they have an extremely important effect.
00:21:37.000 And that the fact is that they constantly disturb the massive nation.
00:21:42.000 And in this way, make sure that the mass formation doesn't go to the last and ultimate stage where they start to be really destructive, where they start to destroy everyone who doesn't go along with them.
00:21:54.000 So what is crucial is the question whether or not there will be a group who will continue to speak out.
00:22:01.000 History has shown us what happens when the opposition decides to become silent, decides to go underground completely.
00:22:11.000 That happened in 1930, I think, in the Soviet Union, 1935 in Nazi Germany, and within one year, the masses started to commit atrocities.
00:22:22.000 At that moment, the opposition decided that it became too dangerous to speak out, and it decided to shut up.
00:22:31.000 Decided to stop speaking out.
00:22:33.000 And that's exactly, sometime a few months later, typically, the atrocity starts.
00:22:38.000 So, it's crucial, that's an extremely important difference between a classical dictatorship and a totalitarian state.
00:22:47.000 In a classical dictatorship, it makes sense to hide and to go underground, to stop speaking out.
00:22:54.000 In a totalitarian state, it doesn't.
00:22:58.000 So that's also a very typical difference.
00:23:01.000 Like if in a totalitarian state, the leaders succeed in silencing the opposition.
00:23:09.000 Now, I will give the other example first.
00:23:12.000 If in a classical dictatorship, the dictator succeeds in silencing the opposition, he will typically become less aggressive.
00:23:21.000 He will mitigate his aggression just because he has His common sense, which tells him, I'm in control now, I should just show the population that I will be a good leader.
00:23:33.000 So he becomes less aggressive.
00:23:34.000 If in a totalitarian state, the leaders succeed in silencing the opposition, exactly the opposite will happen.
00:23:42.000 First, then the system will start to unleash its aggressive potential, because at that moment, the mass formation becomes complete, the madness becomes complete.
00:23:52.000 And everyone in the masses and the leaders start to be convinced that it is their holy duty to destroy everyone who doesn't go along with their system, with their ideology, with their totalitarian ideology, of which they always believe that it will create an artificial paradise.
00:24:10.000 Hitler had such a theory, his race theory. 0.94
00:24:13.000 Stalin had his historical materialist theory.
00:24:16.000 And now we are at risk of a more transhumanist, technocratic... Matthias, Matthias, I've got some questions that have built up over the time we've been talking.
00:24:25.000 Here they are.
00:24:26.000 Thanks.
00:24:27.000 The first one is Martin Goury in his book, The Revolt of the Public, talks about the impossibility
00:24:34.000 of the type of totalitarianism of the last century because of the capacity for dissenting voices
00:24:41.000 and counter narratives continually that technology has presented us with.
00:24:45.000 And I know that Brad Evans, friend of the show, could offer a frequent guest on the show
00:24:49.000 and professor of violence would say that we're always, or the state is always looking for
00:24:55.000 who is permitted to enact violence against.
00:24:59.000 And when I was trying to discern whether this is a classical dictatorship or totalitarianism, and I know that the argument you're making is this is totalitarianism, I was thinking who is it already permitted to enact violence against?
00:25:11.000 I suppose you'd say domestically, people that are in prison, people that are homeless and destitute, Abroad there are certain countries that is permissible and certain populations and ethnic groups that even the neoliberal states sanctions violence against so I'm just looking at whether or like I'm looking for the symptoms of the potential exacerbation of this condition because I imagine that what you're arguing is that we are in the ascent of this phenomena and that without
00:25:43.000 organised opposition, which is possible as Martin Goury has posits in his book
00:25:48.000 'Dissent of the Revolt of the Public' that it is possible now for dissenting
00:25:52.000 voices to maintain counter narratives, to organise, even in the face of considerable
00:25:57.000 opposition. Throughout the pandemic, let's take an example, there were
00:26:01.000 continuing counter narrative voices, there were continual studies about
00:26:07.000 vaccine efficacy, adverse reactions, efficacy of lockdown, questioning the
00:26:13.000 profits of big pharma, the regulatory actions of the government.
00:26:19.000 And now, of course, what's I suppose concerning is the way that there is a sort of a collective amnesia and a willingness to continue the kind of trust and relationship that you describe between the mass formation and the centralised leadership elites.
00:26:37.000 So what I suppose what I'm asking you, Matthias, is What do you think is the requirement for meaningful opposition to this attempt at globalist totalitarianism?
00:26:50.000 And given your diagnosis that there's a point where violence starts being enacted, where do you think we are on that trajectory currently?
00:27:02.000 Well, we are definitely not at the end stage yet of the mass formation.
00:27:09.000 So the crucial question will be whether there are people who are very decided just to continue to speak out no matter what happens.
00:27:19.000 And technology can help.
00:27:20.000 Indeed, at this moment, the social media, through the social media, alternative opinions, dissident voices can spread very fast around the world.
00:27:28.000 And that's extremely important.
00:27:29.000 The question, of course, is, Whether, in a certain amount of time, the alternative voices will not be banned from the social media.
00:27:42.000 That's a good question, of course, because as soon as, let's say, a digital idea is introduced, it might become quite easy to ban critical voices from the social media.
00:27:52.000 I hope it will not, and even in that case, we will have to continue to speak out.
00:27:58.000 No matter what happens.
00:28:00.000 If we can't speak out on social media, then we just speak out on the streets and in the shops and in the pubs.
00:28:08.000 That's also a good place to speak out.
00:28:10.000 But that's always a decisive question, because mass formation is identical to a kind of group formation, mass hypnosis, and hypnosis is always induced by the voice, the voice of a leader.
00:28:25.000 That's exactly why totalitarian leaders use so much indoctrination and propaganda rather than terror, as a classical dictatorship does.
00:28:34.000 The classical dictatorship uses terror in the first place.
00:28:37.000 So, Indoctrination and propaganda can only be countered by truth speech.
00:28:44.000 People who speak in a sincere and honest way what they think is true, not because they are convinced that they are the only ones who know everything.
00:28:53.000 No, just because they say it's my ethical duty as a human being to articulate the words of which I think they are sincere and honest.
00:29:03.000 If we do it in this way, not so much trying to convince other people, but just trying to articulate the words that we think are sincere and honest, then we will have a maximal effect.
00:29:17.000 That's what we have to do.
00:29:18.000 Not so much trying to convince, trying to, in a quiet and peaceful way, articulate what we think is true.
00:29:26.000 And that's where our voice will have a maximum resonating capacity and that it is it is this resonating capacity that is capable of disturbing the mass formation.
00:29:42.000 The mass formation, of which in the end only about 20 to 30% of the people are in the grip of.
00:29:48.000 So usually not much more than 20 to 30% of the people are in the grip of the mass formation, but there is like 60, 65%, maybe even more, it's hard to say exactly, but who always follows the masses because they have the loudest voice in society and because they are never used to go against the loudest voice.
00:30:08.000 So it's just crucial that the people who have the courage to speak out continue to do so and continue to do so in the right way.
00:30:17.000 Matthias Desmet, thank you so much for joining us, for introducing us to some new terminology and some very exciting, if terrifying, new information.
00:30:28.000 I'd love you to join us for our whole episode in the next few weeks so that we can spend an hour talking through these ideas at more length.
00:30:38.000 Thank you so much for joining us.
00:30:40.000 Matthias Desmet is the author of The Psychology of Totalitarianism, and you can of course follow his work on Substack before he's banned.
00:30:46.000 Matthias, thank you so much for joining us, mate.
00:30:48.000 Thank you for inviting me.
00:30:50.000 It's great to talk to you.
00:30:51.000 Thank you very much.
00:30:52.000 Thanks, Lexi, for the hookup. 1.00
00:30:53.000 I appreciate it.
00:30:55.000 On the show tomorrow, Satish Kumar, activist and the author of Radical Love.
00:30:59.000 That's a pivot.
00:31:01.000 That's the kind of thing we offer on this show.
00:31:03.000 Analysis of mass formations from a kind of radical academic and then Satish Kumar whose historic walk from India to the United States set the tone for new spirituality, new pilgrimages.
00:31:16.000 He met Martin Luther King, he met Bertrand Russell, talked about CND.
00:31:20.000 He's a brilliant elder and great leader and you'll love learning from him tomorrow.
00:31:26.000 Gareth, what did you think about Matthias Desmet there?
00:31:29.000 Did you enjoy our conversation?
00:31:30.000 Interesting, obviously, you know, pretty terrifying.
00:31:33.000 I thought, you know, when you were asking about where we were on the kind of trajectory, it felt like, to me, there were moments during the pandemic, certainly in ways that we heard from politicians and the media, where there was a kind of two-tier society being formatted.
00:31:48.000 Yeah, that unvaccinated stuff, they were talking about shaming, blaming, that was borderline, wasn't it?
00:31:53.000 Yeah and so when you were kind of saying where are we and where are the atrocities it felt like to me we were heading in a direction that was pretty scary.
00:32:02.000 Yeah they were looking at justifying it and in a sense it was only because of the demonstrable hypocrisy that many people that are unvaccinated are also drawn from communities that are part of their Stated ideology is supposed to be conserving or protective of, I'm speaking specifically of people from non-white or non-dominant cultures in those particular nations that perhaps arrested or at least provided a counter narrative but it wouldn't have been enough ultimately.
00:32:30.000 People lost their jobs, people lost economic opportunities.
00:32:33.000 I believe there's been some movement in that New York City case, Gareth, where all those 34,000 nurses lost their job.
00:32:39.000 I think there's going to be more cases because isn't there a bit of precedence there?
00:32:42.000 I think that's the other side of it, Ross, is that when we're talking about atrocities, it might not be in the form that we're used to seeing in the history books with, you know, you know, people wiped out in that sense.
00:32:52.000 But when you hear that, you know, 30 or 40 percent of small businesses have not reopened after the pandemic, when you hear that this amount of People are suffering through depression, suicide, cancer, all these kind of things.
00:33:05.000 There are atrocities.
00:33:06.000 It's just that exactly like he was saying at the start of it, at the start of it, only one narrative was being focused on.
00:33:12.000 And that was what everyone could kind of get behind.
00:33:15.000 Particularly when you consider that the victims of those atrocities were ultimately sanctioned.
00:33:21.000 You know I've raised rather well that point about there are certain communities that you're permitted to commit violence against.
00:33:27.000 Well you know over the time that energy giants have been getting record profits, big pharma record profits, big tech record profits, small businesses annihilated.
00:33:36.000 That's how the wealth transfer that's often discussed took place.
00:33:41.000 And so yeah I think there's a I suppose that is evidence both the treatment of the unvaccinated and as you say mate the more diffuse economic impugning of small businesses and the increase in mental health that is an example of atrocities.
00:33:56.000 Would you agree?
00:33:56.000 Let us know in the chat, let us know in the comments.
00:33:58.000 But in a more, if not more, anodyne form, because it's incredible suffering.
00:34:02.000 It's not as vivid and as obvious as the kind of internment and genocide that we're familiar with.
00:34:07.000 And I certainly wouldn't want to make any comparisons because I'm not mad.
00:34:10.000 All right, then.
00:34:12.000 So should we go then?
00:34:14.000 Because we've done this for a while now.
00:34:16.000 Yeah, we're good to go.
00:34:17.000 I guess the other part of it that I was thinking about is, with the Ukraine situation at the moment, we've also got a situation going on in Yemen where, you know, far more people have died and are dying, and yet the kind of framing of the United States involvement in both of those wars is completely different.
00:34:32.000 And that again goes back to what he's saying about, it's about the narrative and the framing that's being created here.
00:34:37.000 You know, no one's talking about, what about Yemen?
00:34:40.000 You know, no one's...
00:34:41.000 We can do that tomorrow because there is that ongoing conflict in Yemen and like the framing of particular deaths and particular wars it's an interesting thing do you think so you guys I'm talking to you I'm talking to you with real connection there so hey listen we better wrap this show up because we've got like to go home yeah yeah Well, thank you very much for joining us for our show, Stay Free Russell Brand.
00:35:00.000 I've told you what you've got to look forward to this week.
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