I'm going to post an essay I wrote, it's difficult on Twitler due to the character restrictions. It's about the formation of totalitarianism and group think.

Mass Formation, the Psychology of Crowds, and the Covidian Cult

Army of Shadows - 10 October 2021

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The American Psychological Association defines mass psychology as “the mental and emotional states and processes that occur in a large body of individuals who, although they may not have any common characteristics, are considered as a whole.”

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Crowd psychology & its formation delivers a fertile petri-dish for the emergence of totalitarianism & the implementation of ideological Utopian dreams. Mass formation is a hive mindset which responds to psychological needs, a form of hypnosis adopted by or imposed on a crowd.

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Mattias Desmet, Prof of Clinical Psychology at Ghent University, has formulated a theory of mass formation as it relates to the Covid crisis. According to Desmet, there are specific conditions which prime a population for mass formation & consequent totalitarian thinking.

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The four conditions necessary for mass formation in individuals & society are:

1/ Isolation & lack of social bonds
2/ Lack of meaning-making & sense-making
3/ Free-floating anxiety
4/ Consequent free-floating psychological discontent, frustration, & undirected aggression.

5/

Twitler has messed up the ordering of my thread.

Anyways. I'll trudge on. Part 2

So far, so bad. Are we facing an inexorable slide into the mud of totalitarianism? Let’s look at some percentages.

“Usually it is only about 30% [of a population that gets] grasped in a mass phenomenon or hypnosis.  An additional 35-45% usually does not want to raise a dissonant voice in the public space because they are scared of the consequences."

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"Usually about 70% who shut up – 30% because they are convinced by the mainstream narrative and 40% because they don’t dare to speak out. And then there is an additional 20-25-30% who does not go along with the narrative and says it in certain situations.” (Mattias Desmet)

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This being the case, the task of the 20-30% is to persuade the 40% of those who go along with the programme for a quiet life or to fit into social norms; those who give lip-service to the narrative but are not true believers.

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Unfortunately, the people who have joined the Covid Cult as a reparative of psychological harms and an unconscious targeted cure for free-floating anxiety, this smaller group, the 30%, are solid gone, never to return.

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