Health & Fitness

This article was previously published December 06, 2020, and has been updated with new information.

Sharyl Attkisson is an award-winning investigative journalist with uncompromising integrity. Her book, “Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism,” was released in November 2020.

In this, her third book, she addresses one of the most pressing issues of our time: media bias and the deterioration of objective journalism — a topic on which she has first-hand experience.

A former anchor at CNN and CBS News, Attkisson now produces her own Sunday television news program, "Full Measure," as well as two podcasts: "Full Measure After Hours" and "The Sharyl Attkisson Podcast," in which she covers the kinds of stories that mainstream news no longer touches.

Slanted Media

Propaganda through media certainly isn't a new thing. Starting in the late 1940s,¹ the CIA ran a well-documented but at the time covert campaign called "Operation Mockingbird," in which they recruited journalists as assets to spread propaganda — news slanted in one way or another. While the program is always referred to in the past tense, as it is said to have been ended in the 1970s,² evidence suggests it never really stopped.

"There are all kinds of ways the Intel community has, and can, manipulate the news," Attkisson says, "but we reached a new level in 2016, 2017, because they don't even have to whisper in our ear to get us to report stuff. We hired them. Meaning, Brennan, Clapper, Comey — all of them were hired as consultants. They were invited on the news directly.

You didn't have to put them through a filter and anonymous sources, although plenty of anonymous sources were also used. But daily putting forth their propaganda, much of which, obviously, was proven false, particularly on the Trump, Russia narrative.

But every day, we allowed them to plaster the airwaves, even after they were proven admittedly wrong … After two years of spewing this false information, they're still consulted by the media. They're still used. So, it's so easy for an Intel operation if they wish to use the media towards whatever goal they may have …

I firmly believe that there have been ongoing [propaganda] campaigns that continue today. Maybe separate operations by intelligence agencies and officials to manipulate the news, and certainly have things reported a certain way to try to push for certain outcomes in politics here at home and internationally."

Big Industry Also Influences the News

Multinational industries, the drug industry in particular, also has a similar level of influence over content relating to their particular interests. In 1996, direct-to-consumer drug advertising was legalized, and as drug advertising became a major income stream for media companies, their reporting on health and medicine became increasingly biased.

The reason is simple. They cannot afford to "bite the hand that feeds them." If an advertiser doesn't want the public to know about a particular finding, all they have to do to influence the reporting is to threaten to withdraw its advertising, which will hurt the media company's bottom line.

Drug companies have also become major sponsors of medical education; thus, doctors are taught to prescribe drugs for all ills, but they're not taught about the side effects and drawbacks of those drugs.

Today, the drug industry also controls fact-checking organizations such as NewsGuard, as it is funded by Publicis, which is supported by drug companies. When feeding from the Big Pharma trough, how could they possibly be objective in their fact-checking? Reality shows us they can't because they aren't..

Big Tech — Master Manipulators of Minds

Big Tech companies, of course, are also masters of censoring anything that might hurt themselves or their technocratic allies. As just one of countless examples, you can no longer post a link to Mercola.com on Twitter.

First, they added a false warning that made it look like my site contained dangerous malware when readers would click on a posted link. After a while, they simply blocked the ability to post links to our site altogether.

"This started, and I traced this in my second book, 'The Smear,' to Media Matters … the left-wing propaganda group that supported Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and is a big smear organization," Attkisson says. "They acknowledged going to Facebook about the time when they were worried that Donald Trump was going to get elected.

They really felt that the only thing giving him a leg up, and they still believe this today, is his social media outreach. They tried to think of a way to control, with the kind of social media and news people could get, so Media Matters lobbied Facebook and tried to convince them — and did so successfully — to taking a fact-checking brand-new role that nobody had ever asked for.

We're not begging for our information to be curated. That was a pretend demand created by the propagandists who wanted to control the information. They had to make us think that we needed a third party to step in and tell us what to think and sort through the information … The fake news effort, the fact-checking, which is usually fake fact-checking, meaning it's not a genuine effort, is a propaganda effort …

We've seen it explode as we come into the 2020 election, for much the same reason, whereby, the social media companies, third parties, academic institutions and NewsGuard … they insert themselves. But of course, they're all backed by certain money and special interests. They're no more in a position to fact-check than an ordinary person walking on the street …

They have interests. They make sure certain things are not seen, even if true. And I think this is the most serious threat that I'm looking at right now to our media environment.

I'm afraid that our kids will be telling their kids of a time when you used to be able to go on the internet and find most, any, information you wanted, because we are increasingly being pointed only to that which they, people who control the information, wish for us to see."

Presidential Treatment Takes on a New Meaning

In her book, Attkisson also spends an entire chapter dissecting the highly-biased treatment of President Trump, and how the media have, through their own admission, suspended traditional journalistic ethics simply because they consider him "uniquely dangerous."

"Therefore, you don't have to follow the normal rules and guidelines when it comes to fair and accurate reporting, which I think is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard in my life, from someone in our profession, because the standards exist precisely so that we report on everybody the same way," she says.

"In other words, using the same standards, whether we like them or not. Particularly, perhaps, if we don't like or agree with the candidate — that's when the standards become most important. But you need only look at Politico, for example, during the last election.

I interviewed them shortly afterwards. Someone in charge of some of their coverage … in almost every answer to a question, she brought up President Trump and something negative about him.

One of the things she said was how many lies he tells per minute. She said, 'We actually had a team that calculated the number of lies per minute that President Trump told.' And I asked the obvious question, 'Well, what was that compared to Hillary's supposed lies per minute?' And she actually said, 'Oh, we didn't have the staffing to do Hillary too.'

Can you imagine a national news organization that purports to cover something fairly and we'll fact-check the lies per minute of one candidate and not the opposing candidate and pretend that that qualifies as fair news?

I also interviewed some noted liberals who have noticed the same thing: That they look at things from a fair-minded viewpoint and are no fan of President Trump, yet are appalled at how the media has dishonestly treated certain topics and information, which should make everybody wonder, 'Are we getting the truth when it comes to things that don't have to do with President Trump?

If the media can report so many things out of context and incorrectly when it comes to somebody they don't like, what else are we getting that's not in context or that's not fully true?'"

The Invention of Lying

Prior to President Trump, virtually no one in the media would accuse someone of lying. The standard was to question an individual's statement or point out a discrepancy to another source, but not call it an outright lie, because it's easy to get confused on specifics. A lie is a very specific allegation that implies an intent to deceive. Just because you misremember a fact doesn't mean you lied.

"[In the book] I talk about the fact that … I know I've probably been lied to many times, but I don't believe I've ever reported that somebody lied to me in a hard news report. Why? Well, a lie is a specific thing that requires you to know the mind of the person. And you as a journalist have to withhold, even if you think something is true without the evidence, you really can't say it's true.

I'll use the example I used in the book: Ford and Firestone tires. The executives consistently said there was no evidence that these tires were dangerous prior to the scandal around the 2000 time period where there were a lot of deaths. I had documents from a source that showed this very danger many years before.

It appeared that they were lying, but I didn't call it a lie because there are many other explanations someone could give. They could say, 'Well, these guys weren't there at the time. So, they didn't know that these discussions had been had. They didn't have access to the emails, their subordinates didn't tell them.' So, you don't know whether they're mistaken or lying.

And from a journalistic standpoint, we used to always take the objective road and say something like, 'Their testimony contradicts the documentary record.' That's good enough. People at home can make up their own mind.

But there was a turn taken, specifically, to target President Trump, whereby, the media started frequently calling things that he said, lies — even when there was simply something that was a matter of opinion, or could not be proven, or a mistake, none of which are lies.

The New York Times was proud of this when it did it. And I recount in the book the first time they made a headline where they talked about President Trump lying, and how that was cheered on by others in the media who then followed suit.

They were even cheered on by a journalism professor who wrote a big op-ed about how it was time to stop doing this objective reporting and that we needed to call out President Trump's lies frequently and often. It's just, again, from a journalistic standpoint, ridiculous … I think this is a new and dangerous tactic that has really destroyed our objectivity in the eyes of the public. And rightly so."

Massaging COVID-19 Messages

In terms of health, COVID-19 reporting has taken censorship and media manipulation to brand new heights, eclipsing just about all previous efforts. They don't even hide the bias anymore.

All social media platforms are openly censoring dissenting views about the virus, particularly its origin and treatment. Even well-respected doctors and scientists have been axed for speaking against the desired narrative dictated by the World Health Organization.

August 26, 2020, the CDC had released data³ showing 94% of people who had died during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. died "with" the virus, not "from" it. Only 6% had COVID-19 listed as the sole cause of death on the death certificate. Hence, at that time the real death toll, those who unarguably died as a direct result of the infection, was only around 10,000.

"For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death," the CDC stated. This is an important distinction. Yet mainstream media continued to report that nearly 200,000 had died "from" COVID-19 in the U.S, and have continued to add to the numbers, thereby increasing and ensuring national fear so they can continue to implement their lockdowns, face mask and vaccine mandates and other strategies to limit our personal freedoms and liberty.

"I think we need both numbers, in a separate sense, to have perspective and understanding of what's really happening," Attkisson says. "And it's something that very few people have shown interest in ... Early on, it was clear … that the primary victims were those with the comorbidities and the elderly population in nursing homes and so on.

But then we sort of lost track of that. And then there seemed to be a propaganda effort to convince people that, initially, after understanding young people were at very little risk of serious illness and death, there seemed to be an effort to convince people that the youth must be very careful. That more young people are dying and getting sick.

I can only guess as to why that's important to some interests, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that when the vaccine comes out, the market needs to be aimed.

You can't rule out young people, you must make them believe they need it, or else you've ruled out a huge section of the vaccine market. And they certainly don't want to make a vaccine that's not used by a giant percentage of the population. I think they have to create a market. Why do I think this?

Well, I was actually told by a top immunization official for the government, when they learned flu shots are ineffective in the elderly … that the way around that was not to take flu shots away from the elderly — who would think that was dishonest because we've been telling it was necessary for so many years — but to convince parents to get their children and babies flu shots so that they wouldn't 'carry flu to the elderly.'

I remember him saying to me, 'The trick is going to be to convince parents to give a vaccine to their children who don't really need it themselves.' In other words, for a secondary supposed benefit for the elderly. And darn it, if you didn't see in the next season, they recommended flu shots for babies and children.

And they didn't tell anybody at the time that they were doing it because flu shots don't work in the elderly. They just started telling people that your kids need flu shots."

When a 'Case' Is Not a Case

The media are also grossly misusing the term "case," in reference to the COVID-19 case load. A case is a medical term for a patient with a symptomatic type of infection. It's not someone who tests positive for antibodies or pieces of viral DNA. By referring to all positive tests as "cases," they're able to fan the flames of panic, making the situation sound far worse than it actually is.

Many still do not understand that most of those who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 are asymptomatic. They think these are sick people in the hospital and that rising "case" numbers are a reflection of a rise in deaths. Statistics reveal this simply isn't true, and that there's not a linear correlation between positive tests and deaths caused by COVID alone.

"There are just so many things that are misreported," Attkisson says. "But if you try to report them accurately and factually, you get called out by those in the media who either didn't understand, or are simply so blinded by the propaganda narrative.

The New York Times did this. They actually called me and several other people out as 'coronavirus doubters,' although I had never said or written anything that even remotely denies coronavirus or denies the risk of it. But they were working very hard to silence voices who are simply reporting more accurately and with context on what's really happening.

By the way, when I spoke to some scientists ... and I said, 'Why don't you speak out or correct what you think is the misconception?' Separately, several of them told me they feared speaking out publicly because they were afraid they would be labeled a coronavirus doubter, and for fear of contradicting Dr. Fauci.

So, I said, 'We're at a pretty scary time when scientists who are experts on these issues fear speaking what they believe is the scientific truth because they'll be controversialized.'"

Search for Truth and Unbiased Facts

The clear take-home message I got from reading, "Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism," is that there's a profoundly serious problem with most mainstream conventional media.

The obvious question is: Where can you go to get the truth? We would like to be informed, but we also want the truth. We don't have time to waste to be brainwashed by propaganda. At the end of her book, Attkisson lists a variety of sources she's come to trust. It may be worth getting the book for those recommendations alone.

"I didn't make a comprehensive list," Attkisson says. "I'm sure I left many people out, but I tried to point to a few outlets and people, and I consulted some of my colleagues for their recommendations. It's not an easy answer. There isn't a place you can go. I can't say, 'Watch this news every day or read this publication.' It's more granular than that.

You have to find a reporter that you trust on a topic and then chase that reporter around … That's where I think you can find a segment of truth. And it's not always, sadly, going to be objective truth.

Some of the reporters I name are coming from the left viewpoint or coming from a right viewpoint, but they have proven themselves to be brave reporters of a particular topic or controversy that I think you can rely on. But it's just not so simple as it used to be where you could just point to a person or an outlet and say, 'Watch that, and you'll get your fair shake at the news' …

I would say, in closing, that I do think a new paradigm will develop when it comes to news reporting. There are people looking at how news and information can be reported in a way that it cannot be censored by big tech giants, political figures and nonprofits and so on …

I'm told there's a way to develop a social media platform where you can post freely and also not be subject to censorship. I think things will evolve because people are tired of what they're seeing. And I hope something really positive, being an optimist, develops out of all of this down the road."

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Fiona Lashells, an 8-year-old in second grade in Florida, was subjected to an outrageous 38 school suspensions for standing up for her right to not do something that isn’t supported by data and science in a school system — wearing a mask.

July 30, 2021, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order ruling that school districts could not require students to wear masks, ensuring parents’ freedom to choose whether or not their children wear masks in school.¹

After the executive order was issued, Fiona’s mother told her she wouldn’t have to wear a mask for the upcoming school year, a relief to the girl, who had complained about fatigue from wearing a mask during the previous school year.² The Palm Beach County school district, however, had other plans, which culminated in the student missing nearly two months of school.

Student Forced to Miss Months of School Over Mask Mandate

At first, when Fiona arrived at school without a mask, she had to eat lunch alone in a hallway outside the office of an administrator. However, soon in-school suspensions began, followed by out-of-school suspensions.³ Despite the state’s executive order banning school mask mandates, the school district had reinstated the requirement.

“We promised her she wouldn’t have to wear a mask,” her mother told The Daily Wire. “I think that’s what upset her so much. We had made that promise to her at the beginning of the year.” Fiona, meanwhile, said, “I’m not wearing a mask because you touch it, and you have germs on your hand. And then you put it on your face and breathe in all the germs.”⁴

After 38 suspensions, the Palm Beach County school district repealed its mask mandate November 8, 2021, telling parents November 6:⁵

“Based on a new development at the State level, the School District will be moving to an opt-out status for facial coverings for students in all grade levels beginning this Monday, November 8, rather than on November 15 as you were originally informed.

A ruling yesterday by Division of Administrative Hearings Judge Newman found the Department of Health’s Emergency Rule 64DER21-15 to be valid, therefore, a parent face covering opt-out will be reinstated effective Monday.”

Now that masks are optional, Fiona was able to return to school, and 10% of the students in the district have opted out of wearing masks.⁶ At schools across the U.S., however, students are still being forced to wear masks for hours at a time every day, despite lack of evidence showing they work — and concerning data suggesting they can cause harm.

How Effective Are Masks? No One Knows

Mandating schoolchildren to wear masks daily is an unprecedented public health move — one that hasn’t been validated. “[W]earing masks by children and students on the effects of slowing down the spread of the virus in schools has never been studied in a randomized controlled trial,” Carla Peeters, founder and managing director of COBALA Good Care Feels Better, who has a Ph.D. in immunology from the Medical Faculty of Utrecht, wrote for the Brownstone Institute.⁷

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lied about masks’ effectiveness November 5, 2021, when CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky tweeted, “Masks can help reduce your chance of #COVID19 infection by more than 80%.”⁸

Walensky didn’t give a reference for her claim that masks reduce COVID-19 infection by 80%, but a large study from researchers at Yale, Stanford and the University of California Berkeley found much less impressive results from masks.

The trial involved 342,183 people from 600 villages in rural Bangladesh from November 2020 to April 2021.⁹ In villages that received masks, the number of symptomatic COVID-19 infections were 9.3%¹⁰ lower compared to villages without masks, or 11% lower in villages that received surgical masks instead of cloth masks.

Moreover, a Cochrane study published in November 2020 found masks do little to nothing to slow down the spread of respiratory viruses:¹¹

“Seven studies took place in the community, and two studies in healthcare workers. Compared with wearing no mask, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness (9 studies; 3507 people); and probably makes no difference in how many people have flu confirmed by a laboratory test.”

A February 2021 report from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control also admitted, “Evidence for the effectiveness of non-medical face masks, face shields/visors and respirators in the community is scarce and of very low certainty.”¹²

Did Sweden Get It Right?

Sweden handled the pandemic differently than most of the globe and has been chided for its looser restrictions and lack of severe lockdowns. It also did not institute a mask mandate, only recommending them at times, such as when using crowded public transportation.¹³

The country’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, has stated that there’s little evidence for wearing face masks¹⁴ and that shutting down schools was also unnecessary during the pandemic. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur in France indeed found that there was no significant transmission of COVID-19 in primary schools, either among the students or from students to teachers.¹⁵

“The study also confirmed that younger children infected by the novel coronavirus generally do not develop symptoms or present with minor symptoms that may result in a failure to diagnose the virus,” study author Bruno Hoen added.¹⁶

Opening a Window Worked Better Than Masks in Schools

Magical thinking regarding masks persists, even as solid evidence shows improved ventilation, such as opening a window, may work better at battling COVID-19 in schools than universal masking.

A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study compared the incidence of COVID-19 in Georgia kindergarten through grade 5 schools¹⁷ that were open for in-person learning in fall 2020 with various recommended prevention strategies, such as mandatory masks and improvements to ventilation. The first important statistic is the COVID-19 incidence, which was extremely low.

At the 169 schools that participated in the survey, there were only 3.08 COVID-19 cases among students and staff members per 500 enrolled students, from November 16, 2020 to December 11, 2020. After adjusting for county-level incidence, the study revealed that COVID-19 incidence was 37% lower in schools that required teachers and staff members to use masks and 39% lower in schools that improved ventilation, compared to schools that did not use these strategies.

Let’s use a school with 500 students as an example, which would have an incidence of just over three cases. Even with a 37% reduction in incidence from staff members wearing masks, that only reduced incidence by about one case in the entire school. Further, ventilation led to better outcomes, reducing incidence by 39%.

Dilution methods, which work by diluting the number of airborne particles, include opening windows and doors or using fans. This led to a 35% lower incidence of COVID-19, while methods to filter airborne particles, such as using HEPA filtration systems with or without ultraviolet germicidal irradiation, led to a 48% lower incidence.

These were the findings when masks were used by teachers and staff. When students were masked, virtually no difference was found. According to the study:¹⁸

“The 21% lower incidence in schools that required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional. This finding might be attributed to higher effectiveness of masks among adults, who are at higher risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection but might also result from differences in mask-wearing behavior among students in schools with optional requirements.”

Effects on Health and Environment Overlooked

Mandatory masking isn’t an innocuous case of “it can’t hurt to try,” as negative effects are apparent. A cluster of symptoms known as mask-induced exhaustion syndrome (MIES) have been described, with researchers warning that children, pregnant women and those who are sick or suffering from certain chronic conditions may be particularly at risk from extended masking.

While short-term effects include microbiological contamination, headaches, exhaustion, carbon dioxide retention and skin irritation, the long-term effects may lead to chronic issues:¹⁹

“Extended mask-wearing would have the potential, according to the facts and correlations we have found, to cause a chronic sympathetic stress response induced by blood gas modifications and controlled by brain centers. This in turn induces and triggers immune suppression and metabolic syndrome with cardiovascular and neurological diseases.”

Significant adverse effects and pathophysiological changes, including the following, often occur in combination due to masks:²⁰

Increase in dead space volume	Increase in breathing resistance	Increase in blood carbon dioxide
Decrease in blood oxygen saturation	Increase in heart rate	Decrease in cardiopulmonary capacity
Feeling of exhaustion	Increase in respiratory rate	Difficulty breathing and shortness of breath
Headache	Dizziness	Feeling of dampness and heat
Drowsiness	Decrease in empathy perception	Impaired skin barrier function with acne, itching and skin lesions

Again, researchers noted, that children may be particularly at risk. “It can be assumed,” they wrote, “that the potential adverse mask effects described for adults are all the more valid for children: … physiological internal, neurological, psychological, psychiatric, dermatological, ENT, dental, sociological, occupational and social medical, microbiological and epidemiological impairments …) …

The masks currently used for children are exclusively adult masks manufactured in smaller geometric dimensions and had neither been specially tested nor approved for this purpose.”²¹

Meanwhile, the effects of disposable masks on the environment are atrocious, with an estimated 3.4 million masks and face shields discarded daily worldwide.²² The plastics, micro- and nanoscale fibers and particles and heavy metals, including lead, antimony and copper, they contain raise significant environmental and public health concerns.²³ Peeters wrote:²⁴

“The influence of harmful compounds, nanoparticles and biocides in masks on children, adults, animals, plants and the environment have not been intensively investigated so far. However based on the available peer-reviewed scientific articles the possible harmful effects on health of healthcare workers is known and an increase in infections and chronic diseases could have been expected.”

No More Masks for Healthy People

Peeters believes all mask mandates should be repealed immediately, due to their lack of effectiveness at curbing the spread of disease and potential for adverse effects, from MIES and a “waning innate immune system” to self-contamination and environmental harm.

Fiona’s story is proof that every individual has the power to make a difference. If you don’t agree with student mask mandates either, contact your local school district and let them know. As Peeters noted:²⁵

“It is time to stop mask mandates for healthy people. It is no longer possible to justify a behavioral experiment with such far-reaching harmful consequences. Many scientific studies and analysis all arrive at the same conclusion: the wearing of masks by healthy people cannot stop the spread of a virus.

People without any symptoms tested and a positive PCR test (due to the presence of a nonviable piece of RNA) rarely spread a virus. The most important magic rule is from ancestral wisdom: rest and go to bed when experiencing Covid or flu-like symptoms. Strengthening the immune system with a healthy food and lifestyle will decrease the risk for infections and chronic diseases.”

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In the video above, Mattias Desmet, professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium, reviews the societal conditions under which a population ends up willingly sacrificing their freedom.

Desmet, who also has a master’s degree in statistics, discovered peculiar anomalies in statistical analyses done during the COVID pandemic, which made him realize our global society is starting to enter a “mass formation” state, a type of “collective hypnosis” required for the rise of a totalitarian regime.

In this Aubrey Marcus podcast interview, Desmet reviews the step-by-step formula that results in this collective hypnosis, and how this formula has been deployed on the global population over the past two years.

Needless to say, he warns us about continuing down this path, and provides solutions that we can take, both on an individual and collective basis, to prevent the loss of freedom that will surely follow if we do nothing.

Nonsensical Modeling

Around the end of February 2020, Desmet started looking at case fatality rates and other statistics, quickly realizing that there was something seriously wrong with the models presented to the public and used as justification for shutting down “nonessential” businesses and telling everyone to stay at home.

The models were greatly exaggerating the threat of SARS-CoV-2, and by the end of May 2020, this was “proven beyond doubt.” For example, the Imperial College in London predicted that if Sweden did not lock down, 80,000 people would be dead by the end of May 2020. Well, Sweden opted not to lock down, and by the end of May only 6,000 people had died with a diagnosis of COVID-19.

Strangest of all, Desmet says, was that everyone kept saying the coronavirus countermeasures were based on mathematical models and science, yet “when it was proven beyond doubt that the initial models were completely wrong, the measures continued, as if nothing was wrong and the models were right.”

Clearly, then, modeling and science were not foundational or even part of the equation at all. This, Desmet says, “was a strong sign that there was something going on at the psychological level that was really powerful.”

Another tipoff that something was really wrong was the fact that none of our political leaders were taking into account the collateral damage of their countermeasures. There was no cost-benefit/risk-reward analysis for any of the countermeasures.

The World Health Organization did warn that the measures might result in excess deaths from starvation. Yet at no time did we ever see a mathematical model that took into account both sides of the coin — the death toll from the virus, and the collateral damage of the countermeasures. And without such an analysis, we could not assess whether the countermeasures might be more harmful than the virus.

Anytime you consider a public health measure, a cost-benefit analysis is essential. You cannot make a sensible decision without it. Yet here, such basics were ignored as if the collateral damage was inconsequential.

The Four Base Conditions for ‘Mass Formation’

What psychological dynamics and processes might be responsible for this apparent blindness? After a couple of months, Desmet finally realized what was going on. Society was (and still is) under the spell of a mass hypnosis, a psychological process known as “mass formation” that arises in society when specific conditions are met.

The central condition is a lack of societal bonding. In other words, social isolation on a mass scale, which is precisely what the lockdowns were all about. We were all told that any contact with others, including members of our own family, could be a death sentence.

I’ve heard of people who for over a year have not met with a single person, remaining locked in their homes the entire time, for fear of contagion. But social isolation was a widespread problem even before the pandemic. Marcus cites a survey, which found 25% of respondents didn’t have a single close friend. What’s more, the loneliest age group were young adults, not seniors, as typically suspected.

So, even before the pandemic, Western societies were suffering from a lack of community, which is a key condition for “mass formation” syndrome to emerge in the first place.

The second condition is that a majority of people must experience life as meaningless and purposeless. Desmet cites research showing that half of all adults feel their jobs are completely meaningless, providing no value to either themselves or others.

In another poll, done in 2012, 63% of respondents said they were “sleepwalking” through their workdays, putting no passion into their work whatsoever. So, condition No. 2 for mass formation hypnosis was also fulfilled, even before the pandemic hit.

The third condition is widespread free-floating anxiety and free-floating discontent. Free-floating anxiety refers to anxiety that has no apparent or distinct cause. If you’re in the jungle and find yourself chased by a lion, your fear and anxiety have a natural, easily-identified cause — the lion.

However, when you are socially disconnected and feel your life has no meaning, then a free-floating anxiety can emerge that is not connected to a mental or physical representation of a specific threat. Judging by the popularity of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, condition No. 3 was also fulfilled long before the pandemic.

The fourth condition is free-floating frustration and aggression, which tends to naturally follow the previous three. Here, again, the frustration and aggression have no discernible cause.

When Conditions Are Met, Mass Formation Emerges

When these four conditions are fulfilled by a large enough portion of society, they are ripe for mass formation hypnosis. All that’s needed now is a story in which the source or cause of the anxiety is identified and spelled out, while simultaneously providing a strategy for addressing and neutralizing that cause.

By accepting and participating in whatever that strategy is, people with free-floating anxiety feel equipped, finally, with the means to control their anxiety and avoid panic. They feel like they’re in charge again.

Interestingly, when this happens, people also suddenly feel reconnected with others, because they’ve all identified the same nemesis. So, they’re joined together in a heroic struggle against the mental representation of their anxiety. This new-found solidarity also gives their lives new meaning and purpose.

Together, this connection, while based on a false premise, acts to strengthen the psychological disconnect from reality. It explains why so many have bought into a clearly illogical narrative, and why they are willing to participate in the prescribed strategy — “even if it’s utterly absurd,” Desmet says.

“The reason they buy into the narrative is because it leads to this new social bond,” he explains. Science, logic and correctness have nothing to do with it.

“Through the process of mass formation, they switch from the very painful condition of social isolation to the opposite state of maximal connectedness that exists in a crowd or a mass.

That in and of itself leads up to a sort of mental intoxication, which is the real reason people stick to the narrative, why people are willing to go along with the narrative, even, as we said, it is utterly wrong, and even if they lose everything that is important to them, personally.”

These losses can include their mental and physical health, their homes, livelihoods and material well-being. None of it matters when you’re under the hypnotic spell of mass formation. And this, Desmet says, is one of the most problematic aspects of this psychological phenomenon. Masses of people become self-destructive through their myopic focus.

19th Century Mass Formation

Gustave Le Bon, a French social psychologist renowned for his study of crowds once said:

“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”

Le Bon’s book, “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind,”¹ takes a deep-dive into the characteristics of human crowds and how, when gathered in groups, people tend to relinquish conscious deliberation in favor of unconscious crowd action.

He warned that if society didn’t take heed and ward of social isolation and the anti-religious idea that life has no purpose, we would end up in a state where mass formation would become the norm. These psychologically damaged people would take over, which is precisely what happened.

A key example is the Nazi regime. Desmet points out that while we typically think of dictatorships arising from the use of brute force and fear, the Nazi regime — and the leadership we’re faced with right now — came into power on the back of this deep psychological phenomenon known as mass formation.

People WILLINGLY participated in the Nazi atrocities because of the psychological state society was in, the mass formation phenomenon, not because they feared their leader.

Key Difference Between Dictatorship and Totalitarianism

So, it’s important to realize that classical dictatorships and totalitarianism arise from different causes. As a general rule, in a classic dictatorship, the dictator becomes milder and less aggressive once dissident voices, his opposition, are silenced. Once he has seized complete power, he doesn’t need to be aggressive anymore and can resort to other means to maintain control.

In a totalitarian state, the exact opposite occurs. This is crucial for us to understand, because in a totalitarian society, once the opposition is silenced, that’s when the state commits its greatest and cruelest atrocities.

An example of this is Stalin’s purification scheme in the 1930s, which led to the death of about 80 million people in a single decade. The mid-30s is also when the Nazi regime began its insane cleansing, which resulted in the Holocaust. Both occurred after the vocal opposition had been quenched.

We’re now at another watershed moment in history, where the opposition to the pandemic madness is being silenced. If we want humanity to survive and not succumb to global totalitarianism, we must keep speaking against it, because when we stop, THAT’S when the real atrocities will begin. In other words, we ain’t seen nothing yet. The worst is still to come — if we fall silent.

Here’s another important point. Totalitarians don’t stop committing atrocities once the opposition is vanquished. It merely expands to new groups. Desmet recounts how Stalin switched from one scapegoat to the next, as he kept running out of groups to blame and had them killed off. Eventually, he ended up murdering half of his Communist Party members, even though most had done nothing wrong and were loyal to him.

That’s something to ponder in our present situation. Right now, “anti-vaxxers” are the opposition the totalitarian regime seeks to destroy. Once there are no more “anti-vaxxers,” say, theoretically, that everyone in the world got the shot, the opposition to be done away with would become some other group.

So, if you’re “vaccinated” and up on all your boosters right now and are cheering on the crusade against those who don’t want the shot, know that it’s only a matter of time before it’s your turn to be victimized over something.

The Tragic End That Awaits All Mass Formation Societies

The fate of those who succumb to mass formation and embrace totalitarianism is particularly tragic, in a sense, because of another curious thing that occurs. People under its spell often end up agreeing that they deserve to die and willingly go to their death. This, Desmet says, is what happened with many of Stalin’s party members who were given death sentences for no apparent reason.

As noted by Marcus, this is basically menticide, the killing of the mind. The psychological process of menticide so degrades the mental faculties that rational thinking is no longer possible, making you profoundly gullible. In this state, you’ll buy into any narrative without critical thinking.

Mass formation also always ends up creating more of the conditions that allowed it to emerge in the first place. So, in the end, people who are under mass formation hypnosis will feel greater social isolation than ever before, less meaning and purpose in life, and more free-floating anxiety and free-floating aggression than before.

Mass formation also erases individuality. The group becomes all-important and the individual inconsequential. Hence being told you, your parents or children deserve or need to die for the betterment of society is acceptable and agreeable.

“Everyone becomes equally stupid, essentially,” Desmet says. “It doesn’t matter how smart or intelligent they were before. They lose all capacity for critical thinking, they lose all individual characteristics.”

Applied to today, this is shockingly relevant. It helps explain how and why parents are willing to line up their children for an experimental injection that can disable or kill them. “Totalitarianism is a monster that ALWAYS devours its own children,” Desmet says.

Mass Formation in Action

Another important point is that, typically, only 30% of people in a totalitarian society are actually under the hypnotic spell of mass formation. It seems greater, but they’re actually in a minority.

However, there’s typically another 40% that simply go along with the program, even though they’re unconvinced. They don’t want to stick out by going against the prevailing current. The remaining 30% are not hypnotized and want to wake the others up.

The so-called Ash experiments clearly demonstrated that very few people, only 25%, are willing to go against the crowd, no matter how absurd and obviously wrong the crowd’s opinion is. Two-thirds of people are willing to go along with “idiocracy.”

Time and again, mass formation events and experiments show us there are three groups of people: those who become spellbound and actually believe that the wrong answer is the right one; those who know the answer is wrong, but dare not tell the truth so they agree with what they know to be false; and those who know the answer is wrong and say so.

How to Break Mass Formation

All of this points to what the answer is. According to Desmet, what dissidents need to do is join together to form one large group. This gives the largest, 40% group — the fence-sitters who only go along with the program because they’re afraid of being ostracized — an alternative social bonding platform.

Most of them are likely to join the dissident anti-totalitarian group rather than follow the totalitarian mindset that they don’t fully agree with. At that point, the mass formation is done. The totalitarian state is finished because the neutral fence-sitters, which allowed for mass formation to take root and grow, are now no longer participating in that process. And without mass formation, a totalitarian takeover cannot succeed.

Secondly, we must continue to speak out — LOUDLY. Speaking out can help minimize the number of people who get hypnotized. It can also wake some up who already are under the mass formation spell. According to Desmet, speaking out has also been shown to limit the atrocities committed.

“In my opinion, it is not an option to stop speaking,” he says. “It’s the most important thing we can do.”

It’s not easy. As discussed by Marcus and Desmet, the totalitarian regime has the benefit of being able to control the narrative through a centralized media. Not surprisingly, mass media is a key tool for the successful creation of mass formation.

A third action item is creating parallel structures. The power of this strategy was demonstrated by Vaclav Havel, a political dissident who eventually became the president of Czechoslovakia. A parallel structure is any kind of business, organization, technology, movement or creative pursuit that fits within a totalitarian society while being morally outside of it.

Once enough parallel structures are created, a parallel culture is born that functions as a sanctuary of sanity within the totalitarian world. Havel explains this strategy in his book, “The Power of the Powerless.” As noted by Desmet, totalitarianism will always self-destruct in the end. The psychological underpinnings are so self-destructive that the system falls apart. That’s the good news.

The bad news is a totalitarian system can survive for long periods of time before petering out, and there tend to be few survivors at the end. That said, Desmet believes this new global totalitarianism is more unstable than regional dictator-led totalitarian systems, so it may self-destruct faster. So, the key is to survive outside the totalitarian system while we wait for it to self-destruct.

However, we must still dissent in word and deed, in order to limit the atrocities and mitigate the damage.

Ultimately, as in medicine, preventing totalitarianism is far easier than trying to break free later. To do that, we need to prevent the four root causes of mass formation in society: social isolation, purposelessness, free-floating discontent/anxiety and free-floating frustration/aggression. This will be the task of those who remain once this global totalitarianism experiment fails and falls.

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