Mattias Desmet: The West's Descent Toward Totalitarianism

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]Welcome back. We are joined today by Matias Desmet, a professor of psychology at the University of Gent uh to discuss among other things his book on the psychology of totalitarianism as um well you have argued yourself that western societies they're showing tendencies at least to what can be associated with emerging totalitarianism. And so I think it's important to unpack this concept what it actually means. Uh so um yeah thank you very much for uh coming on the program.

[00:00:34]>> Well thank you for having me. Glad >> so I've spoken to yeah many leading experts who make the point uh uh that we have you know to discuss international politics. we kind of have left the realm of politics and we need psychology to understand and I guess that's where you come in because it is interesting to look at the psychology of the masses now to understand politics especially the past decade I think has been very suffocating to well in lack of a better word that is you know we began with the Russia gate in 2016 uh which continued for years which was this evidence-free narratives uh completely absurd in many ways but it had to be believed and there was this huge intolerance any disscent was essentially smeared. It was only one perspective and then it seemed to be released by covid where everyone had to subscribe to the same essentially flawed logic that is you know we suddenly had a wonderful vaccine which no one could question however it didn't protect and it was developed only in a few months instead of a decade again no disscent then co was ended by and replaced with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in again there was full conformity around again very absurd narratives it was unprovoked spoke uh Russia was restoring the Soviet Union. NATO had nothing to do with any of this and again total conformity dissent treated more or less as treason and it feels like society delved into this mass psychosis and things aren't getting better. We have this of course a massive war in the Middle East. We have in the west economic decline, legitimacy crisis of the political elites. So again I get back to the point this the environment is quite suffocating. That is, we must all believe the exact same thing. No matter how ridiculous it is, there's no disscent, no addressing arguments, anyone dissenting are essentially smeared and destroyed. And we see that politics tend to enter all realms of uh personal life as well. So uh so yeah my question is that you make the point that modern totalitarianism you know doesn't emerge through brute force but it's a uh psychological process and um well I guess a social process. Uh so and you refer to this as mass formation. So uh I thought a good place to start would be or what if you could outline what is mass formation and how do you explain totalitarianism in u I guess psychological terms.

[00:03:08]Yes. Yes, that's maybe a good point to to start. I can walk you through my uh my theory if you want. Um you know um uh like I think it's it's now maybe 12 or 13 years ago that I started to be fascinated by the the the topic of totalitarianism. uh just because I uh f first first I got interested in um in uh mass psychology because because at at university I was I noticed time and time again uh how completely blind, highly intelligent or or highly educated people can be when they are confronted with with something that doesn't fit in their ideology or their or the narratives they believe in. So I I I made my PhD about um uh research problem problems, methodological problems in contemporary academic research. And I I noticed there time and time again when I when I try to show uh my colleagues uh in academia um how certain research research methods that are widely used impossibly can lead to valid results. You know I'm also a statistician by training. I'm I'm a professor in clinical psychology but but I'm also statistician. And so when I tried to show them how certain research methods actually impossibly can lead to valid results, I noticed that most of my colleagues uh actually got angry at me.

[00:04:49]And um I started to become fascinated by this strange phenomenon that highly educated people and probably highly educated people in particular uh can become completely blind for for certain uh uh facts uh when these facts uh do not confirm or or in conflict with the ideology they believe in. And then um uh like I started to study mass psychology because I I noticed that uh this strange expert blindness um probably cannot be explained on the basis of individual psychology alone.

[00:05:33]You need to understand how how an individual uh is is is is very often in the grip of a certain culture, subculture, a certain group it belongs to or is in the grip of a certain narrative that uh organized uh uh group life. And so I started to become interested in mass psychology.

[00:06:00]And then uh back in 2020 in the beginning the the corona crisis started and um at that moment I was already very well aware you know as soon as I started started to study mass psychology. I started to become aware of the fact that uh uh uh a phenomenon which I I use the term for uh of mass formation that a phenomenon of mass formation actually um is responsible uh for the emergence of a completely new kind of state system uh in the 20th century which we usually refer to now as a totalitarian state. And um I I I I I wasn't from from the beginning I was interested in particular in two questions like what is the difference between this totalitarian state and a classical dictatorship as a first question which is very important. Most people believe that the Soviet Union and let's say Nazi Germany which are the two most important examples I think are the most famous examples of totalitarian states uh of the beginning of the 20th century like most people believe that uh the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were classical dictatorships that they were dictatorships but actually this is not true at all. It were totalitarian states. It were the first totalitarian states in history and then I wanted to understand really understand like what the difference is like between a totalitarian state and a classical dictatorship and the difference is huge actually it are two completely different phenomena at the psychological level and I think it's extremely important to understand psychologically what the difference is because now in the beginning of the 20th century or in the 20 21st century we we confronted, I believe, with the emergence of a new totalitarianism, a new totalitarianism, which is not a fascist or a communist authoritarianism, but which is a which is a technocratic totalitarian technocratic totalitarianism for which Hana Arand probably the most important author philosopher about totalitarian states for which Hana Arand already warned us in 1953. She said like fascist totalitarianism in Germany collapsed and we will probably soon witness the collapse of communist totalitarianism.

[00:08:31]But very soon we will see the emergence of a new kind of totalitarianism, a totalitarianism which is no longer led by ring leaders such as Stalin or Hitler but by dull bureaucrats and technocrats.

[00:08:46]And so a totalitarian the emergence of a totalitarian state in this case I believe a globalist technocratic totalitarian state uh the emergence of a totalitarian state always um uh leads to a certain group who doesn't want to participate who doesn't fall prey to the psychological totalitarian processes and who tries to do something who tries to resist the emergent totalitarian state. And history has shown us that usually the resistance chooses the wrong strategy.

[00:09:28]They usually behave as if they are fighting as if they are resisting a classical dictatorship and that's just a fatal mistake when you're confronted with a totalitarian state. So that's why I believe it's important that we go into it that we try to understand what happens in a totalitarian state. So let me in a nutshell try to try to tell something about the difference like a classical dictatorship at the psychological re level is very primitive. It's s like um there is a certain group of people who are experienced by the population as having a huge aggressive potential um and the population is so scared by this dictatorial regime that they just accept that this dictatorial regime unilaterally imposes its social contract to the population. That's in a nutshell a little bit simplistic what happens in a totalitarian in a in a classical dictatorship. And that means of course that if you if so if if if the population succeeds in destroying the dictatorial regime or a part of the dictatorial regime there is a very good chance that the dict that the dictatorship will collapse. Now compared to that the emergence of a total Italian state is completely different. In a total Italian state, the first thing that happens is the emergence of a very specific group formation in society which I called mass formation. Which means that in a in a totalitarian state you can see how first a certain part of the population usually around 20 to 30% a certain part of the population starts to believe fanatically in a certain ideology for instance the race theories of Hitler or historical materialism of Marx in the Soviet Union.

[00:11:29]So first there is a mass formation that means that a mass a crowd of people emerges which very fanatically believes in a certain narrative and then in a second step there is some usually gifted rhetorical uh speakers who use this mass who put themselves at the at the head of the mass and who use the mass to seize control of the state system. And in that way a new system emerges a new a new state system which has a much much more suffocating impact on society because as Hana put it has a huge secret police at its disposal namely this part of the population 20 to 30% who so fanatically buys into the the state narrative that they are willing to report everyone to the states who doesn't u buy into the narrative who doesn't um uh conform to the narrative.

[00:12:33]So that's and that that emergence of a mass is is the most crucial thing to understand this mass formation. If you want to understand authoritarianism like mass formation is a kind of group formation which has a very specific impact on the individuals in a mass.

[00:12:52]When a when an individual is in the grip of a mass formation, it will typically be completely incapable of taking a critical distance of what the group believes in. It will typically become uh willing to radically self-sacrifice.

[00:13:07]Very strange. It will be willing to to to lose everything uh uh uh uh uh uh in order to follow the state narrative. It will be willing to sacrifice its health, its wealth, the future of its children, everything when the state system requires it. When the state ideology requires it. And then the third characteristic, the third impact of an amass formation on individual psychology is that individuals who are in the grip of a mass become radically intolerant for everyone who thinks differently and who speaks differently in particular. So these three things lead to this very strange atmosphere when a totalitarian state emerges. A people become completely blind, incapable of seeing the flaws and taking critical distance of what the the the masses believe in. Secondly, they become willing radically willing to self-sacrifice. And thirdly, they become radically intolerant for everyone who thinks differently to the extent that mothers will report their children to the state. Hi, there is this conversation of me on the internet with Sharehali, a woman who lived in Iran in 1978 and who was forced to witness uh how a mother who had reported her son to the state put the news around the neck of her son when he was on the scaffold and when he was dead she was very proud to receive a medal for heroineship. So that's what happens in a totalitarian state. Children report their parents to the state, parents report their children to the state. everyone reports everyone because of this phenomenon of massformation. So that's why I believe it's so crucial to understand what really happens there what what happens at the psychological level. Do do I have time to walk through that as well?

[00:15:01]>> Yes, please. But that's yeah >> that's the most important thing I believe like like you know uh a massformation emerges under under specific conditions like mass formations have have have existed as long as mankind exists like the crusades were examples uh there were several examples in history of mass of emerging mass formation but something very specific happens throughout the last two centuries namely the mass formations became stronger and stronger and stronger And up until now, I don't know if there is anyone who really found an explanation or at least tried to find an explanation for why these mass formations became stronger. And the reason was I believe that uh it this phenomenon of the the the the the increasing strength of the mass formations was connected to another phenomenon that emerged in modernity throughout the last few centuries.

[00:15:58]namely that more and more people started to feel lonely. More and more people started to feel isolated from everything around them and their fellow human beings, society, nature, people got atomized or as society got atomized as Hegel said. It fell apart and isolated individuals, isolated and lonely individuals. And like just before the corona crisis 2017 up to somewhere in between 40 and 17% of the people reported to feel completely isolated and lonely was a result of a Gallup world poll and then as soon as you start to understand how that's the basis of the increasing strength of the massformations you can very easily understand the entire mechanism like once people feel lonely once Once people feel disconnected in a in a lonely state, they will typically start to suffer from lack of meaning making in life. We could go into this. We better don't do it. We don't have enough time to explain it in detail. But loneliness typically leads to a feeling that life has no purpose or meaning. And also that we could see very easily like at the level of uh uh the jobs people do up to 60% of the people consider their own job to be a so-called job. That means that they believe that the word they use actually has no meaning or purpose at all which is typically of course our bureaucratic systems. And uh once people are in this state, lonely, disconnected, struggling with profound lack of meaning making, profound lack of purpose in life, something very specific will happen at the emotional level. They will typically be confronted with a very specific kind of frustration, aggression, and anxiety. a kind of frustration, aggression and anxiety which I coined a term for free floating frustration, aggression and anxiety.

[00:18:02]That means a kind of frustration, aggression and anxiety which people cannot connect to a mental representation or in plain words people feel lonely.

[00:18:13]People feel frustrated, aggressive and anxious without knowing what they feel frustrated, aggressive and anxious for.

[00:18:22]That's a very painful state. It's a very in aversive state for a human being because we feel completely out of control. It's the most painful state a human being can be in. Feeling anxious for instance without knowing what you feel anxious for. Feeling anxious without being able to protect to resist that what you feel anxious for. Now when many people are in this state in a society something very specific might h might happen when someone under these conditions intentionally or not distributes disseminates a narrative through the mass media indicating an object of anxiety for instance the corona virus and a strategy to deal with that object of anxiety for instance the lockdowns there is a very good has that many people at the same time will buy into the narrative that they will associate all their anxiety to this object of anxiety in the narrative and that they will be willing to participate in the strategy to deal with that object of anxiety no matter how absurd that narrative is. That's a strange thing.

[00:19:34]When people feel anxious enough and are not capable of associating their anxiety to a certain object, they will be willing to associate it to no matter what. Even when they know somewhere in the back of their head that that that this object of anxiety is actually not very dangerous. That's what happens at the individual level all the time when people develop phobias or compulsive symptoms. They know somewhere that this snake doesn't live in the country they live in or that these spiders are not so dangerous. But they will want to believe that it is dangerous because in that way they can control their anxiety a little bit just by avoiding the spider. Yes. So that's what happens in a massation. But in that case it doesn't happen at the individual level. It happens at the collective level. Meaning that many people at the same time all buy into the same narrative all associate their anxiety with the same object. And in the first place, this leads to an experience of being more in control than before, being more able to control your anxiety.

[00:20:37]And in the second place, more important because so many people at the same time buy into the narrative.

[00:20:47]They feel connected again. It is at this day escape the loneliness because they fight this heroic collective battle.

[00:20:56]this collective war with the object of anxiety, the virus, the Jews, the uh the aristocracy or the bureaucrac the the bourgeoisi in in uh in uh in in Soviet Union. So that's the first step of the massformation. Many people at the same time associate their anxiety to an object of anxiety and then they all blindly buy into the strategy to debate object of anxiety. Yeah. And then of course like the second step is extremely important. It seems as if people escape the most fundamental problematic condition of a human being, anxiety and isolation. I said it seems as if they escape it because in reality they are more lonely than ever before. And that has to do with this very particular characteristic of a mass formation. Like a mass is a group which emerges not because individuals connect to each other, not because individuals start to love each other and start to form a group. No, a mass is a group that emerges because all the individuals separately connect to a collective ideal. the battle the the mask wearing or vaccination which are all like a kind of rituals psychologically have the function of a ritual which makes you belong to the mass. So meaning that a mass is a group that is formed because each individual is gets connected to a collective ideal. Meaning that after a while the connection between the individual and the collective ideal gets much stronger than even the strongest connection between individuals. For instance, the connection between a mother and her child. And that's the reason why after a while mothers start to report their children to the state when they feel that their child is not loyal enough to the collective ideal. So that's the dramatic that's what happened in the mass it was clear that this happened in the corona crisis like even if you do believe that the the the corona virus was to a certain extent dangerous I believe it was it had the mortality rate was much much much lower than they said in the beginning that's clear and that that that's beyond the shade of a doubt but even if you believe that it had a certain dangerousness well even then you cannot ignore that we we could see this very strange phenomenon like that.

[00:23:30]People suddenly started to be willing to report their their their neighbors to the to the state or even their children and people suddenly everyone was talking about a solidarity. But strangely enough, we accepted or most people accepted that the elderly, the old people had to die lonely somewhere in a hospital or in a in a in an institution where they would not even be allowed to be visited by their children. People suddenly accepted, for instance, that when someone got an accident on the street, we were no longer allowed to help that person. So that's a very strange kind of solidarity. It's a solidarity with a collective ideal and the complete lack of solidarity with your fellow human being. So that's massation. It's the basis of uh of uh all totalitarianism. It's extremely dangerous. And you can see now how after the corona crisis, we had the massation of the corona crisis and then suddenly somewhere in 2021, it was replaced like this by the Ukraim narrative which is very typical.

[00:24:39]Once a new narrative is disseminated which offers a new object of anxiety which is maybe even more dangerous the dangerous monster Putin then there is a good chance that suddenly this complex dynamical phenomenon of the massformation chooses a new object leaves the first chooses a new object and a new massformation emerges which of course doesn't mean I wrote several articles about the war in Ukraine I'm not someone who believes that Putin is a saint. Not at all. Uh and I'm not someone who believes that uh the way in which Putin rose to power and the way what Putin did in Chenia or no matter what that Putin is saying, not at all. I just means that we are blindly projecting all our problems, anxiety uh and so on on an external object on Putin and that we are just not capable anymore to see that there is a lot of problems at our side that NATO did a lot of things which actually forced Russia to react with the war and so on and so on.

[00:25:42]So um well that's my little introduction for about the mass to >> now it is interesting though the the well first I just want to make a comment on the anger the anger part that's something I realized as well as an academic because you know if I'm a professor in you know political science focusing on security studies and in in security studies like all theorist kind of recognizes that the reason why states are in conflict is what they refer to as an international anarchy that al all states compete for security. So there's kind of consensus in the literature. If we want peace, we have to first uh reduce the security competition. You have to recognize the security concerns of your opponents such as was done towards the end of the cold war and you reduce mutual threats and then you can have peace. And this was I know I was I thought I was following the common recipe and but I realized as soon as I argued you know with with this war for example that you know we have to recognize the Russian security concerns.

[00:26:37]Um it was it was just push back with massive anger. It was uh in no even rational arguments. It's just well that means you're repeating their their views. You are now part of them. And it wasn't just the Russians. It was the Iranians, the Chinese. I mean people just want to essentially have conformity around the same slogans how evil Putin is, the mulas, the the Chinese communist. And um yeah, there's there's no all all facts are kind of dismissed.

[00:27:07]uh they simply said well that's a talking point uh you know panda hugger Kremlin talking point apologist for mulas and uh I even had colleagues who suggested oh you should write some books on Russian imperial history so people know you're one of us you know like and even when you went to debates about the war in Middle East you know you always have to condemn Hamas they always ask you oh do you condemn Russia it's it's always forcing you into a position as some kind of an activist on behalf of the state. You can't be an analyst to take yourself out of the situation. You have to participate in the moral outrage if not condemnation is now obligatory. And I you see it from regular people and I even had um strange experience. Yeah. last year cuz I even I noticed that in my party sorry my country every single um well when the Russians first invaded Ukraine we had a prime minister said well we can't send weapons because you know that makes us a participant and you know you know we never did this and now uh every single member of parliament is for sending weapons not a single one is arguing we should talk to the other side and so I thought okay I'll I'll I'll run for parliament I thought And uh it was it was quite insane that is uh every media outlet essentially said it well this is pro-Russian anti- Ukrainian and you had people you know tearing down political poster and when they were asked to comment on you know this vandalism they they actually compared it to liberating Norway from Hitler during World War II.

[00:28:45]So all this self-righteousness, it was overwhelming and the moral superiority, you know, and it was all this strong tribal activity, you know, they were all fighting for freedom and uh and essentially my arguments for instead of sending weapons, we should restore diplomacy. was just evidence of being in the hands of Putin and it's you know was a fascist agent and you had politicians arguing that that they should look into whether or not the Kremlin was financing me at at the end even the defense minister came out and he criticized media for having spoken to me the defense minister that is the state power saying that well he and then when he asked why what has he done that's pro that's Russian propaganda well he blamed NATO for the war. So it doesn't matter what the arguments are, your facts. You can point to expert opinions from leading American politicians. Nothing nothing matters. It's just conform to the narrative or we essentially destroy you. It's uh it it doesn't feel like democ democracy to me though. But um but how do you see this linked into uh democracies? Because uh often you know people have been well told essentially that you know we don't have propaganda.

[00:30:00]propaganda something we have in authoritarian states but it um you know when you focus on the what you say the the atomiz automization of the individual the individual standing all alone I don't think people appreciate how powerful this is because you know whether it's a study of sociology political studies or you know psychology the key focus is often this duality of human beings that we're rational individuals you know as the enlightenment would tell us however the duality is that We're also a group animal. We organize in groups for security and meaning as we've done for thousands of years. And the individual does have to adjust to the group though.

[00:30:38]So um so we have on one hand the rational individual but also we have this instinct almost where we adapt to the group. So how is this manipulated though or how how is this channel because on one hand we come more atomized more and again this is a a trait of modernity as you said before modernity is you know often defined by these two variables rationality and individualism but if we aren't individuals only individuals that is and we aren't only uh rational what does this mean for you know how how society is uh impacted Yes. Well, well to start with the question like are we still in a democracy? uh uh I don't really think like many people believe that a democracy is a state system where uh a majority who is elected uh rules the country but that's not true of course as um um Tville said in the 19th century he said like no democracy is a state system where an elected majority rules the country with the respect for the fundamental rights of minorities and that's Of course, what what what uh lacks in a totalitarian system? In a totalitarian system, it's also the majority that rules the country, but it has no respect whatsoever for the for the for the fundamental rights of minorities. And that's what that's very clearly what happened in the in the corona crisis. It's very clear that uh the rights of the of of the minorities were were extremely violated. So I believe at least that we are at danger of ending up in a completely anti-democratic system. That's first thing to start with. And as you said, it's actually connected very much to this more fundamental question like what about the nature of the human being? Is the human being a rational being? That's since modernity, since the so-called scientific revolution in the 17th century, we started to believe or at least the mainstream, the dominant view on man and the world or the dominant view on man was that the human being is a rational being. It's capable of rational thinking and making choices on the basis of rational argumentation.

[00:32:59]Okay, you can clearly see when the first modern democracy emerged in 1979, 1978 in in America with the with the American Revolution, you could clearly see when you read the text of the founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson that they started from the idea that uh the citizens the human beings who who were the members of the states that they would be able to think rationally and choose for a good candidate. it in a democratic way. So that was a starting point and and um uh you know after five or 10 years old the founding fathers of modern democracy knew already that they made a fatal mistake and they had been believing in illusions for all kinds of reasons. We could go into that in all the in all kinds of directions like the fact that like Thomas Jefferson actually started from the from the idea that a democracy can only function as a democracy when um uh the majority of the people in the democracy or small land owners who live a self-sufficient life who who who who can take care of themselves uh uh on a on a on on their own plot of land. That's what he believed. And he had very good reasons to believe so. He he he said like only when an individual is able to see all the facts the entire reality that matter for his own life only then that an individual can take can choose for a candidate and evaluate by its own rationality by its own rational thinking whether this political candidate that they elected was a good or a bad candidate. This Thomas Jefferson started from this idea. The majority of the people have to be small land owners who can live a self-sufficient life. So of course very soon it turned out because the world industrialized more and more. It turned out that this local life was an illusion. More and more people started to be dependent of industries who were uh invisible for them whom they couldn't observe themselves. Meaning that very soon modern democracy needed a new institution, the media and the press who made all the invisible facts visible for the people, who told the people about the world that mattered to them. And in a next step after 10 years, they knew already that it was almost impossible to um build a media system which would be objective for all kinds of reasons. It was impossible for instance because just they they they they could see that that uh it was impossible to have enough eyewitnesses who could describe every significant event that happened uh and and and and allow journalists to report in an objective way and even when there were eyewitnesses all these eyewitnesses contradicted each other. So after 10 years they knew that an objective press was an illusion and they also noticed that the population didn't want to pay for a good for good journalism. They didn't they didn't want to pay for it and and and and in in 10 years like um the the journalism was dependent on uh uh the large industrial and monetary players who wanted to finance uh journalism because they knew that they could manipulate the population. in this way. So in a very short span of time, journalism became necessary and became very close to propaganda. That's the point. and and um uh like what they noticed what the first propagandists which were probably the Marxists like from the from 1850 onwards uh the telegraph was invented uh the modern or at least the the the photography was invented and for the first time in history uh a kind of propaganda system emerged which was which was much more uh uh uh sophisticated than everything uh uh than than all propaganda which preceded it.

[00:37:12]And so like um probably like the the Crimean war was the first heavily propagandized war 1853 we are talking about the Crimean war of uh uh the 19th century which was which was by the way uh like ideologically speaking exactly the same as the war in Ukraine we have now. Uh but so the first highly propagandized war was the Crimean war.

[00:37:36]Then uh in the second half of the 19th century, Marxism emerged and Marxism probably for the first time developed a very coherent and extensive uh propaganda system and uh by the um uh when the second when the first world war happened uh uh propaganda was already fully developed and very interestingly it started from exactly ly the opposite idea as what the mainstream or what uh the world view the view on men of the world of modernity actually believed like the dominant view on men in the world believes that the human being is a rational being. Well, propaganda started from exactly the opposite position.

[00:38:28]Namely, the human being is an emotional being. And when you control the emotions of the human being, you can do no matter what you want with it. Uh you you can when you spread narratives which are completely irrational. But when you repeat it these narratives time and time again, people will start to buy into them. So that was propaganda actually was the return of something that was repressed in the beginning of modernity. namely that the human being is not a rational being, it's an emotional being. And uh the human being of course is capable of rational thinking but that requires in the first way that it has a certain control of its emotions and without that certain control uh it will become completely irrational. So when you're asking me like are we living in a democracy? No, I don't think so because we are living in a in a society of which the fundamental the most important organizing principle is propaganda which means a society where people are incapable of choosing democratically a democratic candidate in a in a more or less lucid or rational way. Meaning that we fundamentally I believe live in what people like Marcus called uh a velvet glove. a to authoritarian system.

[00:39:58]Up until now, it's velvet glove, but it could it could very soon take off its velvet gloves and become very aggressive and use terror.

[00:40:07]Yeah. Well, the what you mentioned about repetition is quite important because that's how narratives are formed. That is it's in human nature uh that we confuse the familiar with the real. So if you hear something over and over again that's then it seems um more real.

[00:40:24]But it's also interesting that a lot of the original literature on propaganda be it from people like Edward Bernese or Walter Lipman they all recognize that the liberal no democracies are more reliant on propaganda than others simply because if sovereignty is transferred to the people it's more important what they believe and but somehow we propagandized what propaganda means because now it's assumed that it's something that others do, authoritarianists do which is kind of fas fascinating to to me. But but you also see that the propaganda was also more utilized when they expanded the voting rights because now there was more need to uh I guess manage the the the masses and uh also when societies said industrialized became more complex the more complex the world is isn't realistic for people to understand everything what's happening you know agriculture from Brazil to great power politics in Russia. So you simplify everything down to very simple heristics and stereotypes and then this is a good way of managing and um I think uh yeah then you don't need this brute force as you described a dictatorship because this also what Walter Lipman made the point you know because he worked propaganda for the US government in the first world war and he made point that individuals they have a human beings have a basic understanding of the world if you challenge that basic assumptions they have you know you don't need to manipulate them. They they have they experience great discomfort in how they see the world as being challenged and they will essentially reject it no matter what the information is. And so essentially propaganda does mean you have to tell people what to believe, appeal to their rationality. All you have to do is uh I guess appeal to the to building up those fundamental ideas who's good and who's bad. Which is why in every war, you know, us we're a liberal democracy. We're fighting Imperial Russia. we're fighting, you know, Muslim uh extremist terrorists.

[00:42:22]It's always if you just make people buy into the premise of this is good and bad, all reality kind of goes away. And um well, that's why I think psychology is an important aspect because it was Sigman Freudo who brought in this concept of group psychology that yeah, we're all nice rational individuals, but you have group psychology. We are group animals. we adjust to the group and if if you know and this will overwhelm the rational individual and you know his nephew Edward Bernese he essentially took that material and this became the foundation of literature on propaganda it is how do you manipulate group psychology in other words how do you appeal to the um the nonrational aspect of human nature to overwhelm the rational individual and again here we are so but I I was curious though because you mentioned you know the fascists and the communist is they had the you know that 20th century version of propaganda but um but now we're moving into techno uh the technocratic thinking technocratic elites which you described as yeah dull and boring uh I can't help but to find that the perfect description of the EU at times but what is what is it that makes the technocrats uh I guess um key well conveyor or uh well pushing this kind of totalitarianism What is it about them?

[00:43:43]>> That's a good question. That's a good question. I always wondered like how could Hana Orans knew back in 1953 that the next big totalitarian system would be a technocratic system led by dull bureaucrats and technocrats. I am not sure but I think I think it has to do with the fact that meanwhile since since uh the middle of the 20th century I think um our worldview became more and more rationalistic and our society became more and more bureaucratic like the number of rules exploded like you could see how if I'm not mistaken I'm not quite sure about the figures anymore but I think in the beginning of the 19th century that only 10% of the people had uh an administrative or a bureaucratic job and now it's the totality of the bureaucratic bureaucratic work and tasks that's up to 70% I think. So I mean our our our the bureaucratic system or or our our society became more and more and more bureaucratic meaning of course that it selects uh the people who by nature have a talent or talent or or are attracted to bureaucracy. the elite at a political level, which of course is like only a very small and probably almost insignificant part of the the the elite that that uh at at the at the at the level of our globalist society. But um uh I I believe that uh the fact that our society became more and more bureaucratic also means that the the public leaders of this new authoritarianism also become more and more bureaucratic and technocratic.

[00:45:27]That's would be my two cent opinion. Uh uh um no but it's a very good question like why as to why like I also think like you know um um the the dominant worldview starting from the 17th century onwards became more and more materialist and rationalist in nature. So we started to believe more and more that the human being is like a biological machine which is one of the big problems. Of course, it's not a biological machine if you ask me. Um um uh but anyway, we started to believe that. We started to consider the human being as a as a machine. And this this this uh machine metaphor got more and more grip on society. And uh until we we we arrive now uh uh at ideology ideologies such as the one of you Noah Harrari, the one which Yuval Noah Harrari articulated in his mega bestseller Homodus where he just says like of course well we order machine we have no soul even no real consciousness.

[00:46:35]uh if you open up the skull of a human being, you will only find find biological uh electrical wires there and and so we can optimize uh this biological machinery of the human being just by merging the human being with all kinds of technological devices such as sensors and uh and chips, brain chips and uh artificial joints and so on and so on.

[00:47:00]So this this uh uh machine this this mechanistic view on man uh became stronger and stronger and stronger which probably also explains why why the ideologies that uh have a very big impact on the human being also became more and more and more mechanistic like the communist ideology was materialist in nature. the um the uh race theories of Hitler were also uh biological in nature. But now we are confronted with a population or now we see a society which is even much more in the grip of a much more explicit uh uh mechanist worldview which of course means that within such a society where everybody more and more starts to look at the human being as a machine well the technocrats the people who represent like a technical mechanistic expertise uh will have more and more psychological impact I think. So I think what we will see the new to authoritarianism will be led publicly as I said I'm talking about the public leaders of the the new to authoritarian system it will probably be be led by a combination of bureaucrats and technical experts that would be u what seems rather logical if we if we start from the fundamentals of our culture.

[00:48:27]Yeah, I have a last question about the technocrats, but first I just Yeah, I was thinking you mentioned before the Crimean War in the 1850s, how it's very similar to what we're doing today. And it is interesting because there's been um you know some important work uh by some British British scholars in the 1950s about about the Crimean War and uh in the in the context of Russophobia and propaganda and they kind of made the point that before the Crimean War the Turks were presented as you know barbaric easterners essentially they were the the bad guy to the Christian Greeks the ones who were you know terrorizing them. So there was, you know, was not a good view of the Turks.

[00:49:07]A little bit like, you know, people recognized Ukraine was deeply, profoundly uh corrupt and all of this.

[00:49:14]But anyways, this was the view of the Turks. However, when it was time to go fight the Russians in in Crimea, um then of course new new basic stereotypes, identities had to be created. So suddenly overnight they made the point that the Turks became innocent victims.

[00:49:32]you know this uh damsel in distress and so that was their role that was the victim. The Russian was this evil barbaric aggressor and then the UK and France would be these knights in shining armor altruistic you know seeking to help the the poor victim and go against evil. So essentially all great power politics competing security interest everything was stripped away and it was just down to this bare naked silly I would say stereotypes in which all strategic thinking all room for compromise mutual understanding everything had to give way to essentially goodness fighting evil and if anyone would have challenged this uh this view saying well that that makes no sense at all this is a bit ridiculous then of course then Well, are you with us, the inroup, the good, or are you sympathizing now with the bad guys? So, they had a nice way of ensuring full conformity to this uh propagandistic view. And I can't help but to think that we're doing exactly the same this time around. There's no difference at all.

[00:50:36]>> Literally. Oh, sorry.

[00:50:38]>> Yeah. Go ahead.

[00:50:40]>> Also, at a strategic level, like the Crimean War of 1853, it was I think 53 to 56.

[00:50:46]>> Yeah. from 53 to 56 years. But the Crimean war like the strategy uh of the allies in the Crimean war was inspired by Lord Palmerston. I think that he was the then uh secretary of external affairs or something like that of Great Britain. Anyway, it was he who who who was the first who who really realized that if you can isolate Russia from the Black Sea, Russia will cease to be a a superpower. Of course, because they have no they they have no access to to the southern seas anymore then. So, Palmerson uh built his his strategical doctrine about exactly on this like we have to isolate Russia from the Black Sea. And of course that's what NATO does now or what NATO did the last 30 40 years. They tries to isolate isolate Russia from the Black Sea. It's very clever at a strategical level, but it's suicidal at at if you consider it from a different point of view like um uh and that that's of course like everyone knows that that when you do this when you really try to isolate Russia from the Black Sea that we are really at risk of a nuclear war and and the strange thing is like that's the most dangerous aspect of our society that it is suicidal like our rationalist mechanist worldview view led to an escalation of the death drive. And many people also at the top they just don't care anymore.

[00:52:20]They are so much in the grip of a destructive drive that they say maybe we can just better enjoy uh uh one last time our full destructive potential knowing that um it might lead to the destruction of the entire planet. So that's uh that's the danger of course that's what we are at risk of of and that's why we have to speak out. We we didn't talk about that upon in this conversation, but as I showed in my book and as I discussed time and time again in podcasts, there is only one real effective resistance against authoritarianism and it's sincere speech. The people who do not fall prey to the massformation have to make this difficult choice to continue to speak out even when the people in the mass will not wake up. They probably won't.

[00:53:15]sincere speech will prevent them from going to the last stage of every mass formation which is the stage in which everyone starts to become convinced that it is their ethical duty to destroy everyone who doesn't go along with the masses. So we have to continue to speak out and also in particular to the people in in charge to the people in power. These people are hypnotized by their own propaganda. That's so typical.

[00:53:45]If you read Hitler minecom, you will see that after a while he was completely hypnotized by his own propaganda. And that's what happens time and time again.

[00:53:56]People who use propaganda. Look at Bernese. You mentioned to them Bernese Lipman. Look at these people. In the beginning, they were very well aware that they were making propaganda. And after a while if you read their works you cannot there is no other you have to conclude that these guys started to believe their own and and so like that's why also in in particular with respect to the so-called elite we have to speak out we have to speak in a very quiet calm way not because we are convinced that we know the truth but just because we think that it is our ethical duty and our inaluable human right to articulate what we feel is the right thing to say.

[00:54:48]Lipman made this point though that uh which I think is important that the the benefits if you will of the propaganda is when you when you frame everything is you know a simple binary as good and evil. The the strength of it was it enables you to mobilize the public for for conflict for war. That is you know for example in his time if this is a fight for uh you know to make the world free for democracies something like this war to end all wars it's easy to get people on board. But he did make the po point that what makes it dangerous is you can't make a workable peace anymore because once you convince the public that you're fighting against pure evil only complete destruction of the opponent can can produce peace. You can't compromise with evil, good compromising with evil only, you know, corrupts further. And uh again, this is um this is where I think we are now. For example, in the case of Russia, when when whenever I make the point that as you said, this is suicidal. I can see where this is going. When the Europeans, for example, say, well, we have to send more drones. We have to pick deep strikes in Russia. We have to kill off its its economy. I know what's coming next. The Russians have to retaliate.

[00:55:56]They have to restore their deterrent. So we're moving towards direct war with a good possibility of a nuclear exchange.

[00:56:03]So it's predictable where this going and one one can get out of this. But then you first have to recognize we have competing interest. You have to recognize that they see this as a as a threat to their survival. But uh but it's impossible now because then you're piecing evil. This is a more or less older arguments can be brought back to this one little thing which is oh you well then you're supporting evil. You have to fight it. This is essentially the argument. But um uh yeah, I was going to say my my my last question which I was going to get to was they they're technocrats. They formed this collective consciousness you know and uh well in the enlightenment we had the whole idea that uh you know we have to focus on method you have to prove something you can't just rely on the authorities of the high priests but contradictory it seems like science now is becoming the new high priests and we saw this during co they say trust the science trust the science but uh and then we do the same with our wars by the way as well trust the experts look this general says this or that often the expert class is bought which is a propaganda way you build you buy your media you buy your NOS's your think tanks and you can produce the knowledge you want but uh but but uh for for me this seems very strange that we took science from a method of uh you know testing having critical analysis critical thought about about an issue and uh and we replaced it with simply saying well it's already sorted out we have an expert. We have this high priest who have now already told us that this you know vaccine although it may not actually protect you now will will will save the world and uh you know same with these wars it's it's unprovoked uh the experts have spoken uh do you think this comes at the heart of it or some of the problems of the the the expert class if you will? Oh yes, definitely definitely because um you know uh I believe like what you what you point out here is a is a problem that existed from the very beginning of of science. Like there was always this gap between the seinal scientists, the people who invented science and the people who followed these seinal scientists, they were all always completely different people. Like literally completely different characters. Like if you look at like maybe Pagoras was a inventor of of western science. You could say it's a little bit arbitrary but uh you could see that he was a mystical type a mystical type which which hoped to and who hoped to understand nature in a better way using all kinds of philosophies about numbers and mathematics. And then uh later on you could see exactly the same like the people who were the founders of of of western science like in the 17th century uh Galileo Kepler Copernicus and so on they were all mystical types religious types who tried to understand nature and these people these people science for these people was a kind of philosophy they wanted to understand the language of nature but they didn't want to conquer nature. Yes. And you could see exactly the same again later on in the 20th century with all the famous physicists like Heisenberg, Bore, Einstein and so on. They all were fascinated by or Maxwell there are so many people on Newton um uh they were all these people were fascinated by understanding the language of nature and only in a second place and very often not at all they wanted to use their science to change nature. Well, the people who followed these seinal scientists almost always were the completely opposite type. They were not the mystical type. They were not the religious type. They were the people who just hoped that all these scientific theories could be used to conquer nature. And and you can see something very strange there. Like all the experts at university, they do not even resemble the seinal scientists. Einstein wrote a wonderful paper about that. A wonderful paper paper which was titled religion and science. He said in that paper like the real scientists he said is identical to the truly religious person. And he he he he he raises a lot of arguments to to underpin that. And he said should you remove all people from academia who are not true scientists I'm afraid he said academia would be almost empty.

[01:00:45]So it's something Einstein and and also Heisenberg had this wonderful paper about uh where where he where he explores the concept of the soul and and where Paulie asks him this question like do you believe in a personal god? It's a wonderful paper and also there Heisenberg says exactly the same. He says the problem is that I gave a lecture last evening together with Neils Boore. He was in uh in Copenhagen at at the time and um he said and the problem is that while Neils Boore and me uh primarily were interested in the metaphysical questions the all these physicists who came to us and who came who came to the lecture actually had no interest in metaphysics at all. they all believed that uh they all were interested in the merely the practical application of our new theories. It's it's a wonderful paper in which you can see like that the people who call themselves experts now often do so on the basis of the fact that they have this scientific attitude but they have a completely different attitude and position in life than the people who actually produce science.

[01:02:04]>> Yeah, that's a great contradiction. Um yeah, now I want to thank you for yeah taking time. I think this is a very important uh topic and uh I I tend to be very worried how fear and this moral righteousness is used to essentially impose a very suicidal conformity on us.

[01:02:25]I mean in this government we even have uh some politicians who made the point that we have um um that uh you know the greatest resource we have is trust in government. So if you if you criticize government narratives, you're an anti-state actor now undermining our democratic system. So we are in a very weird weird place. So I yeah I very much appreciate that you yeah helped explain I guess the psychology behind I think the totalitarian movement which many people can now start to sense very clearly. So thank you very much for taking the time and yeah sorry for going a bit over time there.

[01:03:00]>> No, no problem Glenn. I uh I really enjoyed our conversation and um thank you for for having me and for helping uh together with so many people. I believe we we really have to try to continue to articulate our dissident opinion. I think it's I think it's good to be loyal to to uh to the government to a certain extent but there should be a limit to it. There should be a point where where people start to welcome wait okay or I want to be loyal to the state but only if it answers these questions and that's something that doesn't happen now.

[01:03:36]>> Yeah. Well also I will leave a link uh to your book in the description. So uh thanks again.

[01:03:43]>> Yes. And maybe to to my substack as well if you want.

[01:03:46]>> Oh my page. My sub I can send it. I can my I will ask my assistant to send it.