Were We Hypnotised by Desmet? – Part II: The Work of Woke, New Diagnosis and New Prognosis.

In Part I, I set out my thoughts on why Desmet’s book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, falls apart. I deconstructed his facile view of the mechanistic worldview as a simple diagnosis for all that is wrong with the world. I tried to reposition our thinking about the mechanistic worldview by realigning it with what I believe is the true guiding ideology of today’s masters of the universe.

In Part II, I will attempt to establish a coherent relationship between woke discourses and the true ruling ideology. I’ll examine Desmet’s disappointing dismissal of conspiracy theory as a pejorative. Then I’ll explain why unpicking Desmet’s incorrect diagnosis is important – an incorrect diagnosis makes a poor prognosis more likely. Shadow boxing with the mechanistic worldview is not a good use of our time right now.

Discourses and the work of woke – servants of the ruling ideology

When Desmet talked about ‘the discourse’ that was directed at the masses, he used the singular partly because his focus was narrow. He was concerned with the covid discourse, which encompassed all the lies and manipulation relating to covid containment. This is just one discourse among many, all of which have a relationship to the ruling ideology. We should list some discourses to see if we can arrive at a commonality. To be clear, I detest these discourses, but they were or still are being pedalled. This is how they go:

Cancelling civil liberty and freedom, and destroying lives and health are all good things to stop the spread of an aerosolised virus; injecting the entire planet with shoddily prepared injections manufactured by an industry with a reputation for operating as a global criminal syndicate is a good thing, and playing along with it by offering up your arm on a regular basis demonstrates you are a decent human being hell-bent on saving granny; punishing people for their refusal to comply with government orders about what they can do with their own bodies, such as whether or not they want to inject themselves and their children with experimental vaccines, is a good thing because, according to the justice warriors, freedom does not include the freedom to kill others (!); making the injections available to poor people in the Global South, regardless of whether or not they want or need them, is a good thing and the name for it that oozes goodness is ‘vaccine equity’; cheer-leading the destruction of Ukraine to support a NATO-led proxy war is a good thing in order to defeat today’s official enemies of the state; the Orwellian doublethink involved in supporting ‘good’ neo-Nazis (who were, prior to 2021, acknowledged as bad neo-Nazis) presents no barriers for pro-war pundits drawing parallels between the Russian leader and Hitler; promoting a ‘climate crisis’ narrative that is catalysing global starvation through state-led forced farm buyouts and deindustrialisation of the entire West is a good thing and the name for it that oozes goodness is saving the planet; empowering children to change their name, identify with a different pronoun as young as eight years old or even younger, to obtain puberty-blocking medications for 10-12-year-olds, hormonal treatments and even invasive surgeries for 16 and 17-year-olds, are all good things and the name for it that oozes goodness is trans-affirming care.

The commonality in these apparently very diverse discourses is that they all involve destruction – of dignity, health (mental and physical) and life itself – but are cloaked in the mantle of utilitarian good, social justice, climate justice and generally fighting evil wherever it might rear its head. Those in thrall to these diverse discourses believe unquestioningly in the essential goodness of their intentions even if they have some problems with the logic of the discourse itself. And any flaws in the rationality of the discourse are not permitted to impugn the essential good intent of its believers. The good intent alone provides a free pass for the discourse to propagate unchecked. So convinced are the believers in their essential goodness that they are prepared to kill and maim to achieve their ends. And that’s the paradox of their fanatical belief in the goodness of their cause – they do kill and maim. Often on an industrial scale. And they don’t stop to do a body count.

This is the new Stalinist / Maoist revolutionary fervour sweeping the so-called liberal West, and I believe it can be captured by a word that once encapsulated the pinnacle of leftist ambition but is now used as the catch-all for the manure heap of leftist identity politics – ‘woke’. Because it covers such a broad range of actions and agendas, I find it hard to label it as a single ideology. I prefer to think of it as a way of thinking, or perhaps more accurately, not thinking. And if a woke warrior were, in a brief and rare attack of brutal honesty, to explain themselves to a bemused and frightened bystander caught in the crosshairs of their destructive goodness, this is what they would say:

“We are so good and so right that we have the right to kill to achieve our vision of social justice and utopia. We are so clever that we need not debate our discourse with people too stupid to see the inherent goodness of our cause; they are right-wing terrorists, to be censored initially but later killed once it is socially acceptable to do so. The painful discord of their dissent cannot be permitted to jeopardise our great leaps forward.”

So how do we connect the ruling ideology – god-complex-driven control – with the discourses of the woke way? The ruling ideology weaponises woke discourse in the service of the ultimate goal of god-like control of humanity and the resources of the planet. Some of these discourses are manufactured and propagated directly by the ruling elite and its media and academia tools. Others are seized on and co-opted by elites to drive control and profit agendas. Privately, the ruling oligarchy must fall out of their chairs laughing at the discourses being swallowed by the woke class, but woke discourses are control catalysts so they are publicly honoured by the ruling elite.

I am always amazed at anyone who claims to be able to think rationally and still believes that the upper echelons of the oligarchic power structure actually believe in the rubbish being consumed by the BBC and Guardian faithful. You owning nothing is obviously going to result in someone else owning everything. You eating bugs to save the planet obviously makes organic real food more plentiful for the wealthy. You not flying to go on holiday obviously leaves more petrol to fill the tanks of Idris Elba’s fleet of luxury sports cars. Do you really think the end of private car ownership will apply to the Davos parasites? Where is the outrage at the transmutation of the lie of trickle-down wealth into the reality of pissing-down pain?

As I emphasised earlier, there is a disconnect in consciousness between the ruling class and the masses in that the leaders understand that the perception of any threat promoted by a discourse does not align with the reality – humanity may be trashing the planet in myriad ways, but there is no ‘climate’ crisis warranting even more economic strangulation of the poor; the poor will do just fine without Pfizer’s poison; Russia is not imminently about to invade and conquer Europe, and so on. The discourses are essentially tools that colour the masses’ perception of reality to evoke a crisis response that transfers power to the elite.

I recognise this is stating the obvious to red-pilled observers who understand that covid was a vehicle for the biggest wealth transfer in modern history, but Desmet doesn’t seem to see the significance of this, preferring instead to cleave to a narrative of mutual hypnosis and shared ideology.

The power of discourse as a means of control in the ruling elite’s toolkit is one way to understand why the Royal Family did not hesitate to throw one of their own under the bus when a ‘commoner’ complained about a harmless verbal exchange with one of the ‘higher-ups’. It is not because the Royal Family is woke, but rather that they must honour the woke discourses that strengthen their position in the hierarchy. I do not agree with Ramesh Thakur’s interpretation of the Ngozi Fulani incident, which pedals the standard conservative ideological canard bemoaning the “diminished” standing of the Royal institution. If only the Royal institution had been diminished! But it was not, although it needs to be if it is to stop serving as the beacon of slave mentality so central to the ruling class’s ideology.

I am repulsed in equal measure by the institution of monarchy and the manipulative victimhood leveraged by the woke warrior, Fulani. The reality though is that the Royal Family’s response to this incident was a necessary hat-tip to the woke class that is doing an excellent job of marching us into the pen planned for us by the ruling elite – of which the Royal Family is obviously a lynchpin.

The origins of woke

Where does woke come from and why is it now the defining emblem of ‘left’ politics in the UK, and indeed the entire West? Woke is the culmination of identity politics, the roots of which can be traced to the defeat of the leftist class struggle in the last two decades of the 20^th century. In capitulating to the neo-liberal consensus, the left abandoned concrete material politics aimed squarely at capitalism. In essence, they abandoned the one thing that was worth fighting for and the one thing that separated them from the pro-establishment, pro-status quo right – they abandoned the fight to dismantle The System. That capitulation had to be disguised as a revolutionary adaptation – it was of course counter-revolutionary – and, crucially, it had to be replaced with a new ‘struggle’. Thus, the left substituted identity politics for concrete material politics.

In the UK, a pivotal moment in this capitulation was the amendment to Clause IV part iv of the Labour Party’s constitution which espoused a commitment to “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.” Regardless of where you may lie on the spectrum of opinion about nationalising industry, the fact remains that the clause IV amendment was intended to signal to the financial gatekeepers of political power that Old Labour was dead and New Labour had accepted the neo-liberal consensus. The repeal of Clause IV symbolised the abandonment of any form of commitment to the democratisation of economic processes. The party had debated clause 4 in 1959/60 and, notwithstanding the fascinating differences between the 1994/95 debate and the earlier one, 1995 is the moment the mainstream UK left, embodied in the Labour Party, turned its face against confrontation with The System. Blair himself, in platforming the redaction of clause IV, began using the moralising and empty language of identity politics as he argued for an “ethical socialism …based on a moral assertion that individuals are interdependent, that they owe duties to one another as well as themselves”. He didn’t explain how the moral assertion of interdependence or owing duties to one another would compensate for jobs shipped to China or how they would ameliorate the structural fall in real wages that neo-liberalism was designed to accomplish.

Sahra Wagenknecht is one of the few politicians on the German left who has opposed what she terms the “insane drunkenness about [the Ukraine] war that all the other parties celebrate”. First, here is Wagenknecht homing in on that class of people who now dominate the left discourse and whom I have consistently identified as deserving of contempt – the professional managerial class:

“I believe that the milieu that supports the left has changed completely in the last 30, 40 years, globally. As a result, the issues and positions have also changed, including the social question. In the past, the left has always been concerned with ordinary people who have low incomes and limited access to education. In this context, the left was also against war, not least because poorer people were often the victims…Today, the left…is supported by an academic urban milieu that is relatively privileged. These people are predominantly from well-off academic households. They have a good education and were politicized not so much over the social question or the peace question but over questions of ecology, climate change, and anti-racism—although even that is defined differently today.”

As you read below how she describes the destructiveness of identity politics, hold in mind the diverse woke narratives I described earlier and the glue that holds them together – moral zeal:

“Of course, the rejection of racism is an elementary component of left identity. But it has given way to identity politics. Identity politics is not about equality; it promotes privilege and separatism. What someone says is no longer important, but rather who says it. A rather divisive ideology, a stigmatizing ideology. The left today is no longer characterized by political-economic issues or socio-economic issues, but by moral issues. Everything is moralized. This moral impetus – in German, we have the word “Gesinnungsethik”, meaning when someone doesn’t consider the consequences of one’s actions but always wants to be morally good – is absolutely susceptible to the narrative that is now being used to popularize the war. It says we are the good guys; we represent good values, and that’s why we have to stand with Ukraine, because Ukraine stands for the good, for democracy, and for good values. That’s a mendacious narrative, but it’s catchy for people who approach politics in such a moralizing way. I notice that very clearly.” [emphasis added] 

The left has categorically proven the adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and, having abandoned concrete material socio- and political economics in favour of virtue signalling, it is now burning in hell. Paradoxically, the right has failed to capitalise on the left’s foolishness as it steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that capitalism is not just in crisis but in collapse – the Great Reset is a desperate attempt to reset, or more accurately resuscitate, the financial and monetary system which has been spluttering and grinding to a halt under the weight of an insupportable debt burden. The right therefore is also mired in identity politics, albeit from the perspective of opposition to it. While the monetary and financial system burns, the battleground on which it has chosen to fight the left is the ‘culture wars’.

Everyone not infected with the virus of woke-ism should call out its excesses. But, a left-right culture wars ding-dong fought under a tacit agreement to leave The System in tact is a bit like two bald men fighting over a comb. More importantly, it’s a distraction that the globalist corporatocracy welcomes while it presses ahead with the controlled demolition of the shattered economy, aiming for a soft landing in technocratic-fascist territory. A soft landing for the globalist masters of the universe but a hard landing for everyone else.

I am not alone in this view. Glenn Greenwald recently put it this way when interviewing a guest on his System Update show:

“And sometimes I get the sense that people on both sides are kind of exhausted from trying to change these permanent power structures in Washington and fighting over gender ideology, and books on race, we allow into the public schools, is a lot easier of a fight. It’s easier to win those fights. And power centers are kind of happy when we’re at each other’s throats over cultural issues… What do you think about that concern that we’re going to kind of fall into that Culture War trap where nothing else gets paid much attention to?” [emphasis added]

To repeat – the ruling global oligarchy are laughing heartily while the left and right argue over pronouns. The Culture Wars keep the masses confused, angry, divided and therefore powerless. All of which is a prerequisite for the ongoing efficient transfer of wealth and power to the top of the hierarchy.

Poo-pooing ‘conspiracy theory’

Desmet’s studied dismissal of ‘conspiracy theory’, to which he devotes an entire chapter, cannot go unchallenged. It’s irritating enough to see mainstream stooges embracing the ultimate thought-terminating cliché of our time, but then I expect as much from a mainstream media ‘journalist’ as I do from a chimp in a zoo. However, seeing a Great Reset resistance poster boy discussing ‘conspiracy theory’ as if he’d been tutored by the CIA was enough to make me consider asking my doctor for anti-depressants.

He warns against the over-simplistic seductiveness of conspiratorial thinking on the grounds that “everything is now explainable by means of a simple frame of reference; the world is no longer absurd but logical; one knows where the enemy is and has a point to direct his frustration and anger on; you can absolve yourself of responsibility and forgo the need to question yourself.”

Sadly, Desmet’s own conception of the problem is no less simplistic in its framing and is logically flawed to boot. His studious ignoring of the political and economic dimensions of 21^st century totalitarianism is underlined by a finger-wagging command to believe that mass psychology is the beginning, middle and end of any thesis to explain the totalitarian threat: “The fact that this [harmful covid containment measures] should be understood in terms of mass psychology rather than malicious intentional deception (i.e., a conspiracy; see chapter 8) doesn’t make it any less dangerous.”ⁱ

Here’s a not-so-radical thought: why not try to understand it in terms of both mass psychology and malicious intentional deception, especially since Desmet himself has acknowledged the deception perpetrated by the ruler who he confirms “believes in the ideology he is trying to impose but not in the discourse he uses to promote it”ⁱⁱ?

Fittingly, Desmet begins Chapter 8, Conspiracy and Ideology, with a hypnotic suggestion. We are set up to buy into the idea that the thoroughly mysterious way in which the act of people independently placing dots on a piece of paper evolves into a Sierpinski triangle is pretty much exactly how human actions and events unfold in the real world. He explains that:

“a naive viewer would inevitably be under the impression that the people making the points [that form the triangle] have detailed prior knowledge of this pattern and are working together in a planned and coordinated way. But the reality is different. Nobody needs to know or have ever even seen this pattern. It is enough that all people independently follow the same simple rules as they place their points.”ⁱⁱⁱ

And just like that, in a couple of sentences, the psychology of covid is further reduced from an already simplistic hypnotic formula to the magical thinking of equating people with the dots that mysteriously form when a Sierpinski triangle emerges. There’s just one problem with this analogy – equating a Sierpinski triangle with complex human behaviour and systems has about as much validity as equating Matt Hancock with intelligent life.

Desmet scrapes the bottom of the barrel when he deploys a textbook move from the conspiracy deniers’ manual – dusting off the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, delighting in ridiculing references to the “Illuminati” and theories about “elites of extra-terrestrial origin”. All of which is a transparent attempt to taint all conspiracy theory^iv with the brush of extremely bad conspiracy theories. He hints that most conspiracy theories should, as a matter of good principle, be stigmatised but regrets that the only reason that some conspiracy theories bob above the surface of the water is simply because they become part of the dominant social discourse.

He does, however, scantily acknowledge that the term conspiracy theory “is also currently used – incorrectly – to deride critiques of power structures at the levels of banking, politics, industry, economics and media”. Okay! What would have happened to his dismissal of conspiracy theory if he had stuck with that theme for longer than the single paltry sentence he gave it? What if he had explored it further to understand how all of these phenomenally corrupt power structures have benefitted from covid fascism?

But he chooses not to. Instead, having given it a cursory mention, Desmet then sprints away from this potentially rich seam of debate to return to mystical and unproved theories about “a real physical resonance among individuals who form a mass that cannot be explained solely on the basis of sharing the same narrative.”^v Here, he branches off into a reverie about the way starlings swarm in a murmuration. I have no objection to pondering the miracles of nature and our place in it, but the facile presentation of swarms of starlings to explain (or even partially explain) mass formation in humans without a hint of real science or considered reasoning behind it is, frankly, for the birds.

In any event, putting starlings and Sierpinski triangles aside, Desmet has figured out why those of us in the resistance movement who did not succumb to the pull of mass formation choose to fall back on ‘conspiracy theories’. He says that someone not in the grip of mass formation “develops an intense need for a simple frame of reference which allows him to mentally master the complexity”.^vi If Desmet is going to tear strips off ‘conspiracy theorists’ for adopting overly simple frames of reference, he ought to have considered constructing a theory that involved a little more than stating that the whole of humanity, diverse as it is, is hypnotised by a single ideology.

Had he himself embraced complexity, he might have considered a systemic approach which takes into account corrupt political and economic systems, human behaviour within power concentrating hierarchies and other psychological elements. He might also have considered the reality of conspiracy within these systems because there isn’t a single day that goes by without a revelation of a conspiracy, as evidenced by the release of the Twitter files (albeit a limited hangout) that shows government agencies and Big Tech platforms colluded in a conspiracy to censor truthful narratives. Our duty as sane rational observers is to investigate all these conspiracies to understand what they tell us about State Crimes Against Democracy and formulate a coherent narrative to explain what is happening.

Desmet’s claim that the leaders’ plans are not conspiracies because they’re in the open is a red herring^vii. I would suggest the following approach to Mr Desmet and anyone else who has developed an intense phobia of conspiracy theory owing to its power to attract ridicule from unthinking but influential idiots: simply pay no attention to whether a series of events or actions might be the result of a conspiracy. Rather, simply focus on any disconnect between a scheme’s actual outcomes and its advertised aims. Simply be curious about whether deception is being used to bring about conditions that would not be accepted by the public if the promoters’ true intentions were transparently communicated. In this sense, if deception is being used by two or more people to mask true intent, that could be a conspiracy of sorts. But don’t tell anyone you may be onto a conspiracy. Don’t even whisper it. Tell them instead that you think you’re onto a deception and explain the reasons for the deception – a pattern of disconnect between advertised aims and actual outcomes, backed up by evidence of deliberate false advertising. Then sit back and watch the machine engage full throttle for the next ten years to root out and malign ‘deception theorists’. In a world in which both conspiracy and deception have been banished from explanations of human behaviour, we will then perhaps be well on the way to excising original sin from the heart of humankind. 

Desmet dismisses conspiracy on the grounds that “experts’ communication is full of contradictions and inconsistencies” which makes them in his eyes “the lousiest [conspirators] ever”. First, those inconsistencies are a likely manifestation of deception and therefore proof of possible conspiracy and malign intent. Second, the crucial point to appreciate here is not that they are “the lousiest [conspirators] ever”, as Desmet claims, but that they still managed to fool a majority of the people despite their “transparent errors”. The true measure of how lousy they were is not that Desmet saw through the lies. It’s how many people they succeeded in fooling. Although their errors were obviously transparent to the people who resisted the insanity, their errors were clearly not transparent to the vast army of useful idiots in the medical establishment, civil service and media who unwittingly complied with a spurious agenda. And it wasn’t because they were hypnotised. It’s because they’re working with a totally different set of paradigms that render all these policies acceptable and even attractive.

Desmet’s poo-pooing of conspiracy theory on the grounds that it fails to meet his criteria of secrecy also maddeningly misses the point about how deceptions are being perpetrated. The conspirators of the 21st century understand that in order to achieve their diabolical aims in an age of leaks and an internet that is not (as yet!) under total control, total secrecy is neither achievable nor productive since the plan, once discovered, would automatically be rejected based not on its demerits but solely on the basis of its secrecy. However, a scheme of biomedical slavery dressed up as ‘saving granny’, a scheme to introduce a dystopian technological control grid to ‘save the planet’ or restore ‘economic order’ is more likely to be implemented with less resistance. We could choose to bypass the ‘conspiracy theory’ phobia and simply discuss whether a scheme or narrative is totally transparent; whether deception is being deployed in the attainment of its goals; whether the discourse is rational and who benefits or loses.

While Desmet half-heartedly recognises that the covid debacle was riddled with “all kinds of manipulation” – again, where might his arguments have led if he had sincerely and thoroughly explored this manipulation? – he quickly returns to his simplistic conclusion that “the steering is first and foremost driven by an ideology” which is “mechanistic in nature”.^viii I have tried to counter Desmet’s own apparent “intense need for a simple frame of reference” by showing that: when you expose the facile underpinning of his hypnosis theory, as Amy Willows brilliantly did; when you establish a plausible relationship between bogus discourses and the ruling elite’s true guiding philosophy of its divine right to control; when you examine the mechanistic worldview and relate it to a more enduring ideology of control by a ruling elite; when you weave all of this into extremely dysfunctional political and economic systems; then, you do not end up concluding, as Desmet does, that “the ultimate master is the [mechanistic] ideology not the elite”. A far more complex picture emerges.

The mechanistic worldview in perspective – where to now?

The mechanistic worldview is certainly a massive barrier to humanity’s harmonious existence with nature and, by implication, with ourselves as a species. The mechanistic worldview is a paradigm that accelerates humanity’s innate desire to interfere. We’ve been interfering since Homo habilis made the very first stone tools. Technological advancement is an interference accelerant – the more we advance, the more we believe in the sanctity of interference. Alan Watts pointed out the significance of the language we use to describe the creation of human life itself – being born. We say that we come into this world. But if we were truly able to acknowledge that we are a product of nature, we would be able to acknowledge that we come out of this world. This unconscious and ever-growing separation from nature and ourselves is manifested in Cartesian reductionism and the desire to interfere. Transhumanism – the desire to merge with machines – is the ultimate manifestation of our flight from nature, which is a flight from our very own selves and therefore a flight towards self-destruction.

We measure furiously because science has fooled us into thinking that something measurable is something controllable. Interfering, which is a manifestation of the mechanistic worldview, is a serious problem but, as serious as it is, it should not be conflated with the other type of interference that is the true wellspring of totalitarianism. It is the desire of a small group of humans with a god-complex, who regard interference in the lives of the majority as their divine right. The elite regard the majority as an entity completely outside themselves, an appendage to be despised and feared. If the elite parasites get their way, we are going to be measured, tracked and restricted more tightly than livestock. However, it would be more accurate to say, ‘if we give them their way’, because this trajectory can only succeed if we continue to disempower ourselves by complying with the fascistic tools of tracking which exploded during covid biomedical terror, and uncritically falling in line with destructive and divisive discourses.

If we can agree on the distinction between the mechanistic worldview and the parasitic class’s supreme guiding ideology of the divine right to control, then we can also recognise that the former is not the inevitable precursor to the latter (which has in fact existed independently of the mechanistic worldview). We can then ask which of the two is more dangerous. The answer to that question should tell us how to prioritise resistance goals. Clearly, they are both dangerous, but the reason I would prioritise attacking the ruling elite’s divine right to control is because it is more dangerous. It has the capacity to remove oxygen from the room at a much faster rate than the mechanistic worldview.

Ever more ruthless censorship laws, the rapid expansion of the digital control grid, central bank digital currencies combined with social credit systems – these are the products of the parasitic class’s lust for control, and they are not just on the horizon; they are being implemented. On the other hand, the timeline for changing societal views of Cartesian reductionism is generational and, in any case, cannot have any significant impact on the ruling elite’s desperate agenda to transport us into the digital gulag by 2030.

This is the constructive reason for challenging Desmet’s incorrect diagnosis – correct diagnosis does not in itself guarantee a cure, but it does increase the chances of a better prognosis by enabling us to focus on more potentially productive action. We should not waste the next few months and years shadow boxing with the abstraction of the mechanistic worldview; instead, we should be raising awareness of and halting compliance with the control agenda of the oligarchy – action which has far greater potential to put a spanner in the juggernaut’s works.

Ultimately, claiming that “ideologies organise and structure society progressively and organically” is opaque mysticism that puts the cart before the horse. People organise and structure societies. Ideology in the context of hierarchies should be seen primarily as the software written or co-opted by ruling elites to run the hardware of the society they desire – a society that serves them first and foremost. This is not to diminish the role of ideology; it is about putting it into a perspective that enables concrete action to counter it.

In 1946, Nazis were hanged in Nuremberg, and nearly 80 years later we are once again confronted by the monster of totalitarianism. That’s because the other monsters behind World War II – the ones who financed both sides of the war – escaped the hangman’s noose, as they always have. They got what they wanted, and they’ve been consolidating their gains ever since. They got the UN, the WHO, the IMF the World Bank, Bretton Woods and the European Union. They got more global control in 76 years than they achieved in the previous 1,000 years.

And this time there will be no more hanging because there are no obvious caricatures for bad guys. Sure, Schwab is a poor man’s version of a second-rate Bond villain, but he and his Davos pals aren’t putting people in concentration camps. Not yet anyway. They’re busy writing a series of fraudulent contracts and getting humanity to sign on the dotted line without reading or understanding the small print and checking for mis-selling. Who is really to blame for this, and was Desmet right about something? That’s what I want to explore in Part III.

In Part III, I critique the critics to understand the meaning of the Desmet brouhaha.

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i Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022, Ch 7, Pg 115.

ii Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022, Ch 7, Pg 110.

iii Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022, Ch 8, Pg 122.

iv Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022, Ch 8, Pg 123.

v Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022, Ch 8, Pg 125.

vi Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022, Ch 8, Pg 127.

vii Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022, Ch 8, Pg 133

viii Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022, Ch 8, Pg 131.