Mattias Desmet

In December 2021, Robert Malone made an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, in which he discussed a psychological analysis of covid hysteria put forth by Belgium professor Mattias Desmet.

Before this, Desmet was known by few as the insightful man with messy hair who provided expert testimony to the Berlin Corona Committee almost a year prior.

Refer to a previous article summarizing his testimony here:

Remnant | MD

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Since his first testimony, he has become a rather popular figure both in Europe and North America. More recently, Desmet made an appearance on Tucker Carlson, in part to inform Carlson’s audience and promote his new book The Psychology of Totalitarianism.

If you haven’t seen this interview, I highly recommend it.

Review of Mass Formation

Quote from Desmet:

Mass formation is, in essence, a kind of group hypnosis that destroys individuals’ ethical self-awareness and robs them of their ability to think critically.
This process is insidious in nature; populations fall prey to it unsuspectingly.
To put it in the words of Yuval Noah Harari: most people wouldn’t even notice the shift toward a totalitarian regime. We associate totalitarianism mainly with labor, concentration, and extermination camps - but those are merely the final, bewildering stages of a long process.

Technically speaking, mass formation (MF) is a case of group formation. However, group formation describes the assembly and cooperation of groups with common goals. The 5 stages of group formation are forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.

In comparison, MF develops spontaneously from a couple of pre-existing conditions (reviewed in detail in the prior article):

Widespread social isolation
Loss of sense-making
Overwhelming free-floating anxiety

Under these conditions, the mass media apparatus can be focused on an alleged source of discontent - such as a virus, anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, etc.

Totalitarianism vs. Dictatorship

As long as mankind has existed, MF has been observed - the Crusades, witch-hunts, Soviet Russia, and Nazi Germany. In describing the characteristics of MF, we invariably stumble upon features which help distinguish totalitarianism from classical dictatorships.

Totalitarianism is a diaboloical pact between the masses and their leaders.

In a dictatorship, a small group of people with aggressive potential (such as those who seize an army, e.g. Julius Cesar) impose their rules on society.

Totalitarianism, on the other hand, emerges from a society that is already under mass formation with aid of propaganda. It need not be the majority of the population, and Desmet estimates approximately 30% of the population is sufficient to get this problem rolling.

The majority (65%) go with the flow. The 5% resist.

Vive La Resistance

According to Desmet, in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia came a point in which the dissonant voices went underground. Within 6 months, both regimes saw the start of campaigns aimed at their destruction.

The people entranced in MF become so radically intolerant to the dissonant voices (who disrupt the harmony of the hypnosis), they will seek to destroy them. They will not do so with hesitation - they will destroy them as if it is their ethical duty to do so.

The end stage of MF is the metaphorical and literal destruction of children at the hands of their mothers.

How do we stop mass formation?

Well, in some ways we don’t. We ride it out.

Mass formation persists by the literal voice of the propagandists. The repeat messaging coupled with exposure to the ‘threat.’

The dissonant voices, at the very least, disturb the induction & maintenance of the hypnotic state.

More importantly, dissonance prevents the hypnosis from becoming deep enough to engage in destructive behavior.

Desmet clarifies that the masses are always self-destructive - and will destroy themselves before they destroy the dissonant.

The ever-increasing pressure on the dissonant to conform is partly illusory. It is your silence & compliance that will bring about hell. Yes, we will be asked to sacrifice some comforts. But, this is our ethical duty. Every moment in history has its Remnants. It is the Remnant’s duty to persist.

If you stick to your ethical principles while the world dehumanizes, you evolve mentally and sometimes even physically.

But, who are the Hypnotists?

In recent conversation, the role of the masses has been extensively discussed. More recently, people have become increasingly aware of the global elite’s agenda (great reset, agenda 2030, etc).

But, who and what are leading the hypnosis?

Desmet states the following (I’m paraphrasing):

We live in a time in which materialists & rationalists believe rituals & tradition have no function.
That reality & life can be organized around a rationalist understanding.
The irony, of course, is that the people in MF are unaware that they are in the grip of rituals.
With fervent religiosity, they partake in daily rituals which they believe will help them escape their profound feeling of loneliness & anxiety.
Rituals which are self-harming, and without proper resistance can become genocidal.

These rituals include things like: covering your face, testing to live your life, standing a specific distance apart, blindly accepting the experimental concoctions of the most criminal organizations in modern industry.

Rituals demand a sacrifice.

The more absurd the ritual, the more purifying the experience.

The Rationalist Elite

Modernity is plagued with the notion (and obsession) that life can be understood rationally.

It is this delusion that disconnects us from our environment. This disconnectedness creates fertile ground for the beginnings of MF, and ultimately provides the bedrock from which totalitarianism can emerge.

Consider the people we idolize, the people we want to emulate, the people who parrot the same insane policies our governments have brought in by fiat.

Bill Gates
Anthony Fauci
Mark Zuckerberg
Larry Fink
Marc Benioff
Yuval Noah Harari
the list goes on…

These rationalist technocrats behave as though they have a right to tell the people how to eat, how to work, and even how to love.

Desmet paraphrases a comment by Hannah Arendt, from 1951:

We have seen the collapse of Fascist Totalitarianism, and will soon witness the collapse of Communist Totalitarianism.
But, the ultimate form of Totalitarianism will emerge - a technocratic one.
A totalitarianism that is not led by the likes of gang-leaders, such as Stalin or Hitler, but by dull bureaucrats.

The Rationalist Illusion

For Desmet, the real threat is the ideology of rationalism.

the part of reality observed in a rational way is very limited. The rest of reality we can only understand by empathically resonating with it.
-Rene Thom (Mathematician, Fields Medal recipient)

History is filled with giants in their fields of study, whom agree that reality can not be known mechanistically.

Every artist is painfully aware of this reality.

At first, we take rational instruction when embarking on a new project. As we practice, we start to feel. We resonate with the object we are engaged with.

Rational understanding always hits a limit. It is at this point that our experience transcends rational understanding. This space of transcendence is where rationality ends and life begins.

Fly Close to the Sun

According to Desmet, rational knowledge is always relative - circumscribing reality without ever coming in contact with it.

However, the illusory appeal of rationalism is strong. It makes us believe that we understand the world, and are in control of it. Maybe, even to the extent that we can avoid suffering & death.

Maybe, as rational beings, we can become Almighty.

This is the fundamental disease with which society & our elite are contending.

So strong is their allegiance to rationalism, they have no idea what to do with life, and most importantly…how to handle death.

Our task is clear.

Stay humble. Be nimble. Love.

Most importantly - keep talking.

Man’s arrogance knows no bounds, and its destructive tendencies are likewise limitless.

Remnant | MD

Revisiting Mass Formation | A Way Out