Book Review: Mattias Desmet The Psychology of Totalitarianism
This is an excellent, well-written, thought-provoking book, and is perhaps destined to be a classic.
The main premise of The Psychology of Totalitarianism is quite simple: the mechanistic scientific worldview appears to offer total certainty, but in fact, Desmet shows that this is a complete illusion. He quotes the nineteenth century French mathematician Pierre Laplace as an example of this view of the possibility of total certainty, which is the view of Science (with a capital S) still held by most people:
We ought then to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its anterior state and as the cause of the one which is to follow. Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it (...] it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing could be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes.
Matias Desmet then goes through various scientific, mathematical and philosophical breakthroughs that show that such total certainty is (scientifically speaking) completely impossible, using the examples of quantum mechanics, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and Chaos theory, where very simple, completely comprehensible mathematical equations can give completely unpredictable results.
Mattias Desmet first shows how totalitarianism arises out of a psychological need for certainty, that comes from the common human experience of free floating anxiety, and how the illusion of control that Science fosters and the efforts to implement such perfect control is actually what leads to totalitarianism.
Desmet demonstrates that totalitarianism is different from a dictatorship: for, while in a dictatorship, the dictator controls society by force and generally stops when he has a modicum of control and allows people to continue their lives, the totalitarian society is compelled to gradually exercise more and more control, in more and more detail, until eventually it inevitably destroys itself.
The other difference is that whereas a dictator takes control by force and threat, the great mass of people in totalitarian societies willingly embrace the certainty that totalitarianism offers, and he relates this to the recent Coronavirus epidemic, which engendered for the first time in history a global totalitarian response in which people embraced the most ridiculous, contradictory control measures, that seemed only to increase in absurdity as the supposed epidemic went on, quite willingly.
Desmet also points out that the Jews in World War II were actually willing participants in the holocaust. The Nazi leaders worked with the leaders of the Jewish communities, who willingly participated in everything from the early quarantine measures where Jews were characterised as infectious (the comparison with people’s attitude to the unvaccinated during the coronavirus is uncanny) to their transport on trains to the concentration camps, to their participation in the gas chambers, where they were told they were to be sprayed with insecticide to treat the endemic lice in the camps.
I have collected some of my favourite excerpts below.
Excerpt: Chapter 6 The Rise of the Masses
The message is clear: The individual must at all times show that he submits to the interest of the collective, by performing self destructive, symbolic (ritualistic) behaviors. Ultimately, the reasons individuals participate in mass formation are rarely, if ever, rational in nature. The justification of the strategy is promoted by experts with fancy titles, often on national television, making it seem like a given measure is generally accepted. For many people, this suffices as proof of correctness of the measures: "Surely the experts know what they're doing. ”
"Surely, they can't all be wrong. ”
"They obviously wouldn't say it if it weren't true?" And so on. In other words, the argumentum ad populum (appeal to popularity) and the argumentum ad auctoritatum (appeal to authority), known as logical fallacies since ancient times, are enough for most people to accept the story. In everything, you feel that the underlying motivation to go along with the story is the group formation and the group pressure, not the accuracy of the story.
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The well known conformity experiment by Solomon Asch demonstrates in a very convincing way the enormous impact of mass formation on individual judgment. Asch conducted his experiment shortly after World War II. He did so in an effort to understand how the often absurd theories of Nazism and Stalinism gained such a strong grip on the population and soughtto gain insight into the psychological mystery of mass formation and totalitarianism. Take a good look at figure 6. 1. Which of the segments A, B, and C has the same length as line 1?
That was the question Asch asked the participants of his conformity experiment. Each group of eight test subjects included seven of Asch's employees, all of whom had been instructed to answer "line segment B" without blinking an eye. The eighth participant, the only genuine test subject, usually gave the same answer as the seven persons before him. Only 25 percent consistently stated what even a blind person could see: Not line B but line C has the same length as line 1. After the experiment, some test subjects said that they did know the correct answer but did not dare go against the group. Even more interestingly, others admitted that they had started to doubt their own judgment under group pressure and eventually accepted the absurd group judgment as true.
These three groups are always present in mass formation. There is always a group that is in the grip of mass formation and"believes" the story (this group constitutes the totalitarized part of the population), a second group that does not really believe it but remains quiet and goes along with the masses (or at least, does not oppose them), and a third group that does not believe in the mass forming story and also speaks or acts out against it. These three groups typically intersect with all preexisting social groups. This is shown, time and again, in historical examples of large scale mass formation. 27 And it also became apparent during the coronavirus crisis. At the beginning of the crisis, new societal"camps" emerged at lightning speed, crossing all the preexisting camps people either went along with the virus story or not. Left or right of the political spectrum, regardless of skin color and social status, profession and hobbies: All these boundaries blurred. The only thing that counted was what people thought of the virus.
Typically, these three groups are highly diverse, but for specific reasons this diversity is most visible in the group that protests loudly against the masses. In the mass itself, diversity disappears under the typical uniformizing effect of the masses(the masses make all individuals equal to everyone else) and the silent middle group does not stand out anyway, whereas the third, nonconformist group typically comes to life and all the individuals express themselves in their own specific way, which sharply highlights its diversity.
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As Le Bon noted in 1895, the effect of mass formation is identical to hypnosis. Both hypnosis and mass formation are largely caused by a voice, in the literal sensethrough the physical, vibrating qualities of the voice. Totalitarian leaders are well aware of this, sometimes intuitively, sometimes consciously. Totalitarian systems have always been maintained primarily by systematic indoctrination and propaganda, injected into the population on a daily basis via mass media (without mass media, it is not possible to generate such long lasting mass formation as that which gave rise to Stalinism and Nazism). This way, the population is literally kept on the vibrational frequency of the voice of totalitarian leaders.
Excerpts: Chapter 8 Conspiracy and Ideology
Ironically, conspiracy thinking confirms the leaders' narcissism by taking them seriously and believing that they are truly steering the ship, or causing the waves to recede. There are countless other examples that seem to point in the direction of a plan being implemented, such as the fact that the definition of pandemic was adjusted shortly before the coronavirus crisis; that the definition of herd immunity was changed during the crisis, implying that only vaccines can achieve it; that the counting method for COVID-19 deaths was adjusted by the WHO so it was higher than the number of flu deaths; that the registration methodology of vaccine side effects could not but lead to serious underestimation (for example, by labeling the side effects that become apparent during the first fortnight after vaccination as not vaccine related); that all key political positions when the crisis started were held by politicians who were pro-technocracy (referred to as the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders); and so on. These are examples of how an ideology gets a grip on society rather than evidence of the execution of a conspiracy. For instance: Similar things happen during almost all major reorganizations in large companies and government institutions. Indeed, anyone who would like to reorganize a company or institution and holds the right position(s) will try to adjust the rules here and there in ways that they think are conducive to the goals of the reorganization. And they will do their best to install the right people in the right positions beforehand and will try to mold those minds for the reorganization and restructuring through all kinds of formal and informal influence. Anyone who experiences this up close at a company or institution will probably not experience this as a conspiracy. We could even say that every biological organism does the same: It tries to adjust its environment in the desired direction. At certain points, however, the aforementioned practices may turn into something that does have the structure of a conspiracy. Large institutions do use all kinds of questionable strategies to impose their ideals on society, and the means to do so have increased spectacularly in recent centuries. The whole mechanization, industrialization, "technologization," and "mediatization" of the world has indeed led to the centralization of power, and no sane person can deny that this power is pursued in a relentless way, with a radical lack of ethical and moral awareness. It is well documented: Whether in governments, the tobacco industry, or the pharmaceutical lobby, there is bribery, manipulation, and fraud. Who doesn't partake in these practices can hardly remain at the top. In their endeavors to impose their ideals on society, institutions and people do indeed cross ethical boundaries, and when this goes far enough, their strategies may indeed devolve into a full-fledged conspiracy: a secret, intentional, planned, and malicious project. It is also well known that, as the process of totalitarianization continues, the totalitarian regime is increasingly organized as a full-fledged "secret society." For example, we have seen that the Holocaust came about through a mind-boggling process of mass formation that blinded both the perpetrators and the victims and drew them into an infernal dynamic (see chapter 7). However, at a certain level, there was also an intentional plan, which systematically aimed to optimize racial purity through sterilization and elimination of all impure elements. There were approximately five people who neatly and systematically prepared the entire Holocaust destruction apparatus, and they managed to make all the rest of the system cooperate with it in total blindness for a long time. And those who did see what was going on- namely that the concentration camps were in fact extermination camps-were accused of being .. conspiracy theorists. The preparation and implementation of such plans are by no means the exclusive privilege of totalitarian regimes. Throughout the twentieth century, large numbers of men and women whose genetic material was considered "inferior" have been secretly sterilized under the doctrine of eugenics. By 1972, the term eugenics had taken on a too-negative connotation and was replaced by social biology, but the practice remained the same and continued into the twenty-first century (for example, the sterilization of California inmates without informed consent), Do we have good reason to believe that, in recent years, such practices have ceased? The fact that, in the current social climate, there is hardly any latitude to expose this decay in the exercise of power is highly dangerous. This is precisely the detrimental influence of the rise of the masses: It is so radically intolerant of dissent opinions that it labels any analysis of dangerous influence from institutions, companies, and so on as "conspiracy theory." La passion de l'ignorance (the passion for ignorance) is flourishing like never before. And paradoxically, fanatical conspiracy thinking contributes to this problem because it makes more nuanced analyses less visible and more prone to stigmatization. They are tarred by the same brush and guilty by association. This makes it difficult for everyone to assess the presence and extent of malicious manipulation. Either it is completely ignored or it is perceived to be everywhere. The appeal of these two opposites can always be situated on an affective-impulsive level; both interfere with an authentic, sincere intellectual passion to want to know the truth. In the end, it is usually only a small group of people who manage to escape these forces and are able to make more nuanced and subtle assessments. This gives rise to a polarization in society, which becomes divided between two camps: a large group (the crowd), who believes everything that appears in the mainstream media, however absurd it may be; and then another group, who completely distrusts the same story. Just as in Edgar John Rubin's famous drawing (see figure 8.2) in which one can see either a vase or two faces, but never both at the same time, these two groups perceive in the social developments a different picture of reality, a different gestalt, and cannot imagine that the other group perceives a totally different picture.
Excerpts: Chapter 10 The Dead Versus the Living Universe
The same applies at the societal level: A society primarily has to stay connected with a number of principles and fundamental rights, such as the right to freedom of speech, the right to self-determination, and the right to freedom of religion or belief. If a society fails to respect these fundamental rights of the individual, if it allows fear to escalate to such an extent that every form of individuality, intimacy, privacy, and personal initiative is regarded as an intolerable threat to "the collective well-being." it will decay into chaos and absurdity. The belief in the mechanistic nature of the universe and the associated overestimation of the powers of human intellect, typical of the Enlightenment, were accompanied by a tendency to lead society in a less and less principled manner. Within a purely mechanistic way of thinking, it is extremely difficult (not to say impossible) to ground ethical principles. Why should a machine man in a machine universe have to adhere to principles and ethical rules in relationships with others? Isn't it ultimately about being the fittest in the struggle for survival? And therefore, aren't ethics and principles a hindrance rather than a merit? In the final analysis, it was no longer a question for Enlightenment people to adhere to commandments and prohibitions or ethical and moral principles, but to move through this struggle for survival in the most efficient way possible based on "objective knowledge" of the world. This culminated in totalitarian and technocratic forms of government, where decisions are not made on the basis of generally applicable laws and principles but on the basis of the analysis of "experts." For this reason, totalitarianism always chooses to abolish laws, or fails to implement them, and prefers to rule "by decree." This means that, each new situation will require the formulation of new rules on the basis of a (pseudo)rational assessment of such situation. History abundantly illustrates that this leads to erratic, absurd, and ever-changing rules, which ultimately destroy all humanity in society. This direct and is perhaps the most concrete illustration of Hannah Arendt's thesis that ultimately totalitarianism is the symptom of a naive belief in the omnipotence of human rationality. Therefore, the antidote to totalitarianism lies in an attitude to life that is not blinded by a rational understanding of superficial manifestations of life and that seeks to be connected with the principles and figures that are hidden beneath those manifestations. Chaos theory and the complex and dynamic systems theory open a breathtaking new perspective on the universe.
Excerpts: Chapter 11 Science and Truth
Truth has become an anachronistic concept- it sounds old- fashioned. In The Courage of Truth, the French philosopher Michel Foucault makes an interesting distinction between rhetoric and truth.A person who uses rhetoric tries to arouse in another ideas and beliefs that he does not share himself. For someone who adheres to speaking the truth, the reverse is true. He sincerely tries to convey an idea or experience that lives within himself to the Other through his speaking; he tries to make something he feels in himself resonate in an Other. In recent centuries, and especially in recent decades, the public sphere has been increasingly filled with rhetoric. We were already used to such rhetoric from politicians. No one expected them to even try to fulfill their election promises during their term of office. In the long run, the population simply accepted it: A politician's election discourse only serves to convince. And in fact, the same goes for commercials. Only an idiot believes that they paint an accurate picture of the product being advertised. Moreover, during the coronavirus crisis, we learned that it is not really different for those who present themselves as scientists. What they say today is guaranteed to be retracted tomorrow. The real volte-face and revolution that society has to face is to shake off rhetoric and resolutely turn to truth as a guiding principle.