by Crow Qu’appelle
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
– H.L. Mencken
It is a now an indisputable fact that governments are deliberately employing tactics to frighten populations in order to make the citizenry more compliant.
Governments around the world use teams to psychologists called “nudge units” to influence the behaviour of the public towards actions desired by the state.
The amazing Laura Dodsworth has done an amazing work of exposing the U.K.’s nudge unit in her book “A State of Fear“, which we have reviewed here. We highly recommend this book to people seeking to understand how fear-conditioning works.
The U.K.’s nudge unit, the Behavioural Insight Team, was originally a government agency, but boasts on its website that it is now “independent of the U.K. government”.
It is a for-profit, private-public partnership with offices in New York, Melbourne, Wellington, and Toronto. The B.I.T. has worked in at least 31 countries and trained at least 20 thousand government employees.
There are obvious ethical implications in deliberately frightening millions of people.
Governments want us to believe that this is all for our good, but when is it a good idea to trust people who are using fear to manipulate you?
We highly recommend checking out the excellent video essay “Fear and Social Control” for an exploration of how fear-conditioning has been fundamental part of statecraft for thousands for years.
There is of course nothing new about governments using fear as a method of control. If for not for fear, why would anyone submit to the forceful imposition of a social order in which power is concentrated in the hands of a ruling cabal?
John Adam put it bluntly: “Fear is the foundation of most governments.”
No doubt, the first method of employing fear in politics was that of brute force: “Do not challenge me or I will kill you.” This method of governance, dominance hierarchy in its pure form, has long since been surpassed by superior methods of social control.
The main disadvantage of brute force is that it tends to be resented by those on its receiving end. People tend not to like people who threaten to kill them. And classes of people who are conscious of their oppression have a tendency to rise up against their rulers.
THE GOVERNMENT IS YOUR DADDY
Since ancient times, rulers have sought to cast themselves as the protector of the people, as the Father of the nation. The surest way to pull this off is to use the people’s fear of a threat, real or imaginary, to convince them that their authority is beneficial and needed.
For example, around 1600 B.C. Egypt was threatened by an invasion of foreign rebels. After the threat had subsided, and the invaders driven off, the rulers of Egypt artificially maintained a state of fear, finding that a terrified populace was easier to control.
Probably this tactic is much older than Egypt. Does anyone really doubt that a clever hunter-gatherer would have been able to make people do his bidding by invoking the fear of demons in them through lurid and salacious tales?
Here are some example of Invisible Enemies:
First and foremost is the Devil, the ultimate projection of the shadow aspects of the unconscious. The devil could act upon anyone, inducing them to do evil against their will, and no one was immune from his potential influence.
Witches: In Early Modern Europe, a time of heightened class struggle and religious strife coincided with the vicious persecution of witches. The Witch Hunts were many things, one of them being a campaign of religious authorities against peasant movements.
The list goes on and on: Jews during Nazi Germany, communists in the McCarthy era, Radical Muslim terrorists in the War on Terror, etc…
Since the end of World War Two, America and her allies have had been a never-ending procession of enemies. During the Cold War, paranoia about communists reached a collective hysteria in the McCarthy era, culminating in the performative virtue-signalling of public loyalty pledges, as well as the rabid denunciation of innocent people for stupid reasons.
In Canada, the Drug War began with a racist propaganda campaign portraying Chinese people as sinister enemies of Western civilization who were using opium as part of a plot to take over North America.
It’s easy to look back upon these examples and see them as insane and paranoid, but there can be no doubt that the fear people had was very real. We can also be sure that the flames of fear were stoked in each case by state propaganda
In 2021, the fear of the invisible enemy is alive and well. COVID has taken the place of the Devil.
Dissenters are the new Witches
COVID skeptics are the new witches, heretics, infidels, blasphemers, communist subversives, and terrorists.
Heresy has been rebranded as “spreading dangerous misinformation”.
Critical thinking has been rebranded as “conspiracy theory”, as if trying to figure out what the rich and powerful are up to is a sinister activity.
“Public Health Experts” are the new priests, who determine what is and what isn’t permitted.
Think about it.
The Devil is invisible. So is COVID.
The Devil can get to you when you’re least expecting it. So can COVID.
The malign influence of the Devil justified the moral authority of the priest class. Because laypeople could never be sure that their thoughts were not being twisted by the Devil, of course they could not be trusted with the task of determining right and wrong for themselves.
Likewise, the average person is no virologist, epidemiologist, or “public health expert”. They are not qualified to decide for themselves what does and doesn’t make sense. They must be told. They must be guided. They must be protected from “dangerous misinformation”. They must be nudged in the direction of Orthodoxy. They much accept the Holy Truth of their rulers as their own. They must surrender their free will. And they must silenced and punished if they dare contradict it, because if they do, they are aiding and abetting the invisible enemy – COVID, like the Devil, is forever at the gates..
The Devil is always scheming. Trouble is always brewing. Another variant could hit at any time.
The pious must remain vigilant, and perform rituals to ward off COVID, for the fiendish virus, much like the Devil, may infect and take possession of the person who lets their guard down.
Thou shalt anoint thy hands with alcohol when entering a store..
Consider the world’s obsession with hygiene theatre. Realize that hand-washing has become a religious act, similar to a Catholic crossing themselves. It serves the same purpose – to ward off evil. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, as the old saying goes, which of course means that the more privileged classes are more Godly.
If we each understand ourselves as being potential carriers of viruses that could kill, and consider ourselves ethically responsible for the consequences of its transmission, we wind up in a similar situation, morally, to that of Original Sin.
Original Sin is the notion that human beings are already guilty, from the time they are born, due to the inherited sin of Adam and Eve’s transgression in the Garden of Eden. In the Abrahamic religions, all humans are born guilty.
Likewise, in the COVID religion, you are guilty, because by virtue of being born into an animal body that can host viruses, you might infect others, and others could even die as a result of the part that your sinful body played in a chain of transmission. For this reason, you must always be both cautious and ashamed.
It seems to me like we are being programmed with the same tactics that have been used to control human societies in the past, and that is: make people ashamed of themselves, dependent on you, and afraid. If they are afraid of you, that is good. If they are afraid of an imaginary enemy, and think that they need you for protection, that is much, much better. And if you can make them afraid of one another also, then that is better still.
One is even left wondering if the COVID religion isn’t a reinvention of Catholicism. Could the Vatican be lending their expertise in social control to the architects of the Great Reset?
Far-fetched? Think again. But before you dismiss this out of hand, take a second to check out the website for the Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican, and specifically the page on the “Steering Committee Co-Chairs“. It seems that Pope Francis has licensed his brand to be used by some key players in the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset agenda.
According to the Vatican’s official website: “Council members make actionable commitments aligned with the World Economic Forum International Business Council’s Pillars for sustainable value creation—People, Planet, Principles of Governance, and Prosperity—and that advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”
In other words, the World Economic Forum and the Vatican are working together.
How interesting.
BIOSECURITY IS THE NEW STATE RELIGION
It should come as no surprise that the ruling class has decided that we need a new religion. Most people, at least in the developed world, aren’t afraid of the Devil anymore, nor God for that matter. And the fear of God is such a useful tool for the ruling class…
Control of the many for the benefit of the few is the essence of statecraft. Religion has been a part of statecraft from the very beginning. Napoleon put if best: “religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich”.
By this definition, Christianity is not the religion of the West.
Entertainment is. Consumerism. Hollywood. Celebrities. Sports. Mainstream Media. Endless distraction. Endless consumption. These are the things that keep the poor from murdering the rich. Bread and Circus.
Here’s what I think: Freedom and democracy were always illusions designed to conceal the reality of power. Now, as capitalism has entered into a terminal phase, the illusion of freedom has become too expensive to maintain. So they’re phasing it out.
Like Frank Zappa said: “At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
They’re also phasing something in. A new state religion based upon the fear of sickness and the fear of death. People may no longer fear God, but they still fear death.
So, as COVID winds down, keep this in your mind: Herd immunity will be achieved when the people have been herded. A new virus or other threat will emerge whenever the people get out of line.
Welcome to the New Normal.
Prepare to meet thy God.
> Photo: Spencer Platt.