We’re publishing an original essay today by Kathrine Jebsen Moore, a freelance writer based in Edinburgh who exposed the woke capture of the online knitting community in a now famous piece for Quillette in 2019. In this piece, she writes about the eagerness with which apparently liberal people have blamed the unvaccinated for the waves of Covid infection currently engulfing parts of Europe, even though the evidence for that is questionable at best. In this extract, she draws on the work of Mathias Desmet, a clinical psychologist at the University of Gent in Belgium, to try and understand this sinister development.
The clinical psychologist Mathias Desmet from Ghent University in Belgium has an interesting explanation. In a conversation with Markus Aubrey, he argues that society was ripe for what took hold in the spring of 2020: a phenomenon called ‘Mass Formation’, a precursor to full-blown totalitarianism, which explains why people who would otherwise not agree with draconian measures and the vilification of other people happily do so during a crisis of this kind.
According to Desmet, various conditions have to be present for the phenomenon – which can be compared to a kind of mass psychosis – to take hold.
For instance, there must be widespread social isolation and disconnectedness. This, he explains, is exemplified by the number of people who find their jobs meaningless. Around 50% of workers in so-called ‘bullshit jobs‘ don’t see any purpose in their roles, for example. When the grand narratives such as religion fall away, we are left looking for meaning elsewhere. For many, the ‘health and safetyism’ of the Covid state filled that gap.
The lack of meaning feeds into social isolation, which is widespread and has increased in the past few years. When people lack close friendships and social bonds, the result is a what Desmet calls free-floating anxiety, aggression and discontent. With a high level of general anxiety – anxiety that is not attached to a single object – the population is ready to attach its aggression and angst onto something. When the virus came along, the narrative that was constructed about it served as a perfect receptacle for negative emotions. By channelling these emotions into something concrete, people started to feel the connection and meaning they’ve been lacking. In joining the ‘fight against the virus’, a new kind of social bond and sense making emerged.
Desmet explains: people suddenly feel connected again, in a heroic struggle, and that’s the reason why people buy into the narrative and why they are willing to participate in a strategy even if it’s utterly absurd. The reason why they follow it has nothing to do with the fact it’s correct or scientific, but because it leads to a new social bond. People are social beings, and being socially isolated is painful, and through the process of ‘Mass Formation’ they switch from the very negative state of social isolation to the opposite state of maximal connectedness that exists in a crowd.
Desmet draws on the work of Gustave Le Bon, the father of crowd psychology. When an individual becomes part of a crowd, he undergoes a profound psychological transformation and ceases to operate as an individual. Le Bon argues: “He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will,” he writes in The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Read novelist Paul Kingsnorth’s account in UnHerd of why the demonising of the unvaccinated caused him to switch sides in the vaccine wars.
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Junk $cience and the cults of $cientism. If you withdrew all the money, all the propaganda, all the vested interests, all the elite climate jamborees, all the paid for media attention, and did and said nothing; you would notice zero about ‘climate’ or ‘the weather’. You need to be told every second that the 5% human emission of a 400 ppm trace chemical necessary for life, 90% which is recycled, is destroying everything and causing the hottest second/hour/day/week/month/year evah…..
Brain Dead.
But TPTB know that most of the population as evidenced by the Corona Coup and Plandemic are Brain Dead. Rona was the great litmus test. Society failed.
The same idiots who drool that diapers and poison shots in the arm will protect from a non-existing bat virus, are the same idiots who will die in battle to cover the entire UK with bird choppers, solar panels, end motor car usage and force you into ‘climate lockdowns’. TPTB know this and have weaponised these idiots with fake $cience and endless propaganda, starting with children in day care it should be noted.
Green Nazism on the march.
It would be nice to get normal weather reports again, i.e. without all the climate catastrophe preaching that now accompanies them, and without the utter BS that says what the climate will be in 10,20, 50 years when they can’t even correctly forecast 5 days out.
EV Junkyards to Save the Planet
On a related issue, on the premise of the need to save the planet there is a push to adopt EV’s. ”Save the planet”? here is a video clip where Chinese EV owners are realising that EVs have a limited life span, about 4 -5 years;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-qbelIi7I4
I have heard a story of one EV owner who asked if they could part exchange their old EV for a new car, they were told to take it to the junkyard down the road! By the time we have achieved net-zero and saved the planet, the planet’s junkyards will be piled high with scrapped EVs, dead solar panels and failed wind turbines.
… And with the people of the UK bankrupting themselves to buy overpriced EVs (as the only option available once the last ICE vehicles cannot economically be kept running and the fuel supply is taxed to death) and struggling to afford the electricity to power them (if available, depending on the weather), the dream of a population restricted to travelling locally only on foot or bicycle will come true. In the Western world, at least.
When everything that happens is due to your theory you are not indulging in science. When what you claim cannot be falsified it is not science. Climate is so naturally variable that people will believe almost anything you tell them is happening. Every day on TV News people see all manner of extreme weather events from all corners of the globe. When I say “extreme weather events” I am referring to events that are entirely natural but are simply the outliers in the statistics. When people see extreme storms floods and droughts etc, and that is combined with pronouncements of doom from politicians and the media it creates the feeling in them that what they are seeing is really “climate change” when infact what they are likely seeing is just “climate”. ——But most ordinary people will never look at any data, which would reveal no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather events, and as long as they don’t look at any data and simply blindly accept what they see on their 6’Clock News they are unlikely to ever realise that energy policies that are based entirely on their being a climate crisis and that are forcing up the price of energy and everything else is totally unnecessary and it also means they are not likely to understand the real reasons why these energy policies are being put in place that are impoverishing them. ————Which is POLITICS, not Science or anything to do with climate.
One wonders also about the effect of the Hunga Tonga explosion two years back. Nothing like this has happened since we have been able to closely monitor the climate. It seems to me that that must have had a large part to play in the huge amount of rain we have had in the past two years – what goes up must come down, after all. Don’t know enough to even hazard a guess as to whether it may have boosted temperatures, but it does seem that some people who know far more than I do think so.
Climate crazies always go crazier after an El Nino temperature spike.
The temperatures are clearly rising due to human activity. NASA and their friends are the humans (allegedly) retrospectively adjusting the historical record to make sure it happens.
So not human prodced CO2 but hot air and hubris is the cause.
And news today says:
The Gulf Stream is on the verge of COLLAPSING, leading climate change scientists warn – plunging the UK into a new ice age | Daily Mail Online
Among the great comments from the public is this one from ElectricRock:
“1970s Ice Age (didn’t that have a documentary with Leonard Nimoy?), 1980s Acid Rain & the Ozone Layer, then Global Warming, then rebranded as Climate Change, Covid and Monkey Pox, and now this. I’ve lost count of how many End of the World Events I’ve managed to scrape through. Oh, and the Cold War, too.
At this rate it’s only a matter of time before Godzilla shows up…”
🙂
Copernicus. Would that be the journal that withdrew Prof Richet’s paper on CO2 lagging temperature in ice cores, AFTER peer group approval? Well worth reading in full, Mr Morrison, if you pick up this late comment.
https://www.history-of-geo-and-space-sciences.net/2021-05-26_hgss-2021-1_latest-version-of-the-manuscript.pdf
Who would have thought it, cleaner fuels being used by the marine industry have, however small, caused an increase and not a reduction in global temperature with less pollution to reflect the sun’s rays in the atmosphere. I remember being in Arizona just after 911, when no aircraft were flying and there were no contrails in the sky to reflect the sun. As a result, local weather stations were reporting a slight and unexpected increase in temperature. Be careful what you wish for net zeroers, you may make the planet boil!
subject of Causality. Research performed by Demetris Koutsoyiannis and team in Greece has demonstrated both mathematically and by induction that, expressed simply, Anthropogenic activity, atmospheric emission of CO2, accounts for only 4% of the total . ( the balance of 96% being naturally produced ) In the U.K. we have less than 1% as a figure, so 1% of 4% is minuscule. Overridding all this though, the analysis demonstrates that CO2 LAGS global temperature. The trend is T is independent of CO2 and is considered causal. What this means on the ground is net zero and carbon capture and storage, initiatives are pointless from the perspective of keeping or lowering global temps as the earth is warming naturally, without our help. This is contrary to MSM and the so called settled science of some hitherto influential scientific authorities. Professor Koutsoyiannis has published numerous papers and performed presentations which are available as slides. Widespread acceptance of this information will blow current thinking out of the water, in my humble opinion. To perhaps realise why the world is following the net zero route you only have to follow the money. Global climate migration, amongst others, might the subject of future activities impacting governmental focus and will divert futile activities away from trying to ameliorate out of focus net zero and carbon capture projects ( et al). I attach an interview with the Professor to give you a flavour. Interview with Demetris Koutsoyiannis – Clintel by FRANCO BATTAGLIA It is not the CO₂ levels that influence temperatures but the exact opposite The Greek academic: It’s the hen or egg dilemma applied to the… Source: Clintel https://search.app/tCRQvFcr6j1PAurZ9
Jason West, Associate Professor, Environmental Sciences & Engineering, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
argues (https://west.web.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/18897/2019/09/ResponseToHapper.pdf )
that William Happer, in his presentation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-KZhkxRf3A makes a variety of errors and exaggerations, and uses various strawmen, in asserting that climate change is mostly a lot of hot air. Before anyone starts downticking, let me explain. I’m a sceptic: I’ve seen all those leftie politicians from the 70s/80s etc talking about how a campaign generating a fear of warming will be the key to redistribution of worldwide wealth, and I’ve no doubt that most of what goes in the climate world is a scam. I’ve read about the IPCC and Pielke’s criticisms, and distrust and loathe the Green Blob, which I believe is putting ideology before common sense in the exercise of its luxury belief system. That said, I’m no scientist, and I need to ask if there’s anyone out there who can go through the Happer-critical paper above and explain to me why it’s wrong. I find it exceedingly difficult to believe that human industry can affect weather conditions. In particular, I find it ridiculous that many climate zealots believe that specific events can be attributed to specific weather conditions. Nevertheless, some pretty important points are made by this guy, West – and I’d really like to know what can be said in response. So don’t downtick me; just give me some guidance.
Thanks.
“His presentation
ignores the large number of studies available that show that through climate change, CO2 will be
detrimental to agricultural productivity as well as to human well-being generally.”
I think that is plain wrong. We have record crop yields, shrinking deserts, less famine and suffering at least in part due to higher co2, and a bit of natural warming in recovering from the little ice age of the 17th, 18th centuries. Might dig up some references for you after my tea.
Greening https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth, : https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004 , the planet has greened by about 14% during 35 years of satellite observations (Donohue et al., 2013) , Zhu et al. (2016)
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/01/24/record-agricultural-yields-should-allay-climate-fear/
https://notrickszone.com/2022/03/18/co2-a-blessing-just-1-ppm-increase-means-up-to-0-8-greater-crop-yields-new-study-shows/
Goklany https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf
Many thanks.
Thought I had posted – May turn up twice:
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf
The method by which CO2 is claimed to operate is thermodynamically false. The second law (which has never been falsified in any way) says that energy cannot pass from a cold body to a hotter one. The CO2, high and very cold in the upper atmosphere is claimed to radiate energy (they say heat, but that is simply a result of energy) back to the much hotter surface. If the surface is at 20C say, and the atmosphere above is at 0 degrees, no heat can be transferred. Heat can be transferred for surface to atmosphere at height, but NOT the other way. The theory is therefore false. Is that simple enough?
Pretty much! Is that a reply to me by the way?