Revisiting COVID-19 ‘mass formation psychosis’
Read Hanne’s The Herland Report.
COVID-19 has been called the largest, most sophisticated propaganda operation in history. The media narrative was quickly set and from every angle we heard about the only solution to COVID-19: Get vaccinated and stay isolated with masks on. In a recent conversation with Joe Rogan, Dr. Robert Malone, virologist, immunologist and an original inventor of mRNA vaccination, discussed his experiences surrounding COVID-19 and psychological manipulation. For example, why were good treatments suppressed on the internet while we only heard about vaccines?
Leading immunologists, biologists and experts within the field were simply not listened to. In an interview with Germany’s forefront virus expert in microbiology, Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi pointed out that Western government shutdowns were a completely wrong and extremely dangerous response. He said that self-isolating the whole population was grotesque, absurd and very dangerous: “This is the incredible tragedy, because all these adopted measures are actually senseless and meaningless. The life expectancy of millions is now being shortened because of this with horrifying impact on the world economy.”
During COVID-19, tech billionaires like Bill Gates suddenly became very energetic world health experts and warned of horrific consequences if not every county went into lockdown and quietly remained at home (using Microsoft Teams). Gates appeared all over the news, enthusiastically heralding the message of total lockdown. He later admitted that COVID-19 was more like a flu, after having earned billions. And climate change is also not a problem, after all. The economic consequences of the pandemic saw billionaires’ profits soar while nation state governments plunged into debt.
“Psychological techniques were extensively used during 2020 to incite fear and panic in the population, while other persuasion strategies were used to get people to support and defend COVID measures such as masking, isolation, social distancing, lockdowns and jab mandates,” writes Dr. Joseph Mercola, osteopathic physician and best-selling author. For example, the Imperial College Report, which showed that millions would die, later turned out to be fraudulent, not even peer reviewed. Its author, Neil Ferguson, notorious for overestimating numbers, both during Ebola and the Swine flu, was sacked from his job. The same scientist had estimated that 150,000 would die in the U.K. during the Foot and Clove flu. Two hundred died.
Something happens when a uniform consensus emerges, and every news outlet, every report on social media and every colleague or friend have the same opinion about the topic. Factual information matter less, as fear grips the person who is overwhelmed from every angle by one particular narrative. The element of social fear becomes so pervasive that the individual ends up following the crowd, even if the narrative clearly is irrational. In fact, the individual feels that he is the irrational party if he questions the official narrative. His perspective remains unaltered even if new data emerges that proves the media narrative wrong. This phenomenon can be attributed to the concept of mass formation. As a consequence of social reinforcement, rational independent evaluation is stopped as the individual perceives independence as a social risk.
“Modern information algorithms strongly influence which medical ideas you see, shaping how you interpret health risks and treatment options. During the first months of COVID-19, physicians around the world were testing combinations of existing, inexpensive medications. Some of those strategies showed early promise. Yet, most people never heard about them – not because the science was settled against them, but because of where and when the research happened, who funded it and how information platforms decided what you’d see,” writes Mercola. For example, the FDA and CDC enabled vaccines that guaranteed profits for manufacturers, at the expense of full safety transparency.
Malone highlights the concept of mass formation psychosis, a psychological phenomenon where socially isolated populations become highly susceptible to manipulation by authoritative leaders. He argues that governments deployed psychological warfare and algorithmic censorship during COVID-19 to control public opinion. These mechanisms created a propaganda ecosystem that suppressed dissenting scientific views and treatments like ivermectin, influenced by corporate interests.
The phenomenon of mass formation can be defined as the process where a large number of people adopt a similar narrative due to a dominating sense of anxiety and isolation, rather than being driven by the strongest evidence. This shared narrative is not driven by rational thinking, but from fear of losing the sense of belonging to a “safe group.”
So, while classical argumentation is based on discussions where logic and rationality wins, propaganda enforces the desired narrative through pure fear. Propaganda is defined as information of a biased or misleading nature in the effort to promote a particular narrative.