patrick.net

@MikeBenzCyber
28 Nov 2023
NATO military intelligence became obsessed with stopping funny online memes that seeded support for populist right-wing political parties in Europe.

The Integrity Initiative leaks had required reading material for new NATO cluster cell recruits to defeat funny online memes

Oh well. I think memes are annoying. Honestly I think they're childish. I think it's more Idiocracy

The mass formation hypothesis (which arose from the discipline of crowd psychology) argues that if enough people believe something, it can develop a life of its own and many people will begin to fanatically believe it (to the point good people will do evil things they rationalize are for the greater good), while the rest of the population will fully comply with those zealots because they fear the consequences of challenging them.

A key aspect of the theory is that it can only be broken if enough people take on the personal risk that speaking out against the crowd entails, as once this is done, it gives a signal to everyone else that it is safe to break from the mass formation. This in turn is why horrific systems can be in place for years if not decades, and then suddenly rapidly break apart once the right catalyst comes along. ...

Breaking Mass Formations
V’s strategy for breaking apart the dystopian system he lived within was to:

•Bypass the society’s censors in order to expose the population to a message that emotionally resonated with them, and more importantly to show them that they were not alone (something Substack has also been invaluable for over the last few years). The speech at the start of this article is remarkable, both in that it cuts to the heart of the fear that maintains each oppressive system and because it, in many ways, is just as true for our current era as it was for V’s fictional world

•Provide a safe way for the populace to show they agreed with his message through giving everyone a mask they could wear which simultaneously expressed the core message—that current government was unacceptable.

•Create more and more triggers for the populace to see it was safe for them to begin speaking out (e.g., V continuing to act with impunity despite the government’s best efforts to silence him or repeatedly causing a frustrated and fearful government to make a bigger and bigger fool of itself). As more and more social proof emerged for V’s message, more and more people in turn began to be willing to take on the personal risk that speaking out against the system entailed.

This is critically important, because all the research on mass formations has found that their success or failure depends upon if a minority of the population is willing to challenge them and provide a signal to everyone else to do so as well (this in turn is why I have placed such a strong focus on highlighting and encouraging the psychological characteristics that caused individuals to break from a dysfunctional narrative). While many examples of this exist throughout history, one of the most iconic images comes from Nazi Germany:




... One of the most fascinating aspects of V for Vendetta was its foreshadowing of COVID-19. For instance in this (4:41) scene, the film explains how an engineered virus was produced and then deployed upon the population so that a fascist government could take power in order “to protect” the populace from the virus...

One of the key themes I’ve tried to lay out in this publication is that so many (incredibly impactful) medical policies are not a result of “the best scientific evidence” but rather business interests and politics. As such, you will frequently see absurd and harmful health policies which are backed up by simplistic arguments people angrily repeat ad-nauseam, and likewise that despite the two political parties claiming to be opposed to each other, they always seem to agree on those abhorrent policies.

For instance, almost every single justification for the COVID-19 vaccines was not supported by the existing scientific evidence, yet as each lie was proven to be false (e.g., people who were vaccinated continued to get COVID—often more frequently than the unvaccinated), rather than accept the vaccines were a scam, the goal posts were changed and half the country doubled-down on them.