b'B OOKR EVIEWBY SCOTT C. TIPSThe Psychology of TotalitarianismBy Mattias Desmet A Belgian clinical psychologist,has become the priv-(ISBN-13: 978-1645021728; Chelsea Green Publishing; 2022, hardcover, 240 pages; $28.00)Professor Mattias Desmet, hasileged instrument of justauthoredanimportantopportunism,lies, book that, among many other things,deception,manipu-explainshowmassformationgiveslation, and power. rise to totalitarianism. From the begin- Indeed,overthe ning,Desmethelpfullydefinesmasslast 22 years, I my-formationasakindofgrouphyp- selfhaveobserved nosis that destroys individuals ethicalthisverykindof self-awareness and robs them of theirdogmaticscientific ability to think critically. He posits thatdiscoursebeingim-this is exactly what happened during theposed on one Codex COVID-19 pandemic when huge swathsAlimentariusmeet-of the global population were hypnotizeding after another, as into believing that the virus was a mortalthe National Health threat and that only a highly experimen- Federation was often tal and untested vaccine would savethelone,ridiculed them from this danger. Mass formationvoice in opposition.was also used by Lenin, Hitler, Stalin,Worse, as Desmet and innumerable other totalitarian dem- andmanyothers, agogues over time to fix and then controlincludingme,have the attention of the masses. pointed out, the dog-Of course, as Desmet himself pointsmaticsciencethat out,massformationisnothingbutaispushedonusas newly coined term for mass hypnosis,scientific and ob-a term that was first used more than ahimself in the hands of the hypnotiser.jectiveisusually centuryagoandpopularizedbytheWith maMor refinements, this, too, is theanythingbutscientific.Desmetnotes French psychologist Gustave Le Bon indanger of crowds of which Professorthat in biomedical research 85 percent his 1\x1b9\x18 seminal work Psychologie desDesmet warns us in his book 127 yearsof the time other scientists cannot rep-Foules (literally,ThePsychologyoflatermass formation makes peoplelicate the results claimed by research-Crowds)a book read by Hitler in 1908.danJeroXsl\\ inWoleranW oI an\\WKinJ WKaWers in their studies. He then drives the But even the Psychologie des Fouleswascontradicts the narrative they have ad- stake home into the corpse of modern in large part built upon Le Bons earlieropted. sciencewithhisobservationthatin 1\x1b\x1b1work, LHommeetlessocits But,inhisbook,Desmetwarns2021, 50 percent of surveyed academics (Man and Society). To Le Bon,an in- usofsomuchmore.Science,whichanonymously admitted that they some-dividual immersed for some length ofhad originally developed as an open- times presented their findings in a biased time in a crowd in action soon findsminded way of thinking that banishedway. And fifty percent is almost cer-himselfeither in consequence of mag- dogmas and questioned beliefs, wastainly a serious underestimation. While netic inpuence given out by the crowd,transformed over time into somethingscience adapts its theory to reality, or from some other cause of which wedogmatic, ideological, and prejudiced.the author says, these days ideology are ignorantin a special state, whichWe are only allowed to challenge theadapts reality to theory and is palmed much resembles the state of fascinationright things. To Desmet, scientificoff on us as 6cience.in which thehypnotizedindividual findsdiscourse, like any dominant discourse,This Science is then used to manip-32 H EALTHF REEDOMN EWS /S UMMER2022NHF_Summer40-2_2022_Linda_08-09-2022.indd 32 8/10/22 11:10 AM'