Disputing Desmet

Contesting Coincidence Theory and Conspiracy Denialism from an Unexpected, Respected and Disappointing Source

A Sierpinsky Triangle - onlinemathtools.com

By James Heddle - EON

Conspiracy and Ideology - Take Your Pick

The psyop-generated, thought-stopping, pejorative and dismissive epithets of ‘conspiracy theorist’ and ‘anti-vaxer’ have lately just begun to be replaced in some circles by affirming labels of admiration and respect like ‘conspiracy analyst’ and ‘informed dissenter.’

To paraphrase a pungent quip by former Wall Street investment banker-turned-investigative-reporter Catherine Austin Fitts, “Conspiracies are the way the world actually works.  If you’re not already part of a conspiracy, why not start one of your own?”

Professor Mattias Desmet disagrees.

Dare I dispute the celebrated Dr. Desmet?  With all due respect, indeed, I do.  He has highlighted a key issue, but in a distorting artificial light.

His widely-hailed book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism – that Robert Malone, in a jacket blurb, calls, “the most important book of 2022” – is undeniably an erudite tour de force of analytic scholarship and enlightening intellectual synthesis. 

His explication of the concept of ‘mass formation’ and his critique of the mechanistic worldview long dominant in our culture are important contributions to the current Covid discourse.

However, in his chapter titled ‘Conspiracy or Ideology,’ he seems to this reader to risk being blinded by his own brilliance – and thus helping to blind his growing audience of readers. 

He begins with the metaphor of the Sierpinsky triangle phenomenon (see diagram above). If a series of individuals each successively participate in connecting a preliminary random scattering of four dots on a piece of paper in accordance with a given set of rules, the inevitable, replicable result is the formation of an fractal pattern of equilateral triangles within triangles. 

The participating individuals, each making one mark in accordance with the same rules, do not need to share a common intention or expectation of this result; it emerges from the simple, sequential individual acts of following the rules.

This is Desmet’s core metaphor for why conscious conspiracies are not necessary to explain how the world system works – it just happens as a result of all the people in the system following the same rules without a commonly shared intention.

People do this he says, not because of a conscious conspiracy, but because of a commonly shared ideology – the mechanistic worldview.

Nothing to see here; just mechanistically-driven coincidence.

World events unfold, not by design or intention, but because “if  W, than X. If X, then Y.  If Y, then Z.’ – just like a computer code.  But is this not an example of the very reductionist, mechanistic worldview he is critiquing?

He then, for the only time in his book, quotes Wikipedia:

“A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agreement secret from the public or from other people affected by it.”

Having set up this straw man, he proceeds to knock it down.

He notes that,

“Based on this ideology, institutions were created that make plans about what society must look like and how the ideal future society should respond to crisis situations. Operation Lockstep from the Rockefeller Foundation, Event 201 of the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation (in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University and Rockefeller Foundation), and Covid-19; The Great Reset by Klaus Schwab are examples of such endeavors.  For many people, these events and publications are the ultimate proof that the social developments we are experiencing are planned and the result of a conspiracy.”

But, he argues, the various ‘simulation’ exercises, or the agenda of Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum are endlessly made clear by the publication of foundation reports and in books and videos on the WEF website

The ‘penetration’ of governments by alumnae of the WEF’s Young Leaders program is openly boasted about too, so no big secret there.

He rightly points out that the postulated existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing elite, flawlessly steering world events beyond the reach of popular, democratic control is disempowering.

But then the good professor goes on to contradict himself with such passages as:

“Is there not any steering and manipulation at all then? The answer is a resounding yes, there most certainly is all kinds of manipulation. And with the means available to todays’ mass media, the possibilities are simply phenomenal.  Such steering, however, is primarily not a steering by individuals and is impersonal in nature.” [Emphasis added.]

However, elsewhere he observes,

“There were approximately five people who neatly and systematically prepared the entire Holocaust destruction apparatus, and they managed to make all the rest of the system cooperate with it in total blindness for a long time.  And those who did see what was going on – namely that the concentration camps were in fact extermination camps – were accused of being conspiracy theorists. [Emphasis added.]

Professor Desmet’s erudite semantic hairsplitting these terms does not seem useful.  Whether the root pattern is termed conspiracy, ideology or gesorphenflap, the societal impacts and outcomes are the same; interlocking networks of powerful people, all sharing the same ideology (in the current situation, technocratic trans-humanism) cooperatively pursuing their common intents and collectively held interests to the detriment of us planetary precariat masses.

For democratic institutions to be able to pursue accountability it is necessary to be able to identify the key specific individuals who do conspire to achieve their comon goals via all the current means available to manipulate the frightened and fragmented population.

If you don’t know who is doing what, and with which, and to whom, how can the perps be brought to justice?

He seems unaware of the radical analytical utility of the kind of social diagrams showing the overlapping and interconnected elite networks that were once turned into a MoMA-worthy art form portraying the top scandals of his day by the late conceptual artist Mark Lombardi - who is still believed by some to have died under mysterious circumstances.

Mark Lombardi First United, CB Fin (1994) - https://www.moma.org/artists/22980

In such revealing socio-grams we can clearly see how consciously organized elite networks with complementary agendas, and their cadres of managers and functionaries, have such a ‘competitive advantage’ over a panicky population in the grip of a ‘mass formation’ - whether spontaneously occurring, or induced by state-of-the-art, media-assisted information operations ‘IOPs’ and psychological operations (PSYOPs).

He’s right in his assertion that violently eliminating current members of an elite won’t change the system, as others will quickly emerge to fill their places.

But our admittedly flawed legal system CAN potentially prosecute individual members identified in those networks for their personal and collaborative crimes against humanity.   A few successful prosecutions would likely have more impact on the elites’ ideology than Desmet’s approach of sophisticated psychological or philosophical persuasion. 

In this case, his stratospheric analysis seems to dissolve into a puddle of naiveté by the time it reaches ground level. Clearly well steeped in European-style intellectualism, he seems totally unfamiliar with American sociological analysts.

Not only the work of Catherine Austin Fitts, Not only the work of Catherine Austin Fitts, Naomi Wolf and numerous other contemporary investigative conspiracy analysts, but historical giants including the like of, C.Wright Mills - The Power Elite; Carol Quigley – Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time; and Anthony Sutton - The Wall Street Trilogy: A History, and America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones, demonstrate that conspiracies have existed, still do in fact exist, and continue to have through history an ongoing ‘steering’ impact on our society. 

This, it seems to me – despite his book’s overall utility – is the crux of the disservice Desmet’s confused and confusing chapter on ‘Conspiracy or Ideology’ does to our understanding - and so, to the emergence of workable strategies of resistance.

Take Home Message: Avoid delegating or abdicating your innate critical thinking capacities to any currently prominent ‘thought leader,’ or ‘influencer-of-the-moment.’

Give yourself credit for the acuity of your own internal crap detector and heed it’s blinking-red-light warnings.

Skepticism Furthers.

 As we used to say back in the ‘sixties, “Question Authority.”

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James Heddle co-directs the NGO EON – the Ecological Options Network with his life and writing partner Mary Beth Brangan. The EON feature documentary SOS – The San Onofre Syndrome – a decade in the making - which applies this kind of critical thinking to nuclear energy and the responsible, transgenerational management of radioactive waste – will be released this Fall.