Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet published his book The Psychology of Totalitarianism in June 2022. The book brings attention to the need to understand our own psychology in this time of global crisis.
It outlines the process of mass formation by which the masses find themselves to be hypnotized members of a totalitarian state. It also provides ideas about the evolution of scientific thought and how that evolution has led to an over-estimation of certainty and an oversimplification of living systems.
Overall, Desmet’s book is an ambitious work that focuses initially on his assessment of the evolution of mankind’s “mechanistic worldview,” particularly since The Enlightenment.
Although Desmet’s larger thesis would benefit from more detailed support, the process of mass formation as described in the book rings true, particularly in terms of what people have experienced with the “coronavirus crisis.” The Covid crimes exposed the fact that many individuals in our society can be led to throw away everything they have always valued, including freedom and health, in order to gain security from an innocuous threat.
Studying the development of mass formation is therefore a very important component of understanding human psychology in our time.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”Hannah Arendt
According to Desmet’s theory, we build a false worldview by using numbers to represent aspects of the human condition, like thoughts and feelings, physiological health, or group identity. This leads to an increase in the superficiality of our understanding of the world, and the opportunities for being dangerously wrong, that such a worldview allows. He writes,
The almost irresistible illusion that numbers represent facts ensures that most people become increasingly convinced that their own fiction is reality.”
Something in this narrative causes man to become isolated from his fellow man, and from nature. Something in it causes man to stop resonating with the world around him. Something in it turns human beings into atomized subjects. It is precisely this atomized subject that, according to Hannah Arendt, is the elementary building block of the totalitarian state.”
Science has itself become objectified through simplification. In the last few years, we have seen an increasing number of people speaking of how “Science” tells them they are right in whatever position they hold despite the fact that they either don’t know the actual science behind the subject or don’t know much about science at all.
Science has in many ways become a religion practised by people who put all of their faith in a generalized, objectified view of what they believe science represents. Those who do not agree with their view of science, whether it be “The Right,” or “anti-vaxxers,” or “super spreaders,” are the problem that needs to be solved.
As we saw with the Covid crimes, the hypnotized are easily led to believe that wrong thinkers need to be controlled, by force if necessary.
Desmet did not invent the term mass formation, which was used by Freud and others long before him. His main contributions to the subject are in providing:
- a more through description of mass formation as mass hypnosis
- his distinction between dictatorships, which are driven by fear, and totalitarian states, which are driven by the mass formation process
- his application of the mass formation process to the coronavirus crisis
As stated above, the book describes the “insidious process” of mass formation by starting with the evolution of mankind’s mechanistic worldview. Desmet couples with that a description of how we learn words and numbers as children.
Desmet states that we learn words and numbers to understand, and gain the approval of, The Other (e.g. our mother). Over time we learn that words and numbers cannot have definite meaning. This apparently is an early indication to us that mechanistic thinking is not sufficient for full understanding of our world. This learning either leads to isolation and anxiety through the fear of being left behind, or an appreciation for our own creativity and new ways to develop.
More commonly isolation and anxiety develop, initiating to the process of mass formation, the five primary states of which are as follows.
Desmet emphasizes several important aspects of mass formation and of individuals affected by it. He states that mass formation is like hypnosis but the hypnotist (the Leader) may also be hypnotized. This, Desmet says, is an example of the banality of evil.
Those individuals who are hypnotized by mass formation exhibit the following otherwise inexplicable tendencies.
- They believe in the Leader’s story not because it’s true but because it creates a new social bond. This bond is not between individuals but between the individual and the collective.
- They act as if the rest of reality, apart from the story that relieves their anxiety, no longer exists.
- They must at all times show that they submit to the interest of the collective by performing self-destructive, symbolic (ritualistic) behaviors
- They have radical intolerance of dissenting voices
- Destroying dissenters becomes critical to them
- They lose interest in everything they value without noticing it, and are thereby willing to give up everything they value
- The most educated are the most vulnerable to mass formation
Readers will likely remember the experiments of Stanley Milgram, documented in his fine book Obedience to Authority. Milgram found that a majority of people from all walks of life, men and women, can be made to obey authority figures against their own better judgment and values, even to the extent of causing great psychological and physical harm to others. As Milgram summarized,
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moral factors can be shunted aside with relative ease by a calculated restructuring of the informational and social field.”
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