Neighbor vs neighbor and brother vs brother. Let’s follow the bread crumbs.

Mass formations are as old as time, and can lead to unthinkable atrocities and savage world events, where even family members can turn on one another

Photo 85550825 / Dragon © Rastan | Dreamstime.com

• Applicants to medical schools are being admitted based on their answers to questions of “diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism,” with those answering in accordance with the new woke ideology favored above those who don’t. These concepts have nothing to do with educating doctors to provide the best care for the American people, but today the correct ideology weighs more heavily than the applicants’ academic qualifications.

• The nation’s educators push a radical transgender, or “gender affirming,” doctrine on children as young as age five in taxpayer-funded schools, often without parental supervision or knowledge. Teachers and school administrators en masse support these radical curricula, along with false and divisive critical race theory, pronoun re-education, gay indoctrination and more. Even worse, many young people are coerced into undergoing gender reassignment surgeries (castration) and hormone replacement therapies. 

• Millions of terrified Americans, in order to “flatten the curve,” shut themselves inside for nearly two years, took untested and dangerous vaccines, wore masks everywhere in public – all despite early evidence that not only did these measures not help contain the virus, but made our society much worse on many levels. Irrationally, we were told that Wal-Mart and liquor stores could stay open, but mom and pop stores and hairdressers could not, driving many of them out of business altogether. In some states, such as Michigan, you could not buy paint or use a motorboat during the pandemic.

• Throughout the summer of 2020, rampaging mobs of black Americans and white Marxist instigators looted, burned, murdered and destroyed billions of dollars’ worth of American property and businesses.

And these are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Understanding Mass Formations

What possesses people to group together like this, like insects swarming together on a pile of garbage, in a common, often malevolent, bond? There are many names for this age-old phenomenon: conformity, collectivism (communism), group dynamism, mob psychology, groupthink, and others.

One new phrase has emerged as THE definitive one to describe this phenomenon: mass formation, or sometimes called mass formation psychosis, or mass formation hypnosis. Simply put, when large groups of people join together in a common cause, even when facts or data don’t support the cause, the group's new identity simply takes over. According to author and professor of psychology Mattias Desmet, who coined the mass formation, a new bond emerges that “is intolerant to dissonant voices.”

Desmet’s description of mass formation psychosis/hypnosis was recently articulated on the Joe Rogan podcast during a discussion of our nation’s response to Covid, and the vaccine-only solution pushed by our health agencies. Ironically, the podcast so disturbed those citizens living within the mass formation that they demanded Rogan be kicked off the airwaves. They launched a vicious and well-orchestrated campaign to silence him – proving, ironically, the very existence of the mass formation they denied existed and revealing how easily it was to be triggered into high gear by one dissenting voice.

That was just a small taste of what a mass formation mob can accomplish. Taken to its extreme, a mass formation “will commit appalling atrocities,” says Desmet, the author of “The Psychology of Totalitarianism.”

Throughout history, we’ve seen mass formations committing, as Desmet puts it, “appalling atrocities,” such as the mobs that overthrew the French monarchy in the French revolution. So many people were killed that the French anti-monarchists invented the guillotine in order to kill the people faster. Eventually, the killers became the killed, as a new mass formation emerged to destroy the first.

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1918 saw hundreds of thousands of workers, stirred up by their Marxist agitators, overthrow the imperial government, slaughter the tsar and his entire family, and establish a Marxist regime that endures to this day, with a horrifying death toll of 61 million people.

The Nazis perfected their plan to destroy the Jews after decades of anti-semitism in Germany paved the way for the final solution. Their plan was an intense indoctrination and brainwashing campaign that resulted in a monstrous mass formation of racial hatred directed at the Jews and other non-Aryans that resulted in more than six million deaths.

Mass Formations Can Lead to Mass Killers

In his groundbreaking book, “Ordinary Police,” author Christopher Browning delves into the psychology of police officers in Nazi Germany who were transformed from ordinary, middle-aged police officers into the mass murderers of tens of thousands of Jews. They were not soldiers, but policemen tasked initially with rounding up Jews and assisting in their deportation to concentration camps. With skillful indoctrination and brainwashing, the police were transformed into cold-blooded killers who were able to march naked, pregnant women into the woods and shoot them in the backs of their heads.

Browning’s research into the phenomenon revealed the same trends that Desmet identifies: That it only takes about 30% of the people to create a mass formation. Another 60% will go along, perhaps reluctantly, but peer pressure will convince them to join in. And in nearly every mass formation studied only about 10% of the people will refuse to go along.

The German police officers admitted they were never threatened with severe punishment if they refused to go along. There were no reprisals save for the sneering disapproval of the majority, which was enough for nearly all of them to join the other officers in the killings.

How do these extreme examples fit into the challenges we’re encountering today in America? What mass formations are currently at play?

If we step back and look at the rapid speed of the changes in our society, what stands out most is the sharp division between the two major political parties. The Democrats loathe the Republicans with breathtaking zeal. The rhetoric is so outrageously inflated and inflamed, yet it keeps on coming. In just his recent speeches, President Biden has called Trump supporters “fascists,” “domestic terrorists,” “extremists,” who “don’t respect the Constitution,” who “don’t respect the rule of law.” They are “insurrectionists,” and of course, the ubiquitous “racist” word is used ad nauseam.

The mass formation of left-leaning Americans against just about everyone else has taken many sinister plot twists. With the aid of the mass media and big tech, the left has employed a number of time-tested tactics that always – I repeat, always – lead to totalitarianism unless halted.

First, relentless propaganda, censorship and groupthink must be encouraged. Twitter, Facebook, CNN, MSNBC, etc., have all beaten the propaganda drum against Donald Trump and anyone who supports him. Some Trump supporters who attended the Jan. 6 riot have been imprisoned for 19 months as political prisoners. Big Tech has joined forces with the Biden administration to censor our speech. Language has been so tortuously redefined as to make it impossible to adhere to the new strict speech (and thought) codes, many of which expect us to call a man a woman, a woman a man, a Trump riot an insurrection, but a BLM riot a freedom rally.

Silencing Perceived Enemies

Living in a permanent surveillance state under the all-seeing eye of technology, certain sectors of our society are being systematically excluded from participation. Some lose their right to speak out on social media. Some may no longer use their credit cards if the issuing companies find their ideologies unacceptable. Others who refuse the Covid vaccine and cannot show a vaccine card are denied the ability to fly, participate in sports, attend college, or even go to grade school.

Will those on the left in the United States who are in the grip of this mass formation, like the German police squads who went from being ordinary men to mass murderers within just a few years of indoctrination and brainwashing, follow a similar path? I’m not suggesting the left will soon be pulling out their weapons, rounding us up, and sending us off to concentration camps, but …

… in Australia, at the height of the vaccine frenzy in 2021 and early 2022, terrifying videos emerged of citizens who had refused the jab being chased down in the streets by police and hauled off to “quarantine camps.” Some were actually shot when they tried to flee the police. Oh yes, and Australia also completely disarmed its citizens in the late 1990s, making it impossible for them to defend themselves.

Three Ingredients of a Mass Formation

Desmet describes the three main conditions necessary for a mass formation to form:

1.     People with no or few social bonds. Many say we are experiencing a loneliness epidemic in America, made worse by social media that masquerade as socialization but only serves to further isolate people. The pandemic further frayed these already tenuous social bonds.

2.     The feeling for many that life is meaningless. A recent survey found that only 13% of Americans feel their jobs are meaningful in any way, leaving the majority to feel hopeless about their jobs and their lives.

3.     Free-floating anxiety, frustration and aggression, feelings whose sources or reasons for existence can’t be defined.

Using the example of the Covid response again, what could more perfectly exemplify a nation filled with isolated citizens devoid of meaning in their lives, living under stressful and fearful circumstances? Those in the mass formation quickly coalesced into their new social bond with a deep aggression against their fellow citizens who refused to join – the “anti-vaxxers” and “anti-maskers.”

So when these conditions are met, it’s easy to find a target for the aggression and anxiety, such as anti-vaxxers, or Trump and Trump supporters, or simply all Republicans, thus easily forming a new group aimed at those who don’t participate. This can cause a state of “mental intoxication,” says Desmet, because it gives the group something positive to identify with.

Even the most absurd notions can bond a group together, such as forcing people to recognize dozens of new genders, or using non-words as pronouns, like ze, hir, hirs, xe, xem, xyrs. As the name suggests, the phenomenon is similar to a form of hypnosis.

Unfortunately, Desmet warns, “you can’t wake these people up.” And worse still, as history progresses, mass formations have become larger and more ominous.

But there is hope: By continuing to speak out against the mass formation we can weaken the hypnosis that the group is under. The constant drumbeat of the mass formation must be met with an opposing drumbeat that disturbs the voice of its leader or leaders.

The alternative, to let the mass formation have its way, is unthinkable. Its way could be the death knell for America as we know it.