Originally published by Globalresearch.ca.
While well over a million people died unnecessary deaths because effective non-patented treatments were deliberately systemically suppressed, behavioral scientists weaponized fear to control the global population.
According to behavioral scientists who were members of the Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviors (SPI-B), we have all been strategically systematically “stunned by the weaponization of behavioral psychology” throughout the pandemic.
In a recently released book, A State of Fear: How the UK Government Weaponized Fear During the Covid-19 Pandemic, author Laura Dodsworth and several whistleblowers expose the Psychological Operations (PSYOPS):
Psyops at-a-glance
Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavior (SPI-B), a subcommittee that advises the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), admit the government is using fear to control and manipulate the population;
- SPI-B, which advocated for the use of fear messaging, now says it was unethical, totalitarian and a regrettable mistake;
- Aside from the barrage of bad-news-only data — which was heavily manipulated in a variety of ways — fear and anxiety are also generated by keeping you confused;
- Giving out contradictory recommendations is being done on purpose, to keep you psychologically vulnerable;
- By layering confusion and uncertainty on top of fear, you can bring an individual to a state in which they can no longer think rationally;
- Once driven into an illogical state, you are easily manipulated;
- Government’s reliance on behavioral psychology didn’t just happen as a result of the pandemic. These tactics have been used for years, and are increasing.
As this report in the Telegraph summed it up:
“Use of fear to control behavior in Covid crisis was ‘totalitarian,’ admit scientists
SAGE scientists admit to fear and control tactics
SAGE-SPI-B scientists on a committee that encouraged the use of fear to control people’s behavior during the Covid pandemic have admitted its work was ‘unethical’ and ‘totalitarian.’…
Gavin Morgan, a psychologist on the team, said: ‘Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government.’…
One SPI-B scientist told Ms Dodsworth… ‘There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear. The way we have used fear is dystopian.’
‘The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.’
Another SPI-B member said: ‘You could call psychology ‘mind control.’’
‘That’s what we do… it has been used nefariously in the past.’
One warned that ‘people use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise…’
‘We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in.’
Another said: ‘Without a vaccine, psychology is your main weapon….’
As well as overt warnings about the danger of the virus, the Government has been accused of feeding the public a non-stop diet of bad news, such as deaths and hospitalizations, without ever putting the figures in context with news of how many people have recovered, or whether daily death tolls are above or below seasonal averages.
Another member of SPI-B said they were ‘stunned by the weaponization of behavioral psychology’ during the pandemic, and that ‘psychologists didn’t seem to notice when it stopped being altruistic and became manipulative.’
‘They have too much power and it intoxicates them.’
‘As SAGE SPI-B knows very well, fear is our most powerful emotion. It is rooted deep within the inner reaches of our minds.
When we’re afraid, we do dangerous and irrational things.’
‘Manipulating our most primitive instincts to change behavior is taken from the textbook of tyrants.’
‘Over the past year, we have seen the biggest Campaign of Fear the world has ever seen.’
We now face an unprecedented mental health crisis….’
Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the Covid Recovery Group of Tory MPs, said: ‘If it is true that the state took the decision to terrify the public to get compliance with rules, that raises extremely serious questions about the type of society we want to become.’
‘If we’re being really honest, do I fear that Government policy today is playing into the roots of totalitarianism? Yes, of course it is.’”
Here are some excerpts from a new article by Dr. Joseph Mercola on Laura’s book and the weaponization of fear throughout the media’s coverage of the pandemic:
“Information that would have balanced out the bad news — such as recovery rates and just how many so-called ‘cases’ actually weren’t, because they never had a single symptom — were censored and suppressed.
They also refused to put any of the data into context, such as reviewing whether the death toll actually differed significantly from previous years. Instead, each new case was treated as an emergency and a sign of catastrophic doom.
Don’t Be Confused — Contradiction Is a Warfare Tactic
Aside from the barrage of bad-news-only data — which, by the way, was heavily manipulated in a variety of ways — fear and anxiety are also generated by keeping you confused. According to Dodsworth, giving out contradictory recommendations and vague instructions is being done intentionally, to keep you psychologically vulnerable.
‘When you create a state of confusion, people become ever more reliant on the messaging. Instead of feeling confident about making decisions, they end up waiting for instructions from the Government,’ she said in a May 20, 2021, interview on the Planet Normal podcast.
An example provided by Dodsworth are the pandemic measures implemented over Christmas 2020:
‘Family Christmases were on, then off, then back on, then off again. You have got someone tightening the screw, then loosening the screw, then tightening it again. It’s like a torture scenario.’
But that’s not all. As explained by psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin, by layering confusion and uncertainty on top of fear, you can bring an individual to a state in which they can no longer think rationally.
Once driven into an illogical state, they are easily manipulated. I have no doubt driving people into a state where logic and reason no longer registers is the whole point behind much of the conflicting information we’re given….
The Fear Factory
In her book, Dodsworth details a number of branches of the British government that are using psychological warfare methods in their interaction with the public. In addition to the SPI-B, there’s the:
- Behavioral Insights team, the so-called ‘nudge unit,’ a semi-independent government body that applies ‘behavioral insights to inform policy, improve public services and deliver positive results for people and communities.’ This team also advises foreign nations.
- Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), which is part of the U.K.’s Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, advises front groups disguised as public ‘grassroots’ organizations on how to ‘covertly engineer the thoughts of people.’
- Rapid Response Unit, launched in 2018, operates across the British Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s office (colloquially known as ‘Number 10’ as in the physical address, 10 Downing Street in London) to ‘counter misinformation and disinformation.’ They also work with the National Security Communications Team during crises to ensure ‘official information’ gets maximum visibility.
- Counter Disinformation Cell, which is part of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Both monitor social media and combat ‘fake news’ about science in general and COVID-19 in particular, with ‘fake news’ being anything that contradicts the World Health Organization’s guidance.
- Government Communications Headquarters (QCHQ), an intelligence and security organization that provides information to the U.K. government and the armed forces. According to Dodsworth, QCHQ personnel, and even members of the 77th Brigade, have been enlisted as so-called sockpuppets and trolls to combat anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown messaging on social media.
According to Dodsworth, there are many others.
In her book, she claims at least 10 different government departments in the U.K. are working with ‘behavioral insights teams’ to manipulate the public.
Importantly, government’s reliance on behavioral psychology didn’t just happen as a result of the pandemic. These tactics have been used for years, for myriad PR purposes, and while the pandemic may be winding down, Dodsworth warns that more and more behavioral scientists are being hired:
‘It’s growing and growing. Right now, I feel we are in a maelstrom of nudge,’ she says.
‘In the past, there have been calls to consult the public on the use of behavioral psychology, and those calls have come from the behavioral scientists themselves.
And yet it hasn’t happened.
We haven’t yet been consulted on the use of subconscious techniques which effectively strip away our choices…
I fervently hope this book [‘The State of Fear’] is actually going to inspire a much-needed conversation about the use of fear, not just in the epidemic, but the way we use behavioral psychology overall.
It’s not just a genie that has been let out the bottle. It’s like we’ve unleashed a Hydra and you can keep chopping its head off, but they keep employing more of these behavioral scientists throughout different government departments.
It’s very much how the Government now does business. It’s the business of fear….
I think ultimately people don’t want to be manipulated. People don’t enjoy being hoodwinked and they don’t want to live in a state of fear. We maybe need to be a bit bolder about standing up more quickly when something is not right.’”
For deeper overall context, here are excerpts from report I published on the weaponization of PSYOPS when the 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal gave the general public a rare in-depth look into Psychological Operations (PSYOPS).
As Analytica’s CEO Alexander Nix summed it up back then:
“Your behavior is driven by your personality and actually the more you can understand about people’s personality as psychological drivers, the more you can actually start to really tap in to why and how they make their decisions.
We call this behavioral microtargeting and this is really our secret sauce, if you like.
This is what we’re bringing to America.”
As Scout.AI summed it up:
“‘This is a propaganda machine. It’s targeting people individually to recruit them…. It’s a level of social engineering that I’ve never seen before.
They’re capturing people and then keeping them on an emotional leash and never letting them go,’ said professor Jonathan Albright….
It was a piece of a much bigger and darker puzzle – a Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine being used to manipulate our opinions and behavior to advance specific political agendas.
By leveraging automated emotional manipulation alongside swarms of bots, Facebook dark posts, A/B testing, and fake news networks, a company called Cambridge Analytica has activated an invisible machine that preys on the personalities of individual voters to create large shifts in public opinion….
This new wave has brought the world something exponentially more insidious – personalized, adaptive, and ultimately addictive propaganda.
Silicon Valley spent the last ten years building platforms whose natural end state is digital addiction….
Welcome to the age of Weaponized AI Propaganda…. Big Data Surveillance Meets Computational Psychology….
Analytica’s personality model has allowed it to create a personality profile for every adult in the U.S. — 220 million of them, each with up to 5,000 data points.
And those profiles are being continually updated and improved the more data you spew out online.”
Think about all of this in context of COVID PSYOPS, which are significantly more evolved than Analytica’s 2016 behavioral micro-targeting:
“[Imagine an election campaign with] 250 million algorithmic versions of their political message all updating in real-time, personalized to precisely fit the worldview and attack the insecurities of their targets…
Instead of having to deal with misleading politicians, we may soon witness a cambrian explosion of pathologically-lying political and corporate bots that constantly improve at manipulating us.”
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” ~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War
I cannot stress this enough: the weaponization of PSYOPS and behavioral psychology is the enslavement of humanity.
Everything we communicate on our phones and online is now weaponized against us.
A.I. machine-learned algorithmic manipulation of individual-specific confirmation biases is the psychological enslavement of humanity – such a devastating weapon!
Imperial mind snatchers will think for you. They are already thinking for a significant percentage of humanity.
Cogito, ergo sum.
Author: Centre for Research on Globalization
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) is an independent research and media organization based in Montreal. The CRG is a registered non-profit organization in the province of Quebec, Canada.
