Keywords

Menticide attacks the cognitive faculties of victims to break down their mental integrity and render them susceptible to indoctrination. During “Covid-19,” confusion was weaponised in various ways, including a proliferation of nonsensical and ever-changing “rules,” last-minute U-turns on key Government decisions, unpredictability of restrictions easing or tightening, and a fundamental irrationality in Government behaviour. Verbal confusion was deployed against the public through constant mixed messaging. A strategy of continuous questioning by the media caused bewilderment. Words and phrases were twisted to mean their opposites, or were used in an esoteric fashion. The public was made to question its own sanity via means used to make social reality seem surreal. The past was rewritten to deny events that actually took place. The public was gaslighted to think that anything but the “vaccines” were to blame for injuries/deaths to young people. A Soviet-style abuse of psychiatry was used to pathologise dissent.

Weaponised Confusion

In order to break down the minds of men,” Meerloo writes, totalitarianism “first needs widespread mental chaos and verbal confusion, because both paralyze [...] opposition and cause the morale of the enemy to deteriorate” (1956, pp. 28–29). Once broken down, the victim can no longer believe in anything apart from “the dictated and indoctrinated logic of those who are more powerful than he.

In cults, the deliberate use of confusion serves to “induce a trance state” in which members are more easily hypnotised; this confusion “usually results whenever contradictory information is communicated congruently” (Hassan, 1990, p. 68). So, “if a person is kept in a controlled environment long enough, hearing such disorienting language and confusing information, he will usually suspend his critical judgement and adapt to what he perceives everyone else is doing.” Confusion and disorientation cause individuals to doubt themselves and defer to the group.

Experimental psychology shows that people are generally motivated to avoid addressing social issues that they deem too complex, or which they feel they lack any control over, and instead tend to defer to the government to deal with such issues (Shepherd & Kay, 2012, pp. 275–6). It follows that the intentional creation of confusion over major issues is an excellent means of keeping the public in a state of subjugation. The “bewildered herd” (Lippmann, 1922), as over a century of PR and media manipulation has shown, can be led by an “invisible government” (Bernays, 1928, p. 1) capable of “manufacturing consent” (Herman & Chomsky, 1988).

In the “War on Terror” context, the U.S. National Defence Intelligence College produced an edited volume euphemistically titled Educing Information. “According to the research,” one contributor notes, “confusion reduces resistance, and can be a particularly effective tool of influence when combined with a follow-up persuasive message (reframe)” (Borum, 2006, p. 29).

The same principle of using confusion to lower resistance and create subservience to authority was weaponised against the public through the “Covid-19” operation. Fagan (2020), for instance, was quick to observe: “Through a bombardment of lies, contradictions, and confusion, the state overwhelms your ability to reason clearly.” The Academy of Ideas (2021) makes a similar observation: “Government officials, and their lackeys in the media, can use contradictory reports, nonsensical information and even blatant lies, as the more they confuse, the less capable will a population be to cope with the crisis […].” People who are confused and unable to think straight in the face of a crisis tend to turn to authority for security.

In the context of an alleged “pandemic,” the general public, with no grounding in virology, epidemiology, or other relevant scientific disciplines, has no way of independently assessing the “scientific” claims made. Rather, the highly specialised subject-matter made it easy for “the deployment of confusion” to serve as “a particularly powerful and central feature of the Covid-19 propaganda campaign” (Kyrie & Broudy, 2022). A bewildered public had little choice but to defer to government “experts” on perceived life and death matters—and even then, in the United Kingdom, the similarity between “SAGE” and “Independent SAGE” (iSAGE) “created significant public confusion” (Klarenberg, 2023).

Mental Chaos

Changing “Rules” That Make No Sense

UK citizens were expected to follow a proliferation of “rules” (Walker, 2020) that made little sense and were practically impossible to keep up with. For example, as the first “lockdown” restrictions were relaxed, radio phone-ins tried in vain to establish who, if anyone, understood how many people were “allowed” in one’s back garden, based on different permutations of the “rules” (Perraudin, 2020). If guests were “allowed” in the back garden, were they “allowed” to use the downstairs toilet? Such was the mundane, and frankly insane, level of public discussion, all premised on invasive government overreach regarding what citizens can and cannot do on their own property.

The “rules” never made sense, nor were they intended to. In the United Kingdom, for instance, people were not “allowed” to meet in groups of more than six outdoors, yet in June 2020 police permitted thousands of protestors to march for BLM (Pyper & Brown, 2020). In pubs and restaurants, a mask was required when standing up but not when sitting down (Wardle, 2020), as though the virus only moved at a certain height. Bars and restaurants were pointlessly forced to close early (Takuku et al., 2022), as though the virus became more aggressive at certain times. The Mail’s Richard Littlejohn expressed a palpable sense of frustration:

We're not going to take it anymore. You can sleep with your wife but can’t play tennis with her. You can shoot ducks, but can’t feed them. Boffins scare us with graphs, then change them. You can buy a pint to take away using an app on your mobile phone, but can’t drink it inside or immediately outside a pub. Marks & Sparks can sell you a prawn sandwich, but not a pair of socks. Knickers are ‘non-essential’ on the High Street, but freely available on the internet. (Littlejohn, 2020)

“Impose too many illogical rules,” Damien Green warned on November 29, 2020, “and soon we won’t stick to smart ones [assuming there were any]” (D. Green, 2020).

The extensive number of “rules” that the public was expected to follow (e.g., around what kinds of behaviour were “expected” at different venue types) not only varied between the Home Nations (Chao-Fong, 2021), but they also changed (Cabinet Office, 2020) so often that it became hard, if not impossible to keep track of them (cf. Institute for Government, 2021). By the time that different “tier systems” were introduced in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland in Q4 of 2020 (Department of Health and Social Care, 2020b), each with its own complex set of rules, restrictions, and exemptions, an almost Byzantine level of complexity had been introduced. No ordinary citizen could reasonably be expected to stay abreast of these “rules,” especially when regions were moved between tiers (Department of Health and Social Care, 2020c). By July 2021, when the Government left it up to public transport and other companies to implement their own policies around mask wearing, there was not even an attempt at a consistent set of “rules.” Gerrish (2021) plausibly infers: “the uncertainty and the change in the rules: that is part of the psychological attack,” because they put people “in a position of stress and anxiety and confusion,” making them “very susceptible to further messages and instructions.”

Last-minute Government U-Turns

According to Kleinman (2006, p. 129) in a National Defence Intelligence College publication, “psychologists have identified the inability to effectively forecast near-term events as a major stressor in the detention environment.” This, too, was a feature of the “Covid-19” operation.

“Like the abuser,” Scott (2021a) writes, “the UK and Scottish Governments keep changing the story and goalposts […].” A prime example of this was the UK Government’s repeated last-minute U-turns on key decisions. On July 12, 2020, for example, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Michael Gove, claimed that face masks should not be made mandatory in shops in England; two days later, the government announced they would be. Having vowed not to institute a second national “lockdown” in July 2020, the Prime Minister gave just five days’ notice of the second “lockdown” on October 31 (Silver & Yang, 2020). On December 14, 2020, Matt Hancock announced that 11 million people in London, most of Essex and part of Hertfordshire would be plunged into Tier 3 restrictions with only 30 hours’ notice (Tapsfield & Wilcock, 2020). Having promised the public at least five days’ loosening of restrictions over Christmas, new Tier 4 restrictions were announced as late as December 20 that reduced that figure to zero for London and surrounding areas, while the rest of Britain saw five days reduced to just Christmas Day (“Christmas Rules Tightened,” 2020). In late December 2020 and early January 2021, the government maintained that schools would remain open, yet at 8 pm on January 4, the day before most schools were due to go back, a new national “lockdown” was announced.

“Just as normality appears to beckon, the goalposts have been moved again,” Lee (2021) writes of the Government’s announcement of twice-weekly testing for everybody who wanted it in April 2021. In June 2021, there was a sudden exodus of thousands of British holidaymakers when Portugal was unexpectedly put on the government’s “amber list” as part of a “traffic light” system classifying countries by risk of “Covid-19”; the system created stress and uncertainty for travellers. The goalposts continued to move as the British public was told “‘we will be unlocking on June 21st,’ then ‘we should not unlock,’ that ‘we will not have vaccine passports,’ then ‘we should have vaccine passports,’ that ‘children will not be vaccinated,’ then ‘children should be vaccinated’” (Scott, 2021d).

On September 3, 2021, the JCVI announced that it did not recommend injections for healthy 12–15-year-olds; the following day, The Times ran a front-page headline: “Children set to be jabbed from early next week” (Smyth & Swinford, 2021). On September 12, 2021, the Sunday Times claimed that the Prime Minister was poised to abandon “the proposed compulsory certification scheme” (Shipman & Wheeler, 2021); the next day, the Times ran a piece titled, “Covid Vaccine Passports Can Still Help Defeat Winter Wave, No 10 Insists” (Wright, 2021); Oliver Wright was involved in both pieces. In August 2021 it was officially safe to attend UK nightclubs “unvaccinated”; in September it was not; and then it was again when the rule was rescinded.

The ultimate shifting of the goalposts came in February 2022, when the entire “Covid-19” narrative, having dominated the news channels for almost two years, was abandoned almost overnight in favour of the new narrative: Russia/Ukraine. It was as though its centrality to public consciousness had been nothing more than a function of propaganda in the first place. Those who had spent two years cheering on the suppression of individual rights and freedoms in the “Covid-19” context suddenly “stood with Ukraine,” because they were told to. Having supported the most draconian of measures “to save just one life,” many of those same people emerged strongly in favour of a no-fly zone over Ukraine that would risk major conflict. Having refused to have their own family over for Christmas if they were “unvaccinated,” they opened their doors to Ukrainian refugees. After two years of attempting to make everyone wear masks and take the injections, in May 2022, they chanted “my body, my choice” as Roe vs. Wade was overturned.

Calculated Unpredictability of Treatment

Cognitive confusion and incapacitation are enhanced by calculated unpredictability of treatment, such that the victim never knows what to expect next. In a 1941 essay, Kurt Lewin of the Tavistock Clinic writes:

One of the main techniques for breaking morale through a “strategy of terror” consists in exactly this tactic – keep the person hazy as to where he stands and just what he may expect. If, in addition, frequent vacillations between severe disciplinary measures and promises of good treatment, together with the spreading of contradictory news, make the cognitive structure of this situation utterly unclear, then the individual may cease to know when a particular plan would lead toward or away from his goal. Under these conditions, even those individuals who have definite goals and are ready to take risks will be paralyzed with severe inner conflicts in regard to what to do. (Lewin, 1948, p. 111)

One of the items on Biderman’s “Chart of Coercion” is “occasional indulgences,” which are intended to provide “positive motivation for compliance.” The occasional indulgence arises from “fluctuations of interrogators’ attitudes,” i.e., is granted on a whim. It “hinders adjustment to deprivation” and offers the “tantalising” prospect of an improvement in conditions (Amnesty International, 1973, p. 49). According to the KUBARK Manual, the prisoner “is told that the changed treatment is a reward for truthfulness and an evidence that friendly handling will continue as long as he cooperates” (CIA, 1963, p. 84).

According to Amnesty International (1973, pp. 46–47), “occasional unpredictable brief respites” can make the victim feel obligated towards the torturer. The critical factor is that the treatment is constantly varied: “There is no time when a prisoner can be sure that he is through with a particular ordeal […] Alleviation of the stress, whether due to spontaneous factors or deliberate manipulations, is intermittent, temporary, and unpredictable.” Thus, to break a victim’s will most effectively, it is not advisable to subject them to relentless suffering and deprivation: they may get used to it and become resilient. Rather, it is best to intersperse their suffering with occasional periods of respite. This encourages compliance in the hope of better treatment, prevents resistance from hardening, and creates a misguided sense of obligation towards the abuser.

We find a similar logic of unpredictable rewards and punishment, cloaked in pseudoscientific terminology, in the “Covid-19 countermeasures.” As early as March 13, 2020, SAGE (2020) noted “evidence that people find quarantining harder to comply with the longer it goes on.” Three days later, Neil Ferguson’s infamous “Report 9” claimed that countermeasures may be “relaxed temporarily in relative [sic.] short time windows, but measures will need to be reintroduced if or when case numbers rebound” (Ferguson et al., 2020, pp. 1–2). When declaring the first “lockdown,” the British Prime Minister claimed: “I can assure you that we will keep these restrictions under constant review. We will look again in three weeks, and relax them if the evidence shows we are able to” (Prime Minister’s Office, 2020b). In keeping with technocracy, the power of granting respite was thus placed in the hands of unelected “scientific experts.”

A pattern of abuse based on calculated unpredictability of treatment was established. When the tier system of “lockdowns” was introduced in the United Kingdom in autumn 2020, it was no longer a case of whether “lockdowns” are justifiable in the first place. Rather, a differential scale of abuse was put in place, involving constant fear of being moved into a worse tier. Relief at being in a lower tier was akin to the relief a victim feels for not getting a black eye from their abuser: they are not free, and there is always the threat of worse. As Anthony observes regarding whether the government would “allow” Christmas in 2020: “You forget that they are giving you something that was actually your right to have in the first place” (Anthony & Cullen, 2021).

As inalienable rights were attacked, occasional freedoms were “granted,” but never commensurate with the plundering of fundamental rights and liberties. For example, the British Prime Minister outrageously claimed in April 2021: “It’s only because of months of sacrifice and effort that we can take this small step towards freedom today,” i.e. the “chance to see friends and family outdoors” (cited in Wilcock, 2021). To be clear, three separate “lockdowns” had been in effect almost continuously since March 2020, causing untold levels of harm and suffering (Bardosh, 2023; Dettmann et al., 2022; Harrison, 2023; Hughes et al., 2022). Yet, for acquiescing to this, the public was “granted” the most pathetic of supposed “rewards,” when lawful freedom of association was always its right in the first place.

The simulated prison environment conjured up by “lockdowns” (a prison term) goes hand in hand with the idea of parole. In the Stanford Prison experiment, prisoners were invited to submit formal requests for parole based on their behaviour. This brought one rebellious prisoner to recant that he was “unworthy of better treatment. Since then he did his best to cooperate and no longer cause problems” (Perlstadt, 2018, p. 53). Thus, in prison conditions, the mere possibility of better treatment can be enough to induce behavioural change and compliance. As “lockdown” conditions eased, some commentators noticed the parallel with parole. According to Curtin (2021), “If you felt like a prisoner for the past year plus, now you will be paroled for a while.” “Rather than being liberated from the Covid restrictions,” Myers (2021) writes, “it is as if we are being put on parole. We can exercise some more freedoms, sure. But we do so in the knowledge that we could be hauled back under house arrest at any moment. This is no way to live.”

Fundamental Irrationality in the System

Totalitarian menticide involves barraging the enemy with wave after wave of lies and illogicality:

[Hitler] was never logical, because he knew that that was what he was expected to be. Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot – it confuses those who think straight. The Big Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal [...] than logic and reason. While the enemy is still searching for a reasonable counterargument to the first lie, the totalitarians can assault him with another. (Meerloo, 1956, p. 101)

The Science™ performed a similar function during the “Covid-19” operation. With the Gompertz curve having formed in the spring of 2020, for example, the worst of the alleged viral “pandemic” should have been over, yet UK mask mandates were illogically introduced afterwards, in the summer, when rates of respiratory illness are seasonally at their lowest. When Yeadon (2020) sought to introduce some rationality into proceedings by pointing to errors in SAGE methodology and the fact that “viruses do not do waves,” the “second wave” duly appeared by dint of a “new variant.” When the virulence of the “new variants” was called into question, the fear-mongering moved onto “immune escape” (see Chap. 4). Every attempt at reason and genuine science was met with a barrage of propaganda.

“One’s sense of stability and trust in the world,” Hertzberg (2021) notes, is rooted in “the belief that rationality is a limiting principle at some point upon what government and people/institutions with power in society are able and willing to do”; it is highly stressful to many people to see their governments behaving so irrationally. In that respect, it is significant that serious questions have been raised about the apparent cognitive impairment of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi (plus John Fetterman following a stroke in 2022) (Hanson, 2022). The U.S. population, during the “Covid-19” era, was presented with a President, Vice-President, and Speaker of the House who at times behaved most peculiarly and appeared non compos mentis. The message tacitly conveyed to the public—most likely deliberately, given the timing and otherwise implausibility of allowing all three figures simultaneously to occupy top positions—was that irrationality lies at the heart of the political system, and, therefore, that reason offers no protection against tyranny and the arbitrary exercise of power.

Verbal Confusion

Mixed Messaging

As real science was junked in 2020, “Covid-19” messaging proved schizoid from the outset. For example: asymptomatic transmission does not drive epidemics (Fauci in January 2020, cited in Ballan, 2021); “anyone can spread it.” There is “no obvious rationale” for “home quarantine” (WHO, 2019, p. 16); “lock down.” Stay home; it is safer to be outdoors. “Three weeks to flatten the curve”; “the new normal.” The public should not wear face masks; mask mandates (see Chap. 4). Never use contact tracing in a pandemic (WHO, 2019, p. 3); biosurveillance/contact tracing is essential. Scott (2021d), noting R.D. Laing’s claim that contradictory messaging from a child’s mother can drive a child into psychosis or schizophrenic breakdown, argues that “Covid-19” mixed messaging represents “a pernicious schizogenic tactic common to psychological abuse.”

There was mixed messaging regarding the deadliness of “Covid-19.” Health Secretary Hancock told parliament on March 23, 2020: “Coronavirus is the most serious public health emergency that has faced the world in a century” (Hansard, 2020)—only four days after the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens removed “Covid-19” from its list of high consequence infectious diseases (UK Health Security Agency, n.d.), and only 20 days after his department had published the following:

Among those who become infected, some will exhibit no symptoms. Early data suggests that of those who develop an illness, the great majority will have a mild-to-moderate, but self-limiting illness – similar to seasonal flu. It is, however, also clear that a minority of people who get COVID-19 will develop complications severe enough to require hospital care, most often pneumonia. In a small proportion of these, the illness may be severe enough to lead to death. (Department of Health and Social Care, 2020a)

What happened in March 2020 to change this seasonal flu equivalent (see Chap. 6) into an alleged new “Spanish flu” (see Chap. 4)? Schwab and Malleret (2020, p. 8) note that past disease outbreaks have “forced empires to change course” and ask: “could the COVID-19 pandemic mark the onset of a similar turning point with long-lasting and dramatic consequences for our world today?” Yet, in the same book, they concede Schwab and Malleret (2020, p. 99) that “the consequences of COVID-19 in terms of health and mortality will be mild compared to previous pandemics.”

There was substantial mixed messaging around the “vaccines.” For example: the “vaccine” is the way out; NPIs remain necessary after injection. “Vaccinated” people become dead ends for the virus and cannot spread it (Choi, 2021); efficacy wanes and the “vaccine” prevents neither transmission nor infection (Loffredo, 2021). For most of 2021, “fully vaccinated” meant having had two injections; then it changed to include a third injection or “booster shot” (Wright & Tapsfield, 2021).

Contrast the following Mail headlines from August 15 and 27, 2023: “Here comes the “real deal”! Scientists raise alarm over new Covid variant and call for return of face masks” (Stearn, 2023) vs. “Mask study published by NIH suggests N95 Covid masks may expose wearers to dangerous level of toxic compounds linked to seizures and cancer” (Joshu, 2023). The messaging is schizoid by design and is intended to cause confusion.

Continuous Questioning

In prisoner interrogations in totalitarian regimes, “the victim is bombarded with questions day and night” (Meerloo, 1956, p. 28). CIA Director Allen Dulles (1953, p. 21) recounts the tale of a man who had been “subjected for 75 days to the monotony of interrogation.” For POWs in the Korean War, “Under the daily signal of dulling routine questions […] their minds went into a state of inhibition and diminished alertness” (Meerloo, 1956, p. 45). Biderman’s chart of coercion includes “threats of endless interrogation” (Amnesty, 1973, p. 49). The Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual recommends “nonsense questioning” in which “two or more ‘questioners’ ask the subject questions which seem straightforward but which are illogical and have no pattern”; finding this “mentally intolerable,” even “very orderly and logical subjects […] begin to doubt their sanity” (CIA, 1983).

From the beginning of “Covid-19,” the BBC News website, accessed by roughly three quarters of British online news users (Ofcom, 2018), featured a “Coronavirus” bar containing five lead articles whose titles were almost always framed as questions. This means that a very large number of people in Britain and around the world who turn to the BBC for their news were subliminally barraged with questions for ca. two years, until the bar was finally retired.

Consider the following BBC article titles, all from 2020 (date/month in brackets): “Coronavirus: What are viruses?” (20/1), “How do I protect myself from coronavirus?” (4/3), “Can AI help to fight coronavirus?” (12/3), “Coronavirus: What are the facts? (13/3), “Coronavirus: Do masks work?” (16/3), “Coronavirus: What does ‘delay’ mean for you?” (16/3), “How do I know if I have coronavirus?” (18/3), “Coronavirus: What is social distancing?” (23/3), “Should I wear a mask to stop coronavirus?” (17/4), “How can you tell if it’s hay fever or coronavirus?” (20/4), “What are the EU coronavirus schemes?” (22/4), “How close are we to a coronavirus vaccine?” (23/4), “Coronavirus: how to wear a face covering?” (14/5), “What does a Covid-secure office look like?” (15/5), “Does contact tracing stop coronavirus?” (2/6), “Coronavirus: What’s the risk for ethnic minorities?” (10/6), “Covid in Scotland: What are the latest lockdown rules?” (24/6), “Has Covid testing gone wrong?” (29/6), “Can you get coronavirus twice?” (9/7), “Coronavirus vaccine: how close are we? (29/7), “Coronavirus and lockdowns: what is the latest?” (13/9), “Covid: how worried should we be?” (17/10), “Has Covid stolen my future?” (18/10), “Long Covid: Who is more likely to get it?” (21/10), “Coronavirus vaccine: How close are you to getting one?” (16/11), “When will the Covid-19 vaccine be ready?” (17/11), “Will there be more than one coronavirus vaccine?” (17/11), “Will you take the vaccine?” (17/11), “When will you be eligible for the Covid vaccine?” (24/11), “What can you do in a Covid Christmas?” (25/11), “Covid: What are the new tiers and lockdown rules in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?” (27/11), “How will I get a vaccine?” (2/12), “What’s in the vaccine?” (12/2), “A Covid Vaccine: The End of the Pandemic?” (12/12), “Covid vaccine: How does a vaccine get approved?” (14/12), “New Covid strain: how worried should we be?” (15/12), “What has Covid done for climate crisis?” (27/12), “Covid: What is happening with schools in January?” (29/12), and “Covid-19 in the UK: How many coronavirus cases are there in your area?” (ongoing).

Although this may look like the BBC performing a public service by trying to answer questions readers may have, in the context of psychological warfare the constant questioning exacerbates public confusion and uncertainty. It also wears people down by inculcating them with a sense that they never really know what is happening and, implicitly, that they should trust the authorities to tell them what to do.

Damage to the Meaning of Words

Propaganda has always done damage to the meaning of words. As Fromm wrote in 1942,

Never have words been more misused in order to conceal the truth than today. Betrayal of allies is called appeasement, military aggression is camouflaged as defence against attack, the conquest of small nations goes by the name of a pact of friendship, and the brutal suppression of the whole population is perpetrated in the name of National Socialism. (Fromm, 1960, p. 236)

How little times change. §5 of the 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy proposes pre-emptive warfare as a means of camouflaging the U.S. invasion of Iraq the following year (recalling Hitler’s invasion of Norway). The mass atrocities of the “Covid-19” era (Hughes et al., 2022) were perpetrated in the name of keeping people “safe,” “the greater good,” etc. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

Consider the damage done to language and the meaning of words by the “Covid-19” operation. Staying apart from other people, a profoundly antisocial act, is called “social distancing.” “Staying apart,” Australians were told, “keeps us together” (R. Green, 2020). “Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives” can be reinterpreted as “House arrest (Sumption, 2020). Nazification of the NHS (Corbett, 2021). Lockdown deaths (Rancourt et al., 2021).” “Freedom passports,” as they were originally branded in the United Kingdom, require people to show their (digital ID) papers as in any totalitarian society. Peaceful protestors have been branded “right-wing extremists.” Truth has been labelled “misinformation” by “fact checkers” paid to promote Establishment narratives, while pseudoscience has been propagated by pro-Establishment so-called “scientists” (see Chaps. 4 & 6).

The Science™ is a form of anti-scientific cult thinking that insists on consensus (a political category) instead of scepticism (the essence of real science). Under The Science™, the meanings of scientific terms can be altered at will to fit political agendas. A “pandemic” since the WHO’s redefinition of the term in 2009 does not imply serious illness or death (Keil, 2010, p. 2). The WHO redefined “herd immunity” in 2020 as exclusively a function of “vaccination” (removing reference to natural immunity)—compare the June 9 and November 13 definitions (WHO, 2020a, 2020b). The CDC in 2021 redefined “vaccination” to exclude all reference to immunity: “protection” or alleviation of symptoms, rather than preventing infection or transmission, became sufficient, rendering the “Covid-19 vaccines” no different from drugs or treatments (Hughes, 2022, p. 210).

With the U.S. economy entering recession in mid-2022, the definition of recession was changed so that it no longer meant two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth (Billot, 2022). The Cambridge English Dictionary changed its definition of a woman from “an adult female human being” to include also “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth” (Cambridge University Press, n.d.). In keeping with totalitarianism, words just mean whatever the authorities want them to mean, no matter how unscientific. “They can change the rules of reason or truth at the drop of a hat,” Scott (2021c) claims, and “whatever they suggest, it will be couched via an abuse of language, science and reason, to confuse us and lead us further into menticide and breakdown.”

Davis (2021) observes of the ruling class: “They consistently use deceptive language to conceal their intentions […] We must unpick their language to fully comprehend their intentions, in the hope that we can resist and deny them.” In that spirit, I propose the following glossary of deceptive terms since 2020:

Table 5.1 Glossary of deceptive terms
Full size table

Once one learns to decode the deliberately deceptive language, the agendas become more visible.

The Production of Insanity

Gaslighting

The term “gaslighting,” Merriam-Webster’s word of the year in 2022, derives from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 stage play Gas Light, in which an abusive husband tries to drive his wife insane (in order to steal from her) by clandestinely dimming the gas lights in the house and denying his wife’s perception that the lights are dimmer. Gaslighting, in contemporary parlance, is a form psychological manipulation intended to make the victim “question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories,” typically leading to “confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator” (Merriam-Webster, 2021).

An obvious example of gaslighting in the “Covid-19” context was NHS/UK Government “look them in the eyes” propaganda (Duffy, 2021), evidently intended to guilt-trip anyone resisting the official narrative and to make them question their own judgement. The scientific literature, nevertheless, indicates that looking someone in the eye is a “bad predictor” of whether or not they are lying (Gray, 2011, p. 31).

The public was made to question its own sanity through the creation of a nonsensical and harmful medicalised environment that was ostensibly to keep people “safe.” As van der Pijl (2022, p. 29) observes: “Making face masks compulsory, social distancing and similar, medically senseless or even counterproductive measures evoke an absurd, unreal atmosphere that deeply affects people’s state of mind.”

Gaslighting can involve pretending things happened when they did not (or vice versa), to interfere with the victim’s memory and undermine their sense of perception. As a matter of historical record, Boris Johnson told the British public on March 18, 2020: “we think now that we must apply further downward pressure on that upward curve by closing the schools. So I can announce […] that after schools shut their gates from Friday afternoon, they will remain closed for […] the vast majority of pupils until further notice” (Prime Minister’s Office, 2020a). Yet, when a High Court challenge was made to the decision to close schools, the defence successfully argued that

the government had not exercised any power to close schools. Rather, they had requested schools not to provide education on school premises save for the children of key workers and vulnerable children, and to comply with their continuing duties to provide education by other means. (Dolan & Ors v. Secretary of State for Health and Social Care & Anor, 2020)

With the help of Justice Lewis and some legalese, history was rewritten and the Government was exonerated of the enormous educational and psychological damage caused by its actions.

Or consider the catastrophic damage to mental health caused by the lockdowns, which is consistent with a campaign of psychological warfare. Critics pointed to “heightened levels of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and complicated bereavement” (Marmarosh et al., 2020, p. 122). One meta-analysis of different studies finds that “individuals may experience symptoms of psychosis, anxiety, trauma, suicidal thoughts, and panic attacks” as a result of the “pandemic” (Salari et al., 2020). According to the ONS (2020), the rate of depression among UK adults rose from 10% (July 2019–March 2020) to 19% (June–November 2020); 60% of adults reported feeling stressed or anxious; and 34% reported a deterioration in their mental health (in keeping with a report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists [2022]). A 2022 meta-analysis finds that the first UK “lockdown” increased the rate of depression to 32% (Dettmann et al., 2022). Yet, the BBC in 2023 gaslights the public that “people’s general mental health and anxiety symptoms hardly deteriorated at all during the pandemic” (Roxby, 2023), while according to Sky News, “Covid did not affect happiness around the world” (Franks, 2023). The Times even expressed “lockdown nostalgia” (Walker, 2023).

Justin Trudeau, having prevented people from entering or exiting Canada without proof of “Covid-19 vaccination,” having stifled media opposition to the “Covid-19” official narrative, having forced countless people to choose between their job/education and getting the shot, and having sought to freeze the bank accounts of supporters of the Truckers’ Convoy, claimed in April 2023: “there are people who’ve probably gotten very sick from [Covid-19] vaccinations,” but “individuals are allowed to make their own choices” (see Armstrong, 2023). Similarly, New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, who as Covid Response Minister introduced “vaccine” mandates in 2021, claimed in September 2023: “I acknowledge that it was a challenging time for people, but they ultimately made their own choices. There was no compulsory vaccination, people made their own choices” (cited in Southwell, 2023).

Gaslighting Around “Covid-19 Vaccine” Damage

Perhaps the cruellest form of gaslighting has been the military-grade propaganda campaign to convince the public that “Covid-19 vaccine” damage was caused by anything but the dangerous experimental technologies that were shot into billions of people in the absence of adequate safety data. From the beginning, the “safe and effective” mantra could not be reconciled with “the expected high volume of Covid-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reaction[s],” to quote the MHRA on the eve of the UK “vaccine” rollout (Tenders Electronic Daily, 2020).

From September 2021 on—once the “Covid-19 vaccine” had been offered to the entire adult population and was moving down the age ranges to target children—the media went into overdrive to provide any justification whatsoever for heart attacks, strokes, and sudden deaths that did not involve the “vaccines.” Those symptoms were instead linked to: “young adult cannabis consumers” (CNN), “physical activity” (Irish Times), “pandemic stress and poor diet” (Sunday Times), “skipping breakfast” (Express), “lonely older women” (Times), “shovelling snow” (Mail), energy drinks (Express), a “popular fizzy drink” (Sun), living under a flight path (Mail), moderate consumption of alcohol (Mail), “hotter nights” (Guardian), “traffic noise” (CTV News), an “entirely new kind of ‘highly reactive’ chemical […] found in Earth’s atmosphere” (Mail), “clocks changing” (Express), “cold weather” (News Punch), “hot weather” (Express), “humid weather” (Express), “solar storms” (New Scientist), “flight delays” (Sun), “falling asleep with the TV on” (New York Post), “certain sleeping positions” (News Punch), a “shower habit” (Express), “loneliness” (CTV News), “car fumes from exhaust and heavy braking” (Mail), “mild Covid” (Times), “long Covid” (Sun), “no symptoms at all” (Mail), “tiny particles in the air” (Science Alert), “soil” (Sun), “artificial sweeteners” (SLAY), patients missing out on statins (Times), “Broken Heart Syndrome” (NBC, Mirror), a “cold snap” (Sky News), “lack of masking” (SLAY), women having children in their early 20s (Mail), not smiling enough (Mail), and vaping (Insider). Blood clots, meanwhile, were linked to “binge-watching TV” (WebMD), “nutrients in eggs” (Express), “alcohol, tea, and coffee” (Express), “women under 40” (Sun), “the common cold” (Sun), and “extreme heat” (Telegraph).

Thus, having terrorised the public into believing that ordinary coughs and sneezes, and even “asymptomatic transmission” by healthy people, posed a potentially lethal threat (see Chap. 4), the media strove relentlessly to normalise blood clots, heart attacks, strokes, neurological disorders, “died suddenly,” and the novel “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome” (SADS) from the time of the “vaccine” rollout.

In an apparent attempt to normalise “Covid-19 vaccine” damage in October 2022, the BBC soap opera EastEnders included a scene of a young woman suffering tremors, the left side of her face dropping, followed by a collapse and convulsions—reminiscent of the proliferation of real-life videos of that nature circulating online since the “vaccine” rollout. The ITV soap opera Coronation Street, in a December 2022 episode, included the “died suddenly” motif, helping to normalise the idea of sudden death at a time when people all over the world were publicly collapsing and convulsing (Dowd, 2022; Broudy et al., 2022).

The media feigned ignorance of what exactly was killing young people and causing the excess mortality that could not be ignored (Cuffe & Shraer, 2023). For example, consider the following headlines from between June and September 2022: “Healthy young people are dying suddenly and unexpectedly from a mysterious syndrome—as doctors seek answers through a new national register” (Daily Mail Australia), “Fit and healthy Kiwis dying unexpectedly from mysterious adult condition” (NZ Herald), “There are thousands more UK deaths than usual and we don’t know why” (New Scientist), “Heart attacks are becoming increasingly more common in women under 50 and medical experts can’t figure out why” (Daily Record). And from 2023: “Why are Americans dying so young?” (Financial Times, no mention of “vaccines”); “Brits are dying in their tens of thousands—and we don’t really have any idea why” (Mirror); and “excess deaths are on the rise—but not because of Covid” (Telegraph, no mention of “vaccines”).

The media sought to cover up “vaccine” damage to children and young people. Further to the evidence provided in Hughes (2022, § 10), consider the following headlines: “Video games could trigger heart attacks in children” (Times), “Air pollution may spur irregular heart rhythms in healthy teens” (Newsroom), “Air pollution causing heart failure and sudden death in healthy teenagers” (SLAY), “Wonder why youngsters are getting heart attacks after hitting the gym?” (Hindustan Times), and “University student ‘dies of joy’ after hearing he’d passed his exams with flying colours” (Mirror). The point with such headlines is not that each and every one definitively masks a “vaccine”-induced injury/death, but that their transnational proliferation works to normalise the abnormal, i.e. heart attacks in children and young people—coinciding with the “Covid-19 vaccine” rollout.

This is all additional to the media’s constant churning out of duplicitous pro-vaccine headlines, e.g.: “Why vaccinated people dying from Covid-19 doesn’t mean the vaccines are ineffective” (CNN), “JABULOUS: No deaths linked to Pfizer and Moderna Covid jabs, major new study finds” (Sun), “Revealed, just SEVENTY-FIVE Brits have been killed by Covid vaccines as experts hail data as proof jabs are incredibly safe and NOT behind surging excess deaths” (Mail). The media even promoted the idea that “vaccines” could be used to help cure known effects of “Covid-19 vaccine” damage, viz. “Scientists discover world’s first cure for heart attacks using the same mRNA technology as Covid vaccines” (Mail).

A Lancet Infectious Diseases study sponsored by the Rhodes Trust, the WHO, the UK Medical Research Council, GAVI, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institute for Health Research, and Community Jameel finds—predictably, given its backers—that “Covid-19 vaccination” saved “tens of millions of lives globally” (Watson et al., 2022, p. 1293). But as Rancourt and Hickey (2023) demonstrate, the modelling in the study is flawed. In country after country, it shows a huge surge in all-cause mortality (ACM) and excess mortality for 12 months in 2021, assuming the “vaccines” had not been rolled out. Epidemiologically, this is implausible “following several presumed waves of infection, and past one year of declared pandemic” (Rancourt & Hickey, 2023, p. 8). In many countries, such as the United States, the actual ACM in 2021 shows no decrease that could be associated with the “vaccines”; on the contrary, there are additional peaks. The modelling appears even more ridiculous in the case of countries such as Finland, Norway, and Australia, where there was no noticeable increase in all-cause mortality in 2020 despite a supposed “pandemic” raging. Watson et al. (2022) expect us to believe that, having made no discernible impact for a year, “Covid-19” would suddenly have let rip in 2021 were it not for the “vaccines.” In countries such as Qatar and Singapore, the modelled ACM is, at its peak, approximately ten times (!) higher than the actual ACM, which, however, remained broadly unchanged between 2018 and 2022—obvious nonsense.

Although the Watson et al. (2022) paper looks more like “vaccine” propaganda than genuine science, it had been cited in scientific sources over 900 times by December 2023. Published in a supposed leading journal, it confers intellectual respectability on claims such as that made in the 2023 announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (awarded for work facilitating the development of “Covid-19 mRNA vaccines”), i.e. “The vaccines have saved millions of lives and prevented severe disease in many more, allowing societies to open and return to normal conditions.” On the day of the announcement, the mainstream media gushed that the “vaccines” had saved “millions” and “tens of millions” of lives (see Rancourt & Hickey, 2023, pp. 2–3). As usual, the opposite appears to be true: Rancourt et al. (2023, p. 3) deduce 17 million “vaccine”-induced deaths up to September 2022. And so the gaslighting around the “vaccines” continues.

The Political Abuse of Psychiatry

In the Soviet Union, the political abuse of psychiatry was systematic and widespread (British Medical Association, 1992, pp. 63–84). Political opposition was classified as a psychiatric problem, allowing for medical incarceration and the removal of dissidents from society (Bonnie, 2002). This was particularly useful as “a tool in the struggle against dissidents who cannot be punished by legal means” (Podrabinek, 1980, p. 63). Soviet dissident, Viktor Feinberg, was told by a psychiatrist after 25 years in prison: “Your illness consists of dissenting opinions. As soon as you renounce them and adopt a correct point of view, we will let you go” (cited in Zimbardo, 2005, p. 142). Solzhenitsyn (1970) describes “the incarceration of free-thinking healthy people in madhouses” as “spiritual murder,” a psychological “variation of the gas chamber.”

In the West, dissent has been increasingly pathologised since 9/11 (Corbett, 2023). In the “Covid-19” era, however, the monstrous Soviet practice of weaponising psychiatry to discipline dissidents has made an unwelcome return—in the West. The abuse began when German medical lawyer Beate Bahner issued a press release on April 3, 2020, condemning the lockdown measures as “flagrantly unconstitutional, infringing to an unprecedented extent many of the fundamental rights of citizens” and calling on the public to take to the streets in protest (Thomson, 2020). For this, she was arrested and placed in a psychiatric ward, where she claims to have been “treated like a terrorist” and violently abused by authorities.

Swiss cardiologist Thomas Binder was arrested by an anti-terrorist squad in mid-April 2020 after speaking out against unscientific restrictions, the flawed PCR test, etc. (Hudak, 2022). He was then involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution and forced to take psychiatric medication as a condition of his release. As with Bahner, the anti-terrorist pretext indicates that the anti-terrorism architecture put in place under the “War on Terror” is now being deployed against political dissidents.

On December 10, 2020, the retired French professor of pharmacology and toxicology, Jean-Bernard Fourtillan, was forcibly placed in solitary confinement at the Uzès psychiatric hospital, the order having been given by the local préfet, “the official representative of the French executive” (Smits, 2020). Fourtillan had become well-known for his view, expressed in the independent film Hold-Up (released on November 11, 2020), that the manufactured “Covid-19” crisis was being used to impose a dangerous “vaccine” on the world.

The British press assisted in weaponising psychiatry against dissidents. Seizing on an academic paper asking whether “antisocial traits matter” when it comes to “compliance with containment measures to the COVID-19 pandemic” (Miguel et al., 2020), the Mail headline was: “People who won’t wear face masks are more likely to be sociopaths and feel ‘socially detached,’ study claims” (Chalmers, 2020). The Mirror went with “People refusing to wear face masks are ‘likely to be sociopaths’ says study” (Holland, 2020). The Times ran with, “Refusal to wear a facemask linked to sociopathy” (Blakely, 2020).

Kuhn et al. (2021) link “coronavirus conspiracy beliefs” (assumed without question to be invalid) to “delusion-related reasoning biases” and “paranoia.” Going even further, Miller (2020) argues that “neuropsychological impairments” involving “faulty prefrontal systems” in the brain are to blame for questioning the official “Covid-19” narrative, implicitly opening the door to neurosurgery/lobotomy as effective treatment for political dissent, recalling Ken Kasey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962). In an article that uses a still from the film version of Kasey’s book as its main image, Elmer (2021) comments on Forsberg et al. (2020): “In summary and effect, these Oxford doctors of medical law and ethics have advised the UK Government to equate anyone who refuses to take the COVID-19 vaccine voluntarily with someone with a mental health disorder.” Demonstrating the gravity of this error, Elmer notes that under the UK Mental Health Act, medical treatment can be administered without the recipient’s informed consent, and thus the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics was ultimately “advocating sectioning the UK public to enforce compulsory vaccination.”

The pathologisation of dissent impacted ordinary citizens. Some employers, for example, made their employees attend counselling sessions following their decision to refuse “vaccination.” When pub landlord Rod Humphris threw Labour leader Keir Starmer out of his establishment for failing to challenge “lockdown” policy in April 2021, Labour replied that Humphris was “deluded”—an example of Soviet-style “psychopathologisation of dissidents” in Scott’s (2021b) view. In May 2021, an Irishman who had filmed police disrupting Mass in the name of “Covid-19 countermeasures” was arrested in his house at 3:30am a week later under mental health legislation, based on an allegation supposedly made by his long-deceased mother (UK Column, 2021, 45:00).

Meryl Nass, a leading voice against Covid medicalised tyranny, had her licence suspended in January 2022 and was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation for prescribing Ivermectin, reminiscent of “the Soviet KGB during the period when dissidents were incarcerated in psychiatric gulags to silence their dissent” (Blaylock, 2022, p. 2).

In April 2022, independent journalist Ramola D was arrested and was detained against her will for six days in a psychiatric facility (D, 2022). She believes she was targeted for reporting on a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Defence and the Department of Justice to roll out a programme of mass surveillance and targeting of the population using electromagnetic weaponry.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in October 2022 mooted the idea of “prescription medications and/or referral to psychotherapy” for patients refusing to take a “Covid-19 vaccine” (Zwicker, 2022). In the same month, the increasingly politicised direction of travel was also evident in the Canadian Psychiatric Association’s (2022) claim that “certain political movements have challenged the diagnosis of delusions.”

Driving the Public Mad

The “Covid-19” operation involved an orchestrated, multi-pronged attack on the cognitive function of the minds of the public. Confusion was weaponised via the mental chaos arising from nonsensical “rules,” last-minute government U-turns, deliberately unpredictable treatment of the public, and a barrage of lies designed to convey that the system itself is fundamentally irrational (even though it follows a very clear class logic). Constant mixed messaging, continuous questioning, damage to the meaning of words, and an esoteric ruling class vocabulary all contributed to verbal confusion. The public was gaslighted in various ways, from the implementation of a seemingly absurd/surreal social environment, to denial of past events, to cover-up of “vaccine” injury, to a Soviet-style political abuse of psychiatry.

“Covid-19” was, in Scott’s (2021d) assessment, “an anti-human and psychotic narrative; a schizogenic and menticidal narrative; [intended] to drive us mad and destroy our reason, beliefs and values.” Based on the evidence provided in this chapter, this seems like an accurate assessment. We are dealing here with a psychological warfare operation designed to cripple the cognitive capabilities of targeted populations. Troublingly, that operation was implemented by the very governments and media whose role it supposedly is to protect the public and expose abuses of power. This provides further evidence that all institutions aligned with the transnational ruling class are now arrayed against the public, to force through the transition to technocracy. The fact that Soviet-style methods have been openly adopted is yet another warning sign that liberal democracy is on the brink of giving way to totalitarianism unless a revolutionary alternative can be found.