Home

  • Professor Mattias Desmet’s Theory of Mass Formation Psychosis

    After the Joe Rogan / Robert Malone interview, many people are wondering what Mass Formation Psychosis is. This interview, titled “Are we being hypnotized? The Phenomenon of Mass Formation” with Aubrey Marcus and Professor Mattias Desmet is worth listening to no matter what side of the fence you are on when it comes to COVID-19, vaccines, etc. In it, Desmet explains that mass formation is essentially a group hypnosis (group think) that emerges in society when four conditions are met:

    1. Lack of social bond [see 11:51 mark]
    2. People experience life as meaningless or senseless [14:01]
    3. Free floating anxiety and free floating psychological discontent [15:22]
    4. Free floating frustration and aggression [17:17]

    Desmet explains that all four of these conditions are currently being met, putting the majority of the population in a mental state that allows them to be essentially hypnotized.

    “So all this free floating anxiety is attached to, connected to, the object of anxiety indicated in the narrative. And there is a huge willingness to participate in the strategy to deal with this object of anxiety because in this way, people feel that they can control their anxiety and their psychological discontent better. So all this anxiety connects to the subject of anxiety, and there is a huge willingness to participate in the strategy and that leads up to something very specific. People suddenly feel connected again in a heroic struggle with the object of anxiety. So a new kind of solidarity, a new kind of social bond and a new kind of meaning emerges in society. And that’s the reason why people follow the narrative, why people buy into the narrative and why they are willing to participate in this strategy.“

    Professor Mattias Desmet

    For those that prefer to read instead of watch, you can find the full transcript below. It include timestamps in case you want to jump to a specific part of the video embedded below. The interview is over 1 hour an 20 minutes long in total.

    Note: If viewing this on a mobile device, it is best viewed horizontally (in landscape mode.)

    SpeakerTimeDialogue
    Aubrey Marcus1:02Mattias, thanks for coming on the show.
    Mattias Desmet1:05Welcome.
    Aubrey Marcus1:07So I’d love to start with a little explanation of your background and where you’re coming from and where you’ve gotten your education and some of your credentials to talk about what we’re about to talk about.
    Mattias Desmet1:22That’s great. Yes. So actually I am a professor in clinical psychology, and I lecture at Ghent University in Belgium. And also I have a double degree. Actually, I have a degree in psychology, but also I also got a master in statistics, meaning that I could take two different angles or two perspectives on this crisis, actually.
    Aubrey Marcus1:49Yeah. And that’s kind of where things started for you, because with your background and statistics, you started noticing that there was models that were being projected out into the world and then the models were not making sense pretty quickly. So tell us how that got into your mind as far as taking a look at things and thinking something’s not quite right here.
    Mattias Desmet2:14Yes. So indeed, in the beginning of the crisis. So, around the end of February 2021, I took the perspective of a statistician. Indeed, I started to study some numbers and some figures and some mortality rates, the infection fatality rate, the case fatality rate, stuff like that. And I immediately got the impression that most statistical models overestimated the dangerousness of the virus. And by the end of 2020, in my opinion, by the end of May 2020, this was proven beyond doubt, I think, because the models that were used around which the Corona measures were based worldwide predicted, so those were the models of Imperial College in London, these models predicted that in a country such as Sweden, about 80,000 people would die by the end of May 2020 if the country did not go into lockdown. And the country did not go into lockdown and only 6,000 people died, which means about 13 times less than was predicted. So the predictions of Imperial College were completely off, actually. And the strangest thing was for me that at that moment, the Corona measures, the people in charge, always claimed that they relied on mathematical modeling and science, actually. But when it was proven beyond doubt that the initial models were completely wrong, the measures continued. The Corona measures continued as if nothing was wrong, as if the models were right. So for me, it was a strong sign that there were things going on at a psychological level that were really powerful. Besides other things. Of course, something that also struck me at the beginning of the crisis was that political leaders never seem to have taken into account the collateral damage caused by the measures. In my opinion, if you take measures against the virus, the first thing that you would consider is whether the measures you take, for instance, the lockdowns, will not claim more victims than the virus could claim. That was exactly, so like in the beginning of the crisis, Institutions such as the United Nations warned us immediately that there could be more people dying from hunger, from starvation in developing countries, then there could possibly die from the virus if no measures were taken at all. So it shows immediately that actually the remedy could be far worse than the disease in this case and also that in one way or another, nobody seemed really able to take into account both the victims that could be claimed by the virus on the one hand, and the collateral damage caused by the Corona measures. Never during this crisis…we saw one mathematical model that calculated both the number of victims that could die from the virus and the collateral damage of the measures never happened.
    Aubrey Marcus6:14And it’s such a basic thing that you would do if you’re acting in good faith and you want to do the best thing for the world, the best thing for the country. You look at all different options and you assess risk and reward for all different options and you make a logical decision. It’s just the most obvious thing to do. This is not like, wow, what an amazing idea. How did you come up with that? That’s incredible.
    Mattias Desmet6:40It’s obvious that you basic consideration someone can do in this situation, yes? And it never happened. So in one way or another, it showed how that the attention of the entire world was so narrow that it was focused so much on one risk or one danger, the coronavirus itself. That to me, it seemed as if from then on, from the end of May 2020, I really switched perspectives. I really had a feeling that I should try to understand what was happening at the psychological level. What made that the attention of people was so narrowly focused on the coronavirus.
    Aubrey Marcus7:34This was something that was very difficult for me, and this is a very complex situation, and it’s hard to know what exactly the right thing to do is, but the fact that people weren’t considering all of these other tangential and secondary effects of all of the measures being taken, and not only that, but the opportunity cost of the money that was being spent to support the lockdowns and the closing of businesses. I mean, the US alone has produced trillions of dollars of excess capital. And if you look at statistics of estimates from different worldwide organizations, okay. What would it cost to create sustainable food supplies for the entire world and world hunger? It’s like 300 billion somewhere around there. What would it cost to get clean sanitary water for everybody who’s dying of parasites with a bloated belly? Okay, that’s maybe 150,000,000,000. Maybe it’s double. That doesn’t matter. It’s less than one stimulus check. And all of a sudden, we ended world hunger. We provided clean water for the world, and then we can start looking at other things.
    Aubrey Marcus8:34Okay.
    Aubrey Marcus8:35Let’s improve education. Let’s improve all of these other qualities that ultimately downstream lead to the degradation of society, poor education, poor support, poor nutrition, lack of support for families and domestic abuse. And all of these centers. There’s so much that could have been done with the money. So there’s not only the direct cost, which is the suicidality that goes from lack of meaning and lack of purpose and people taking their jobs and the increase in alcohol sales, which are through the roof and increase in domestic violence and all of these other different things and the people who are being starved. But then there’s opportunity cost. And that wasn’t in a model either. So no one was deciding like, okay, maybe this is the right thing, and I’m still open to that. I’m still open to that. But you have to show me that this is the right thing compared to all of the other things that we could do. I mean, I was the CEO of a big company. It’s basic. We got this opportunity. It’s going to cost this, this is where it’s going to go. You just figure it all out. Of course, you make the best choice. And maybe you’re wrong. But at least you’ve considered it.
    Mattias Desmet9:43Of course yes. And that was what didn’t happen. And what was really striking. I started to really think about what psychological dynamic or processes could be responsible for this lack of openness of mind in a situation. And it took me several months. Actually, it took me until August 2020 to really, in my opinion, hit the nail and to suddenly see that what we were dealing with was a large scale phenomenon of mass formation, of what is called mass formation, and looking backward it seems really surprising to me that it took me so long because I had been lecturing for three or four years about the psychological process, which showed actually that also, I, as a psychologist, was very much under the spell of this process. Or at least that also for me, it was really difficult to see what was going on. And I believe that’s the same for my colleagues in psychology. Most of them are really not aware of what is going on at this moment. I mean, 99%.
    Aubrey Marcus11:01Yeah. So, I want to really get into this into mass formation and understand it. Is it possible that just like you, first of all, I want to make it so that it doesn’t seem like we’re saying this is some conspiracy and it has to be that. It seems like it’s possible that even the politicians themselves, even the policymakers themselves, everybody, was falling victim to this kind of mass psychosis that was happening in mass formation. This was just a psychological process that was universal that doesn’t necessitate some evil intent or some powerful cabal that’s trying to do something to harm people. It’s just a psychological process that’s difficult to resist unless you become aware of it.
    Mattias Desmet11:51Yes, it’s psychological process that is, for 95%, an unconscious process, both at the level of the masses and at the level of the leaders of the masses. So that’s one very important thing that the leaders of the masses usually are also grasped in the process of mass formation. But maybe we should go into detail a little bit and tell how it emerges in a society. The process absolutely. Is that okay. So mass formation is a specific kind of group formation, and it emerges in a society when very specific conditions are met. And the most central of these conditions, the most important of these conditions, is that there should be a lot of people who experience a lack of social bond. A lot of people who feel socially isolated, and then the second condition immediately.
    Aubrey Marcus12:44Well, let me stop you there because I have some statistics. So lack of social bond. We’re talking about ripe conditions for this psychological phenomenon called mass formation, which is a kind of group hypnosis. Number one, lack of social bond. This is a condition that’s important. Here are some statistics. According to the National Survey from published in the American Sociological Review, 25% of people reported that they didn’t have a single close friend, not one, right? That’s a crazy thing. One out of four people didn’t have a single close friend. And then the 75 million adults aged 18 to 27, comprising the millennials and generation Z, were lonelier than any other US demographic. Which is wild to think. We think of like older generations being lonely, but it’s actually the younger generations reporting even more loneliness. Some psychologists say it’s a social media paradox. People are interacting online with their avatars, which isn’t their true self, so they’re not creating the intimacy of vulnerability that comes from shared experience. So as far as condition number one for mass formation, it’s inarguable that we are suffering a crisis of lack of community and lack of peace.
    Mattias Desmet14:01From this first condition follows the second one, which means that a lot of people experience life as meaningless or senseless. And, for instance, think about the phenomenon of the bullshit jobs. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this phenomenon. Professor Graeber in Great Britain wrote a book about it, which was titled Bullshit Jobs, and he describes how research shows that when you ask people whether they think their job is meaningful, 50% of the people answered “not at all”. 50% feels that their job is not meaningful at all. That doesn’t mean anything to anyone. So a very nice example, I think strong condition.
    Aubrey Marcus14:49I also have another study that I was able to find it’s. A Gallup poll from 2012 polled people in 142 countries. 63% of respondents admitted to being so disengaged at work that they were sleepwalking through their work day, putting time but not passion into their work. 63% of people right. Okay. Condition number two, condition number two, we’ve established that there’s a lack of social bond. There’s a lack of meaning and purpose in what people are doing.
    Mattias Desmet15:22And the third condition follows actually from the first two conditions. The third condition is that in order for mass formation to emerge, there should be a lot of what psychologists call free floating anxiety and free floating psychological discontent. Meaning that if you’re anxious of a lion, you know what you’re anxious for. So the anxiety is connected to the mental representation or the mental image of a lion. But if people feel socially isolated and if they feel that their life has no meaning, then they are confronted with a kind of anxiety that is free floating. That means that it is not connected to a mental representation and with a lot of psychological discontent that is not connected with a mental representation. And also that at that level, we see very striking things, namely, that, for instance, in a country such as Belgium, each year, 300 million doses of antidepressants are used in a population of about 11 million. And then we are talking only about antidepressants. There are also antipsychotics and sleeping pills
    Aubrey Marcus16:39And anxiety medications. Yep.
    Mattias Desmet16:41Yea. The fourth condition is that they should…
    Aubrey Marcus16:45Let me just give one more study. So the World Health Organization says that one in five people actually have anxiety disorders. So they actually not only have anxiety, but they qualify as having anxiety disorders, which is over 300 million people. And that’s something that’s in the manual, like an anxiety, in the manual. It’s not just like a little bit of anxiety, which a lot of us have, like, one in five people have anxiety disorders. So this free floating anxiety is also incredibly pervasive.
    Mattias Desmet17:17Yes, of course it is. Yes. And then the fourth condition is that there should be a lot of free floating frustration and aggression meaning people should feel. And that actually follows from the other conditions as well. So people should feel frustrated and feeling aggressive without also really knowing what the cause of the frustration and aggression is. And if these four conditions are fulfilled in society, then the population is in a mental state in which something very specific can happen. Meaning that, if under these conditions a narrative, a story is distributed through the mass media, indicating an object of anxiety, and at the same time providing a strategy to deal with this object of anxiety, then the following happens or might happen. All the free floating anxiety, free floating anxiety, which is extremely painful because it always threatens to turn into panic. So all this free floating anxiety is attached to, connected to, the object of anxiety indicated in the narrative. And there is a huge willingness to participate in the strategy to deal with this object of anxiety because in this way, people feel that they can control their anxiety and their psychological discontent better. So all this anxiety connects to the subject of anxiety, and there is a huge willingness to participate in the strategy and that leads up to something very specific. People suddenly feel connected again in a heroic struggle with the object of anxiety. So a new kind of solidarity, a new kind of social bond and a new kind of meaning making sense, making emerges in society. And that’s the reason why people follow the narrative, why people buy into the narrative and why they are willing to participate in this strategy, even if it is utterly absurd. Because the reason why they follow it has nothing to do with the fact that it is correct or accurate or scientific. Not at all. The reason why they buy into the narrative is because it leads to this new social bond. This new solidarity. People are social beings and being socially isolated is really painful. And through the process of mass formation they switch from the very negative state of social isolation to the opposite state of maximal connectedness, of the maximum connectedness, that exists in a crowd in a mass. And that in itself leads up to a kind of mental intoxication which is the real reason why people stick to the narrative, why people are willing to go along with the narrative, even as we said, if it is utterly wrong and even more important, even if they lose everything that is important to them personally. Because mass formation is a kind of hypnosis. And just like in hypnosis, the attention is focused on this very small part of reality that is indicated by the story. And just like in hypnosis, people are not aware of everything that happens mentally outside of this small focus of attention. That’s something very striking, like in hypnosis. What you see is that a simple hypnotic procedure is sufficient to focus the attention of someone so much on one aspect of reality that a person will never feel that someone cuts into his flesh. It’s a procedure that is used in some hospitals when someone is allergic to a chemical anesthesia. Sometimes a simple hypnotic procedure is used which focuses the attention on a positive thing, and then the surgeon can cut straight through the breast bone. The patient will not feed it. So that’s exactly what happens in mass formation. The attention is focused on the virus, for instance, in this case, and then people are not aware that they lose their psychological health or their physical health. Or they lose their wealth, their material well being, and so on. That’s one of the most problematic aspects of the phenomenon of mass formation.
    Aubrey Marcus22:09And it can be productive, right? The human beings don’t develop things that are entirely unproductive. Those things typically get weeded out. So you take a look at, like Sebastian Junger’s work in his book Tribe, and he talks about how in interviewing and surveying the people who survived the blitzkrieg in London, where bombs were falling from, Nazi bombs were falling and the air raid sirens were going off. They report that that was the happiest time of their life. They were happiest when the bombs were falling. Can you imagine the atrocity of bombs falling, people dying, exploding things happening. But they felt such a deep social bond. And all of their focus of attention was on the Nazis, on the bombs that brought everybody together. No one was lonely, actually, the mental hospitals, they all emptied out to a certain degree. Everybody was like, oh, we have a deep meaning. We have a clear purpose. We’re all in this together, and they felt better than they ever have. And it allowed them to make it through a very challenging situation. So in a situation like that, it’s a very healthy process that can happen.
    Mattias Desmet23:14Yes. For the same reason, people do not commit suicide under very severe conditions. For instance, in the concentration camps and the Gulag people did not commit suicide. And it was because there was a clear external danger they were focused on and which made their psychological system very coherent, very coherently focused on one point. Usually, people commit suicide because they feel internally divided, because they feel that they lack unity, they lack coherence. And when there is a strong external danger, people usually will feel very coherent and they will, for instance, and not commit suicide. That’s something very striking. And the example you give is actually a wonderful example indeed, of people who are under attack and who feel that they experience the happiest times of their lives. I’ve never heard that example. But it’s a wonderful example.
    Aubrey Marcus24:11Yeah. Sebastian Junger’s book Tribe is phenomenal. I recommend it. There’s very toxic examples of that as well. So you take a look at the witch hunts, for example, that happened throughout Europe and in America. And there’s a quote from Francis Hill, and he was saying during the witch hunts in some Swiss villages, there were hardly any women left alive once the fever burned out. And it got to such a fever. So basically, everybody had this free floating anxiety, a lack of social bond, lack of purpose, all of the conditions presuming led up to this. And then all of a sudden, someone came with a narrative that, oh, you know what the problem is? It’s the witches.
    Aubrey Marcus24:51It’s the witches. It’s the women who are the witches. And that’s the problem. So they became the scapegoat. They became the reason everybody became myopically focused, narrowed their field of attention on that external threat. And in that fever, they just burned women alive until in some places, there were no women left.
    Mattias Desmet25:11Yes. So something very important, I think, is that for one reason or another, which can be explained. I’m writing a book in which I go into detail about this. But I don’t think we can do it now because it would lead us too far. But for one reason or another, the process of mass formation become stronger throughout the 19th century. And, for instance, Gustave Le Bon, who is one of the major scholars on the phenomenon of mass formation, warned us that in 1895 already that if the process would continue to become stronger, the process of mass formation, we would soon end up in a state in which the masters of the crowd would take over control in society. And that we would, according to Gustave Le Bon, experience the emergence of a new kind of state, a new kind of political apparatus. And that was exactly what happened in the beginning of the 20th century in the Soviet Union and the Nazi Germany. We saw this immense, this last large scale process of mass formation there. And then the objects of anxiety were the aristocracy in the Soviet Union and the Jews in Nazi Germany. And we saw that we saw how the masses emerged and how the masses were grasped in this specific narrative. And then how suddenly a totalitarian regime took advantage of this mass formation and started one of the most cruel episodes in modern history. With something with certain characteristics, like a totalitarian state is radically different from a classical dictatorship. And that’s very important. And the difference is this psychological process. Classical dictatorship is not based on mass formation, not at all. Classical dictatorship is based on a very primitive process of fear that a human being has for someone who is stronger, who is in power.
    Aubrey Marcus27:20Like any warlord, like a warlord in a tribal situation, I have the most guns. I have the people on my side. And if you don’t comply, I’ll shoot you. And that’s what we see in a lot of movies, actually, like a lot of the villains in the fantasy novels or whatever. They’re just they have the biggest army. And that’s how they keep everybody in control. But we don’t see the process. And I think a lot of times we project that on someone like Stalin, like, oh, yeah, he just did this. It was all him. But no, he just took advantage of a deep psychological process that was supported. People were cheering him on all the way up to the point where he killed millions and millions of people. And then they were like, oh, shit. What did we do? But that was like, a little bit late.
    Mattias Desmet28:02Of course, that’s the difference between classical dictatorship and a totalitarian state. And it shows that it makes that actually the structure and the process totalitarian states go through is really different from the process of classical dictatorships. For instance, if in a classical dictatorship, the opposition stops to speak out. Like if the opposition, the dissonant voices, the dissident voices are silenced, then usually the dictator will become milder. He will become less aggressive because he realizes that he has to try to make the population sympathetic against him to make them feel that he will be a good leader and stuff. So it’s important for him that at that moment he becomes milder and less aggressive because he is in power. He doesn’t need to be aggressive anymore. But in totalitarianism, a totalitarian state, exactly the opposite happens. When the opposition is silent, when the opposition stops to speak out. At that moment, exactly, the totalitarian state commits its most cruel atrocities, starts to commit its most cruel atrocities. And that was what happened in 1930 in the Soviet Union, when Stalin started has a “large scale purification”, which led to about 80 million people dying in less than ten years, according to Selsinchin. And then in Nazi Germany, the same happened around 1935. The opposition was silenced. And then the real problem started in the totalitarian state. So totalitarianism is something really different from classical dictatorships. And it’s the process of mass formation that is important. There the process of mass formation, which became increasingly strong throughout the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, like the witch funds you refer to, are very important. These witch funds, indeed, were perfect examples of mass formation, but they didn’t last too long.
    Aubrey Marcus30:24That’s because people out of women.
    Mattias Desmet30:26Yes. But that’s something that often happens, like the larger the population, the worse the processes of mass formation are. And for the reason you mentioned, because mass formation needs always new victims. Mass formation arises around an object of anxiety, and that object always has to be destroyed. And so if the population is too small, the mass formation will take less long than in a large population. And that was exactly the reason, according to Hannah Arendt Jewish German philosopher, why totalitarianism was only successful or emerged only in countries with a very large population, such as the Soviet Union.
    Aubrey Marcus31:22Let me get this. I don’t understand Soviet history that well, but I think initially the scapegoat was the wealthy, right? It was like the wealthy bourgeoisie, and they were the ones that were destroying the country. But ultimately, somehow Stalin then switched because you ran out of those there’s not that many wealthy people right ran out of killing them and using them as a scapegoat. And then he switched it. He switched it to something else that gave him the reasoning to kill all of the 80 million people that he killed.
    Mattias Desmet31:55He switched it to the Kulaks, the farmers, actually. And then to the goldsmiths, then to the Jews, the one group after the other. Until finally, he also killed 50% of his Communist Party members, who usually didn’t do anything wrong, who were not disloyal to him, not at all. But he killed them. And the strangest thing about this was that these party members actually in a very strange way, which was also very nicely described by George Orwell in Animal Farm, for instance, but also by Sulcinich and the Willock Archipelago and Hannah Arendt also describes it. These party members who were killed, who were condemned, all admitted that they had been disloyal, that they had been traitors and so on, which was very strange. Like people, observers from abroad, international observers were baffled. And they said, what is happening here? We can’t believe our eyes. These people didn’t do anything wrong. They did not go against the rules of Stalin. And then now they admit that they have done things wrong and that they deserve to die, which was extremely strange. And that’s exactly what happens in a process of mass formation. Someone is graphed so much in a narrative that he accepts the most absurd consequences of the narrative, even if it costs him or her their own life. So that’s one of the most strangest things I’ve heard.
    Aubrey Marcus33:33I’ve heard the word mentacide. Would you call that, what happens, the mentacide is the killing of the mind. At a certain point, the totalitarian process, it kills the mind. It degrades logical thinking. It degrades all of the faculties of sense making and meaning making to the point where the mind is dead. And at that point, you’re so gullible to suggestion. And it’s something that you can see in a small scale where if you have a really belligerent interrogator and someone with a weaker mind, after enough time, they’ll admit to a crime that they didn’t do. And there’s many examples of this in the justice system of a very aggressive and psychologically keen interrogator that’s convinced somebody that they actually committed a murder that they didn’t do. And then they’ll find with DNA results, they didn’t do it. And they were like, Why did you admit to it? And they’re like, I don’t know.
    Mattias Desmet34:26Indeed, that’s exactly what happens in a process of mass formation. The individual disappears and the collective becomes absolutely predominant and erases all individual characteristics. It doesn’t make a difference whether the people involved, the individual involved are very intelligent or not intelligent. It doesn’t make any difference. Always the same happens. Everybody becomes equally “stupid” in a mass, and it doesn’t matter how smart or how intelligent they were before they lose all capacity for critical thinking. They lose all individual characteristics because they are really absorbed in this process of mass formation.
    Aubrey Marcus35:15I’ve heard you talk about there is a spectrum of people who go along with the narrative and are very susceptible to this mass formation phenomenon. There’s people in the middle that are kind of like, I’m not really sure. And then there’s the people who are in opposition of this. And that’s the initial condition for mass formation. Then it seems like, once we get to totalitarianism, the degradation of people’s mind starts to actually make those numbers even increase. But let’s talk about the first part, which is how this spectrum kind of plays out. And whether you think that what’s happening now is kind of what you’re seeing in the spectrum. And of course, we have to establish that what we’re seeing now has some of the characteristics of mass formation. But let’s talk about the spectrum first. And then let’s talk about our current situation.
    Mattias Desmet36:05Yes, indeed. Usually when a process of mass formation emerges in a society and a population only 30% of the people is really hypnotized. So that’s something very important, because it seems there are much more. But it’s not the case. There is only 30% of the people who are really hypnotized. And then there is an additional 40% of the people who goes along with this first group because they never go against the current, and they feel that they don’t want to go against the current, that is too difficult and too dangerous to go against the crowd. So and then there is an additional 20% or 30% or something who is not hypnotized and who wants to speak out, who wants to do something. But it can be surprising, like even in totalitarian States such as Germany or the Soviet Union. Usually not more than about 30% of the people is really totalitarian. And that’s something that is observed time and time again. I don’t know if you’re familiar with experiments of Solomon Ash. Solomon Ash was a psychologist who did some experiments shortly after the second World War, in which he showed two small groups of about eight people on one line who was about 30 CM long, and then three other lines. The first of these three lines was about 10 CM long. The second was 120 CM long, and then the third one was about 60 CM long. So it was clear in one glance of an eye it was clear that the third line was the line that was equally that had the same length as the first one. And that was what Solomon Ash asked to these small groups of participants, eight participants, he asked, what do you think which lines have the same length? And the first seven of the participants actually were collaborators of Solomon Ash. And they were all instructed to give the wrong answer. They were all instructed to say that line one and the two lines were equally wrong, who were absolutely not equally equally long. And upon hearing that upon hearing that the first seven participants all gave the wrong answer, of which a blind man could see that this was wrong, the 8th participants in 75% of the cases gave the same wrong answer. So it was really amazing to see.
    Aubrey Marcus38:58When I studied that, and it’s a really powerful video as well. And maybe we’ll be able to edit that into this just so people can see it. The psychologist and Solomon gave two hypotheses. One was that in some cases, people actually convinced themselves that they were wrong, that their eyes were deceiving them, and they were just wrong. And so they actually believed that they believed what everybody else was saying was true. And then another group was just so shy about saying something different from everybody else because they were so worried that the other people would make them an outcast. So they were just going along with it, even though they knew they were wrong, they were giving the wrong answer. So there was two reasons why the participants were giving the wrong answer.
    Mattias Desmet39:41Yes, indeed. And there were these three groups as well. The three groups, the first group who really believed or who are really hypnotized by the group and who are really convinced that the wrong answer was the right answer. And then the second group who knew that it was the wrong answer, but who didn’t dare to speak out. And then the third group who saw that, who gave her the right answer, who dared to speak out. You see these three groups time and time again and you see them in each process of mass formation, a group that is really hypnotized and then a totalitarian state who becomes really totalitarian, then a second group who just only goes along with the first group. And then a third group who does not want to buy into the story and who wants to speak out. So meaning that in this situation, if the people who want to speak out dissident voices, if in one way or another, they could unify and form one group, then it’s very probable the second group of about 40% of the people might switch direction and join them. And that would mean that the mass formation is over so that’s one of the solutions to the problem. But if all the people who want to speak out and who want to go again, who are not hypnotized and who want to do something against the crowd or against the mainstream narrative, if they would unify and become one group, they would be powerful enough to change the direction of the middle group, which would mean that the majority of the people would go in a different direction than the people who are really hypnotized.
    Aubrey Marcus41:34One of the challenges, now let’s bring this to the modern context, and we’ve explained the theory and the philosophy behind mass formation, what do you see in the current system that we’re seeing, who is becoming the scapegoats? Where is this pointed to? What do you feel like is dangerous about the current situation that we’re in, and as it pertains to the pandemic?
    Mattias Desmet42:06Well, the risk, of course, is that the people who don’t want to buy into the narrative that they become a scapegoat, indeed, the anti vaccines, for instance, people who don’t want to take the vaccine might become public enemy number one, and they might become the object of this fourth condition that we mentioned at the beginning of all this free floating frustration and aggression. Because that’s also something typical for mass formation. All the free floating frustration and aggression that existed before the mass formation is projected and channeled onto the people who are not into the process of mass formation. So that’s one major risk. And then also, of course, if the massed would succeed in silencing these people, then the masses will start to commit atrocities, also towards the members of the masses themselves. So that’s strange. Hannah Ardendt says the monsters or totalitarianism and mass formation always is a monster that divorce its own children. There’s something very strange. In the end, it starts to kill among its own members. So the most important thing, actually, the most important thing we can do in this situation is to continue to speak out. I repeat this time and time again, mass formation is one kind of hypnosis. It’s an example of hypnosis, and hypnosis works through the voice in one way or another. People are grasped in the resonance of a voice. That’s what totalitarian leaders know. They start each day with 30 minutes of propaganda, for instance, just to keep people into the narrative and to make sure that they continue to resonate with the voice of the leader, with the narrative that led up to the mass formation. And the opposite is also true. Like, if there are dissident voices, if there are dissonant voices that continue to speak out, then the hypnosis will become less deep. Gustave Le Bon in the 19th century said, usually dissonant voices will not have the power to wake up the mouses, but they will make the hypnosis less deep, and they will prevent that the mouses start to commit atrocities. So that’s what we all have to realize. We all have to realize, in my opinion, that it is not an option to stop speaking. We should continue to speak out. That’s the most important thing we can do.
    Aubrey Marcus44:47So we see some conditions when you talk about atrocities, people might think, all right, this will never happen. This will never exist. But all of this begins with some form of dehumanization and some form of really making some other the enemy.
    Mattias Desmet45:02Right.
    Aubrey Marcus45:03And we’ve already heard in the mainstream narrative, people who don’t want to take the vaccine, it’s become the pandemic of the vaccine. And then they’re killers. They’re domestic terrorists. That’s actually a word that mainstream media has been using. And it seems like the advantage of the state in this case is that they control the mainstream narrative. There’s a clip that I saw recently of dozens and dozens of newscasters from different all Fox News and ABC and CBS and CNN. They were all reading the exact same script. There’s a centralization of the narrative.
    Mattias Desmet45:42Production of the narrative is centralized.
    Aubrey Marcus45:45Yeah. And then with that, then there’s also the silencing of the contrary narrative, which is coming through social media. And people say, well, Instagram can censor whoever they want. It’s a private company. But nonetheless, the pressure that’s being applied seems to be, or they are just in the mass formation themselves, and they’re just deciding to do it. Who knows? I’m not trying to propose a conspiracy. I don’t know what’s happening. I think it’s very likely that people are just caught in their own mass formation. But what we’re seeing is we’re seeing censorship of dissident voices, and we’re seeing the collaboration on the single narrative that’s being pushed out to the mainstream. And that’s the challenge that I think in all of these cases, in all of these societies you face is that the more centralized communication is and the more they’re able to silence dissident narratives, burn books. It used to be. But now it’s now censoring and deplatforming and banning different… it starts to allow them to be able to be in easier control of the masses. And I think that’s what we have to look at is when doctors are being censored from giving their opinion. Why? When in history has that ever happened? That’s not science. It’s not the scientific method. You come up with a theory and you have a bunch of people challenge it. You’re an academic, you propose a theory, you expect all of your colleagues to be like, Matthias, I don’t agree with you. This is why. And you say, thank you. I appreciate your critique. Now let me explain why I’m right. But it’s not really what we’re seeing right now. So this is also leading to an opinion that, all right, this is dangerous. These conditions are appearing like they’re following a pattern, and it’s a pattern that we’ve seen. And it’s a pattern that leads to a disastrous dystopian, catastrophic result in many other cases. I’m not saying that’s where we’re going necessarily. But there’s indications that cause worry.
    Mattias Desmet47:45The large scale mass formations that we have seen, and from the 20th century on, it can never exist without mass media. So that’s clear, you need mass media who distribute the same narrative time and time again to make this large scale and long term mass formation happen. And usually I think it’s a mixture. And it’s for 90% of unconscious process. But there is also for 10% about maybe I say 10% now could be more could be less but intentional manipulation of the masses that also happens. And usually the people who do it are convinced that they will bring paradise to society. Like Stalin was. He was convinced that his historical materialistic ideal society would be realized and that in order to do that, it was justified to manipulate the population to move them in the direction he wanted. And exactly the same was the case for Hitler, who felt that his race theory would turn society into a kind of a paradise. And that exactly for that reason, it was justified to provoke some collateral damage. And I think it’s the same now of course, there are some powerful institutions who have this ideal image of society and who want to use the crisis to move the society in the direction they think is optimal, and they use all their power that is at their means. I think to make people go in the direction they want. That’s true. But I think for 95%, what is happening is not the process of large scale manipulation, but for 95%, we are in a process of large scale unconscious mass formation in which almost everybody has grasped. We shouldn’t be naive. There has always been intentional manipulations. There are always institutions who want to benefit from all kinds of circumstances. All institutions have their own idea about how the future society should look like, and they always will use their power to move in that direction. So that’s definitely happening. But that doesn’t take away. I think that for 95%, it’s a phenomenon of mass formation that happens.
    Aubrey Marcus50:15For certain people, their fatal flaw is not that they hate the world or hate society. It’s not the Batman villain Bane that just wants to watch the world burn. They actually are more like the bond villains that are like, oh, well, or Thanos, for example, yes. Except for an ordered universe, we need to kill half. We need to blink half of the people out of existence, and then the universe will be fine, and then I’ll retire. The motivation was pure in a way, it’s just a delusion. The delusion in the hubris to say, I can be God, and I accept the knowledge and I can decide. So it’s very interesting because the actions themselves are evil, but the intentions are often not evil. So when we project these, like demonic reptilian things upon them, it’s not that, they’re just overconfident and they just think they’re doing something good, but they’re actually not.
    Mattias Desmet51:09Yes, we are dealing with megalomaniac plans here. That’s the right word. I think not so much with psychopaths. That’s not true. People often say that we are dealing with psychopaths. I think we are dealing with megalomaniac plans, people who believe that they will solve all the problems in the world by imposing a new social system, which is, I think, the basic ideology of the system is transhumanist in nature. People who believe that problems can only be solved through technological control. I truly believe that this is what drives these people. This is their view on man and the world. And this is their idea on how the problems of humanity can be solved, which is delusional thinking, that’s not true at all. Exactly. This mechanistic ideal. This mechanistic thinking. This transhumanist thinking is the cause of the problems, because if we wonder why we ended up, before the Corona crisis, in this terrible mental state in which people felt socially disconnected, in which they experienced this lack of meaning making in which there was all this free floating attention, all this frustration, then we can clearly see that all this free floating anxiety and this frustration that it started to increase once the world became industrialized and mechanized. So this is very typical. While the mechanistic view on men in the world started to become predominant at the same pace, the free floating anxiety and also the social disconnectedness started to increase. And that’s why Hannah Arendt says that’s why the phenomenon of mass formation became increasingly strong throughout the last century because more and more people ended up in an isolated state. More and more people dealt with this free floating anxiety. So, I believe that the people who the large institutions who are in charge now and who actually tried to shape the future according to their own ideal image, well, I think that these people propose a solution exactly. This kind of discourse. This kind of things that caused the problem. Einstein said something very nice about that. You can never solve a problem by the same kind of thinking that caused it. That’s exactly what people try to do now, I think.
    Aubrey Marcus53:28Yeah. In The Myth of Control, Charles Eisenstein talks about this in The Myth of Control, it’s always an increasing amount of control that’s the solution, and it never ends. If the control didn’t work, more control will work. Oh, technology didn’t work? More technology will work! It’s just this endless process. They don’t want to reevaluate their thinking, probably because their identity is attached to this solution that they believe is going to work. And by whatever mechanism.

    I want to switch gears to real quick and talk about. One of the things that I see happening is this is not just a singular narrative that’s creating mass formation, because there are small pockets of mass formation that are existing as well, because on the other side, in opposition to the mainstream pandemic narrative, there’s a counter mass formation of people who are in this deep conspiracy thinking that all liberals are evil. And so they’re scapegoating liberals or they’re scapegoating certain politicians or Bill Gates or whoever becomes the object of the external threat that their free floating anxiety, their anxiety, is then attached to. So it’s a very interesting time where all right, we have one side where it’s the dominant narrative that’s causing a mass formation. And then on the other side, we have a counter mass formation, which is much smaller. That’s also not the right way, right? It’s also a scary thing as well, because if that side wins, it’s just going to be the same problem with a different scapegoat and a different victim of the atrocity. So that doesn’t work. So what needs to emerge is a third way of just loving, compassionate, rational thinking. And that’s really what I’ve been trying to dedicate my efforts towards. It’s not about picking sides here. It’s about sense making in general and universal compassion.
    Mattias Desmet55:21I agree. On the other side, there is a very similar process in which people are confronted with a lot of anxiety because they feel threatened by the process of the mass formation. They also deal with a lot of free floating anxiety, and they connected to a different object, to the elite, to the Illuminati or a small elite that would threaten them. They dehumanize this small group of people, so they have a different enemy. While the masses have as an enemy, the people who refuse to conform with the masses, the other side also creates an enemy, an object of anxiety. And in a similar way, they want to destroy this enemy. They believe that if we destroy the elite, the problem will be solved, which, of course, is not true.
    Aubrey Marcus56:09Humanization on both sides. On one side, there’s domestic terrorists. On the other side, there’s reptilian elite and sheep. Talk about dehumanization. They’re literally making them non human. And so we’re dealing with this on both sides. Fundamentally, neither way is going to work. And it’s a very interesting predicament because I was looking out at the world. I was like, well, I can’t join that team because that team is following the same principles. They’re on the same mechanism as the other team, and I certainly can’t join that team. So what’s the third team and I came up with this sentiment. I call it united polarity, which is like taking both sides with absolute reverence and reminding people that underneath all of the opinions and ideologies, there’s a human, and it’s a human that’s scared. It’s a human. It’s lonely. It’s a human that wants the best for themselves and other people at the fundamental level. Let’s remind ourselves of that. Let’s actually, instead of dehumanizing, let’s super-humanize them. Let’s see ourselves in them. Let’s see ourselves in every single other person and unite the polarities, not by trying to change them, but saying, like, look, what is the common ground by which we all stand. And that’s really through this whole process, that’s the only thing that’s really made sense to me. And when I speak about it, it seems like people, maybe it’s that group that 40% in the middle. But that group in the middle is like, I like that, I can stand behind that. And so I’m hoping that in some small way, in whatever way I’m able to contribute, that can help become part of this force that mitigates some of the damage of the mass formation leading to totalitarianism.
    Mattias Desmet58:02Yes, I hope I am part of the same force.
    Aubrey Marcus58:06I believe you are.
    Mattias Desmet58:08Yes. Because I agree there is a strong tendency to dehumanize on both sides, and that’s exactly what we should avoid. We should try to identify with being someone who tries to speak as sincere as possible and who gives everybody the right to speak out his own opinion. That’s being human. What makes us human is that we have the right to speak in our own way and the way we prefer. If people could unify, if people could form a group because they all identify with this position, that would be the solution to the problem we are facing.
    Aubrey Marcus58:50:00One of the other things that is concerning. So when you look at some of the mechanism of totalitarianism, there’s some thinkers who talk about and have analyzed that there’s waves of terror. And this is how it kind of works and the waves of terror. So something becomes really scary. There’s a retraction where it’s not so scary. And then something else really scary happens. And it’s just kind of like battering down, like you imagine a big log trying to batter down a door. And so this is something that I think we should be mindful of that if this process is happening, we should be aware that if there’s a second wave, this is part of the playbook for actually weakening people’s defenses and having them desire to reach for some powerful, despotic, tyrannical, totalitarian leader who can save the day because they just get more and more scared.
    Mattias Desmet59:54:00Yes, it’s something quite strange. I think that the masses always long for a severe and cruel leader, Gustave Le Bon said, which is something very strange, something in the process of mass formation that kept you. Look, we come from a very individualistic age in which people try to find meaning in their own lives in their own way, but actually in a strange way. Now we see how the opposite emerges. It is as if people want to lose themselves in the masses, in the crowd and as if they are looking for a leader who tells them what to do. And that’s one of the most specific aspects of mass formation that it makes people long for a harsh leader. Gustave Le Bons crisis already. And if the readers of the masses understand this, they understand that they can be as absurd as they want, that they can be as harsh as they want, that they can impose the most absurd limitations to individuals lives. It will only make mass formation stronger, and it will only make the regions more popular.
    Aubrey Marcus1:01:05It’s imposing sacrifice, which is a deep part of ritual. And I’ve heard you say ritual. How like the sacrifice itself, any initiation process, it’s difficult. It’s hard. We’ve had to do this together. We gave up Thanksgiving and we gave up Christmas, and we gave up. We never left our house and we put masks on our three year old children, and we sacrificed. And that ritual then actually increases the sense of social bond.
    Mattias Desmet1:01:32Of course. Exactly.
    Mattias Desmet1:01:33You nail it down. Now I think that’s exactly what happens. Like the Corona measures, the lockdowns, the social distancing, the mask wearing, and so on actually have the function unconsciously of a ritual, a ritual meaning a kind of behavior that, as the only function has to create a social bond. And the less practically meaningful such a behavior is, the better it serves its function as a ritual. The more absurd it is, the better it serves a function as a ritual. And the more sacrifices it demands, the better it functions as a ritual, because in this way, the individual that sacrifices something shows that the collective, that the group, the cohesion among the group members, is more important than what is important to the individual. So that’s exactly how rituals functions. Rituals have to be pragmatically meaningless, useless. And they have to demand sacrifices of the individual. And that’s exactly what the Corona measures do. They are absurd without practical relevance, most of them. And also they imply huge losses for the individuals, which makes them very useful, very suitable as rituals for the new cohesion, the new collective, the new solidarity.
    Aubrey Marcus1:03:02And people who hear that will vehemently deny that the rituals are meaningless. And of course, I have enough epistemic humility to say, like, all right, maybe that maybe there is some purpose to these rituals, but you also have to acknowledge the nature, the psychological nature. Like you have to look at both, even if there is meaning to these rituals of mask wearing, and even if there is meaning to the social isolation, you have to look at what it actually is happening psychologically as well. Just like we were mentioning before, you have to look at the damage of the virus and you have to look at the social damage. You have to look at, all right, what is the actual possibility of prevention based on all of these different procedures? And what is the psychological cost? And there should be just a whole group of top psychologists and sociologists who are saying, all right, this is the damage that’s being done to children having to wear masks when they’re in school, and this is the risk of children actually contracting COVID. Right? Let’s take a look at this from a really holistic perspective, of course, but that’s certainly not happening. So whether you think these rituals are meaningless or whether you think these rituals are essential, that’s fine. But also, please look at the total picture, regardless of what’s happening on a psychological level. And I hope no matter what everybody thinks as they’re listening to this podcast, to become aware of the psychological processes to make the unconscious conscious is extremely important.
    Mattias Desmet1:04:37Indeed. Indeed. Yes and maybe some of the measures have a certain practical effect. That’s possible. But in the psychological function, what I tell only shows I think that we should not expect that because the measures are absurd. In certain respect, people will stop to follow them. Not at all. The more absurd they are, the more the 30% of people who are under hypnosis will be willing to cling to them and to follow them.
    Aubrey Marcus1:05:06That just deepens their vigor for these. So when we’re talking about, all right, the ways to stand in resistance, I think, identifying, as I said, the united polarity movement that I’ve really started to put out there into the world, the idea of recognizing the shared humanity amongst all people and drawing people together for that cause. I think that’s something that I of course want to mention. But there’s Vaclav Havel, who was the President of Czechoslovakia, went through periods of Russian communism. He talks about the importance of parallel structures, and these are like enclaves havens of where different ideologies and philosophies operate and how important they are even in totalitarian, even if it goes all the way to totalitarian, what Charles Eisenstein would call islands of sanity. These parallel structures, these places where people can recognize each other’s sovereignty and humanity. And this is really important, and it’s important for people to understand that even if you’re not out publicly speaking, which, as you said, it’s important, a lot of the hypnosis comes verbally, so definitely speak. But another big part of the resistance is just become part of the parallel structure, become part of something that is a living, breathing example of something different.
    Mattias Desmet1:06:29Yes, I entirely agree. Yes, those parallel structures are extremely important, and it doesn’t matter so much where you speak out. I think if it is in a small group, if it is in front of a camera, on television or in a podcast, or if it is around the kitchen table or in a small shop or on the streets, I think that if you look at, I think that something like this, this process of mass formation can really be compared to a complex dynamical system. And in complex and dynamical systems, even the smallest action and the smallest spot of the system can make the system change. That’s something very specific characteristic of complex dynamical systems. So it doesn’t matter where you are. It doesn’t matter how large your audience is, but continue to speak out, continue to speak out.
    Aubrey Marcus1:07:24In this specific case, there’s two factors that I think are interesting that are perhaps different than other periods of mass formation. One is that social isolation has been part of the policy, which is removing people from other people. The other one is if you’re around people, you’re wearing a mask, which is limiting the amount of nonverbal communication that you can have and the actual connection you have with people. This is either a happy accident in an actual way to stop the spread of disease, which certainly being around people less, I think COVID is a real virus, and not being around someone who has a virus is certainly helpful. The mask debate certainly has evidence on both sides, but in either case, these two conditions seem like they’re actually exacerbating and actually creating more conditions where this mass formation is possible because people are isolated and because if they are around each other, they’re literally masked. Do you see that as like something that’s actually accelerating the process of mass formation? These two different things.
    Mattias Desmet1:08:36You can consider mass formation as a kind of a psychological symptom…symptom of a society. And as all symptoms do, they always create more of the conditions that made them emerge. So that’s always at the individual level, you see the same. Like if someone drinks too much alcohol, something in his system will change, which makes him long more after alcohol. And that’s exactly same at all symptoms. Symptoms always recreate and reinforce the things they need to exist. And I think that mass formation is the same. Mass formation in one way or another will make that after a while, people feel even more socially isolated. That was exactly what happened in Nazi Germany and then the Soviet Union as well. After a while, people didn’t dare to come together anymore with more than two or three people because they were always scared of being accused that they were conspiring against the state. So in that way, they become even more socially isolated than they were in the beginning, and that in itself made them more susceptible, more vulnerable to mass formation. So the phenomenon of mass formation, indeed, in one way or another makes that society ends up in a vicious spiral. It always goes down, and it always goes down faster, and in the end, it always leads up to its own destruction. That’s something very important. Totalitarianism, classical dictatorships can exist for thousands of years, such as in Egypt with the Pharaohs, for instance. But totalitarian systems usually destroy themselves and quite quickly usually. And I think that this kind of totalitarianism we are in now, like Hannah Arendt warned already in 1953, she said, we’ve seen the decline and fall of Nazism, and we see the decline of the Soviet Union of Stalinism now. But she wonders that that does not mean that a trend towards authoritarianism will stop. Very soon, she said, a new totalitarian state will emerge and it will be a worldwide system, she said. And it will be a system that is no longer led by mob leaders such as Stalin and Hitler, but by dull technocrats and bureaucrats. And I think that’s what we are about to see now and such as, just like the totalitarian systems of the first half of the 20th century, this system will destroy itself, and it probably will destroy itself much quicker than the systems than the systems of the 20th century. It will be more intrinsically self destructive because totalitarianism and mass formation are always self destructive. You can explain this very well from a psychological point of view, but it’s quite complicated, but they are always self destructive. And once you realize that you know that the only thing you have to do is in one way or another, you have to try to survive outside of the system in a parallel structure and just wait until the system destroys itself.
    Aubrey Marcus1:11:58Well, that seems like a pretty clear prerogative and to help mitigate so it seems like mitigate the amount of damage and hopefully prevent the level of atrocities where people are going around, because we saw that actually happened after 9-11, where people were attacking mosques, and we’ve seen this where we feel threatened and then people lash out. And there’s this vigilante thing. So do our best to mitigate the level of atrocity. Of course, I don’t think it will ever reach the level. It’s a different type. It’s more of a psychological totalitarianism, unlike the way that it was in Germany or Russia, but who knows? But it feels like it’s going to be more of a psychological war that’s being waged, but still, nonetheless, on the periphery, there can be atrocities that occur so mitigating those as much as possible by standing for, you know, standing for the recognition of humanity and then also accelerating the awakening of people to all of the deep, unconscious psychological processes that exist. The seduction of the solution of mass formation, how you can externalize the problem that’s internal, how seductive that is, and then also the seduction of the ego to say, I’m helping the world more than you. So I’m better than you and how good that feels to be the one that really is sacrificing the most and helping people more because that makes you better than someone else. Hey, I’m a better person than Joe Rogan. And Joe Rogan is super powerful and super wealthy, but I’m better than him because I care more. And then how seductive that is psychologically. Just to be aware of all of these processes, it’s okay. We’re all fallible. We’re all vulnerable. We’re all subject to unconscious processes. Any of us could walk on stage with a top hypnotist, like a world class hypnotist. We could walk on stage, and in ten minutes we could be clucking like a chicken in front of an audience. It could happen to any of us. And then would our friends later, like, two years later be like, you fucking chicken. You’re such a chicken like, no, you would have been a chicken, too. Our mind is vulnerable. And so to have that compassion for everybody, I think it’s so important.
    Mattias Desmet1:14:14Yeah, but, you know, that usually people who are under hypnosis stick to the same ethical rules and ethical level as they do when they are not hypnotized. That’s interesting. I think so. Being hypnotized is not an excuse to transgress ethical boundaries. That’s something important. But it doesn’t matter. I agree with you. Of course. I think that is maybe the deeper meaning of this crisis that it confronts us, or that it might lead to an analysis of who we are as a human being, for someone else, that it might confront us with who we are. And that can make us think about how we can, what the right thing to do is in this situation. I don’t know. I feel that in one way or another, this crisis pushes me and brings me closer to myself. And then by continuing to speak out, I learned to control my own anger. For instance, if people react aggressively towards me and so on. I feel that in one way or another, this process leads to an intense questioning of who I am and makes that I go through an evolution as a human being. And I hope that the same is the case for many other people.
    Aubrey Marcus1:15:40Yeah. No doubt that brought something up because I have seen that where the top hypnotist will put someone under a deep hypnosis, give them a knife and say, “Stab me” and they’ll do anything else. They’ll do anything else, humiliating, completely humiliating. They would take their pants off, or they would pretend to have sex or act like a chicken, whatever they’ll do, all that stuff, but they won’t hurt somebody else under hypnosis. So mass formation isn’t exactly hypnosis. It’s something a little bit different because it can lead to atrocities that are so it’s almost like there’s almost more Manchurian candidate, this kind of different psychological process that’s similar to hypnosis, but also different because it seems like historically, at least it’s led to people committing committing atrocities that they normally wouldn’t commit under normal conditions unless there’s just a percentage of people that are naturally homicidal. Anyways.
    Mattias Desmet1:16:42Yes. I think there are, but I think that mass formation is a kind of hypnosis. But there are differences with classical hypnosis. For instance, in the process of mass formation, the hypnotist is hypnotized himself. That’s the most important difference. Like in a classical hypnosis, the hypnotist is awake. His field of attention is not narrower than normal, but the person who is hypnotized suffers from a narrow field of attention. But the hypnotist doesn’t. And in the process of mass formation, usually the opposite is true. The field of attention of the person who hypnotizes is usually even narrower than the masses themselves. So that’s why the experts in this situation, they make mistakes that ordinary people wouldn’t make, and that it was very clear to me from the beginning. If you look at the statistics and the numbers that are presented through the mass media, they often are so blatantly wrong that even a child can see it. And still it is as if many of the experts do not realize it. And that’s because in one way or another, they very often are hypnotized, or their field of attention is even narrower. So we could talk for days about the leaders of the masses. It’s very complicated because in one way or another, they are hypnotized. In another way, they often manipulate and cheat and lie to the people, and that’s because they do really believe in their ideology and the ideals they are striving for. That’s something they are usually hypnotized by. But usually they do not believe in the narrative that they are presenting to the people. They feel that it is justified to lie to the people and to manipulate them. So you have to make a distinction there. They are hypnotized in this sense that they really believe in a megalomaniac way, that their ideology will create a kind of a paradise for humanity. But that doesn’t mean that they believe everything they are telling, because usually they know that they are manipulating the population. So it’s double, I think.
    Aubrey Marcus1:19:16Have you been threatened to lose your job as a professor for speaking out in this way? Has there been any consequences for you professionally? Because we certainly hear that in different places.
    Mattias Desmet1:19:27Not at this moment, not at this moment. So I’ve been under huge pressure. Some people at my university told me that I should watch out what I was saying, and I felt that they implied that, well, if I continued in the same way that I could get in trouble, but at the same time, well, I’ve never felt up until now, I’ve never felt really threatened. Because in Belgium, a professor is a very well protected profession. But I think in the nearby future it might become problematic actually. I think that things are getting worse. Of course, for instance, if you refuse the vaccine, I don’t know if you will still be, if it will still be possible to teach to students, for instance.
    Aubrey Marcus1:20:19Yeah, we’re seeing that with a lot of our health care workers. It’s very interesting times. Well, I want to end with something, a positive message that actually came from Carl Jung. And he says, and obviously it wasn’t pertaining to this time, but it’s almost very prescient for where we are now. He says, “It is not for nothing that our age cries out for the redeemer personality, for the one who can emancipate himself from the grip of the collective psychosis, save at least his own soul, who lights a beacon of hope for others. Proclaiming that here as at least one man who has succeeded in extricating himself from the fatal identity within the group psyche.” It’s just a beautiful message to say, look, even if you don’t say anything, even if you don’t go out there like emancipate yourself, this is crucial, like be the living example of someone who is free and someone who can generate their own thoughts and have agency and be aware of your own biases. Be aware of your own desire for confirmation. Be aware of your own desire to be better than others. It’s all okay.
    Aubrey Marcus1:21:36We’re all human, but liberate yourself with that awareness. And that’s a great way to stand in this world where people are really subject to phenomenon like mass formation.
    Mattias Desmet1:21:49It’s a very nice code. Yes, I agree.
    Aubrey Marcus1:21:53Well, thank you so much for joining. If people are interested in learning more from you, and I know you got a book coming out if you want to talk about that.
    Mattias Desmet1:22:02Yes. Well, first it will be published in Dutch first, but then it will be translated very quickly. The title is The Psychology of Totalitarianism. I really go into the phenomenon of totalitarianism and mass formation that’s historical roots and trying to explain how it emerged in our society. And then also, I will also try to show what the real solutions to the problem are. Yes. I think it will be available in Dutch somewhere in February next year and then I hope a few months later, also in English and in America.
    Aubrey Marcus1:22:44Well, if the world hasn’t dramatically changed by then, then maybe we’ll do another podcast after I can get my hands on.
    Mattias Desmet1:22:54Absolutely.
    Aubrey Marcus1:22:55Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on. Yeah.
    Mattias Desmet1:22:58Thank you for listening.
    , , ,

  • Civil Disobedience: What sayeth St. Thomas Aquinas?


    St. Thomas Aquinas maintains that there are four types of law: eternal, divine, natural, and human. The distinction between Natural Law and human law is where conflict arises and the question of civil disobedience becomes
    relevant. Eternal law is the unchanging moral law that St. Thomas Aquinas upholds as deriving from the Divine Source, God.

    St.Thomas ascertained that “the received is in the receiver according to the mode of the receiver” (On Human Nature 136). That is, a being can only receive knowledge in a way and form that is suited to their own form of being. Therefore, humans cannot know God’s law as God does, given the distinction between human beings and God. He also posits,“There are two ways in which a thing can be known,” either “in itself” or “in its effect” (Summa Theologiae I-II Q. 93 A. 2). Humans know Eternal law in this second way. He states, “No one except the blessed in heaven . . . can know the eternal law as it is in itself. However, every rational creature knows the Eternal law with respect to more or less what radiates from it” (ST I-II Q. 93 A. 2). By this, Aquinas means that humans cannot know Eternal Law in its essential form, as does God, but only through its derivatives and effects. This phenomenon is defined as Natural Law, which is the rational human participation in Eternal law; it is the law we arrive at through reason, and that to which we adhere on moral grounds, both universal and eternal.

    While humans cannot know eternal law, Natural Law, according St. Thomas Aquinas, is our rational
    participation in Eternal Law. How are we to know Natural Law? Aquinas asserts, “The first precept of law is that good ought to be done and pursued and that evil ought to be avoided”(ST I-II Q. 94 A. 2). This provides the foundation for all other precepts, which are the “practical precepts” or the general rules by which we might govern our practical actions.

    Conflict appears when Natural Law and human law overlap, as they will interact in one of two ways. In an ideal scenario the two will comply: the human law will affirm what is morally just and expressed in the natural law. Otherwise, the two can fail to comply. St. Thomas maintains that natural law is superior to human law as it is humankind’s rational participation in God’s law, which is the highest and most absolute authority—it is difficult to imagine the rationale explaining how the arbitrary rule of humans could surpass the moral obligations we have
    derived from God’s law. Given this context, we can understand Aquinas’ statement: “If in any point [human law] deflects from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a perversion of law” (ST I-II Q. 95 A. 2). Aquinas does not intend to say that an unjust human law ceases to exist. Rather, he believes its authority is nullified. He writes, “Laws can be unjust . . . by being contrary to the divine good, as are tyrannical laws that induce men to idolatry or to do anything else that is contrary to divine law. It is not permissible to obey such laws in any
    way at all” (ST I-II Q. 96 A. 4)    . Natural Law, as the human expression of Eternal Law, carries an analogous level of authority. One can logically infer that an unjust human law—one that violates Natural Law—is not only a law that it is morally permissible to ignore, but is a law that one is morally obligated to disobey.

    , , , , ,

  • Early Treatment

    “His critics argue that Dr. Fauci’s “slow the spread, flatten the curve, wait for the jab” strategy—all in support of a long-term bet on unproven vaccines—represented a profound and unprecedented departure from accepted public health practice. But most troubling were Dr. Fauci’s policies of ignoring and outright suppressing the early treatment of infected patients who were often terrified. “The Best Practices for defeating an infectious disease epidemic,” says Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch, “dictate that you quarantine and treat the sick, protect the most vulnerable, and aggressively develop repurposed therapeutic drugs, and use early treatment protocols to avoid hospitalizations.” Risch is one of the leading global authorities in clinical treatment protocols. He is the editor of two high-gravitas journals and the author of over 350 peer-reviewed publications. Other researchers have cited those studies over 44,000 times. Risch points out a hard truth that should have informed our COVID control strategy: “Unless you are an island nation prepared to shut out the world, you can’t stop a global viral pandemic, but you can make it less deadly. Our objective should have been to devise treatments that would reduce hospitalization and death. We could have easily defanged COVID-19 so that it was less lethal than a seasonal flu. We could have done this very quickly. We could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.” Dr. Peter McCullough concurs: “Once a highly transmissible virus like COVID has a beachhead in a population, it is inevitable that it will spread to every individual who lacks immunity. You can slow the spread, but you cannot prevent it—any more than you can prevent the tide from rising.” McCullough was an internist and cardiologist on staff at the Baylor University Medical Center and the Baylor Heart and Vascular Hospital in Dallas, Texas. His 600 peer-reviewed articles in the National Library of Medicine make McCullough the most published physician in history in the field of kidney disease related to heart disease, a lethal sequela of COVID-19. Before COVID-19, he was editor of two major journals. His recent publications include over 40 on COVID-19, including two landmark studies on critical care of the disease. His two breakthrough papers on the early treatment of COVID-19 in The American Journal of Medicine and Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine in 2020 are, by far, the most downloaded documents on the subject. “I’ve had COVID-19 myself with pulmonary involvement,” he told me. “My wife has had it. On my wife’s side of the family, we’ve had a fatality . . . I believe I have as much or more medical authority to give my opinion as anybody in the world.” McCullough observes that, “We could have dramatically reduced COVID fatalities and hospitalizations using early treatment protocols and repurposed drugs including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and many, many others.” Dr. McCullough has treated some 2,000 COVID patients with these therapies. McCullough points out that hundreds of peer-reviewed studies now show that early treatment could have averted some 80 percent of deaths attributed to COVID. “The strategy from the outset should have been implementing protocols to stop hospitalizations through early treatment of Americans who tested positive for COVID but were still asymptomatic. If we had done that, we could have pushed case fatality rates below those we see with seasonal flu, and ended the bottlenecks in our hospitals. We should have rapidly deployed off-the-shelf medications with proven safety records and subjected them to rigorous risk/benefit decision-making,” McCullough continues. “Using repurposed drugs, we could have ended this pandemic by May 2020 and saved 500,000 American lives, but for Dr. Fauci’s hard-headed, tunnel vision on new vaccines and remdesivir.” Pulmonary and critical care specialist Dr. Pierre Kory agrees with McCullough’s estimate. “The efficacy of some of these drugs as prophylaxis is almost miraculous, plus early intervention in the week after exposure stops viral replication and prevents development of cytokine storm and entrance into the pulmonary phase,” says Dr. Kory. “We could have stopped the pandemic in its tracks in the spring of 2020.” Risch, McCullough, and Kory are among the large chorus of experts (including Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier) who argue that, by treating infected patients at home during the early stages of the illness, we could have averted cataclysmic lockdowns and found medicine resources for protecting vulnerable populations while encouraging the spread of the disease in age groups with extremely low-risk, in order to achieve permanent herd immunity. They point out that natural immunity, in all known cases, is superior to vaccine-induced immunity, being both more durable (it often lasts a lifetime) and broader spectrum—meaning it provides a shield against subsequent variants. “Vaccinating citizens with natural immunity should never have been our public health policy,” says Dr. Kory. Dr. Fauci’s strategy committed hundreds of billions of societal resources on a high-risk gambit to develop novel technology vaccines, and virtually nothing toward developing repurposed medications that are effective against COVID. “That strategy kept the medical treatment on hold globally for an entire year as a readily treatable respiratory virus ravaged populations,” says Kory. “It is absolutely shocking that he recommended no outpatient care, not even Vitamin D despite the fact he takes it himself and much of the country is Vitamin D deficient.”

    Dr. Kory is president of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, a former associate professor, and Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center at the University of Wisconsin Medical School Hospital, and the Critical Care Service Chief at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee. His milestone work on critical care ultrasonography won him the British Medical Association’s President’s Choice Award in 2015. Risch, McCullough, and Kory are also among the hundreds of scientists and physicians who express shock that Dr. Fauci made no effort to identify repurposed medicines. Says Kory, “I find it appalling that there was no consultation process with treating physicians. Medicine is about consultation. You had Birx, Fauci, and Redfield doing press conferences every day and handing down these arbitrary diktats and not one of them ever treated a COVID patient or worked in an emergency room or ICU. They knew nothing.” “As I watched the White House Task Force on T.V.,” recalls Dr. McCullough, “no one even said that hospitalizations and deaths were the bad outcome of COVID-19, and that they were going to put together a team of doctors to identify protocols and therapeutics to stop these hospitalizations and deaths.” Dr. McCullough argues that, as COVID czar, Dr. Fauci should have created an international communications network linking the world’s 11 million front-line doctors to gather real-time tips, innovative safety protocols, and to develop the best prophylactic and early treatment practices. “He should have created hotlines and dedicated websites for medical professionals to call in with treatment questions and to consult, collect, catalogue, and propagate the latest innovations for prophylaxing vulnerable and exposed individuals, and treating early infections, so as to avert hospitalizations.” Dr. Kory agrees: “The outcome we should have been trying to prevent is hospitalizations. You don’t just sit around and wait for an infected patient to become ill. Dr. Fauci’s treatment strategies all began once all these under-medicated patients were hospitalized. By that time, it was too late for many of them. It was insane. It was perverse. It was unethical.” Dr. McCullough says that Dr. Fauci should have created treatment centers for ambulatory patients and field clinics specializing in treating asymptomatic or early-stage COVID. “He should have been encouraging doctors to use satellite clinics to conduct small outpatient clinical trials to quickly identify the most effective protocols, drugs, and therapeutics.” Professor Risch concurs: “We should have deployed teams of doctors all over the world doing short-term clinical trials and testing promising drugs and reporting successful protocols. The endpoints were obvious: preventing hospitalizations and deaths.

    By July 1, McCullough and his team had developed the first protocol based on signals of benefit and acceptable safety. They submitted the protocol to the American Journal of Medicine. That study, titled “The Pathophysiologic Basis and Clinical Rationale for Early Ambulatory Treatment of COVID-19,” quickly became the world’s most-downloaded paper to help doctors treat COVID-19. “It is extraordinary that Dr. Fauci never published a single treatment protocol before that,” says McCullough, “and that ‘America’s Doctor’ has never, to date, published anything on how to treat a COVID patient. It shocks the conscience that there is still no official protocol. Anyone who tries to publish a new treatment protocol will find themselves airtight blocked by the journals that are all under Fauci’s control.” The Chinese published their own early treatment protocol on March 3, 2020, using many of the same categories of prophylactic and early treatment drugs uncovered by McCullough—chloroquine (a cousin of hydroxychloroquine), antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, antihistamines, a variety of steroids, and probiotics to stabilize and fortify the immune system and apothecaries of traditional Chinese medicines, vitamins, and minerals, including a variety of compounds containing quercetin, zinc, and glutathione precursors. The Chinese made early treatment the central priority of their COVID strategy. They used intense—and intrusive—track-and-trace surveillance to identify and then immediately hospitalize and treat every COVID-infected Chinese. Early treatment helped the Chinese to end their pandemic by April 2020. “We could have done the same,” says McCullough.

    Though now he is often censored, the AMA still lists Dr. McCullough’s study as the most frequently downloaded paper for 2020. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) downloaded and turned McCullough’s AMA article into its official treatment guide. AAPS Director Dr. Jeremy Snavely told me in August 2021 that the Guide had 122,000 downloads: “We figure it has been seen by over a million people. It’s the only trusted guide. Our phone never stops ringing. Mostly the calls are from physicians and patients desperate for the help they cannot get from any HHS website.”

    By autumn, front-line physicians had assembled a pharmacopeia of repurposed drugs, all of which were effective against COVID. By that time, more than 200 studies supported treatment with hydroxychloroquine, and 60 studies supported ivermectin. “We combined these medicines with doxycycline, azithromycin to suppress infection,” says McCullough. Another meta-analysis supported the use of prednisone and hydrocortisone and other widely available steroids to combat inflammation. Three studies supported the use of inhaled budesonide against COVID; an Oxford University study published in February 2021 demonstrated that that treatment could reduce hospitalizations by 90 percent in low-risk patients, and a publication in April 2021 showed that recovery was faster for high-risk patients, too. Furthermore, a very large study supported colchicine as an anti-inflammatory. Finally, McCullough’s growing array of physicians had observational data from late-stage treatment of hospitalized patients with full-dose aspirin and antithrombotics, including Enoxaparin, Apixaban, Rivaroxaban, Dabigatran, Edoxaban, and full-dose anticoagulation with low molecular weight heparin for blood clots. “We were able to show that doctors can work with four to six drugs in combination, supplemented by vitamins and nutraceuticals including zinc, vitamins D and C, and Quercetin. And they can guide patients at home, even the highest-risk seniors, and avoid a dreaded outcome of hospitalization and death,” said McCullough. Working with a large practice in the Plano/Frisco area north of Dallas, McCullough and his team administered this protocol to some eight hundred patients and demonstrated an 85 percent reduction in hospitalization and death. Another practice led by the legendary Dr. Vladimir Zelenko in Monroe, New York showed similar astonishing results. Independent physicians unaffiliated with the government or the universities that are so dependent on Dr. Fauci’s good favor were discovering new COVID treatments by the day. Researchers treated 738 randomly selected Brazilian COVID-19 patients with another adjuvant, fluvoxamine, identified early in the pandemic for its potential to reduce cytokine storms. Another 733 received a placebo between Jan. 20 and Aug. 6 of 2021. The researchers tracked every patient receiving fluvoxamine during the trial for 28 days and found about a 30-percent reduction in events among those receiving fluvoxamine compared to those who did not. Like almost all the other remedies, it is cheap and proven safe by long use. Fluvoxamine costs about $4 per 10-day course. Fluvoxamine has been used since the 1990s, and its safety profile is well known.

    “Hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are not necessary nor sufficient on their own—there are plenty of molecules that treat COVID,” says McCullough. “Even if hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin had become so politicized that no one wanted to allow these drugs to be used, we could use other drugs, anti-inflammatories, antihistamines, as well as anti-coagulants and actually stop the illness and again, treat it to reduce hospitalization and death.” When the pandemic started, most of the other medical practices in the Detroit area shut down, Dr. David Brownstein told me. “I had a meeting with my staff and my six partners. I told them, ‘We are going to stay open and treat COVID.’ They wanted to know how. I said, ‘We’ve been treating viral diseases here for twenty-five years. COVID can’t be any different.’ In all that time, our office had never lost a single patient to flu or flu-like illness. We treated people in their cars with oral vitamins A, C, and D, and iodine. We administered IV solution outside all winter with IV hydrogen peroxide and vitamin C. We’d have them put their butts out the car window and shot them up with intramuscular ozone. We nebulized them with hydrogen peroxide and Lugol’s iodine. We only rarely used ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. We treated 715 patients and had ten hospitalizations and no deaths. Early treatment was the key. We weren’t allowed to talk about it. The whole medical establishment was trying to shut down early treatment and silence all the doctors who talked about successes. A whole generation of doctors just stopped practicing medicine. When we talked about it, the whole cartel came for us. I’ve been in litigation with the Medical Board for a year. When we posted videos from some of our recovered patients, they went viral. One of the videos had a million views. FTC filed a motion against us, and we had to take everything down.” In July 2020, Brownstein and his seven colleagues published a peer-reviewed article describing their stellar success with early treatment. FTC sent him a letter warning him to take it down. “No one wanted Americans to know that you didn’t have to die from COVID. It’s 100 percent treatable,” says Dr. Brownstein. “We proved it. No one had to die.” “Meanwhile,” adds Dr. Brownstein, “we’ve seen lots of really bad vaccine side effects in our patients. We’ve had seven strokes—some ending in severe paralysis. We had three cases of pulmonary embolism, two blood clots, two cases of Graves’ disease, and one death.”

    Repurposed medicines, the record shows, could also have drastically reduced death among hospitalized patients. One of Dr. Kory’s cofounders of FLCCC, Houston Memorial Medical Center’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Joe Varon, worked 400 days in a row, seeing between 20–30 patients/day. Using ivermectin and a cocktail of anti-inflammatories, steroids, and anticoagulants since Spring 2020, Dr. Varon lowered hospital mortality among ICU COVID patients to about 4.1 percent, compared to well over 23 percent nationally. “Even in the ICUs where patients were coming in undertreated, we were able to dramatically reduce mortality,” says Dr. Kory. “Almost anything you do in the nursing homes—basically, any combination of the various components of these protocols—reduces mortalities by at least 60 percent,” McCullough told me. A 2021 paper in Medical Hypotheses supports McCullough’s claim. That study by twelve physician co-authors shows that diverse combinations of many of these and similar medications dramatically lower death rates in a variety of nursing homes. The study concludes that even the most modest early medical therapy combinations were associated with 60 percent reductions in mortality. Says Dr. McCullough, “Therapeutic nihilism was the real killer of America’s seniors.”

    McCullough’s findings may be conservative. Early in the pandemic, two Spanish nursing homes simultaneously experimented with early treatment with cheap, available repurposed drugs and achieved 100 percent survival among infected residents and staff. Between March and April 2020, COVID-19 struck two elder care facilities in Yepes, Toledo, Spain. The mean age of residents in those locations was 85, and 48 percent were over 80 years old. Within three months, 100 percent of the residents at both locations had caught the virus. By the end of June, 100 percent of residents and half the workers were seropositive for COVID, meaning they had endured infection and recovered. None of them went to the hospital and none died. None had adverse drug effects. Local doctors rapidly discovered early treatment with the same sort of remedies that McCullough was championing: antihistamines, steroids, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, aspirin, nasal washes, bronchodilators, and blood thinners. In pooled data, 28 percent of the residents in similar nursing homes in the same region over the same time period died. That study supports the experience of front-line physicians that cheap available, repurposed drugs can easily prevent hospitalizations and deaths.”

    Kennedy Jr., Robert F. “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health (Children’s Health Defense) (pp.74-78). Skyhorse. Edizione del Kindle.

    , , , , , , , ,

  • Ivermectin, the Wonder Drug

    “By the summer of 2020, front-line physicians had discovered another COVID remedy that equalled HCQ in its staggering, life-saving efficacy. Five years earlier, two Merck scientists won the Nobel Prize for developing ivermectin (IVM), a drug with unprecedented firepower against a wide range of human parasites, including roundworm, hookworm, river blindness, and lymphatic filariasis. That salute was the Nobel Committee’s only award to an infectious disease medication in 60 years. FDA approved IVM as safe and effective for human use in 1996. WHO includes IVM (along with HCQ) on its inventory of “essential medicines”—its list of remedies so necessary, safe, efficacious, and affordable that WHO deems easy access to them as essential “to satisfy the priority health care needs of the population.”2 WHO has recommended administering ivermectin to entire populations to treat people who might have parasitic infections—meaning they consider it safe enough to give to people who haven’t even been diagnosed. Millions of people have consumed billions of IVM doses as an anti-parasitic, with minimal side effects. Ivermectin’s package insert suggests that it is at least as safe as the most popular over-the-counter medications, including Tylenol and aspirin. Researchers at Japan’s Kitasato Institute published a 2011 paper describing IVM in terms almost never used for any other drug: There are few drugs that can seriously lay claim to the title of “Wonder drug,” penicillin and aspirin being two that have perhaps had greatest beneficial impact on the health and wellbeing of Mankind. But ivermectin can also be considered alongside those worthy contenders, based on its versatility, safety, and the beneficial impact that it has had, and continues to have, worldwide—especially on hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people. Three statues—at the Carter Center, at the headquarters of the World Bank, and at the headquarters of the World Health Organization—honor the development of ivermectin. Because since 2012, multiple in-vitro studies have demonstrated that IVM inhibits the replication of a wide range of viruses. Nature Magazine published a 2020 study reviewing 50 years of research finding IVM “highly effective against microorganisms including some viruses,” and reporting the results in animal studies demonstrating “antiviral effects of ivermectin in viruses such as Zika, dengue, yellow fever, West Nile . . .”

    An April 3, 2020 article entitled “Lab experiments show anti-parasitic drug, ivermectin, eliminates SARS-CoV-2 in cells in 48 hours,” by Australian researchers at Monash and Melbourne Universities and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, first won IVM global attention as a potential treatment for COVID. The international press initially raved that this safe, inexpensive, well-known, and readily available drug had demolished SARS-CoV-2 in cell cultures. “We found that even a single dose could essentially remove all viral RNA by 48 hours and that even at 24 hours there was a really significant reduction in it,” said lead researcher Dr. Kylie Wagstaff. Based on this study, on May 8, 2020, Peru—then under siege by a crushing COVID endemic— adopted ivermectin in its national guidelines. “Peruvian doctors already knew the medicine, widely prescribed it for parasites, and health authorities knew it was safe and were comfortable with it,” recalls Dr. Pierre Kory. COVID deaths dropped precipitously—by 14-fold—in the regions where the Peruvian government effectively distributed ivermectin. Reductions in deaths correlated with the extent of IVM distributions in all 25 states. In December 2020, Peru’s new president, under pressure from WHO, severely restricted IVM availability and COVID cases rebounded with deaths increasing 13-fold. In prophylaxis studies, ivermectin repeatedly demonstrated far greater efficacy against COVID than vaccines at a fraction of the cost. In Argentina, for example, in the summer of 2020, Dr. Hector Carvallo conducted a randomized placebo-controlled trial of ivermectin as a preventative, finding 100 percent efficacy against COVID. Carvallo’s team found no infections among the 788 workers who took weekly ivermectin prophylaxis, whereas 58 percent of the 407 controls had become ill with COVID-19. A later observational study from Bangladesh—also investigating ivermectin as a pre-exposure prophylaxis against COVID-19 among health care workers—found nearly as spectacular results: only four of the 58 volunteers who took a minimal dose of ivermectin (12 mg once per month for four months) developed mild COVID-19 symptoms, compared to 44 of the 60 health care workers who had declined the medication. Furthermore, a 2021 study suggested that a key biological mechanism of IVM— competitive binding with SARS-CoV-2 spike protein—was not specific to any coronavirus variant and therefore, unlike vaccines, ivermectin would probably be effective against all future variants. As early as March 1, 2020, some front-line ICU and ER doctors began using ivermectin in combination with HCQ in early treatment protocols. Dr. Jean-Jacques Rajter, a Belgian physician working in Miami, began using the drug March 15 and immediately saw an uptick in recoveries. He published an excellent paper on June 9. Meanwhile, two Western physicians using ivermectin in Bangladesh also reported a very high rate of recoveries, even among patients in later states of illness. Since March 2020, when doctors first used IVM against COVID-19, more than 20 randomized clinical trials (RCTs) have confirmed its miraculous efficacy against COVID for both inpatient and outpatient treatment. Six of seven meta-analyses of IVM treatment RCTs completed in 2021 found notable reductions in COVID-19 mortality. The relevant studies “all showed significant benefit for high-risk outpatients,” says the eminent Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch. The only studies where its performance was anything short of stellar were those that investigated its efficacy in patients in very late stages of COVID. But even late-stage patients showed benefits in almost all studies, although somewhat less dramatic. According to a 2020 review by McCullough et al., “Numerous clinical studies—including peer-reviewed randomized controlled trials—showed large magnitude benefits of ivermectin in prophylaxis, early treatment, and also in late-stage disease management. Taken together . . . dozens of clinical trials that have now emerged from around the world are substantial enough to reliably assess clinical efficacy and infer a signal of benefit with acceptable safety.” Early in January 2021, Dr. David Chesler, a geriatric specialist who had treated 191 infected patients since the previous spring at seven Virginia nursing homes, wrote to Dr. Fauci claiming that he had achieved a mortality rate of 8 percent using ivermectin—half (and 146,000 deaths less than) the US average in elder-care facilities. In his letter to Dr. Fauci, Chesler attached a peer-reviewed case study documenting reports of similar efficacy from other countries. Neither Dr. Fauci nor anyone else from NIAID replied to Dr. Chesler’s letter. The Annals of Dermatology and Venereology reported that in a French nursing home, all 69 residents—average age 90—and 52 staff survived a COVID-19 outbreak. As it turns out, they had all taken ivermectin for a scabies infestation. COVID decimated the surrounding community, but only seven elder home residents and four staff were affected, and all had mild illness. None required oxygen or hospitalization.

    Research suggests that ivermectin may work through as many as 20 separate mechanisms. Among them, ivermectin functions as an “ionophore,” facilitating transfer of zinc into the cells, which inhibits viral replication. Ivermectin stops replication of COVID-19, seasonal flu, and many other viruses through this and other mechanisms. For example, a March 2021 study18 by Choudhury et al., found that “Ivermectin was found as a blocker of viral replicase, protease and human TMPRSS2, which could be the biophysical basis behind its antiviral efficiency.” The drug also reduces inflammation via multiple pathways, thereby protecting against organ damage. Ivermectin furthermore impairs the spike protein’s ability to attach to the ACE2 receptor on human cell membranes, preventing viral entry. Moreover, the drug prevents blood clots through binding to spike protein, and also deters the spike protein from binding to CD147 on red blood cells, which would otherwise trigger clumping. When patients take IVM before exposure, the drug prevents infection, which halts onward transmission, and helps protect the entire community. In March, 2021, a published study by Peter McCullough and 57 other front-line physicians from multiple countries found that “Our early ambulatory treatment regimen was associated with estimated 87.6 percent and 74.9 percent reductions in hospitalization and death.” Many other studies echo Dr. McCullough’s results. The average reduction in mortality, based on 18 trials, is 75 percent, according to a January 2021 meta-analysis presentation to the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel. A WHO-sponsored meta-review of 11 studies likewise suggests ivermectin can reduce COVID-19 mortality by as much as 83 percent. “

    Kennedy Jr., Robert F . The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health (Children’s Health Defense) (pp.117-122). Skyhorse. Edizione del Kindle.

    , , , , , ,

  • Remdesivir, the Killer

    “Anthony Fauci needed to use all his moxie and all his esoteric bureaucratic maneuvers—mastered during his half-century at NIH—to win FDA’s approval for his vanity drug, remdesivir. Remdesivir has no clinical efficacy against COVID, according to every legitimate study. Worse, it is deadly poisonous, and expensive poison at $3,000 for treatment.1 In fact, remdesivir’s wholesale cost is roughly 1,000x more costly than hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. The challenge required Dr. Fauci to first sabotage HCQ and IVM. Under federal rules discussed earlier, FDA’s recognition of HCQ and IVM efficacy would automatically kill remdesivir’s ambitions for EUA designation. And even if Dr. Fauci somehow finagled an FDA license for remdesivir, demand for the product, which doctors were administering late in the disease, as it had to be given through an IV in the hospital, would plummet if either HCQ or IVM stopped the COVID-19 infections early. Why would Dr. Fauci care to undermine any medicine that might compete with remdesivir? Might it have something to with NIAID and CDC having just spent $79 million developing remdesivir for Gilead, a company in which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation owns a $6.5 million stake? The BMGF is engaged in other large drug development deals with the company, including a cofunded $55 million investment in a malaria treatment being developed by Lyndra Therapeutics. Gates has also funded the promotion of Gilead’s Truvada in Kenya. Another Gilead partner, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick, Maryland (USAMRIID), where the drug was studied in monkeys, also contributed millions to remdesivir’s development. At the outset of the coronavirus plague, remdesivir was just another pharma-owned molecule that FDA had never approved as safe and efficacious for any purpose. In 2016, remdesivir demonstrated middling antiviral properties against Zika, but the disease disappeared before the expensive non-remedy got traction. After the Zika threat vanished, NIAID put some $6.9 million into identifying a new pandemic against which to deploy remdesivir. In 2018, Gilead entered remdesivir in a NIAID-funded clinical trial against Ebola in Africa. This is how we know that Anthony Fauci was well aware of remdesivir’s toxicity when he orchestrated its approval for COVID patients. NIAID sponsored that project. Dr. Fauci had another NIAID-incubated drug, ZMapp, in the same clinical trial, testing efficacy against Ebola alongside two experimental monoclonal antibody drugs. Researchers planned to administer all four drugs to Ebola patients across Africa over a period of four to eight months. However, six months into the Ebola study, the trial’s Safety Review Board suddenly pulled both remdesivir and ZMapp from the trial. Remdesivir, it turned out, was hideously dangerous. Within 28 days, subjects taking remdesivir had lethal side effects including multiple organ failure, acute kidney failure, septic shock, and hypotension, and 54 percent of the remdesivir group died—the highest mortality rate among the four experimental drugs. Anthony Fauci’s drug, ZMapp, ran up the second-highest body count at 44 percent. NIAID was the primary funder of this study, and its researchers published the bad news about remdesivir in the New England Journal of Medicine in December 2019. By then, COVID-19 was already circulating in Wuhan. But two months later, on February 25, 2020, Dr. Fauci announced, with great fanfare, that he was enrolling hospitalized COVID patients in a clinical trial to study remdesivir’s efficacy. For important context, this was a month before the WHO declared the new pandemic, a time that there were only fourteen confirmed COVID cases in the United States, most from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. These individuals were among the first wave of COVID-19 hospitalizations from whom NIAID recruited the 400 US volunteers for Dr. Fauci’s remdesivir trial. Dr. Fauci’s press release said only that remdesivir “has shown promise in animal models for treating Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).”It’s unclear, then, if NIAID informed these frightened souls that, less than a year earlier, a safety review board had deemed remdesivir unacceptably toxic. Its deadly effect on patients aside, remdesivir was a perfect strategic option for Dr. Fauci. Optics required that NIH devote some resources to antiviral therapeutic drugs; critics would complain if he spent billions on vaccines and nothing on therapeutics. However, any licensed, repurposed antiviral that was effective against COVID for prevention or early treatment (like IVM or HCQ) could kill his entire vaccine program because FDA wouldn’t be able to grant his jabs Emergency Use Authorization. Remdesivir, however, was an IV remedy, appropriate only for use on hospitalized patients in the late stages of illness. It would therefore not compete with vaccines, allowing Dr. Fauci to support it without compromising his core business. Furthermore, while HCQ and IVM were off-patent and available generically, remdesivir was in the sweet spot of still being on patent. The potential profit upside was impressive. Remdesivir cost Gilead $10 per dose to manufacture. But by granting Gilead an EUA, regulators could force private insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid to fork over around $3,120.00 per treatment—hundreds of times the cost of the drug. Gilead predicted remdesivir would bring in $3.5 billion in 2020 alone. Dr. Fauci did not suddenly get the idea that remdesivir might work against coronavirus in January 2020. In one of his many extraordinary feats of uncanny foresight, beginning in 2017, Dr. Fauci paid $6 million to his gain-of-function guru, Ralph Baric—a University of North Carolina microbiologist—to accelerate remdesivir as a coronavirus remedy at China’s biosecurity laboratory in Wuhan. Baric used coronavirus cultures obtained from bat caves by Chinese virologists working with Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, another recipient of Dr. Fauci’s funding. Dr. Fauci demonstrated his personal interest in those experiments by dispatching his most trusted deputies, Hugh Auchincloss in 2018 and then Cliff Lane in 2020, to negotiate with the Chinese government and to supervise Baric’s experiments at the Wuhan lab and elsewhere in China. Baric claimed that his mouse studies showed remdesivir impeded SARS replication, suggesting that it might inhibit other coronaviruses. Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Lab and China’s Military Medicine Institute of the People’s Liberation Army Academy of Military Science submitted their own patent application for remdesivir. China’s military brass said the joint patent application was “aimed at protecting China’s national interests.” Early in March 2020, the Gates Foundation bankrolled $125 million of tax-deductible grants to support drug makers to develop coronavirus treatments. Gates and/or his foundation had large equity stakes in many of the pharmaceutical companies that received these funds—including Gilead. On April 24, 2020, Gilead’s volunteer spokesperson Bill Gates declared: “For the novel coronavirus, the leading drug candidate in this category is remdesivir from Gilead.” For HCQ, Dr. Fauci demanded well-designed randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials and he warned against the use of IVM for treatment. In contrast, Fauci green-lighted remdesivir following studies in which the control group did not receive a real placebo. Instead, Fauci’s researchers used no placebo in the more severely ailing patients and gave the remaining patients an “active comparator” containing the same treatment protocol agents as used in the remdesivir arm except for substituting sulfobutyl for remdesivir as the test agent. Utilization of so-called “toxic” or “spiked” placebos—also known as “fauxcebos”—is a fraudulent gimmick that Dr. Fauci and his drug researchers have pioneered over forty years to conceal adverse side effects of toxic drugs for which they seek approval. Dr. Fauci eventually recruited 400 US hospitalized volunteers for NIAID’s remdesivir trials, but despite this fauxcebo chicanery, Dr. Fauci’s researchers just couldn’t get remdesivir to show any improvement in COVID survival. Despite its disappointing performance, Dr. Fauci worked hand-in-hand with Gilead’s remdesivir team to guide the trial to a satisfactory outcome. According to Vera Sharav, the President and founder of the Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP), “The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) had complete control over the trial and made all decisions regarding trial design and implementation. Gilead Sciences employees participated in discussions about protocol development and in weekly protocol team calls with NIAID.” Sharav’s organization, Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP), monitors the quality and ethical performance of clinical trials. NIAID’s remdesivir trial’s original endpoint made sense: to win approval, the drug would need to demonstrate a “reduction in COVID mortality.” However, the drug didn’t show the hoped-for benefit. While fewer patients receiving remdesivir died, those receiving remdesivir were also a lot less sick than the placebo subjects when they entered the trial. So Dr. Fauci’s team decided to move the goalposts. The researchers, in fact, had changed the trial “endpoints” twice in an effort to create a meager appearance of benefit. Dr. Fauci’s new endpoints allowed the drug to demonstrate a benefit, not by improving the chances of surviving COVID, but by achieving shorter hospital stays. Yet this too was a scam, because it turned out that almost twice as many remdesivir subjects as placebo subjects had to be readmitted to the hospital after discharge—suggesting that Fauci’s improved time to recovery was due, at least in part, to discharging remdesivir patients prematurely. Altering protocols in the middle of an ongoing study is an interference commonly known as “scientific fraud” or “falsification.” UCLA Epidemiology Professor Sander Greenland explains, “You’re not supposed to change your endpoint mid-course. That’s frowned upon.” Vera Sharav agrees: “Changing primary outcomes after a study has commenced is considered dubious and suspicious.” But Dr. Fauci had little reason to worry that insiders would complain about the corruption of the study, since his trusted deputy, Cliff Lane, chaired the NIH Treatment Guidelines panel. Lane was doubly conflicted, since he had personally overseen the remdesivir trials in China, and stood, potentially, to share in patent rewards and royalties for the drug. In addition to Lane, seven of the panel members had financial relationships with Gilead—and eight additional panel members had had financial relationships with Gilead prior to the past eleven months, for which they were required to declare a relationship. “Is it any wonder remdesivir is the only drug recommended for COVID?” asks Vera Sharav, a Holocaust survivor who has devoted her life to advocating for ethics in the notoriously corrupt clinical trial industry.

    Before his study was completed or peer-reviewed, much less published, Dr. Fauci learned that The Lancet had just published a placebo-controlled Chinese study that showed remdesivir utterly ineffective at keeping hospitalized patients alive OR reducing the duration of hospitalizations. Even more importantly, remdesivir did not reduce the presence of the virus in the blood. Worst of all, the Chinese study confirmed remdesivir’s deadly toxicity. The Chinese regulators and researchers shuttered that trial because of potentially lethal side effects. Remdesivir caused serious injuries in 12 percent of the patients, compared to 5 percent of patients in the placebo group. Unlike Dr. Fauci’s trial, the Chinese study was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-center, peer-reviewed study, published in the world’s premier scientific journal, The Lancet. All the underlying data was available to the incurious press and the uninformed public. In contrast, Dr. Fauci’s NIAID-Gilead study was at that point, still unpublished, not peer-reviewed, its details undisclosed. It employed a phony placebo and had suffered a sketchy mid-course protocol change. In April, the Chinese cancelled two ongoing clinical trials with NIAID in China because the Chinese had succeeded in ending the COVID epidemic in the country, and researchers could no longer identify enough COVID patients to enroll in the study. In any event, the Chinese study spelled certain doom for remdesivir. It was now D.O.A. at FDA—a poem title? But Dr. Fauci never accepted this. The inimitable maestro of regulatory combat responded to the crisis with savvy and bold action that would miraculously salvage his sinking product: He appeared at one of his regular White House press conferences, this one in the Oval Office. Seated on the couch next to Deborah Birx and opposite President Trump, Dr. Fauci made a surprise announcement. From that lofty platform, Dr. Fauci, with great fanfare, declared victory. The data from NIAID’s clinical trial for remdesivir shows “quite good news,” he said, glossing over the drug’s failure to demonstrate any mortality advantage. He boasted that the median time for hospitalization was eleven days for patients taking remdesivir, compared to fifteen days in the placebo group. He told the credulous press: “The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery.” He claimed that his study had therefore proven remdesivir so remarkably beneficial to COVID patients that he had decided that it would be unethical to deny Americans benefits of this wonder drug. He was, he declared, unblinding and ending the study and giving remdesivir to the placebo group. Remdesivir would be America’s new “standard of care” for COVID. It was, of course, all a lie.

    On May 1, the FDA granted the pandemic’s first Emergency Use Authorization for a COVID drug, allowing remdesivir treatments for patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19. Based on Dr. Fauci’s representation, President Trump purchased the world’s entire stock of remdesivir for Americans. The European Union signed a “joint procurement agreement” with Gilead to queue up in the pipeline for 500,000 treatment courses. The day after Dr. Fauci’s announcement at the White House, the University of North Carolina issued a press release headlined: “Remdesivir, developed through a UNC-Chapel Hill partnership, proves effective against COVID-19 in NIAID human clinical trials.” Dr. Fauci’s gain-of-function wizard, Dr. Ralph Baric, called this “a game changer for the treatment of patients with COVID-19.” Vera Sharav points out that in a rational universe, a poison like remdesivir would have no hope of winning regulatory approval—unless, of course, the company could somehow distract attention from the overwhelmingly catastrophic scientific evidence by getting the world’s most powerful health official—the man who conducted the clinical trial—to pronounce the drug a “miracle cure” at a globally attended press conference while lounging on an Oval Office divan beside the president of the United States. Says Sharav, “What better free advertisement?” Sharav adds, “Dr. Fauci had a vested interest in remdesivir. He sponsored the clinical trial whose detailed results were not subject to the peer review he demanded for the drugs he regarded as rivals, like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Instead of showing transparent data and convincing results, he did ‘science’ by fiat. He simply declared the disappointing results to be ‘highly significant,’ and pronounced remdesivir to be the new ‘standard of care.’ Fauci made the promotional pronouncement while sitting on a couch in the White House, without providing a detailed news release, without a briefing at a medical meeting, or peer review for publication in a scientific journal—as is the norm and practice, to allow scientists and researchers to review the data.”

    “Standard of Care”: FDA’s recognition of remdesivir as the new “Standard of Care” for COVID meant that Medicaid and insurance companies could not legally deny it to patients and would have to fork over Gilead’s exorbitant price tag on a product US taxpayers had, by then, spent at least $85 million to develop. Improving Gilead’s business even more, doctors and hospitals that failed to use remdesivir could now be sued for malpractice, leading some medical experts to believe that coercing the use of this worthless and dangerous drug on COVID patients almost certainly cost tens of thousands of Americans their lives. As we shall see, Dr. Fauci copied the choreographed script for winning remdesivir’s EUA from the worn rabbit-eared playbook that he developed during his early AIDS years, and then used repeatedly across his career to win approvals for deadly and ineffective drugs. Time and again, he has terminated clinical trials of his sweetheart drugs the moment they begin to reveal cataclysmic toxicity. He makes the absurd claim that his drug-du-jour had proven so miraculously effective that it would be unethical to deny it to the public, and then he strong-arms FDA to grant his approvals. This time only, the brazenness of the fraud earned Dr. Fauci some rare criticism even in mainstream science and press, and from academic institutions that customarily maintain silence about his shenanigans, given their addictions to whopping NIH and BMGF funding. On October 24, 2020, Umair Irfan noted that “The FDA is once again promoting a Covid-19 therapy based on shaky evidence.” The British Medical Journal pointed out, “None of the randomized controlled trials published so far, however, have shown that remdesivir saves significantly more lives than standard medical care.” Eric Topol of Scripps Research Translational Institute scolded that, “This is a very, very bad look for the FDA, and the dealings between Gilead and EU make it another layer of badness.” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, told a reporter: “I was really surprised when I saw that news.” Science Magazine said Dr. Fauci’s move had, “baffled scientists who have closely watched the clinical trials of remdesivir unfold over the past 6 months—and who have many questions about remdesivir’s worth.” University of Oxford Professor of Clinical Therapeutics Duncan Richard scathingly observed that, “Research based on this kind of use should be treated with extreme caution because there is no control group or randomization, which are some of the hallmarks of good practice in clinical trials.” Professor Stephen Evans in Pharmacoepidemiology, at the Gates-funded London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, offered a particularly scathing assess-ment—“The data from this paper are almost uninterpretable. It is very surprising, perhaps even unethical, that the New England Journal of Medicine has published it. It would be more appropriate to publish the data on the website of the pharmaceutical company that has sponsored and written up the study. At least Gilead has been clear that this has not been done in the way that a high-quality scientific paper would be written.” “

    Excerpt from “The Real Anthony Fauci”, Robert Kennedy Jr., Skyhorse Publishers, Kindle Edition

    Yes, as of the 14th of January 2022, Italy is STILL using Remdesevir to treat Covd19 patients, which would explain why we continue to witness so many deaths.

    #NOVITÁ (From the Tuscany Health Library Network)
    • WHO aggiorna la Living guideline on drugs for Covid-19 (14 gen 22)
    • Molnupiravir e Remdesivir: OK di AIFA per trattamento dei pazienti non ospedalizzati ad alto rischio di malattia grave (30 dic)
    • Molnupiravir: ok dell’FDA in alcuni gruppi di persone (23 dic)
    • Anticorpi monoclonali e variante Omicron: FDA sospende bamlanivimab ed etesevimab insieme, etesevimab da solo e REGEN-COV (23 dic)
    • Paxlovid: FDA autorizza uso di emergenza (22 dic)
    • Molnupiravir: studio fase 3 per trattamento precoce e ambulatoriale (16 dic)
    • Paxlovid (PF-07321332/ritonavir): il parere di EMA e l’avvio della rolling review (16 dic)
    • Xevudy (anticorpo monoclonale sotrovimab): EMA raccomanda autorizzazione (16 dic)
    • Kineret (anakinra): EMA raccomanda approvazione (16 dic)
    • Aggiornate raccomandazioni AIFA sui farmaci per la gestione domiciliare di COVID-19 (14 dic)
    • Anticorpi monoclonali: FDA approva tixagevimab + cilgavimab come prevenzione in alcuni individui (8 dic)
    • RoActemra (tocilizumab): EMA approva uso nei casi di COVID-19 grave (7 dic)
    • Plasma convalescente: OMS sconsiglia l’uso nei pazienti COVID-19 non gravi (7 dic)
    • WHO aggiorna la Living guidance for clinical management of COVID-19 (23 nov)
    • Monitoraggio anticorpi monoclonali per Covid-19: Report Aifa settimanali   

    , , , ,

  • Doctor Pregliasco, Director of the Milanese Hospital IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Galeazzi, Invents Medical Rules and Restrictions out of whole cloth, stipulates that Individuals without the ‘Super Green Pass’ (double vaccinated with booster) will not recieve Medical Assistance and their Scheduled Operations will be Cancelled.

    At the Hospital Galeazzi in Milan, a memo signed by Doctor Pregliasco negates medical cures to those individuals not in posession of the Super Green Pass, in deliberate conflict with Italian law, the Hippocratic Oath and the Spirit of Christian Charity which historically has animated the foundation of all hospitals.

    Two medical patients who had been in contact with the Galeazzi Hospital in preparation for their operations testified on the programme ‘Fuori del Coro’ that they had been informed that they would not recieve any surgical interventions without the SGP. Call Center operators of the hospital explained to the patients that they and other medical operators had recieved these specific indications from Doctor Pregliasco: “All patients must have recieved the third dose, or the second dose at least five monthes ago, or have recovered from covid in the past six monthes.” In other words, at Galeazzi, one must be in possession of the Super Green Pass, otherwise one’s surgery is automatically cancelled.

    Pregliasco has managed to argue his way out of a denoucement for malpractice by stating that “we have suspended all operations at the Galeazzi Institute on individuals considered ‘fragile’ – a category which includes the unvaccinated.” “I gave these indications to our medical operators in order to make correct risk management evaluations with repect to the fragility of each patient, but also in order to optimize the operating rooms for the most urgent surgical interventions, because our activities are limited by the fourth wave of covid.”

    If this is truely the case, it is time to interrupt the covid pantomime: Dr. Angelique Coetzee – the doctor who isolated the Omicron variant – stated quite clearly that the symptoms were “so mild as to go almost undetected.” This quite literally signifies that we are halting the function of our System of Public Health, delaying programmed medical interventions, for an illness with characteristics now resembling the common cold.

    ,

  • Exposing the Lies of the Italian ‘Ministry of Health’ by Logical Deduction

    UK Latest UK Adverse Reactions and Fatalities to 22nd December 2021, per the MHRA, following the experimental Covid-19 injections (released by the MHRA -6th January 2022). The MHRA in the UK is now reporting a total of 1,913 deaths and almost 1.4 million injuries to over 420k people. MHRA report is not clear but it seems likely that the deaths and injuries noted above are only those following either dose 1 or 2 of a Covid-19 injection given to an adult. Note: The MHRA are reporting that 30.5k people have reported harm after a booster injection and that there are over 2.5k cases reported of harm to a child following a Covid-19 injection. The MHRA are not however disclosing any details of deaths and injuries reported from either booster injections or doses given to children, they are only giving case numbers i.e. the number of children / adults impacted. Only 1-10% of cases reported Link to data: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions https://t.me/robinmg/13696

    EU / USA / UK– 61,604 Covid-19 injection related deaths, plus over 9.7 million injuries now reported by over 2.8 million people –January 2022.

    Table shows the analysis of all deaths reported in EU, US and UK by injection manufacturer

    Only 1-10% of deaths and injuries are reported

    Link to US VAERS ADR Data: https://www.openvaers.com/covid-data

    EUdraVigilance covers EEA countries and also some non EEA countries. Link to the database: http://www.adrreports.eu/en/search_subst.html#/

    Link to the UK ADR’s by the MHRA:
    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions

    Where is the Italian data regarding adverse events and deaths following the so-called vaccine? Why is it that there are no numbers available after mid-Spetember 2021? Why has our National Office of Statistics not released any information with regard to excess deaths in 2021?

    If we observe the sheer horror of the number of deaths and adverse events reported in the UK and the United States, we can conclude that the Italian government is once again obfuscating the truth and lying to the citizenry, as it states that only 16 people have died as a direct result of ‘vaccination ‘, and that although there have been over 100,000 reports of adverse effects, only 18% of these are ‘severe’ and the others are not ‘serious’. This is so highly statistically improbable as to be be considered impossible: in the UK (a population numerically similar to Italy, although we have a larger number of aging and fragile individuals) there have been to date more than 2,000 adult deaths directly related to vaccination, and an asounding +800 amongst UK children as a result of the ‘booster’, which would be more aptly named ‘The Final Solution’.

    We may logically conclude that either Italians are so hearty and rigorous as to remain immune to the effects of the genocidal serum, or we can deduce, based upon the above numbers, that the Ministry of Health is LYING, that injection-induced deaths number in the thousands, that severe injury is in the tens – if not hundreds – of thousands, and that pertinent data has not been released for 4.5 monthes in order to obfuscate these facts.

    ,

  • Why do Covid hospital patients continue to die, despite numerous and efficient available cures?

    In the UK it’s Midazolam, in the rest of the world equivalent drugs and Remdesivir: “So we’ve seen this pattern play out, over and over and over again. Patients head to the hospital with a Covid case, their condition rapidly declines, they’re put on a ventilator, and they die. Why does this keep happening? One possible reason is this drug they keep giving them, Remdesivir. More than a year ago, even the World Health Organization said that Remdesivir shouldn’t be used, in ANY Covid cases, because there’s no evidence that it’s helpful and a lot of evidence that it causes deadly kidney failure, among other things. But hospitals keep using it, even while they move heaven and earth to keep patients from using ivermectin, which at a minimum is completely harmless even if it doesn’t work, and there’s quite a bit of evidence that its does work. But it’s not just Remdesivir that is causing patients to die. Dr. Brian Ardis joins Robin Monotti Graziadei to talk about what’s causing patients to die so frequently in our pro-death hospitals.” https://rumble.com/vss3ph-proof-docs-know-theyre-killing-faucis-deadly-remdesivir-had-50-kill-rate-in.html https://t.me/robinmg/14311

    “Who is behind the use of Midazolam and Opioids in the UK as a treatment for “Covid.” The interview between Clare Wills Harrison and Dr Bryan Ardis is now available to view. It has been posted on Awakened World, so that the PowerPoint and documents discussed can also be accessed. If you follow the link below you will be able to watch the interview, read the post and download the documents and PowerPoint. If you prefer to just watch the interview we will post that separately below. All documents and links can also be found on Dr Ardis’ website and again we will post that below. My sincere thanks to Dr Ardis for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk to me. I really appreciate it, and I know he is as deeply concerned as me about the use of Midazolam in the UK, along with being concerned about who suggested Midazolam be prescribed with Opioids at the beginning of April 2020. Midazolam of course, is not just used for treatment where there is “Covid”. Read the post and watch the interview for the full shocking information. https://awakenedworld.co.uk/clare-wills-harrison-talks-to-dr-bryan-ardis/ https://t.me/robinmg/14314

  • Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (Feastday February 9th) Prophecy on The Two Popes

    “I saw also the relationship between the two popes. . . I saw how baleful (harmful) would be the consequences of this false church. I saw it increase in size; heretics of every kind came into the city (of Rome). The local clergy grew lukewarm, and I saw a great darkness…”

    March 22, 1820

    “I saw very clearly the errors the aberrations an the countless sins of men. I saw the folly and the wickedness of their actions, against all truth and all reason. Priests were among them, and I gladly endured my suffering so that they may return to a better mind.”

     April 12, 1820

    “I had another vision of the great tribulation. It seems to me that a concession was demanded from the clergy which could not be granted. I saw many older priests, especially one, who wept bitterly. A few younger ones were also weeping. But others, and the lukewarm among them, readily did what was demanded. It was as if people were splitting into two camps…”

    May 13, 1820

    “I saw also the relationship between the two popes. . .

    I saw how baleful (harmful) would be the consequences of this false church. I saw it increase in size; heretics of every kind came into the city (of Rome). The local clergy grew lukewarm, and I saw a great darkness…”

    “Then the vision seemed to extend on every side. Whole Catholic communities were being oppressed, harassed, confined, and deprived of their freedom. I saw many churches closed down, great miseries everywhere, wars and bloodshed. A wild and ignorant mob took violent action. But it did not last long…”

    “Once more I saw that the Church of Peter was undermined by a plan evolved by the secret sect [Freemasons], while storms were damaging it. But I saw also that help was coming when distress had reached its peak. I saw again the Blessed Virgin ascend on the Church and spread her mantle [over it].”

    July, 1820

    “I saw the Holy Father surrounded by traitors and in great distress about the Church. He had visions and apparitions in his hour of greatest need. I saw many good pious Bishops; but they were weak and wavering, their cowardice often got the upper hand…Then I saw  darkness spreading around and people no longer seeking the true Church.”  

    August to October, 1820

     “I see more martyrs, not now but in the future…I saw the secret sect relentlessly undermining the great Church. Near them I saw a horrible beast coming up from the sea… All over the world, good and devout people especially the clergy were harassed oppressed and put into prison.  I had the feeling that they would become martyrs one day.”

    “When the Church had been for the most part destroyed, and when only the sanctuary and altar were still standing, I saw the wreckers enter the Church with the Beast. There they met a Woman of noble carriage who seemed to be with child because she walked slowly. At this sight, the enemies were terrorized, and the Beast could not take but another step forward. It projected its neck towards the Woman as if to devour her, but the Woman turned about and bowed down [towards the altar], her head touching the ground. Thereupon, I saw the Beast taking to flight towards the sea again, and the enemies were fleeing in the greatest confusion…. Then, I saw in the great distance great legion approaching. In the foreground I saw a man on a white horse. Prisoners were set free and joined them. All enemies were pursued. Then, I saw that the Church was being promptly rebuilt, and she was more magnificent than ever before….” [After the Warning with billions of converts]

    August 10, 1820

    “I see the Holy Father in great anguish. He lives in a palace other than before [notice how Pope Benedict XVI no longer lives in the Papal residence?] and he admits only a limited number of friends near him. I fear that the Holy Father will suffer many more trials before he dies. I see that the false Church of darkness is making progress and I see the dreadful influence it has on the people. The Holy Father and the Church are verily in so great a distress that one must implore God night and day…”

    “I have been told to pray much for the Church and the Pope… The people must pray earnestly for the extirpation (rooting out) of the dark church.”

    “Last night I was taken to Rome where the Holy Father immersed in his sorrow, is still hiding to elude dangerous demands (made upon him). He is still very weak, and exhausted by sorrows, cares and prayers. He can now trust but few people. That is mainly why he is hiding. But he still has with him an aged priest who has much simplicity and godliness. He is his friend and because of his simplicity they did not think it would be worth removing him. But this man receives many graces from God. He sees and notices a great many things which he faithfully reports to the Holy Father. It was required of me to inform him while he was praying, of the traitors and evil doers who were to be found among the high ranking servants living close to him, so that he might be made aware of it.”

    August 25, 1820

    “I do not know in what manner I was taken to Rome last night, but I found myself near the Church of St Mary Major, and I saw many poor people who were greatly distressed and worried because the Pope was to be seen nowhere, and also on account of the restlessness and the alarming rumors in the city. These people did not seem to expect the Church doors to open; they only wanted to pray outside. An inner urging had left them there individually. But I was in the Church, and I opened the doors. They came in, surprised and frightened because the doors had opened. It seems to me that I was behind the door, and they could not see me. There was no office on in the Church. But the sanctuary lamps were lit. The people prayed quite peacefully…”

    “Then I saw an apparition of the Mother of God, and she said that the tribulation would be very great. She added that people must pray fervently with outstretched arms, be it only long enough to say three Our Fathers. This was the way her Son prayed for them on the Cross. They must rise at twelve at night, and pray in this manner; and they must keep coming to the Church. They must pray above all for the Church of Darkness to leave Rome…”

    “She (the Holy Mother) said a great many others things that it pains me to relate: she said that if only one priest could offer the bloodless sacrifice as worthily and with the same disposition as the Apostles, he could avert all the disasters (that are to come). To my knowledge the people in the Church did not see the apparition, but they must have been stirred by something supernatural, because as soon as the Holy Virgin had said that they must pray God with outstretched arms, they all raised their arms. These were all good and devout people, and they did not know where help and guidance should be sought. There were no traitors and enemies among them, yet they were afraid of one another. Once can judge thereby what the situation was like.”

    September 10, 1820

    “I saw the Church of St Peter: it has been destroyed but for the Sanctuary and the main altar St Michael came down into the Church, clad in his suit of armor, and he paused, threatening with his sword and number of unworthy pastors who wanted to enter. That part of the Church which had been destroyed was promptly fenced in with light timber so that the Divine office might be celebrated as it should. Then, from all over the world came priests and laymen and they rebuilt the stone walls, since the wreckers had been unable to move the heavy foundation stones. And then I saw that the Church was being promptly rebuilt and She was more magnificent than ever before…”

    September 12, 1820

     “I saw a strange church being built against every rule…No angels were supervising the building operations. In that church, nothing came from high above…There was only division and chaos. It is probably a church of human creation, following the latest fashion, as well as the new heterodox Church of Rome [one world church of the False Prophet], which seems of the same kind…”

    “I saw again the strange big church that was being built there (in Rome). There was nothing holy in it. I saw this just as I saw a movement led by Ecclesiastics to which contributed angels, saints and other Christians. But there (in the strange big church) all the work was being done mechanically (i.e., according to set rules and formula). Everything was being done, according to human reason. I saw all sorts of people, things, doctrines, and opinions. There was something proud, presumptuous, and violent about it, and they seemed to be very successful. I did not see a single Angel nor a single saint helping in the work. But far away in the background, I saw the seat of a cruel people armed with spears, and I saw a laughing figure which said: ‘Do build it as solid as you can; we will put it to the ground’.”

    “I saw that many of the instruments in the new Church, such as spears and darts, were meant to be used against the living Church. Everyone dragged in something different: clubs, rods, pumps, cudgels, puppets, mirrors, trumpets, horns bellows – all sorts of things. In the cave below (the sacristy) some people kneaded bread, but nothing came of it; it would not rise. The men in the little mantles brought wood to the steps of the pulpit to make a fire. They puffed and blew and labored hard, but the fire would not burn. All they produced was smoke and fumes. Then they broke a hole in the roof and ran up a pipe, but the smoke would not rise, and the whole place became black and suffocating. Some blew the horns so violently that the tears streamed from their eyes. All in this church belonged to the earth, returned to the earth. All was dead, the work of human skill, a church of the latest style, a church of man’s invention like the new heterodox church in Rome.”

    September 27, 1820

    “I saw deplorable things: they were gambling, drinking, and talking in church; they were also courting women. All sorts of abominations were perpetrated there. Priests allowed everything and said Mass with much irreverence. I saw that few of them were still godly, and only a few had sound views on things.  I also saw Jews standing under the porch of the Church [the Jews who will accept the Antichrist – John 5:43]. All these things caused me much distress.”

    October 1, 1820

    “The Church is in great danger. We must pray so that the Pope may not leave Rome; countless evils would result if he did.  They are now demanding something from him. The Protestant doctrine and that of the schismatic Greeks are to spread everywhere. I now see that in this place (Rome) the (Catholic) Church is being so cleverly undermined, that there hardly remain a hundred or so priests who have not been deceived. They all work for destruction, even the clergy. A great devastation is now near at hand.”

    “In those days Faith will fall very low and it will be preserved in some places only.”

    “The Little Black Man in Rome, whom I see so often, has many working for him without their clearly knowing for what end. He has his agents in the New Black Church also. If the Pope leaves Rome, the enemies of the Church will get the upper hand. I see the Little Black Man in his own country committing many thefts and falsifying things generally. Religion is there so skillfully undermined and stifled that there are scarcely 100 faithful priests. I cannot say how it is, but I see fog and darkness increasing … All must be rebuilt soon; for everyone, even ecclesiastics, are laboring to destroy (and) ruin is at hand. The 2 enemies of the Church who have lost their accomplice are firmly resolved to destroy the pious and learned men that stand in their way…”

    October 4, 1820

    “When I saw the Church of St Peter in ruins and the manner in which so many of the clergy were themselves busy at this work of destruction – none of them wishing to do it openly in front of the others  – I was in such distress that I cried out to Jesus with all my might, imploring His mercy. Then I saw before me the Heavenly Spouse, and He spoke to me for a long time…He said, among other things, that this translation of the Church from one place to another meant that she would seem to be in complete decline. But she would rise again; even if there remained but one Catholic, the Church would conquer again because she does not rest on human counsels and intelligence. It was shown to me that there were almost no Christians left in the old acceptation of the word.”

    October 7, 1820

    “As I was going through Rome with St. Francis and the other saint, we saw a great palace engulfed in flames from top to bottom. I was very much afraid that the occupants would be burned to death because no one came forward to put out the fire. As we came nearer, however, the fire abated and we saw the blackened building. We went through a number of magnificent rooms (untouched by the fire), and we finally reached the Pope. He was sitting in the dark and slept in a large arm-chair. He was very ill and weak; he could no longer walk. The ecclesiastics in the inner circle looked insincere and lacking in zeal; I did not like them. I told the Pope of the bishops who are to be appointed soon. I told him also that he must not leave Rome. If he did so, it would be chaos. He thought that the evil was inevitable and that he should leave in order to save many things beside himself. He was very much inclined to leave Rome, and he was insistently urged to do so. The Pope is still attached to the things of this earth in many ways…” 

    “The Church is completely isolated and as if completely deserted. It seems that everyone is running away. Everywhere I see great misery, hatred, treason, rancor, confusion and utter blindness. O city! O city! What is threatening thee? The storm is coming, do be watchful!…”

    June 1, 1821

    “Among the strangest things that I saw, were long processions of bishops. Their thoughts and utterances were made known to me through images issuing from their mouths. Their faults towards religion were shown by external deformities. A few had only a body, with a dark cloud of fog instead of a head. Others had only a head, their bodies and hearts were like thick vapors. Some were lame; others were paralytics; others were asleep or staggering. I saw what I believe to be nearly all the bishops of the world, but only a small number were perfectly sound. I also saw the Holy Father – God-fearing and prayerful. Nothing left to be desired in his appearance, but he was weakened by old age and by much suffering. His head was lolling from side to side, and it dropped onto his chest as if he was falling asleep He often fainted and seemed to be dying. But when he was praying, he was often comforted by apparitions from Heaven. Then, his head was erect, but as soon as it dropped again onto his chest, I saw a number of people looking quickly right and left, that is, in the direction of the world…”

    “Then I saw that everything pertaining to Protestantism was gradually gaining the upper hand, and the Catholic religion fell into complete decadence. Most priests were lured by the glittering but false knowledge of young school-teachers, and they all contributed to the work of destruction. In those days, Faith will fall very low, and it will be preserved in some places only, in a few cottages and in a few families which God has protected from disasters and wars…”

    1820-1821

    “I also saw the various regions of the earth. My Guide (Jesus) named Europe and pointing to a small and sandy region, He uttered these words: ‘Here is Prussia (East Germany), the enemy.’ Then He showed me another place, to the north, and He said: ‘This is Moskva, the land of Moscow, bringing many evils’.”  

    “I see many excommunicated ecclesiastics who do not seem to be concerned about it, nor even aware of it. Yet, they are (ipso factor) excommunicated whenever they cooperated to [sic] enterprises, enter into associations, and embrace opinions on which an anathema has been cast[i.e. become Freemasons]. It can be seen thereby that God ratifies the decrees, orders, and interdictions issued by the Head of the Church, and that He keeps them in force even though men show no concern for them, reject them, or laugh them to scorn.”

    April 22, 1823

    “I saw that many pastors allowed themselves to be taken up with ideas that were dangerous to the Church. They were building a great, strange, and extravagant Church. Everyone was to be admitted in it in order to be united and have equal rights: Evangelicals, Catholics sects of every description. Such was to be the new Church…But God had other designs…”

    “I see that when the Second Coming of Christ approaches, a bad priest will do much harm to the Church. When the time of the reign of Antichrist is near, a false religion will appear which will be opposed to the unity of God and His Church. This will cause the greatest schism the world has ever known. The nearer the time of the end, the more the darkness of Satan will spread on earth, the greater will be the number of the children of corruption, and the number of the just will correspondingly diminish…”  

    “They built a large, singular, extravagant church which was to embrace all creeds with equal rights: Evangelicals, Catholics, and all denominations, a true communion of the unholy with one shepherd and one flock. There was to be a Pope, a salaried Pope, without possessions. All was made ready, many things finished; but, in place of an altar, were only abomination and desolation. Such was the new church to be, and it was for it that he had set fire to the old one; but God designed otherwise….”

    “I came to the Church of Peter and Paul (Rome) and saw a dark world of distress, confusion, and corruption, through which shone countless graces from thousands of saints who there repose…”  

    “I saw the fatal consequences of this counterfeit church: I saw it increase; I saw heretics of all kinds flocking to the city. I saw the ever-increasing tepidity of the clergy, the circle of darkness ever widening…”

    “Again I saw in the midst of these disasters the twelve new Apostles laboring in different countries, unknown to one another, each receiving streams of living water from on high They all did the same work. They know not whence they received their tasks; but as soon as one was finished, another was ready for them…”  

    “The Jews shall return to Palestine, and become Christians toward the end of the world.”

    October 22, 1822

    “Very bad times will come when non-Catholics will lead many people astray. A great confusion will result. I saw the battle also. The enemies were far more numerous, but the small army of the faithful cut down whole rows of enemy soldiers. During the battle, the Blessed Virgin stood on a hill, wearing a suit armor. It was a terrible war. At the end, only a few fighters for the just cause survived, but the victory was theirs…”

    Source

    Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, German Stigmatic and Victim Soul (1774-1824) 

    Anna Katharina Emmerick (or Anne Catherine Emmerich in English) was born on September 8, 1774 at Flamske, Westphalia, West Germany, to a small farming family. Her parents, Bernard Emmerich and Anne Hiller, were poor peasants, but very devout and pious.  Anne Catherine was baptized at the St. James Church at Coesfeld. As a child, she spent alot of her time as a maid and seamstress until her entrance into the Augustinian Order on November 13, 1803. 

    At age 29 she joined the Convent of Agnetenberg at Dulmen, Westphalia. Even during these youthful years, Anne was extraordinarily gifted with ecstasies and visions of Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, her guardian angel, and many of the saints. Although never given an adequate education, Anne had perfect recollection of her childhood days, and she seemed to understand Latin beginning in her very early years. Almost from infancy Anne reportedly had the gifts of discerning holy from unholy objects, consecrated objects or locations, and the identification of relics and from which saints they came. Also during these early years, Anne was often seen making the entire Way of the Cross in her bare feet, even when the snow had covered the ground.

    Anne receives the Crown of Thorns

    The following is the account she herself has given of the circumstances under which she received the crown of thorns:
    “About four years prior to my admittance into the convent, that is in 1798, it happened that I was in the Jesuits’ Church at Coesfeld, at about twelve noon, kneeling before a crucifix and absorbed in meditation, when all on a sudden I felt a strong but pleasant heat in my head, and I saw my Divine Spouse, under the form of a young man clothed with light, come towards me from the altar, where the Blessed Sacrament was preserved in the tabernacle. 

    In His left hand he held a crown of flowers, and in His right hand a crown of thorns, and He bade me choose which one I would like to have. I chose the crown of thorns; He placed it on my head, and I pressed it down with both hands. Then He disappeared, and I returned to myself, feeling, however, violent pain around my head. I was obliged to leave the church, which was going to be closed. One of my companions was kneeling by my side, and as I thought she might have seen what happened to me, I asked her when we got home whether there was not a wound on my forehead, and spoke to her in general terms of my vision, and of the violent pain which had followed it. She could see nothing outwardly, but was not astonished at what I told her, because she knew that I was sometimes in an extraordinary state, without her being able to understand the cause. The next day my forehead and temples were very much swelled, and I suffered terribly. This pain and swelling often returned, and sometimes lasted whole days and nights. I did not remark that there was blood on my head until my companions told me I had better put on a clean cap, because mine was covered with red spots. I let them think whatever they liked about it, only taking care to arrange my head-dress so as to hide the blood which flowed from my head, and I continued to observe the same precaution even after I entered the convent, where only one person perceived the blood, and she never betrayed my secret.’

    Anne receives the Stigmata

    In 1811, Anne was forced to leave her convent along with all the sisters when King Jerome Bonaparte closed all of the Religious houses during his reign. Four years before the suppression of her convent, Anne made a visit home with her family in Flamske. One day while she was kneeling and praying for hours before the Cross of the Church of St. Lambert at Coesfeld, Anne had asked our Lord for a share in His Passion as a sacrifice for the sake of her convent. From that time on, she began experiencing terrible pains in her hands, feet and side, an indication that God had given her the invisible stigmata. 

    On August 28,1812 (the Feast of St. Augustine), Jesus appeared to her in a vision and imprinted a cross-shaped wound on her breast directly above the heart. Later that same year, specifically on the 29th December 1812, at about 3pm she was lying on her bed in her little room, extremely ill, but in a state of ecstasy and with her arms extended, meditating on the sufferings of her Lord, and beseeching him to allow her to suffer with him. She said five Our Fathers in honour of the Five Wounds, and felt her whole heart burning with love. She then saw a light descending towards her, and distinguished in the midst of it the resplendent form of her crucified Saviour, whose wounds shone like so many furnaces of light. Her heart was overflowing with joy and sorrow, and, at the sight of the sacred wounds, her desire to suffer with her Lord became intensely violent. Then triple rays, pointed like arrows, of the colour of blood, darted forth from the hands, feet, and side of Jesus, and struck her hands, feet, and right side.

    When she recovered her senses she was astonished when she beheld blood flowing from the palms of her hands, and felt violent pain in her feet and side. It happened that her landlady’s little daughter came into her room, saw her hands bleeding, and ran to tell her mother, who with great anxiety asked Anne Catherine what had happened, but Anne begged her not to speak about it. She felt, after having received the stigmas, that an entire change had taken place in her body; for the course of her blood seemed to have changed, and to flow rapidly towards the stigmas. She herself used to say: ‘No words can describe in what manner it flows.’

    In 1813, Anne was examined by a group of both medical and Church authorities; an inquiry which lasted for five months. The examiners found Anne to be mentally sound, and they could not find any medical or temporal explanation for the wounds of the stigmata.

    Anne lives off the Eucharist alone for 12 years

    From the moment she received the Sacred Wounds until her death, Anne Catherine Emmerich took no solid food, existing only on the Sacred Host. In fact, when she would try to eat or drink she would have a severe reaction and would vomit violently when attempting to consume food, even broth. She was however able to consume the Holy Eucharist and her diet consisted only of the Eucharist. 

    In 1819 she was once again investigated by high-ranking secular authorities. She was taken away from all of her acquaintances and moved to a house in the country belonging to one of the authorities. They referred to her as ‘The Imposter’. She was locked up for three weeks with the authorities watching her 24×7 in 6 hour shifts. Much to the aggravation of her captors, she still consumed no food and bled through her Stigmata even though she prayed not to bleed so they would release her. After three weeks, she was finally sent back to her home in Dulmen by her frustrated captors. Two of them became very sympathetic to her cause. During her last few years, she did not sleep at all, a miracle in itself according to the testimonies of many doctors. She was given shelter by various charitable people in the area, and was bedridden for the rest of her life. God had chosen this gifted soul to become His victim, and she voluntarily suffered and sacrificed as a means of atonement and expiation for the souls that were living in sin.

    Because of the great trouble caused by her visible stigmata, Anne implored our Lord to remove them, a prayer which was granted – at least partially – starting in 1819. Over the next seven years, her wounds became less visible until finally they disappeared, except for on special occasions or particular feast days of the Church calendar. They would reappear and continue to bleed, however, during each Lenten season, particularly on Good Fridays. There were other occasions when Anne Catherine Emmerich’s wounds would manifest and bleed severely, including some Holy Thursdays and a few Fridays outside of Lent. Yet she was never without the stigmata, for the rest of the time they were invisible but equally as painful.

    Her remarkable visions

    It is though that the most extraordinary gift that Anne possessed was that of her extraordinary visions, also known as ecstasies. She was given visions of almost the entire life of Jesus, and most of the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary also. These private revelations of Jesus and Mary’s life included the most intimate details and can be considered a complete vision of the Gospel story. The visions of the life of Jesus as witnessed by Anne Catherine are compiled and published in the popular book “The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ” which many view as a true treasure, and her visions of Mary are published under the title “The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary- From The Visions Of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich”.

    Other visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich include those of Heaven, Hell, Purgatory along with intimate details in the lives of many Saints. Many of these Saints she conversed with, and she often witnessed events in their lives as if she were right there beside them. The list is truly impressive so only some of their names will be mentioned here: Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, her own guardian angel, St. Agnes, St. Agatha, St. Emerentiana, St. Paula, St. Dorothea, St. Apollonia, St. Benedict, St. Scholastica, St. Paschal, St. Cyprian, St. Isidore, St. Stephen, St. Lawrence, St. Nicodemus, St.Clare, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Perpetua, St. Felicity, St. Justina, St. Denis, St. Ursula, St. Hubert, St. Gertrude, St. Cecilia, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Augustine, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Jane Frances de Chantal. And this is far from being a complete list. In addition to all of this, she also received many prophecies about future events. Many of these revelations have come true, sometimes with remarkable accuracy.

    Angels and devils

    Anne Catherine Emmerich was favored since her childhood with the guidance and protection of her guardian angel. God allowed her to entrust her will to this angelic creature, who in turn enlightened her to God’s designs upon her soul. Anne even revealed that her angel often took her to various places during her ecstastic moments, throughout all of Europe and even to the Holy Land. Often too, this favored soul would communicate with the poor souls in Purgatory via the guidance of her angel, who led her safely through this place of purification in order that she might visit those who implored her aid. In turn, Anne would pray and suffer in order to help free them from their pain and to help gain their entrance into the heavenly kingdom.

    And in regards to the Angels, Anne Catherine stated:

    “I see the angels without aureolas (ie. “halos”). They appear to me, indeed, under a human form with faces and hair, but they are more delicate, more noble, more beautiful than men. They are immaterial, perfectly luminous and transparent, but in different degrees. I also see blessed souls surrounded by a material light, rather white than resplendent, and around them a many-colored glory, an aureola whose tints correspond to their kind of purification , I see neither angels nor saints moving their feet, excepting in the historic senses of their life upon earth, as men among men. I never see these apparitions in their real state speaking to one another with the mouth; they turn to one another, interpenetrate one another …. “ (p. 419-420.)

    , , , , , , , ,

  • Alice von Hildebrand, Catholic Philosopher and Author, Dies at the age of 98

    Catholic philosopher and professor Alice von Hildebrand died Jan.14 at the age of 98.

    “With sadness suffused by joy, I write to share that ou beloved friend and sister Alice von Hildebrand went home to the Lord at 12:25am this morning.” “She died peacefully at home after a brief illness” wrote Hildebrand Project Founder and President John Henry Crosby in a Jan. 14 death announcement.

    “Those who knew Lily often heard her say that the wick of her candle was growing ever shorter. In fact, she yearned for death – to see the face of our Lord, to be reunited at last with her husband Dietrich, her parents, her dearest friend Madeleine Stebbins – with the peace that only true innocence and profound faith can grant.”

    Von Hildebrand was born Alice Jourdain in Belgium in 1923. She fled Europe during World Was II, arriving in New York city in 1949. Soon after, she met reknowned personalist philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand. She recalled being immediately impressed by Dietrich’s dedication to truth and wisdom.

    “The moment he opened his mouth, I knew that it was what I was looking for: the perfume of the supernatural, the radiant beauty of truth, the unity of all value: truth, beauty, and goodness,” von Hildebrand wrote in her 2014 autobiography, Memoirs of a Happy Failure.

    She was a philosphy student of Dietrich’s for several years before the pair were married in 1959.

    Von Hildebrand spent the majority of her career teaching philosophy at Hunter College in New York City, beginning in 1947. Though she described the secular college as radically anti-Catholic, von Hildebrand was well-liked among her students and even inspired several of them to conversion.

    “In secular universities, the phrase ‘objective truth’ triggers panic, she wrote in her autobiography. “God said, ‘I know you don’t belong there,’ as my collegues repeated time and again. ‘But I have work for you to do, and you cannot do it on your own. I will help you.’”

    In 1984, von Hildebrand retired from Hunter College after 37 years and she was awarded the college’s Presidential Award for excellence in teaching.

    Von Hildebrand published several books during her lifetime including the Privilege of Being a Woman and The Soul of a Lion: The Life of Dietrich von Hidebrand. She also wrote countless articles and essays and helped launch the Hildebrand Project to promote her late husband’s work.

    She was a frequent contributor to Catholic News Agency, the National Catholic register and made more than eighty appearances on parent company the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN).

    In 2016, she wrote a passionate article for the register about Mother Angelica highlighting her feminine genius. Writing that she and Mother Angelica were “almost twins,” von Hildebrand reflected on the foundress of EWTN: “Mother Angelica’s amazing life clearly tells us that humility (pauper et inops sum ego) and a heart burning with love can conquer the world.”

    “We are grateful for the many contributions she made to Catholic thought and for the many programs she made for EWTN over the years,” said EWTN Chaplain Father Joseph Wolfe. “may she enjoy her eternal reward and the joy of being reunited with her dear husband Dietrich, whom she so admired.”

    Alejandro Bermudez, executive director of Catholic News Agency and ACI Prensa, called Hildebrand an “exemplary, happy warrior” for the Church.

    “She not only made more than eighty appearances on EWTN, but left probably her most iportant body of essays in the set of articles she wrote exclusively for CNA,” Bermudez said.  You can read her work for CNA here.

    In a 2014 interview with CNA, con Hildebrand reflected that her life looked radically different from the one she had expected.

    “God has chosen the pattern of my life, the words that come to my mind from my heart are: Misericordia Domini in aeternum cantabo, I will sing the mercies of the Lord forever.”

    Sources: National Catholic Register, AlicevonHildebrand.org

    https://youtu.be/wSCWo_WC5rQ : Mother Angelica and Alice von Hildebrand, EWTN

    Books by Alice von Hildebrand: available at http://www.alicevonhildebrand.org

    The Privilege of Being a Woman

    Women historically have been denigrated as lower than men or viewed as privileged. Dr. Alice von Hildebrand characterizes the difference between such views as based on whether man’s vision is secularistic or steeped in the supernatural. She shows that feminism’s attempts to gain equality with men by imitation of men is unnatural, foolish, destructive, and self-defeating. The Blessed Mother’s role in the Incarnation points to the true privilege of being a woman. Both virginity and maternity meet in Mary who exhibits the feminine gifts of purity, receptivity to God’s word, and life-giving nurturance at their highest.https://www-alicevonhildebrand-org.filesusr.com/html/6c27c9_1b3470d01a92bc01f88c880934938eb3.html

    Man & Woman: A Divine Invention

    In follow-up to her acclaimed Privilege of Being a Woman;, Dr. von Hildebrand expands the discussion to explore how the fullness of human nature is found in the perfect union between man and woman. God chose to create man doubly complex. He made man of both soul and body a spiritual reality and a material reality. To crown this complexity, He created them male and female. Dr. von Hildebrand elucidates the tragic separation that happened with original sin and the consequences of this brokenness in the world today: the distortion of the male and female genius, supernatural blindness, and the triumph of secularism. She explores how this brokenness can be healed by following God s Divine plan for man and woman. https://www-alicevonhildebrand-org.filesusr.com/html/6c27c9_c24fcefb876998bb2f2b5c571781d38d.html

    By Love Refined: Letters to a Young Bride

    Because of human imperfections, difficulties crop up in marriage, even between people who love each other deeply. You’ll soon find that for this reason, although love is a gift, it must also be learned.

    So begins this remarkable book of letters to Julie, a young bride letters that reveal the beauty and importance of high ideals in marriage while teaching you practical tips to help you live up to those ideals daily. You’ll learn how to grow in wisdom and in love as you encounter the unglamorous, everyday problems that threaten all marriageshttps://www-alicevonhildebrand-org.filesusr.com/html/6c27c9_40f738f563f191105ed743c5f8be06cc.html

    Memoirs of a Happy Failure

    Alice von Hildebrand is a household name to many who know her from her countless EWTN appearances, her  books, and her extensive articles and essays. What is little known is the story of her life, notably the thirty-seven years she spent at Hunter College in New York City. There, despite systematic opposition she left  a mark on a generation of students through her defense of truth with reason, wit, and love. By showing her students how truth fulfills the deepest longings of the heart, she liberated countless students from the oppressive relativism of the day, enabling many of them to find their way to God.https://www-alicevonhildebrand-org.filesusr.com/html/6c27c9_022b2a7469c4d1ba91d89015c51a5691.html

    The Soul of a Lion: Dietrich von Hildebrand

    Dietrich von Hildebrand, widely regarded as one of the great Catholic philosophers of the 20th century, is well-known for his numerous books, but, until this present work, not much has been known of his remarkable and inspiring life. Written by his wife, Alice, this is a fascinating, moving and, at times, gripping account of a truly great man of the Church who suffered much for the faith. Based on a very long letter Dietrich wrote to his wife late in his life, it tells his story from his glorious youth with a unique intellectual and cultural formation, his conversion to Catholicism, his great passion for truth and beauty, his extensive writing on Christian philosophy and theology, and his steadfast, determined opposition to Nazism that made him a marked man who miraculously escaped execution. A powerful biography of a relentless fighter against injustice, a devoted son of the Church, a man who had the soul of a lion. https://www-alicevonhildebrand-org.filesusr.com/html/6c27c9_4158ff03dd39bf46301a303cf9ac1151.html

    The Art of Living

    In just over one hundred pages, Dietrich von Hildebrand, with his wife Alice, presents a distinctive view of the virtuous life that begins with reverence, “the mother of all virtues,” and includes chapters on “Faithfulness,” “Goodness,” “Hope,” “The Human Heart,” and many others. The essays that make up this book began as a popular series of radio lectures in 1930s Germany, and their conversational tone comes through in this new edition, which maintains Alice von Hildebrand’s original translation, and updates this beloved work for a new generation of readers. The Art of Living promises to provide clarity, hope, and fresh insights for those seeking to live life more fully, faithfully, and beautifully.

    , , ,