Laura Dodsworth, author of the fantastic book: "A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic" joins the show to discuss masks and how global governments used fear to ensure compliance with mandates. You can find Laura’s Substack
I really enjoyed this episode…much of what she said of UK journalism is exactly the same experience in New Zealand - however here there was a government fund set up to save journalism…so the journalists are literally paid by the govt (and of course competing for clicks…the fear narrative is and was very strong). I did know a reporter in the press gallery who covered some of the PMs live briefings…they said they couldnt ask many questions as they would be disinvited but it still surprised them the lack of questions and how pathetic they were…there’s still been no questions about the inaccurate modelling and reasoning the led to useless lockdowns!
I have been reading Laura's book and thoroughly enjoying it. Thank you Laura. Here in NZ we are in the 'orange' traffic light setting. With respect to masks (I wont' list all of the mask restrictions) it means we don't need to wear masks in a restaurant, where a party of 20 can sit cheek to jowl but you must wear them in the supermarket and retail stores where there is minimal if any close proximity exposure. Certainly not for 15minutes. I refuse to wear a mask in these public settings. In a retail store my behavioral strategy is to see how long it will take before someone asks me if I have an exemption. I say 'no'. One young lady, maybe 22yrs old, handed me your standard surgical mask, she did this when I was standing at the checkout. I didn't put it on. As I was walking out I handed it back. Her comment was "You've touched it, I can't take it back". I just shrugged my shoulders and as I was walking away I heard her say "ooow someone's got an attitude". It can be emotionally exhausting standing up for what you believe in, especially when that belief is going against the crowd.
Co-author with Richard Thaler of 2008 "Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness." Both directly influenced and participated in the establishment of the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) in the UK and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST)
in the US at the same time. SBST was supposed to be eliminated in the US as Pres. Trump took office, but ended up being transferred to oversight under the General Services Administration as the Office of Evaluation Services (OES).
Sunstein is married to former UN Ambassador Samantha Power, the Obama administration's point person deflecting his Libya/Benghazi policy debacle. Blamed on a small filmmaker who was then jailed for using inflammatory language that inspired a terrorist assault on our embassy in Libya that killed US Ambassador Chris Stevens. The first time that free speech came under assault by an American president in a nation that previously had the strongest free speech protections in the world.
Sunstein also developed a protege, Jessica Hertz, who headed up the Biden administrations transition team and staff search, becoming his first Staff Attorney, a surprisingly powerful position in an administration. Hertz worked for Facebook between working with Sunstein and Biden.
Shankar is very connected. She was on a Chelsea Clinton (Bill & Hillary's daughter) podcast with Frank Luntz. Luntz is a long time prominent messaging guru for Republicans who also happens to be the GOP House leader, Cong. Kevin McCarthy's roommate in DC.
Shankar is a co-author of the UN's Behavioral Insights: Achieving Agenda 2030. Aka The Great Reset. A behavioral science plan to make us "own nothing and be happy." And enjoy our diet of bugs instead of eating meat.
And she serves as an adviser to a newly-created international organization focused on constructing an ethical practices of behavioral sciences model, the Global Association of Applied Behavioral Scientists (GAABS). To be relied upon by public policymakers in deciding how best to apply "nudges." Or "shoves." Or "Slaps." Foxes guarding the henhouse.
Notice how the behavioral scientists at the heart of the establishment of Nudge Units are everywhere inside Big Tech today? Coincidence?
Behavioral science is increasingly relied up on by public policy officials. Including judges who base decisions on the legality and appropriateness of applied behaviorism. Here's a piece in Health Affairs (HA), a leading international behavioral health publication, about masks. Acknowledging that masks didn't work in the 1918 Spanish Flu. But they are needed today.
Behavioral science is the science of totalitarianism, as Laura Dodsworth quotes a practitioner in her book, A State of Fear. It is how consent is manufactured to authoritarianism in a democracy. As described by Noam Chomsky in 1988. And going back to the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences in 1933, where Harold Lasswell wrote of the desirability of propaganda to achieving government public policy. Note: Joseph Goebbels was familiar with that publication and Lasswell's insights.
From Chomsky's speech while on book tour for Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media in 1989. How close does this describe the pandemic response. And all of the behavioral science-based initiatives we see ahead in Agenda 2030/Great Reset.
"If you go back to the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences published in 1933 — days when people were a little more open and honest in what they said — there’s an article on propaganda, and it’s well worth reading. There’s an entry under propaganda. The entry is written by a leading- one- maybe the leading American political scientist, Harold Lasswell, who was very influential, particularly in this area, communications, and so on. And in this entry in the International Encyclopedia on propaganda he says, we should not succumb to democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests. They’re not, he said. Even with the rise of mass education- doesn’t mean that people can judge their own interests. They can’t. The best judges of their interests are elites — the specialized class, the cool observers, the people who have rationality — and therefore they must be granted the means to impose their will. Notice, for the common good. Because, again, because- well, he says, because of the ignorance and superstition of the masses, he said it’s necessary to have a whole new technique of control, largely through propaganda. Propaganda, he says, we shouldn’t have a negative connotation about, it’s neutral. Propaganda, he says, is as neutral as a pump handle. You can use it for good, you can use it for bad; since were good people, obviously, — that’s sort of true by definition — we’ll use it for good purposes, and there should be no negative connotations about that. In fact, it’s moral to use it, because that’s the only way that you can save the ignorant and stupid masses of the population from their own errors. You don’t let a three year old run across the street, and you don’t let ordinary people make their own decisions. You have to control them.
And why do you need propaganda? Well, he explains that. He says, in military-run or feudal societies — what we would these days call totalitarian societies — you don’t really need propaganda that much. And the reason is you’ve got a- you’ve got a club in your hand. You can control the way people behave, and therefore it doesn’t matter much what they think, because if they get out of line you can control them — for their own good, of course. But once you lose the club, you know, once the State loses its capacity to coerce by force, then you have some problems. The voice of the people is heard — you’ve got all these formal mechanisms around that permit people to express themselves, and even participate, and vote, and that sort of thing — and you can’t control them by force, because you’ve lost that capacity. But the voice of the people is heard, and therefore you’ve got to make sure it says the right thing. And in order to make sure it says the right thing, you’ve got to have effective and sophisticated propaganda, again, for their own good.
So in a- as a society becomes more free — that is, there’s less capacity to coerce — it simply needs more sophisticated indoctrination and propaganda. For the public good.
The similarity between this and Leninist ideology is very striking. According to Leninist ideology, the cool observers, the radical intelligentsia, will be the vanguard who will lead the stupid and ignorant masses on to, you know, communist utopia, because they’re too stupid to work it out by themselves.
And in fact there’s been a very easy transition over these years between one and the other position. You know, it’s very striking that continually people move from one position to the other, very easily. And I think the reason for the ease is partly because they’re sort of the same position. So you can be either a Marxist-Leninist commissar, or you can be somebody celebrating the magnificence of State capitalism, and you can serve those guys. It’s more or less the same position. You pick one or the other depending on your estimate of where power is, and that can change.
The- and in fact the mainstream of the intelligentsia, I think over the last, say, through this century, have tended to be in one or the other camp. Either- there’s this strong appeal of Marxism-Leninism to the intelligentsia, for obvious reasons — I don’t have to bother saying. And there’s the same appeal of these doctrines to the intelligentsia, because it puts them in the position of justifying- of having a justified role as ideological managers, in the service of real power, corporate/State power. For the public good, of course. So you naturally are tempted to one or the other position."
I really enjoyed this episode…much of what she said of UK journalism is exactly the same experience in New Zealand - however here there was a government fund set up to save journalism…so the journalists are literally paid by the govt (and of course competing for clicks…the fear narrative is and was very strong). I did know a reporter in the press gallery who covered some of the PMs live briefings…they said they couldnt ask many questions as they would be disinvited but it still surprised them the lack of questions and how pathetic they were…there’s still been no questions about the inaccurate modelling and reasoning the led to useless lockdowns!
I have been reading Laura's book and thoroughly enjoying it. Thank you Laura. Here in NZ we are in the 'orange' traffic light setting. With respect to masks (I wont' list all of the mask restrictions) it means we don't need to wear masks in a restaurant, where a party of 20 can sit cheek to jowl but you must wear them in the supermarket and retail stores where there is minimal if any close proximity exposure. Certainly not for 15minutes. I refuse to wear a mask in these public settings. In a retail store my behavioral strategy is to see how long it will take before someone asks me if I have an exemption. I say 'no'. One young lady, maybe 22yrs old, handed me your standard surgical mask, she did this when I was standing at the checkout. I didn't put it on. As I was walking out I handed it back. Her comment was "You've touched it, I can't take it back". I just shrugged my shoulders and as I was walking away I heard her say "ooow someone's got an attitude". It can be emotionally exhausting standing up for what you believe in, especially when that belief is going against the crowd.
Cast Einstein/Kas Einstein is actually Cass Sunstein. The result of a voice to text software error.
Who is Cass Sunstein?
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797617702501
Co-author with Richard Thaler of 2008 "Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness." Both directly influenced and participated in the establishment of the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) in the UK and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST)
https://sbst.gov/
in the US at the same time. SBST was supposed to be eliminated in the US as Pres. Trump took office, but ended up being transferred to oversight under the General Services Administration as the Office of Evaluation Services (OES).
https://oes.gsa.gov/about/
Sunstein is married to former UN Ambassador Samantha Power, the Obama administration's point person deflecting his Libya/Benghazi policy debacle. Blamed on a small filmmaker who was then jailed for using inflammatory language that inspired a terrorist assault on our embassy in Libya that killed US Ambassador Chris Stevens. The first time that free speech came under assault by an American president in a nation that previously had the strongest free speech protections in the world.
Sunstein also developed a protege, Jessica Hertz, who headed up the Biden administrations transition team and staff search, becoming his first Staff Attorney, a surprisingly powerful position in an administration. Hertz worked for Facebook between working with Sunstein and Biden.
https://bluetent.us/articles/governing/cass-sunstein-biden-white-house-oira/
Another Sunstein protege is Maya Shankar. Shankar headed up the SBST under Obama. She went on to become Google's Chief Global Behavioral Scientist.
https://mayashankar.com/bio
Shankar is very connected. She was on a Chelsea Clinton (Bill & Hillary's daughter) podcast with Frank Luntz. Luntz is a long time prominent messaging guru for Republicans who also happens to be the GOP House leader, Cong. Kevin McCarthy's roommate in DC.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-in-fact-with-chelsea-clin-80529176/episode/changing-minds-with-maya-shankar-and-82670587/
Shankar is a co-author of the UN's Behavioral Insights: Achieving Agenda 2030. Aka The Great Reset. A behavioral science plan to make us "own nothing and be happy." And enjoy our diet of bugs instead of eating meat.
https://www.undp.org/library/behavioural-insights-united-nations-achieving-agenda-2030
And she serves as an adviser to a newly-created international organization focused on constructing an ethical practices of behavioral sciences model, the Global Association of Applied Behavioral Scientists (GAABS). To be relied upon by public policymakers in deciding how best to apply "nudges." Or "shoves." Or "Slaps." Foxes guarding the henhouse.
https://gaabs.org/team/
Notice how the behavioral scientists at the heart of the establishment of Nudge Units are everywhere inside Big Tech today? Coincidence?
Behavioral science is increasingly relied up on by public policy officials. Including judges who base decisions on the legality and appropriateness of applied behaviorism. Here's a piece in Health Affairs (HA), a leading international behavioral health publication, about masks. Acknowledging that masks didn't work in the 1918 Spanish Flu. But they are needed today.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/forefront.20200508.769108/full/
HA is no trifling publication for policy wonks. It was cited by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, in his ACA (Obamacare) decision.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/about
Behavioral science is the science of totalitarianism, as Laura Dodsworth quotes a practitioner in her book, A State of Fear. It is how consent is manufactured to authoritarianism in a democracy. As described by Noam Chomsky in 1988. And going back to the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences in 1933, where Harold Lasswell wrote of the desirability of propaganda to achieving government public policy. Note: Joseph Goebbels was familiar with that publication and Lasswell's insights.
https://chomsky.info/19890315/
From Chomsky's speech while on book tour for Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media in 1989. How close does this describe the pandemic response. And all of the behavioral science-based initiatives we see ahead in Agenda 2030/Great Reset.
"If you go back to the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences published in 1933 — days when people were a little more open and honest in what they said — there’s an article on propaganda, and it’s well worth reading. There’s an entry under propaganda. The entry is written by a leading- one- maybe the leading American political scientist, Harold Lasswell, who was very influential, particularly in this area, communications, and so on. And in this entry in the International Encyclopedia on propaganda he says, we should not succumb to democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests. They’re not, he said. Even with the rise of mass education- doesn’t mean that people can judge their own interests. They can’t. The best judges of their interests are elites — the specialized class, the cool observers, the people who have rationality — and therefore they must be granted the means to impose their will. Notice, for the common good. Because, again, because- well, he says, because of the ignorance and superstition of the masses, he said it’s necessary to have a whole new technique of control, largely through propaganda. Propaganda, he says, we shouldn’t have a negative connotation about, it’s neutral. Propaganda, he says, is as neutral as a pump handle. You can use it for good, you can use it for bad; since were good people, obviously, — that’s sort of true by definition — we’ll use it for good purposes, and there should be no negative connotations about that. In fact, it’s moral to use it, because that’s the only way that you can save the ignorant and stupid masses of the population from their own errors. You don’t let a three year old run across the street, and you don’t let ordinary people make their own decisions. You have to control them.
And why do you need propaganda? Well, he explains that. He says, in military-run or feudal societies — what we would these days call totalitarian societies — you don’t really need propaganda that much. And the reason is you’ve got a- you’ve got a club in your hand. You can control the way people behave, and therefore it doesn’t matter much what they think, because if they get out of line you can control them — for their own good, of course. But once you lose the club, you know, once the State loses its capacity to coerce by force, then you have some problems. The voice of the people is heard — you’ve got all these formal mechanisms around that permit people to express themselves, and even participate, and vote, and that sort of thing — and you can’t control them by force, because you’ve lost that capacity. But the voice of the people is heard, and therefore you’ve got to make sure it says the right thing. And in order to make sure it says the right thing, you’ve got to have effective and sophisticated propaganda, again, for their own good.
So in a- as a society becomes more free — that is, there’s less capacity to coerce — it simply needs more sophisticated indoctrination and propaganda. For the public good.
The similarity between this and Leninist ideology is very striking. According to Leninist ideology, the cool observers, the radical intelligentsia, will be the vanguard who will lead the stupid and ignorant masses on to, you know, communist utopia, because they’re too stupid to work it out by themselves.
And in fact there’s been a very easy transition over these years between one and the other position. You know, it’s very striking that continually people move from one position to the other, very easily. And I think the reason for the ease is partly because they’re sort of the same position. So you can be either a Marxist-Leninist commissar, or you can be somebody celebrating the magnificence of State capitalism, and you can serve those guys. It’s more or less the same position. You pick one or the other depending on your estimate of where power is, and that can change.
The- and in fact the mainstream of the intelligentsia, I think over the last, say, through this century, have tended to be in one or the other camp. Either- there’s this strong appeal of Marxism-Leninism to the intelligentsia, for obvious reasons — I don’t have to bother saying. And there’s the same appeal of these doctrines to the intelligentsia, because it puts them in the position of justifying- of having a justified role as ideological managers, in the service of real power, corporate/State power. For the public good, of course. So you naturally are tempted to one or the other position."
Been a fan of Laura for a long time and I really like the way she approaches the CoVid issue in particular.