I stopped reading the discourse after a few exchanges because this is BULLSHIT. Of course it was pre-planned. Explain EVENT 101 to me then? Or explain the presentation I saw on UK Column at least two years back, where a media mogul described how you control the media for two months and you start a crisis. I think he engineered the Foot and Mouth scare. Go to The Corbett report and tell me this wasn't pre-planned. For God's sake, just go to the WEF's website and they lay out exactly what they would like to happen. This discussion is just part of the psyop (like Fenton talking to John Campbell) to try to get us who KNOW what happened, to have some kind of 'Mandella Effect' moment and pretend it didn't happen.
Every problem must be a nail if you’re a hammer. There’s way too much effort here to say, since X isn’t necessary, then X doesn’t exist. If a boulder was thrown, and did start the avalanche, then it’s a “first cause” (stupid name for such a thing because it opens the door to infinite regression). But just because avalanches can occur without the boulder doesn’t mean the boulder doesn’t exist or wasn’t thrown. And just because Wile E. Coyote has failed in every previous attempt, doesn’t mean that when we see him finish a meal that we can be certain it’s not the roadrunner. Furthermore, is it not possible to kick off a stampede or a murmuration by disturbing key individuals within the group intentionally?
I understand that the mere possibility doesn’t make it the explanation. But I’ve come to the same place in the last year or so as what I take to be Martin’s position. All the evidence taken together now makes “intentional steering” the best fitting model and seems to satisfy Occam’s razor. We can only guess at the intentions, true. But this individual seems far too dogmatic in framing all problems as nails for his specialized hammer.
It is possible to be a little of both, and in my opinion “both” is the best explanation for what we see. And “which came first” is a foolish question. Because one can always ask, “what happened before that?”
To me, using basic tools back in early 2020, the institutionally published numerical data (from government, public health, academia, etc) seemed likely to be fraudulent. Since then, the likelihood has only increased. Because institutions have even more sophisticated tools available to them than I do, there are individuals at those institutions that know the truth but say nothing. Worse still, they continue to publish the fraudulent data. This, plus nudging (a euphemism for intentional steering), moves us outside “network hysteria” as the explanation for the lying experts. If an expert looks at data and lies about it for a “noble” purpose, that’s not network hysteria causing their behavior. That’s intentional steering that leverages network hysteria for some perceived benefit. We don’t need to know why to identify it correctly, to reject the supposed nobility of purpose, and to hold them accountable for it.
In my not so humble, and frustrated, opinion. Frustrated that we still find ourselves consumed by reductionism one way or another, and that we are so obsessed with knowing why. (Chalking everything up to emergent phenomena is a form of reductionism!)
It's interesting to read. I have followed Mark on Twitter since the early days of The Madness. He was a voice of sanity! One thing he hasn't explained is how come we Non-Believers didn't fall for it all? I heard about a new virus doing the rounds in China on a BBC programme where they interviewed a British student in China who said they were restricting people's behaviour because of a new cold virus. That must have been in about November 2019 and I thought "huh, typical Chinese heavy-handed reaction". When the weirdness started here I remember a Korean tutor at a course I was on telling us that her sister said it was "terrible" in South Korea and we "didn't know what was about to hit us". I also knew an NHS health visitor who said her south London hospital was gearing up for a "terrible onslaught of sick people". All this was before March 2020. How come I didn't react with fear and terror? How come I didn't believe it was as bad as all that? Am I not a starling in the mummuration? Why was I not affected? I don't know what I think about how it all panned out. Was it co-ordinated? Yes, but then world leaders are all in the same bubble so they all did the same thing. Did it give banks the time to save themselves from collapse? Yes, but that was just luck. Did BigPharma see an amazing opportunity? Duh, yes. Did middle-class people thoroughly enjoy being scared? Yes! Did they care about the genuine fear they allowed into the hearts of the elderly and the children? Not at all - didn't dawn on them. Did governments control any of it? Not really - once the momentum got going, nobody controlled it, they all got swept up in the power they suddenly had. Will it happen again? Probably. Will I fall for it next time? Doubt it (here's hoping it's not a real pandemic of a real killer like TB crossed with influenza!!)
In early March 2020, I sent a copy of a peer reviewed article to other medical pharma colleagues regarding the effectiveness of HCQ against SARS1. As SARS2 was supposedly similar to SARS1, it made sense to try HCQ therapy. The article was suddenly removed and I was unable to find it. This was followed by a stringent public campaign of innuendo, falsehoods, and coercion. This is, in my experience, a complete departure within a heavily regimented and regulated industry. A simple lookup in standard references is all it took to prove duplicity. It was extremely irregular and indicated that the system had fallen to capricious and rogue elements. It was obvious to me and should have been obvious to any competent health care professional at the outset. I spent a career on the inside. No layman should buy the lies of mass professional ignorance. This was avarice and dishonesty. It still is.
My experience in business leads me to believe that as soon as people see a key move they line up alongside and behind it, and will parrot nonsense in support of it, if they seek to gain from it. Much as I'd like to believe that Govts, NGOs and even Big Pharma had a covert master plan I can't get myself in that space. Running big organisations and big teams is incredibly complex and difficult. Govts and NGOs are institutionally incompetent and IMO don't have the capability. I don't believe big business has it either, if just a tad less incompetent. So for me I'd say it was an massive over-reaction because once the door opened, most interested parties sought to smash it down along with those who sought to close it or keep it ajar. Oh, and there were a huge nr of interested parties (that bit really shocked me). Who opened the door and why? I'm not sure. I think these things can emerge. In the UK, Govts can be easily terrified. I can imagine being in the room when Prof Pants Down presented his report. Boris thinks bullshit but Witty and Vallance support it. Boris become isolated and he can't bring himself to be strong (he's a coward). Where was the challenging team? Once the media roll into town any politician who stands up faces enormous difficulty (they'd be accused of murder as soon as the first death was announced) and no one goes after the media if they are wrong, we just move on. The Govt, I think, then ramps up the fear factor to help justify their position but we then start on a journey we can't get off. The longer you're on the more difficult it is to get off. The populous were egged on and enjoyed it in many instances IMO.
What we needed at that time was a Churchillian parliamentarian. Ironic that Borris was in the hot seat and chose to run away. I lost all faith in him and his party as a result. Absolute cowards. Politics is about making difficult decisions but the last PM we had who did that was around in the 80s.
The IEA report issued yesterday shows just how diabolical the response was. Neither Lockdown supporters nor skeptics can be happy. This was the worst public policy decision for well over 100yrs IMO. We have war time debt (but no war), destroyed health service, collapsed education, a civil service that has become unaccountable and activist, a populous who will seemingly accept basic freedoms that took almost 1000yrs to acquire, removed at the drop of a hat etc etc etc
Every institution has been painstakingly seeded, over decades, with ideologies and practices which made them ripe for emergent phenomena of the type described by Mark, once the first lever was pulled. The tax free foundations set up by the US robber barons began this seeding process in the early years of the 20th century, and replicated the model in other countries.
The repo crisis of September 2019 is seen by Catherine Austin Fitts, Mathew Crawford, and many others who study the financial markets, as the opening salvo of the manufactured COVID crisis.
In the age of centrally controlled and censored social media, AI chatbots, and recommendation/ visibility algorithms, and of course 100% bought and paid for MSM, I think it is completely possible to create a very realistic looking hysteria out of nothing. And that is what happened. It helps a lot when everyone is physically separated, because their entire view of the world and their model of others' views is completely intermediated by a bunch of algorithms.
Jun 6, 2023·edited Jun 6, 2023Liked by Martin Neil
"if, hypothetically speaking, there were a premeditated attempt to mass murder the population and enslave the survivors, what would that look like"? This is exactly the logic I use that draws me back into concluding that it was planned. Because this is exactly what it would look like. Sure, it's just a coincidence that it follows the long stated eugenic objectives of the Rockefeller foundation. The same people who have funded all the actual planning sessions like event 201. A world wide implementation of the most insane and reckless policies? Nobody pushed back, except for a few guys who got quickly assassinated? Probably a coincidence.
If the answer to that question is, it's not what it looks like, with nothing like contrary evidence, then what that real says is that this person will never admit this possibility. But it doesn't make it false.
I agree with you that most probably the sudden disappearance of flu was an intentional 'ploy' to artificially inflate Covid case numbers to the point where countermeasures such lockdowns could be justified. But behind the scenes was the spectre of the mRNA and DNA 'vaccines' coming over the horizon, we know they'd been in the planning for years (for various reasons, whether people believe it's depopulation, digital IDs/central bank currencies or whatever) and flu disappearing was required to help convince the world to accept the largely untested jabs ... if flu had been at normal levels I doubt the public would've bought into the 'vaccination' program they way they did
I have long since given up trying to persuade Mark as I’ve found he is so attached to his theoretical model that no amount of proof will convince him otherwise. He condescendingly dismisses those who are examining the evidence of collusion as failing to understand quantum mechanics and “emergent behaviour of complex systems.”
He inexplicably denies that Bernaysian techniques of persuasion have been effectively deployed for mass control, propagandizing, and opinion engineering by increasingly sophisticated tools for over a century as is compellingly documented by Michelle Stiles in this must-read book:
• “One Idea To Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda”
People who are frightened of being called conspiracy theorists for recognizing obvious patterns accept the propagandists’ gaslighting as a way of evading the shattering realization that the world is darker than they are willing to believe. Although Mark is by no means a Covidian, he winds up at the same Orwellian place:
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
“A few hundred at the top, to plan and direct at every level; a few thousand to supervise and control (without a voice in policy) at every level; a few score thousand specialists (teachers, lawyers, journalists, scientists, artists, actors, athletes, and social workers) eager to serve or at least unwilling to pass up a job or to revolt; a million of the Pöbel, which sounds like ‘people’ and means ‘riffraff,’ to do what we would call the dirty work, ranging from murder, torture, robbery, and arson to the effort which probably employed more Germans in inhumanity than any other in Nazi history, the standing of ‘sentry’ in front of Jewish shops and offices in the boycott of April, 1933.”
—Milton Mayer, “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45”
People can deny it all they like, but the evidence overwhelmingly shows Mistakes Were NOT Made.
Jun 6, 2023·edited Jun 6, 2023Liked by Martin Neil
If I ask myself "who/what/why?" I can come up with some answers such as the need to cover for the decline in cheap oil and the bubble that is the financial system but then even they are not at the centre of the onion.
The bottom line is, we are living in a system. We were born in to this system and most of us are quite comfortable living in it, mostly unaware of what it even is.
I guess people always have lived in a system of some sort. Empires, even. Or a small community on a remote island.
These days, the empire that is running us can reach far and wide around the globe and control most of it via religion, banking and the military. No doubt there are other powerful groups who occasionally challenge and want a bigger piece of the pie but you can see how tempting it would be to globally co ordinate, as all the oligarchs want the same thing, riches and control and safety for themselves and their off spring.
In time, there might be one group that would like to take over world power. That doesn't sound so fanciful if they are a smallish group who control the US, China and other places with resources and manufacturing capacity. It might require splitting up Russia and the US, but borders can be re-drawn.
It is about control and who knows they will probably leave us alone as long as we go along with the cards we are dealt. 'You will own nothing and be happy' sounds like a sincere message sent on their behalf. It was just a bit blunt! If you don't want to be part of the system, ok, try living outside it. Just don't take too many others with you as they wouldn't want a mass awakening and uprising. Then you would be taken out, either physically or reputationally. Or ignored, like many of us have been.
You are missing the "I don't know" option in your poll :)...
There's a couple of things I think I can know for sure...
1. Utopianists (often Godless), are opportunists, as well as schemers...
2. Schemes are exceptionally difficult to pull off...
I'm reminded of troops of chimpanzees. The leader is authoritarian. Sometimes relatively good, sometimes miserably evil. The leader is eventually ousted the instant a weakness is detected by the relentlessly scheming rivals...
Although the opportunistic rivals were indispensable in in fulfilling the coup, the events leading up to the culmination (e.g. illness in the leader) were just an eddy in the stream...
Human nature is inexorable, and when left unchecked (i.e. melioristic utopianism), appears to act merely as a catalyst to negative societal avalanches.
It’s always difficult, if not impossible, to pin point an exact beginning/cause. Determining culpability, however, is different. I’m a lawyer, so perhaps I’m jaded, but one tenant has, for me, always held true: follow the money. I’m old enough to know that Public Health in the US has been jonesing for a pandemic for decades. In earlier years, the American public ignored such predictions of gloom and doom—judging for themselves based on observation. Here, we had videos from China allegedly showing people dropping dead on the streets—videos that MSM and social media picked up and broadcast almost gleefully (click bait?). People became afraid. Fear is a very powerful emotion that most cannot or have not been trained to think through; and a fearful population is a controllable population. There is a video of a panel discussion at a Milken Institute conference in October 2019, wherein Fauci states that no one is afraid of the flu; and to change that perception gov’t had to address it in a “disruptive and iterative way, because you do need both.” Thus, an opportunity arose in early 2020 to change the perception the public had of influenza—to make them very fearful. And, also as predicted by Fauci in the above-referenced video, the gov’t opened up wide the taxpayer wallet. Corporations (PPE, for example), the military (which led Operation Warp Speed), NIH (which “earned’ millions in royalties based on existing vaccine patents), and others in the PH field had an opportunity to make a name ($$) and lot of money for themselves. Money is a powerful motive and makes people predictable to a large extent. There were a few voices in the hysterical wilderness (Ionannidis, for example) that urged people to stop, slow down, and think critically. They were maligned in the MSM. But there are few true emergencies in life; generally a pause to stop and think is available and wise.
My interest is in what and when those in power who developed and instituted polices/rules knew about covid-19, the mRNA vaccines, the PCR testing. The wheels of justice turn slowly (and judges are not immune to fear, though they should not base rulings on it), but turn they do.
I voted "both". It wasn't people conspiring in a secret room smoking cigars saying "let's do a plandemic" because, as mentioned in the chat, the whole thing would be far too complex and unpredictable. It would also raise the question who "they" are. Certainly not Gates and the WEF and the CDC gang because they are far too incompetent and don't have any clue about anything. And even with a super-brilliant mastermind, the plan would be impossible to execute because even a slight variation in one of the variables could push the whole thing in a completely different direction.
But on the other hand, they got the "pandemic" they were looking for. They were testing a coronavirus outbreak (Event 201), Fraudchi was bragging that he needed a disruptive event to deploy the mRNA crap, the WEF had penetrated the parliaments and was planning to impose their technocratic bullcrap, the EU was already preparing vaxxiine passports, and so on and so forth, and when that coronavirus really showed up, they all jumped onto the bandwagon and executed their own agendas which then converged into the Plandemic. Also they most likely deliberately induced the process of mass formation through their fear and manipulation tactics.
So, there was definitely some planning, but not one brilliant masterplan.
Eugyppius' view on emergent conspiracy I think adds another layer to this - institutions plan - they plan and plan and plan and when something finally happens the appropriate plan gets retrieved from the archives, dusted off, and set into action. So we get this blurring of lines between malicious conspiracy and emergent conspiracy where we also have define a difference between "benign" just-in-case planning and malicious new-society planning.
I would direct Mark to David Martin's material showing patenting of SARS going back decades. And so many other facets of pre-knowledge and pre-planning, right out in the open. He is not going where the evidence leads, rather is clinging to his 'non-hysterical hysteria' hypothesis. His dangerous naiivete is why the globalists don't even bother to conceal their agenda. The only way not to see it is willful blindness.
I stopped reading the discourse after a few exchanges because this is BULLSHIT. Of course it was pre-planned. Explain EVENT 101 to me then? Or explain the presentation I saw on UK Column at least two years back, where a media mogul described how you control the media for two months and you start a crisis. I think he engineered the Foot and Mouth scare. Go to The Corbett report and tell me this wasn't pre-planned. For God's sake, just go to the WEF's website and they lay out exactly what they would like to happen. This discussion is just part of the psyop (like Fenton talking to John Campbell) to try to get us who KNOW what happened, to have some kind of 'Mandella Effect' moment and pretend it didn't happen.
Every problem must be a nail if you’re a hammer. There’s way too much effort here to say, since X isn’t necessary, then X doesn’t exist. If a boulder was thrown, and did start the avalanche, then it’s a “first cause” (stupid name for such a thing because it opens the door to infinite regression). But just because avalanches can occur without the boulder doesn’t mean the boulder doesn’t exist or wasn’t thrown. And just because Wile E. Coyote has failed in every previous attempt, doesn’t mean that when we see him finish a meal that we can be certain it’s not the roadrunner. Furthermore, is it not possible to kick off a stampede or a murmuration by disturbing key individuals within the group intentionally?
I understand that the mere possibility doesn’t make it the explanation. But I’ve come to the same place in the last year or so as what I take to be Martin’s position. All the evidence taken together now makes “intentional steering” the best fitting model and seems to satisfy Occam’s razor. We can only guess at the intentions, true. But this individual seems far too dogmatic in framing all problems as nails for his specialized hammer.
It is possible to be a little of both, and in my opinion “both” is the best explanation for what we see. And “which came first” is a foolish question. Because one can always ask, “what happened before that?”
To me, using basic tools back in early 2020, the institutionally published numerical data (from government, public health, academia, etc) seemed likely to be fraudulent. Since then, the likelihood has only increased. Because institutions have even more sophisticated tools available to them than I do, there are individuals at those institutions that know the truth but say nothing. Worse still, they continue to publish the fraudulent data. This, plus nudging (a euphemism for intentional steering), moves us outside “network hysteria” as the explanation for the lying experts. If an expert looks at data and lies about it for a “noble” purpose, that’s not network hysteria causing their behavior. That’s intentional steering that leverages network hysteria for some perceived benefit. We don’t need to know why to identify it correctly, to reject the supposed nobility of purpose, and to hold them accountable for it.
In my not so humble, and frustrated, opinion. Frustrated that we still find ourselves consumed by reductionism one way or another, and that we are so obsessed with knowing why. (Chalking everything up to emergent phenomena is a form of reductionism!)
It's interesting to read. I have followed Mark on Twitter since the early days of The Madness. He was a voice of sanity! One thing he hasn't explained is how come we Non-Believers didn't fall for it all? I heard about a new virus doing the rounds in China on a BBC programme where they interviewed a British student in China who said they were restricting people's behaviour because of a new cold virus. That must have been in about November 2019 and I thought "huh, typical Chinese heavy-handed reaction". When the weirdness started here I remember a Korean tutor at a course I was on telling us that her sister said it was "terrible" in South Korea and we "didn't know what was about to hit us". I also knew an NHS health visitor who said her south London hospital was gearing up for a "terrible onslaught of sick people". All this was before March 2020. How come I didn't react with fear and terror? How come I didn't believe it was as bad as all that? Am I not a starling in the mummuration? Why was I not affected? I don't know what I think about how it all panned out. Was it co-ordinated? Yes, but then world leaders are all in the same bubble so they all did the same thing. Did it give banks the time to save themselves from collapse? Yes, but that was just luck. Did BigPharma see an amazing opportunity? Duh, yes. Did middle-class people thoroughly enjoy being scared? Yes! Did they care about the genuine fear they allowed into the hearts of the elderly and the children? Not at all - didn't dawn on them. Did governments control any of it? Not really - once the momentum got going, nobody controlled it, they all got swept up in the power they suddenly had. Will it happen again? Probably. Will I fall for it next time? Doubt it (here's hoping it's not a real pandemic of a real killer like TB crossed with influenza!!)
In early March 2020, I sent a copy of a peer reviewed article to other medical pharma colleagues regarding the effectiveness of HCQ against SARS1. As SARS2 was supposedly similar to SARS1, it made sense to try HCQ therapy. The article was suddenly removed and I was unable to find it. This was followed by a stringent public campaign of innuendo, falsehoods, and coercion. This is, in my experience, a complete departure within a heavily regimented and regulated industry. A simple lookup in standard references is all it took to prove duplicity. It was extremely irregular and indicated that the system had fallen to capricious and rogue elements. It was obvious to me and should have been obvious to any competent health care professional at the outset. I spent a career on the inside. No layman should buy the lies of mass professional ignorance. This was avarice and dishonesty. It still is.
My experience in business leads me to believe that as soon as people see a key move they line up alongside and behind it, and will parrot nonsense in support of it, if they seek to gain from it. Much as I'd like to believe that Govts, NGOs and even Big Pharma had a covert master plan I can't get myself in that space. Running big organisations and big teams is incredibly complex and difficult. Govts and NGOs are institutionally incompetent and IMO don't have the capability. I don't believe big business has it either, if just a tad less incompetent. So for me I'd say it was an massive over-reaction because once the door opened, most interested parties sought to smash it down along with those who sought to close it or keep it ajar. Oh, and there were a huge nr of interested parties (that bit really shocked me). Who opened the door and why? I'm not sure. I think these things can emerge. In the UK, Govts can be easily terrified. I can imagine being in the room when Prof Pants Down presented his report. Boris thinks bullshit but Witty and Vallance support it. Boris become isolated and he can't bring himself to be strong (he's a coward). Where was the challenging team? Once the media roll into town any politician who stands up faces enormous difficulty (they'd be accused of murder as soon as the first death was announced) and no one goes after the media if they are wrong, we just move on. The Govt, I think, then ramps up the fear factor to help justify their position but we then start on a journey we can't get off. The longer you're on the more difficult it is to get off. The populous were egged on and enjoyed it in many instances IMO.
What we needed at that time was a Churchillian parliamentarian. Ironic that Borris was in the hot seat and chose to run away. I lost all faith in him and his party as a result. Absolute cowards. Politics is about making difficult decisions but the last PM we had who did that was around in the 80s.
The IEA report issued yesterday shows just how diabolical the response was. Neither Lockdown supporters nor skeptics can be happy. This was the worst public policy decision for well over 100yrs IMO. We have war time debt (but no war), destroyed health service, collapsed education, a civil service that has become unaccountable and activist, a populous who will seemingly accept basic freedoms that took almost 1000yrs to acquire, removed at the drop of a hat etc etc etc
Every institution has been painstakingly seeded, over decades, with ideologies and practices which made them ripe for emergent phenomena of the type described by Mark, once the first lever was pulled. The tax free foundations set up by the US robber barons began this seeding process in the early years of the 20th century, and replicated the model in other countries.
The repo crisis of September 2019 is seen by Catherine Austin Fitts, Mathew Crawford, and many others who study the financial markets, as the opening salvo of the manufactured COVID crisis.
In the age of centrally controlled and censored social media, AI chatbots, and recommendation/ visibility algorithms, and of course 100% bought and paid for MSM, I think it is completely possible to create a very realistic looking hysteria out of nothing. And that is what happened. It helps a lot when everyone is physically separated, because their entire view of the world and their model of others' views is completely intermediated by a bunch of algorithms.
"if, hypothetically speaking, there were a premeditated attempt to mass murder the population and enslave the survivors, what would that look like"? This is exactly the logic I use that draws me back into concluding that it was planned. Because this is exactly what it would look like. Sure, it's just a coincidence that it follows the long stated eugenic objectives of the Rockefeller foundation. The same people who have funded all the actual planning sessions like event 201. A world wide implementation of the most insane and reckless policies? Nobody pushed back, except for a few guys who got quickly assassinated? Probably a coincidence.
If the answer to that question is, it's not what it looks like, with nothing like contrary evidence, then what that real says is that this person will never admit this possibility. But it doesn't make it false.
I agree with you that most probably the sudden disappearance of flu was an intentional 'ploy' to artificially inflate Covid case numbers to the point where countermeasures such lockdowns could be justified. But behind the scenes was the spectre of the mRNA and DNA 'vaccines' coming over the horizon, we know they'd been in the planning for years (for various reasons, whether people believe it's depopulation, digital IDs/central bank currencies or whatever) and flu disappearing was required to help convince the world to accept the largely untested jabs ... if flu had been at normal levels I doubt the public would've bought into the 'vaccination' program they way they did
“But they all watched in early March the same TV and social media everyone did.”
Who programmed the TV and social media messaging?
“They drank the KoolAid.”
Who made the KoolAid?
I admire your probing of Mark’s position on this matter and had a similar exchange with him last year:
• https://www.loofwired.com/p/being-culpable-for-mass-hysteria/comment/8216228
I have long since given up trying to persuade Mark as I’ve found he is so attached to his theoretical model that no amount of proof will convince him otherwise. He condescendingly dismisses those who are examining the evidence of collusion as failing to understand quantum mechanics and “emergent behaviour of complex systems.”
He inexplicably denies that Bernaysian techniques of persuasion have been effectively deployed for mass control, propagandizing, and opinion engineering by increasingly sophisticated tools for over a century as is compellingly documented by Michelle Stiles in this must-read book:
• “One Idea To Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda”
People who are frightened of being called conspiracy theorists for recognizing obvious patterns accept the propagandists’ gaslighting as a way of evading the shattering realization that the world is darker than they are willing to believe. Although Mark is by no means a Covidian, he winds up at the same Orwellian place:
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Decent people have difficulty believing so many participants would collude to achieve a diabolical objective, but what they miss is it only takes a small number of people to be aware of the democidal aspirations (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/a-mostly-peaceful-depopulation). The philanthropaths (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-philanthropath-dreams) and tyrants (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-tyrant) merely have to formulate the goals and then corral people into implementing and accepting those goals through a systematically orchestrated propaganda campaign, financially incentivized bad outcomes (e.g., hospicide to inflate the COVID death tallies: https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-governor-ron-desantis), and an Obedience-Prison-Conformity framework (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/are-you-a-good-german-or-a-badass).
As the epigraph to my “Letter to a Colluder” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-colluder-stop-enabling) reads:
“A few hundred at the top, to plan and direct at every level; a few thousand to supervise and control (without a voice in policy) at every level; a few score thousand specialists (teachers, lawyers, journalists, scientists, artists, actors, athletes, and social workers) eager to serve or at least unwilling to pass up a job or to revolt; a million of the Pöbel, which sounds like ‘people’ and means ‘riffraff,’ to do what we would call the dirty work, ranging from murder, torture, robbery, and arson to the effort which probably employed more Germans in inhumanity than any other in Nazi history, the standing of ‘sentry’ in front of Jewish shops and offices in the boycott of April, 1933.”
—Milton Mayer, “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45”
People can deny it all they like, but the evidence overwhelmingly shows Mistakes Were NOT Made.
• “Mistakes Were NOT Made: An Anthem for Justice” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/mistakes-were-not-made-an-anthem)
• “Mistakes Were NOT Made: An Anthem for Justice (Video)” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/mistakes-were-not-made-an-anthem-57a)
• “Mistakes Were NOT Made: One Poem to Wake the World” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/mistakes-were-not-made-one-poem-to)
If I ask myself "who/what/why?" I can come up with some answers such as the need to cover for the decline in cheap oil and the bubble that is the financial system but then even they are not at the centre of the onion.
The bottom line is, we are living in a system. We were born in to this system and most of us are quite comfortable living in it, mostly unaware of what it even is.
I guess people always have lived in a system of some sort. Empires, even. Or a small community on a remote island.
These days, the empire that is running us can reach far and wide around the globe and control most of it via religion, banking and the military. No doubt there are other powerful groups who occasionally challenge and want a bigger piece of the pie but you can see how tempting it would be to globally co ordinate, as all the oligarchs want the same thing, riches and control and safety for themselves and their off spring.
In time, there might be one group that would like to take over world power. That doesn't sound so fanciful if they are a smallish group who control the US, China and other places with resources and manufacturing capacity. It might require splitting up Russia and the US, but borders can be re-drawn.
It is about control and who knows they will probably leave us alone as long as we go along with the cards we are dealt. 'You will own nothing and be happy' sounds like a sincere message sent on their behalf. It was just a bit blunt! If you don't want to be part of the system, ok, try living outside it. Just don't take too many others with you as they wouldn't want a mass awakening and uprising. Then you would be taken out, either physically or reputationally. Or ignored, like many of us have been.
You are missing the "I don't know" option in your poll :)...
There's a couple of things I think I can know for sure...
1. Utopianists (often Godless), are opportunists, as well as schemers...
2. Schemes are exceptionally difficult to pull off...
I'm reminded of troops of chimpanzees. The leader is authoritarian. Sometimes relatively good, sometimes miserably evil. The leader is eventually ousted the instant a weakness is detected by the relentlessly scheming rivals...
Although the opportunistic rivals were indispensable in in fulfilling the coup, the events leading up to the culmination (e.g. illness in the leader) were just an eddy in the stream...
Human nature is inexorable, and when left unchecked (i.e. melioristic utopianism), appears to act merely as a catalyst to negative societal avalanches.
It’s always difficult, if not impossible, to pin point an exact beginning/cause. Determining culpability, however, is different. I’m a lawyer, so perhaps I’m jaded, but one tenant has, for me, always held true: follow the money. I’m old enough to know that Public Health in the US has been jonesing for a pandemic for decades. In earlier years, the American public ignored such predictions of gloom and doom—judging for themselves based on observation. Here, we had videos from China allegedly showing people dropping dead on the streets—videos that MSM and social media picked up and broadcast almost gleefully (click bait?). People became afraid. Fear is a very powerful emotion that most cannot or have not been trained to think through; and a fearful population is a controllable population. There is a video of a panel discussion at a Milken Institute conference in October 2019, wherein Fauci states that no one is afraid of the flu; and to change that perception gov’t had to address it in a “disruptive and iterative way, because you do need both.” Thus, an opportunity arose in early 2020 to change the perception the public had of influenza—to make them very fearful. And, also as predicted by Fauci in the above-referenced video, the gov’t opened up wide the taxpayer wallet. Corporations (PPE, for example), the military (which led Operation Warp Speed), NIH (which “earned’ millions in royalties based on existing vaccine patents), and others in the PH field had an opportunity to make a name ($$) and lot of money for themselves. Money is a powerful motive and makes people predictable to a large extent. There were a few voices in the hysterical wilderness (Ionannidis, for example) that urged people to stop, slow down, and think critically. They were maligned in the MSM. But there are few true emergencies in life; generally a pause to stop and think is available and wise.
My interest is in what and when those in power who developed and instituted polices/rules knew about covid-19, the mRNA vaccines, the PCR testing. The wheels of justice turn slowly (and judges are not immune to fear, though they should not base rulings on it), but turn they do.
I voted "both". It wasn't people conspiring in a secret room smoking cigars saying "let's do a plandemic" because, as mentioned in the chat, the whole thing would be far too complex and unpredictable. It would also raise the question who "they" are. Certainly not Gates and the WEF and the CDC gang because they are far too incompetent and don't have any clue about anything. And even with a super-brilliant mastermind, the plan would be impossible to execute because even a slight variation in one of the variables could push the whole thing in a completely different direction.
But on the other hand, they got the "pandemic" they were looking for. They were testing a coronavirus outbreak (Event 201), Fraudchi was bragging that he needed a disruptive event to deploy the mRNA crap, the WEF had penetrated the parliaments and was planning to impose their technocratic bullcrap, the EU was already preparing vaxxiine passports, and so on and so forth, and when that coronavirus really showed up, they all jumped onto the bandwagon and executed their own agendas which then converged into the Plandemic. Also they most likely deliberately induced the process of mass formation through their fear and manipulation tactics.
So, there was definitely some planning, but not one brilliant masterplan.
Eugyppius' view on emergent conspiracy I think adds another layer to this - institutions plan - they plan and plan and plan and when something finally happens the appropriate plan gets retrieved from the archives, dusted off, and set into action. So we get this blurring of lines between malicious conspiracy and emergent conspiracy where we also have define a difference between "benign" just-in-case planning and malicious new-society planning.
I would direct Mark to David Martin's material showing patenting of SARS going back decades. And so many other facets of pre-knowledge and pre-planning, right out in the open. He is not going where the evidence leads, rather is clinging to his 'non-hysterical hysteria' hypothesis. His dangerous naiivete is why the globalists don't even bother to conceal their agenda. The only way not to see it is willful blindness.