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I had a great interview recently with Steve Deace about The Weaponization of Loneliness and Stella's Book Club. Take a look!

I’ve been getting some wonderful feedback from the book clubs. A member of a Stella’s Book Club (SBC) in Ohio wrote of their first meeting: “Wow, was it good!!” They began the session by sharing their experiences of isolation and confusion, especially due to the Covid lockdowns and propaganda.  Then followed an animated discussion about why cancel culture causes people to silence themselves and how that creates a dangerous spiral of silence. They exchanged ideas about how best to speak up and act in such circumstances. That Ohio group has members from all walks of life with many perspectives. All of them appreciated the chance to speak openly in a friendly setting about the weaponization of loneliness and how to break free of it. The leader writes to me that their guiding principle is to build courage in an age of deception. Excellent! I’ve also gotten some great feedback from SBC groups in Virginia and Alabama.  It seems that everybody who joins or starts one of these discussion groups is doing so out of their need to break out of the weaponization of loneliness that’s resulted from decades of political correctness. And to connect with others who feel the same way. Only by speaking openly to one another can we break the loneliness epidemic that has been plaguing us. A member from one of the Virginia groups writes that this is “the right book club for the times we are in now!” Another shared how liberating it feels to have a website set up with all of the resources necessary to start thoughtful discussions with others. I really believe that the only way out of the social chaos we're living through is to come together in small groups in the private sphere of life to discuss these things, especially offline. Whether or not it's done in a book club, we need to have millions of conversations and build millions of new friendships. This is the best route to building the inner strength that preserves freedom.

You've probably seen the photo above. One man defiantly folds his arms while everyone around him duly gives the Nazi salute. Most of us zero in on him as a brave soul who refused to be swept up in the social contagion of the crowd around him. Some believe the man was known as August Landmesser who was punished by the Nazis for becoming engaged to a Jewish woman. You can read more about his plight here and here. Others believe him to be Gustav Wegert who refused to salute on religious grounds. Either way, the gesture was brave and worthy of admiration. But if the man in the photo was Landmesser, he was probably also angry and disgusted enough to commit what he knew was a punishable offense against the regime. But let's shift our focus from the non-saluter to any other face in that crowd. Because they represent most people when faced with social pressure. They probably had a variety of motives. Some--probably most?--just going along with the crowd to avoid the risk of ostracism. If you enlarge the photo and look at the faces, several appear to just be doing what was expected of them. Of course others were swept up in the euphoria of being part of a jubilant crowd wanting to feel like they're a part of history -- perhaps like many of the rioting students who today are shutting down universities and insisting that Israel must be destroyed. I think there are three key questions we should ask about all of those saluting. First, do they really believe the principles behind their salute? I don't think so. Their response comes from the hard-wired conformity impulse. Second, if enough of them refused to comply, could they have stopped the ensuing horrors of Nazism? Yes, of course they could have. When people are forthright in their beliefs and act them out, any regime that depends on the compliance of such "salutes" tends to collapse. Third, what prevents us from speaking up when that's all it takes to shut down something so evil? I think it's a combination of ignorance, loose social ties, false illusions, and fear. All of the above are reinforced through isolation. So one solution is to break down our isolation by talking about these kinds of situations and exchanging ideas about how to break free of them. And that's exactly the purpose of the project called Stella's Book Club. The goal is to build the knowledge that frees us from the isolation of ignorance. And to build friendships that give us the inner strength to resist tyranny. Learning about these dynamics also helps us to see through the illusions of tyranny so that we don't become overwhelmed with fear.

I recently had a great conversation with CPAC's superb host Mercedes Schlapp. We discussed The Weaponization of Loneliness and how tyranny always begins with isolation -- cutting you off from other people and ideas. Sadly, this is a constant pattern of tyranny, and yet too few understand how it works on us. We discussed the history of it and how the government practiced it during the Covid lockdowns and continues today with demonization and lawfare. Mercedes also asked about the project of stellasbookclub.com. I explained that it serves as a clearinghouse of resources--books, articles, movie clips--to help spark friendly group discussions about the weaponization of loneliness and how to build counter-strategies against it. You can access my 15-minute interview with her here: https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1rmxPMqVQodKN Here's an excerpt from the write-up of the interview: “Political censorship is designed to isolate us, get us to shut up about what we believe, or even lie about what we believe, and that creates even more isolation even though people think they’re getting relief from isolation by obeying this conformity impulse,” explained Morabito. “When you look at political correctness and the censorship industrial complex...it’s really an anti-thought, anti-friendship, anti-conversation process and when you isolate people it sort of creates a captor-hostage situation.”

This week I’m beginning a book club which is entirely focused on the theme of propaganda and the human susceptibility to mind hacking. Why? Because there has been an abysmal lack of self-awareness on this topic among the general public. And that’s a shame because the less aware we are of the trickery involved in social pressure and psychological manipulation, the less immune we are to those things. But when you learn how and why people blindly conform to destructive behaviors, it’s like learning the magician’s tricks. You can get beyond the illusions of political correctness, propaganda, and advertising. That’s not to say you won’t still be susceptible, but building public awareness can really help cut through and challenge the political correctness we are barraged with in modern life. Our club is going to read a lot of titles, mostly non-fiction, but I hope also to include some fiction. (The dystopian novel “We” by Yevgeniy Zamyatin is high on my list. That’s the book that influenced George Orwell to write 1984.) I offered a short list of titles in my Federalist article “Ten Resources for Hack Proofing Your Mind.” But I’ve decided to start the club off reading Denise Winn’s book “The Manipulated Mind” because that book serves as an overall primer on many different aspects of psychological conditioning, indoctrination, and brainwashing. At just over 200 pages, it’s relatively short and introduces the reader to many of the theories and scholars who have studied conditioning and social psychology, including Ivan Pavlov, Stanley Milgram, Solomon Asch, and numerous others. Here are a few of the questions I offer for pondering if you read this book: What parallels can you detect between political correctness and the 10 brainwashing processes discussed in Chapter Two? (For example, as used on college campuses, or in the media, or in Human Resources departments.) 2.  Why is the threat of social rejection so central to getting people to conform to an agenda? And what makes some people more vulnerable than others? 3. What do the Milgram experiments (“Obedience to Authority”) tell you about how ordinary people can commit unthinkable acts? Given the information you gleaned from this book, what qualities would you conclude are necessary to keep a society free? I'd love to hear about more and more folks starting book clubs like this to jump start these kinds of discussions.  If you know people who are interested, why not get together and start reading with them? Spread the word!

My book club met the other day and we had a lively discussion of Denise Winn's book The Manipulated Mind: Brainwashing, Conditioning, and Indoctrination.  Next we'll be reading Doris Lessing's book on this topic.  That little volume (77 pages) of five essays entitled Prisons We Choose to Live Inside (1986) is a gem that deserves a whole lot more attention.  Lessing (1919-2013) was an icon of feminism who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.   Youtube has posted excerpts from those speeches in which she talks about conformity and how group think operates on us.  You can listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXSsjX4rVU Over the years, especially as Lessing became more unsettled by the noxious influences of group think and mob psychology in Western society, she became a great champion of free speech.  I wrote about her in two previous blog entries:  "Acclaimed Author Doris Lessing: Our Future Depends on Resisting Group Think" and "Doris Lessing on Fighting Group Think." I am more convinced than ever that awareness of how propaganda works on us is KEY to helping our society regain sanity and reason.  As more and more students at campuses around the country shout down politically incorrect speakers -- even to the point of rioting -- it is clearer than ever that our very individuality is under attack. Stella's Book Club Freedom of conscience, of speech, of association is all under attack.  Radical education reforms continue to sow ignorance. They continue to intellectually kneecap students so that they are not even capable of listening to diverse points of view.  Instead, students seem to have been programmed to respond reflexively and emotionally against free speech, as they did the other day at Indiana University at Bloomington when scholar Charles Murray spoke there.  Watch here:   https://twitter.com/idsnews/status/851924596769128448   The act is so self-destructive, it's as though these students have been virtually programmed to shoot themselves in the head. Let me provide an insightful quote from Lessing's book.  Whether or not you read the book, please keep this particular quote in mind: ". . . it is always the individual, in the long run, who will set the tone, provide the real development in a society.Looking back, I see what a great influence an individual may have, even an apparently obscure person, living a small, quiet life.  It is individuals who change societies, give birth to ideas, who, standing out against tides of opinion, and change them. This is as true in open societies as it is in oppressive societies, but of course the casualty rate in the closed societies is higher.  Everything that has ever happened to me has taught me to value the individual, the person who cultivates and preserves her or his own ways of thinking, who stands out against group thinking, group pressures.  Or who, conforming no more than is necessary to group pressures, quietly preserves individual thinking and development. . . .“It is my belief that an intelligent and forward-looking society would do everything possible to produce such individuals, instead of, as happens very often, suppressing them.  But if governments, if cultures, don’t encourage their production, then individuals and groups can and should.” Isn't it interesting that political correctness is all about suppressing the voice of the individual?  To force self-censorship on us? I suspect that is because the small minority of power elites have always wished to control the masses.  But they realize -- better than we do -- that there is great power in the individual voice. So, as always, they employ group think-tactics in order to mobilize mobs to shut down conversation and friendship.  We've no choice but to go against that hostile tide.  So start your book club to help disable the propaganda machine! Even if it's only with one other person.  It'll grow.

Cults in our Midst."  You can find it in my blog post entitled:  "Do you know the difference between real education versus coercive thought reform?"  The chart which Singer drew up is called "The Continuum of Influence and Persuasion."  On one side of the continuum is true education that involves open and civil discourse with no intent to deceive.  On the other side is coercive thought reform, or brainwashing, which uses deceptive tactics to blunt independent thought and control the person.  In between are other, varying forms of influence: advertising, propaganda, indoctrination.  It's very helpful to understand what's going on in each of these forms of persuasion. I believe that the study of cult methods is useful for resisting political correctness. And especially today.  First of all, few people are actually focusing today on the methods and processes of thought reform.  Certainly not the media or academia.  And as we are battered with floods of information from all quarters -- the internet, news outlets, social media, TV, our education institutions, and so on -- one thing should be clear:  there is a battle to push us into conformity of thought to the benefit of power elites and their power-consolidating agendas.  There's nothing new there.  This has been the story in advertising and propaganda from time immemorial.  But what is most disconcerting is that few are investigating the actual guts of the propaganda machinery itself.  At some point we have to tune out the constant barrage of blather and start sniffing out the machinery that its coming from! Stella's Book Club The study of cults offers a key to understanding how propagandists behave:  their methods, their features, their techniques for controlling how people think. It's especially helpful in strengthening us to resist the temptation to self-censor in our culture of political correctness. And that's critical because giving in to it creates a spiral of silence that makes it ever harder to express an independent thought.  Propagandists know this!  Anyone pushing a power-centralizing agenda tends to be hellbent on shutting off all other forms of influence in people's lives. Driving you into this sort of isolation is exactly what political correctness is designed to do.  Did it ever occur to you that this is precisely how cult leaders operate as well? So, please take a look at Singer's book as soon as possible.  Find another person to do the same so you can talk about it.  Hopefully you can grow a book club like mine, dedicated to propaganda awareness and the fight for freedom of expression.  I hope soon to post some some study questions that go with the book.

Cults in Our Midst by Margaret Thaler Singer is a top selection for book clubs on the theme of the weaponization of loneliness. To avoid mind-rape -- whether by a cult leader or the propaganda media or our Big Tech devices -- we must first understand how cults operate in people. Each study guide for each session of my book club comes with multi-media supplements to enhance the reading. For example, below are Parts I and II of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst's interview with Larry King from the year 2000. In 1974 Hearst was kidnapped by a terrorist group that subjected her to constant propaganda while isolating her in a closet. After six weeks she emerged with a new identity and could not shake it off even when she was free to walk away. As she told King: "I had no free will." Here's part II: Another supplement is an old interview with Margaret Thaler Singer about cults and how they work. For more examples of study guides to each session, go to: https://www.stellasbookclub.com/guide-to-sessions I will keep adding new sessions with new materials and video supplements.

I hope my article posted at The Federalist yesterday can explain in more detail why I felt this book club project is so necessary. Here's an excerpt: Let’s face it. The corporate media certainly won’t offer a solution. Neither will Big Tech or academia or any other corrupt institution. It must come from within each of us speaking one-on-one and face-to-face. As renowned sociologist Jacques Ellul wrote: “Propaganda ends where simple dialogue begins.” To that purpose, I hope my website can help promote sincere discussion on the theme of weaponized loneliness and to build new bonds of friendship. Here's a link to the whole essay: "Speaking Openly About Loneliness Can Help People Resist Tyranny." People are becoming ever more isolated and confused in a society that increasingly punishes open speech. My goal is simply to do something to help us overcome the isolation and confusion that is smothering us as individuals and as a society. I was inspired by Vaclav Havel's essay "The Power of the Powerless" (which I plan to use as a book club selection.) Our real power is not in the media or institutions that have become corrupted. Rather, our power to overcome the weaponization of loneliness can only come from our relationships. It comes from real conversations with real people in real life. This is the essence of what Havel called "the hidden sphere of life" where it's possible to live within the truth. Book Club Website

Most people succumb to blind conformity because they are fearful of being socially rejected. And they crave social acceptance. We all know this instinctively. But it’s tragic that we don't seem to know it consciously. Because social isolation -- the threat of it being imposed on us -- is actually a primal human terror. And this terror can put some dangerous dynamics into play if we are unaware of its power over our speech and our actions. We then become very susceptible to being manipulated and controlled by bad actors who use the fear against us. The weaponization of loneliness is probably the most powerful force wielded by tyrants throughout history. And the most commonly used. Consider the video below -- of a mass of people participating in a ritual proclaiming their collective guilt: Mass Conformity and the Weaponization of Loneliness What you see there (if it has not yet been censored by our tech overlords) is a cult ritual, reminiscent of the Jonestown cult that ended badly in 1978. It also calls to mind the struggle sessions during Communist China’s Cultural Revolution, which were meant to enforce monolithic thought. In the latter case, millions who were tagged as enemies for not submitting -- or who were simply perceived to be non-compliant -- were exterminated. We see masses of so-called white people in the affluent Washington, D.C. suburb of Bethesda, Maryland reciting a mass confession of guilt for being “white.” Though it is happening in America, the pattern is clear and recognizable: the weaponization of loneliness in action. The participants are actually pledging to commit themselves – and submit themselves – to a new, totalitarian regime, under the guise of something else. This is how cult indoctrination begins. These people are in the process of rejecting themselves -- and others -- as individual human beings who have individual responsibilities, experiences, personality traits, thoughts, feelings, and souls. It’s like they’re being absorbed by the Borg’s hive mind. They sense their compliance will get them some safety. Being part of the herd probably also gives them a fuzzy feeling of being accepted. Most of all, they hope that submitting to this obvious brainwashing exercise will help them avoid being shunned and turned into social pariahs. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Weaponization of Loneliness The full title of my new book, just released, is The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer. Please click on the link to order your copy! You may have asked this old question: Why does a majority of good people so often allow a small minority to push evil agendas? It all amounts to what I call a "machinery of loneliness," fueled by conformity which is sparked by our fear. Maybe we instinctively know that our conformity usually boils down to the fear of being ostracized for speaking out. But we don't consciously understand how that happens. Or why it happens. And how easily it is weaponized. We need to study these patterns and change our habits if we are to preserve freedom. So often our primal fear of loneliness is exploited to extract the conformity and compliance necessary to push destructive policies forward. We comply in order to avoid the awful feeling of social rejection. But the great irony with this reaction is that our compliance only cements our isolation in the end. Worse, when we are isolated -- atomized -- we are even more easily controlled and terrorized. The book is a deep dive that includes the history of totalitarian movements – all of which waged direct war against free speech and private life. It happened in the French Revolution, in Bolshevik Russia, in Nazi Germany, in Mao's China and those patterns continue today. But today's cyber-technologies and globalism exponentially worsen the threat. I also delve into the research on social conformity, starting with the 1950s experiments of Solomon Asch who showed that people will often deny the evidence of their own eyes if they fear being socially isolated otherwise. The book shows us the many ways that identity politics, political correctness, and mob agitation is tearing us all apart -- causing a painful vivisection of America. This has led to corruption that has subverted all of our institutions, including education, our intelligence services, the corporate world, the courts, legislatures, and the military. Last on the hit list of the institutions are the primordial ones in the private sphere of life: family, faith, and community. We must defend that sphere with all our strength. It's the only escape hatch. Otherwise, we end up completely atomized, at the mercy of the mass state.

The Weaponization of Loneliness: The Tyrant’s Choice for Control,” Episode 218 of Economic War Room