Architects, Operatives, Cheerleaders…Oh My.

Understanding Who You've Been Dealing with for the Last Three Years

Prior to 2020, I had a reasonably rosy view of mankind…

I did not believe, like Rousseau, that man was inherently good, and then ruined by the institutions of civilization. I did not believe, like Hobbes, that humans are either brutes or weaklings living in fear of brutes. I was closer to Locke: most people are okay, and it’s a few bad apples that tend to spoil the barrel.

After having lived through our journey into soft totalitarianism over the last three years, my views have gotten rather more complex. Not necessarily less Lockean or more Hobbesian—I just see things as somewhat more complicated now. Simply put, all the different kinds of behavior I observed (plus some suppositions about that which is unseen) led me to develop a sort of taxonomy—a hierarchy of where everyone appears to stand vis-a-vis this tyranny.

During this time, I happened to read Vaclav Havel’s brilliant essay The Power of the Powerless. Havel’s observations on the hard totalitarianism under which Czechoslovakia languished in the Soviet era helped me better understand what I was seeing. Thus, borrowing from Havel, I will label the phenomenon of this tyranny, writ large, as The Regime.

I don’t love the idea of creating taxonomies to describe human behavior. I am, philosophically and emotionally, an individualist: I prefer to focus on the uniqueness of each person rather than their membership in various group categories. The individual is, and must be, the fundamental unit of moral concern and analysis. Unfortunately, once an escalating totalitarianism is forced upon a people, we do tend to fall into certain broad categories of behavior and reaction. Thus, uncomfortable though it may be, I cannot shy away from the truth of what I have observed.

For the purposes of this discussion, we are going to take it as given that you understand that something very odd is going on in the world…

There is a mainstream narrative about events that clearly does not comport with reality. There are events occurring that cannot be the result of random chance: Not just one type of event, but numerous categories of events—all occurring with frequencies that are statistically impossible without a specific cause, and all occurring within a small stretch of time. Train derailments, sudden deaths, 3– and 4-digit-percent increases in dozens of health conditions, sudden rashes of fires at food processing facilities, massive increases in all-cause mortality, and on and on. I have read analysis from statisticians indicating that the amount of time it would take for even one such event cluster to occur through random chance is longer than the universe has existed. And there have been many such clusters.

Given this, and the fact that the mainstream narrative does not match the facts, and the fact that nearly every widespread “conspiracy theory” about all this ends up being true, only one conclusion is possible: There is agency behind the events—an agency that does not want its intent known. If that still sounds like “crazy-talk” to you, then you are either lacking adequate information, or you are blinkered by an ideology, or your personality is such that, for one reason or another, you refuse to accept what is plainly so. I am sorry to be so blunt, but…well, I don’t know how to finish that sentence. It is what it is.

Walking through life in 2020–2022—the white-noise of dystopia constantly rushing in your ears—was a weird experience. Those of us who were capable of rational thought knew something was up. Those of us who get our information from somewhere other than the Narrative-Creation Industrial Complex knew that masking wasn’t going to work. We knew that lockdowns are ineffective, and extremely damaging to human psychology, economy, and immunity. And we were skeptical of the vaccine from the start.

But we were a minority—at first, a fairly small minority. Most people are unaware that anything legitimate even exists beyond the mainstream narrative. By day, they work (or not). By night, they suckle upon the vile effluent that issues forth from the withered teat of the mainstream media. They know nothing else. And so it was that we were surrounded by people who did not know what we knew. More of them are starting to find out now, but at the time, we were dangerous, scary, and crazy to them.

Some of us tried to talk to them. That rarely went well. For a few, it came to blows. I myself once had to square-off, waiting to see if Mr. “Wear a Fucking Mask” was going to throw the first punch. Another woman had a meltdown in Walmart because I got too close to her, even though a reasonably accurate estimate certainly had me more than 11 feet away. Panic, self-righteousness, and ignorance were in the air.

Thinking about what I was seeing (and also about Havel’s insights), I began to perceive a sort of hierarchy in all this. Starting at the top…

Regime Architects

First, we have those who are actually responsible for creating all of this. Here, we find ourselves in shadowy territory. It is clear there is an agenda being implemented, and that its true nature is being hidden. Names like Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum, and the like are often discussed, but the truth is, no one knows for sure. Secret cabals of ideologues? Higher ups or shadowy figures in governments and NGOs? Billionaires with ideological agendas and the resources to force those agendas on all of us? We are left to speculate and put together what we can from the available information. This leads to wild speculations, of course, but with each passing day, what was once wild starts to seem just a little more plausible.

Regime Operatives

Totalitarianism, when it finally collapses, often collapses like a house of cards. Yet while it is in force, it is surprisingly stable and easy to maintain. It all comes down to hierarchies. Information and orders are transmitted downward through the hierarchy, and the whole system develops what Havel called a kind of “automatism.”

For example, consider the case of ivermectin: A drug that is safer than aspirin, which has been administered more than four billion times worldwide, and which won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2015. Most importantly, a drug that in 2020 was already showing an extremely effective off-label use as a treatment for Covid19.

And yet, by mid 2021, some person or group of persons, for some reason that is not entirely clear, had effectively made it impossible to get ivermectin (and hydroxychloroquine, whose story is similar) throughout much of the Western world. Doctors wouldn’t prescribe it. If you could find a doctor who would, pharmacies wouldn’t fill it. The post office started inspecting packages shipped to private citizens from pharmacies overseas. People turned to veterinary ivermectin from farm stores. The media lampooned that as “horse paste,” and the average person living in the Matrix smugly repeated the phrase. A drug that was once regularly prescribed was gone. A drug that they eat like candy in equatorial or poor countries (where parasites are a bigger concern)—a drug that, from all accounts, essentially cured the entire Indian state of Uttar Pradesh of covid—had been turned into a joke. A joke you might lose your license for prescribing or dispensing.

Thinking about how this must’ve been accomplished, I gained a better understanding of Havel’s term “automatism.” Some small group of architects, fully aware that ivermectin is an effective treatment for covid, nonetheless decided to make it impossible to get. It was then a simple matter of transmitting those orders to just a few people—to the leaders of various governing bodies for medicine and pharmacies, perhaps, and to a few select higher ups in the media, politics, and academia. These then transmit the instructions down through the hierarchy. The narrative is established that ivermectin is dangerous and ineffective, and that anyone who wants it is crazy. Everyone in the middle ranks of the hierarchy has no clue why any of this is happening, but the “experts” and “leaders” above them told them so, so that is that. Automatism.

The operatives, then, are everyone from the upper-middle ranks on downwards through the hierarchy. They implement the architects’ plans. From positions of authority, influence, or (supposed) expertise, they maintain and enforce the regime: bureaucrats, police, military, courts, scientists, doctors, academics, media, business leaders, and so on. Some have more knowledge of what is actually going on than others, but none is fully aware.

Regime Cheerleaders

Earlier, I mentioned three causal factors for cluelessness: ideology, (lack of) information, and personality. This is a great topic for future discussion, but for now, suffice it to say that some people, to whatever extent they understand what is going on, actually like it, due to a toxic blend of these three factors.

Leftism is, at its core, an authoritarian ideology—leftists must command power in order for leftist ideas to be put into practice. So right off the bat, the fact that the central government grew in power in 2020, and exercised that power over more aspects of human life, was appealing to adherents of leftism. Leftism is also, at its core, a collectivist ideology. The covid-years combination of everyone being “in this together” and everyone being forced to do the same thing “for the community” was, frankly, a leftist ideologue’s dream (whether they care to admit it or not). Leftists also tend to love a mainstream, centrally controlled narrative for much the same reasons—especially when their ideological fellow travelers are the ones doing the controlling.

Personality obviously bleeds into this, since personality traits often precede, and help determine, people’s ideological inclinations. Throw in the lack of good information, and the cheerleader is born. The regime cheerleader appreciates and supports the actions of, and control exercised by, the regime.

Regime Dupes

Here, the ideology problem fades somewhat, but the personality and informational problems loom large.

A dupe is a victim of deception. The word is not meant as an insult—in the absence of good information (that is, accurate information not fabricated by the regime), it is easy for any of us to be duped. And many people do not even know that good information actually exists, let alone where to find it.

We also have a personality issue—specifically, the susceptibility to what Ghent University professor Mattias Desmet calls “mass formation." This is the tendency of people to allow their free-floating anxiety to be focused by authority figures upon a specific narrative, and then to become, in essence, hypnotized by that narrative. Roughly 30% are highly, almost intractably, susceptible. Another 30% are susceptible, but can be more easily broken out of the hypnosis. Covid—and the entire authoritarian regime—constituted the perfect storm for this those susceptible to mass formation.¹

Again, any one of us can be in the dark about what is truly going on. But those who are categorically ignorant of any information outside the regime narrative, coupled with those who are highly susceptible to mass formation, swelled the ranks of the deceived—of the “dupes”—to the point where they became, arguably, the largest class in this hierarchy.

Regime Slaves

I discovered The Power of the Powerless as the result of reading a comment in social media that included the phrase “regime slaves.” I assumed the commenter was quoting from Havel’s essay and, interested to see what Havel meant, began to read it. As it turns out, Havel never actually uses that phrase, but he does describe the concept. He gives the example of a greengrocer who puts a communist propaganda poster in his shop window—not because he believes in Marxist principles, but because he wants to keep his shop open.

The regime slave may know more, or less, about what is going on, but for him, the most important consideration is keeping his job. He has become a “slave” to the automatism of the system. This applies, to some degree, to all of us. Nearly everyone had to make some concessions—to work, to fly, to shop, to live—no matter what our beliefs.

I thought of this in 2020 when talking with the poor young woman whose job it was to stand at the front of Marshalls and make sure Christmas shoppers were wearing their masks. She had no idea about any of this. Or maybe she had some idea, but it didn’t matter. She was told to do it and she wanted to keep her job.

Many were also enslaved, in all of this, by the normal desire to be civil and avoid confrontation. Fighting the automatism of the system required constant confrontation. Constant stress. It wasn’t too much for me—as you might imagine, I am compelled to speak up, even in the face of conflict, on matters of principle. But it was too much for most people. Understandably so.

Free People

Please do not misunderstand me. In a totalitarian system—of the soft or hard variety—no one is fully free. But those who understand what is going on are significantly freer than those who don’t. The knowledge alone is liberating.

Some are called dissidents: people who are actively fighting the system. There are obviously degrees of this, from working within the system to change it all the way to fighting the war of ideas in social media or at the water cooler.

Others are people who recognize the truth of Viktor Frankl’s observation that “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” They have set themselves free in mind, spirit, and emotion.

Free people, in essence, are doing what Havel called “living within the truth” and refusing to ‘live within the lie.” Ultimately, this is the most powerful form of resistance to totalitarianism and the automatism of the system.

That’s it for now. I have mentioned Havel because of the important role that The Power of the Powerless played when I was making these observations. And, of course, to tip my hat to a man who survived a far grayer totalitarianism than that which we have so far undergone. However, I am not ascribing this taxonomy to Havel. It is based primarily on my observations, and thus I take responsibly for it. As I mentioned above, it’s not something I wanted to observe. Yet I cannot deny that I did observe it, and that it continues to be a fairly useful shorthand in describing the different types of reactions that people have to the regime under which we continue, to this day, to languish.

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1. Needless to say, the mass-formation phenomenon is also at work to a significant degree in the cheerleader category.