Breaking the Spell: MindSpace, Trance Warfare, and Neuro Linguistic Programming

“Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.

Bertrand Russell – The Impact of Science on Society (1951)

This article is for anyone who has found themselves frustrated as they tried to speak with family members, friends, co-workers, or complete strangers about the official covid-19 narrative and pandemic response, only to find any kind of rational discussion nearly impossible. This article is for those who have raised concerns over the totalitarian power grab by governments, only to find a significant portion of people “spellbound,” with their stories and identities “reframed” to fit the narrative.

From collective sacrifices for the common good being ritualized in the form of “Zoom calls” among atomized individuals and families kept apart by “lockdowns” to the artfully vague and constantly shifting messaging around “stopping the spread” of a virus with a 99% survival rate, this article will demonstrate the attempts to “reframe” humanity using a new form of mass hypnosis. It will demonstrate how common-sense thinking has come to be seen as morbidly eccentric due to the fact that a significant portion of the population has been reprogrammed using a series of trance-inducing public messaging “incantations.” Above all, this article will seek to demonstrate how the spells cast over the last two years may be finally broken and the incantations reversed.

Despite the abundance of Hollywood “spy” thrillers and cartoonish depictions of Anglo-American intelligence agencies like MI6 and the CIA protecting citizens, saving the world, or reigning in one of their own “rogue” elements, the nature and extent of genuine intel agency PSYOPS (Psychological Operations) are rarely explored. While conspiracy theories abound, they may or may not be true. On the other hand, PSYOPS and what former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov called “ideological subversion” are very real, yet seldom discussed in any meaningful manner.

This is especially the case if we consider how the latest “behavioural insights” from the fields of social psychology and behavioural science have been used across the Western world over the last two years. Under the auspices of battling a virus with a 99% survival rate, the population has been bombarded with an aggressive combination of “Neuro Linguistic Programming,” “Nudging,” and public messaging “incantations.” As we will continue to demonstrate, all of these techniques — in one way or another — have been designed to target what social engineers call “automatic motivations” i.e. our unconscious (or preconscious) minds.

As we discussed in the previous article, many have observed how a significant portion of the population appears to be under a “spell.” These spells have turned attempts at honest and rational discussion among friends, family, and co-workers into futile exercises. None of this is by chance. Public messaging and senior government officials have been using the latest insights into “Neuro Linguistic Programming” (NLP) — first laid out in a book called The Structure of Magic by John Grinder and Richard Bandler — along with “Nudge Theory” to actively change people’s thoughts and behaviour without their conscious knowledge or consent. As we will show, this new age of trance warfare and mass hypnosis has been spearheaded across the Five Eyes, starting in 2010 with the establishment of the Behavioural Insights Team by top echelons of the UK political elite.

Enter the Magicians

Before diving into the spell books and the means of reversing spells, let us briefly recap NLP’s history and the use of what its creators consider the “magical” qualities of language, as well as the origins of “Nudge Theory” (first developed by the Obama Administration’s Cass Sunstein and behavioural economist Richard Thaler). On the one hand, NLP techniques were developed as a formal system for transforming a patient’s “meta-model” of the world i.e. their linguistically-formed maps of reality. NLP practitioners have often emphasized the magical qualities of language, which in the right hands, give one the ability to transform people’s linguistic maps and “reframe” their reality. In recent times, this work has been combined with “Nudge Theory,” which uses the latest cutting-edge insights in behavioural science and social psychology to directly target and subtly steer people’s unconscious minds without the need of their “reflective processes” i.e. the conscious mind.

The first spell book to systematically lay out these insights and their application by governments was the UK Institute for Government’s 2010 MindSpace document. The UK Institute for Government describes itself as”leading think tank working to make government more effective.” In the wake of the MindSpace document and its new approach to powerful and “cost-effective” behaviour modification, the Behavioural Insights Team was established as a new psychological warfare node across the Five Eyes countries i.e. Australia, Canada, the USA, New Zealand, and Great Britain.

The idea of “nudging” was first laid out by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler in a 2008 book called Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Notably, Cass Sunstein is considered one of the most cited legal scholars of recent times. During his stint in the Obama administration, Sunstein was at the centre of the crackdown on “conspiracy theories” and the “real risks” they posed to governments and their “antiterrorism policies.”

In a 2008 paper authored by Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, the authors write:

“…the existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks to the government’s antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be.”

They then went on to list several steps government agencies could take to counter the growing threat of conspiracy theories:

“Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.”

“Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.”

Government might itself engage in counter speech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories.”

“Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counter speech.”

“Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help”.

Thus, Sunstein and his cohorts have been responsible for the framing of conspiracy theories as existential threats to democracy and counter-terrorism, making very careful use of nudging and NLP practices to create powerful cognitive dissonances in the minds of anyone engaged in wrong think. Today, virtually all major public policy issues have in been “reframed” to nudge people into unconsciously making decisions that radically transform not only their lives, but the very makeup of society. Sunstein now serves in the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security.

Following Sunstein and Thaler’s work on nudging, these insights were picked up and spearheaded by top echelons of the UK political establishment. The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), which produced the MindSpace document and its sequels, was established by the British Conservative party took power, with George Osborne at the financial helm as the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. In its own words, the BIT describes its history in a 2018 Behavioural Government report in the following manner:

BIT was created in 10 Downing Street in 2010 as the world’s first government institution dedicated to the application of behavioural sciences to policy.

According to the BIT’s own website, it is “jointly owned by the UK Cabinet Office, the innovation charity Nesta and BI employees.” Not surprisingly, the UK Cabinet Office is the same institution that commissioned MindSpace several years earlier.

In its own words, the BIT describes its web of behavioural scientists in the following way:

“Our international panel of world-leading academic affiliates includes Professor Richard Thaler, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics, and Theresa Marteau, director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge. We also have a formal partnership with Harvard University’s Behavioral Insights Group (BIG) and close relationships with several universities, including Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, UCL and University of Pennsylvania.”^[1]

Speaking at a 2009 Fabian Society meeting, Ed Miliband of the British Labor Part made the following remarks about “Nudging”:

“Remember something called Nudge. Nudge was very fashionable in the Guardian for a few months before the financial crisis. Nudge was about not really needing the state to do big things. You just need a few incentives here and there. People don’t talk about Nudge much any more.^[2]

In an April 8, 2009 article The Guardian would reference George Osborne — the Chancellor of the Exchequer — discussing the importance of “Nudging”:

“Osborne said that Nudge thinking was relevant to the banking crisis because, unlike conventional economists, Thaler and Sunstein accept that people act irrationally and banking reform has to be based on the acceptance that markets are irrational too.”

Soon after the BIT was established, it went on to become the leading institution shaping public messaging across the Western world, with offices conveniently situated in all of the Five Eyes countries. With this brief history, let us now dive into the “spell books” used by the would-be sorcerer’s apprentices of the 21st century.

The Structure of Magic

Taken together, NLP and Nudging techniques may rightly be considered a new hybrid form of “trance warfare.” It may be compared with previous eras of psychological warfare, but also be seen as quite distinct in that a new degree of scientific precision has been achieved over the last decade.

At this point, we should state that none of this is new. As Bertrand Russell himself observed — a descendent of one of the oldest imperial lines of Britain’s hereditary “blue bloods” — rule-of-thumb tricks and techniques in mass psychology have existed for a while:

“I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology. Mass psychology is, scientifically speaking, not a very advanced study, and so far its professors have not been in universities: they have been advertisers, politicians, and, above all, dictators. This study is immensely useful to practical men, whether they wish to become rich or to acquire the government. It is, of course, as a science, founded upon individual psychology, but hitherto it has employed rule-of-thumb methods which were based upon a kind of intuitive common sense. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modem methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called “education.” Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part.

Bertrand Russell — The Impact of Science on Society (1951)

What we are looking at now is the culmination of a century-long process of mass psychological control. This new precision accounts for the spell-like quality that seems to have enraptured so many people, often even highly-educated or well-meaning citizens, including doctors, teachers, law enforcement etc. However, the structures of these “spells,” rather than being magical, are due to scientific precision in behavioural science and social psychology. Unlike more traditional and earlier forms of information and psychological warfare, which used certain rule-of-thumb practices for manipulating “groups,” subliminal messaging etc. the new “context model” elaborated in the UK Cabinet Office’s MindSpace takes a different approach. Rather than simply giving people false or confusing information per se, or attempting to sway their conscious minds and faculties, it is about directly steering their unconscious minds using the “magical” language of NLP, unconscious “Nudging,” and trance-inducing public messaging “incantations.” The basis for these concepts and their application can be found in the pioneering work of John Grinder and Richard Bandler, which they formulated in The Structure of Magic I & II. Even among the chapters of The Structure of Magic I, one can find titles like “Becoming a Sorcerer’s Apprentice”and “The Final Incantation.”

In brief, the initial research by Grinder and Bandler can be summed up in the following manner. The pioneers in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) had observed the seemingly magical results of very effective and powerful therapists like Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, and others. These therapists had such a powerful ability to effect fundamental change in their patients’ identities and behaviors that Bandler and Grinder sought to model how their intuitive approaches allowed them to effect such deep and “magical” transformations. NLP became a formalized and sophisticated version of the many intuitive insights practiced by these therapeutic “sorcerer’s apprentices.”

40 years later, with the addition of “Nudge Theory,” we have entered the age of “trance warfare.” In the simplest terms, we can observe that people experience trance in various ways throughout daily life, from driving a car, walking, exercising, all of these activities involve “automatic processes,” which don’t have to be consciously directed. In trance warfare, social engineers are afforded the ability to directly trigger and steer the various automatic processes found in trance states without people’s conscious knowledge or consent. These techniques involve using NLP “framing” techniques, targeting natural “defaults” in the human decision-making process, using “cues,” “priming,” leveraging authority and the many “shortcuts” taken by the mind when faced with various choices. The purpose of this article is to allow people to put a name on all these trance-inducing techniques and to name the “frames” used by public messaging whereby even the laymen can become capable of breaking the spells and reversing incantations, almost as magically as they were initially cast.

Opening the Spell Books

In the right hands, language can have a magical power. Those with an intuitively strong ability to know just what to say, at just the right time, can have immense power over others, especially when the said others aren’t aware of the kinds of “spells” being cast. Using different kinds of language, people can frame their stories, lives, and the problems they face in markedly different ways. Carefully-curated language thus has the ability to shape our conscious and unconscious apprehensions of reality in the most profound ways.

In this light, NLP practitioners identify our primary interface with reality as our linguistic maps. These maps become formalized (however poorly or however well) throughout our childhood and adulthood. We use these maps regardless of whether we are ever fully able to consciously describe them. From a positive standpoint, NLP allows us to investigate how these maps are formed or ill-formed, how we describe situations, events, our feelings, and how all these things can be distorted, generalized, or deleted, depending on initial map formations. In the simplest terms, NLP practitioners identify three primary ways that our linguistic maps become “ill-formed”: deletions, distortions, and generalizations. A single deletion or generalization of an experience can fundamentally alter our maps of reality for all future times; these maps will then consequently transform how we respond and act in the real world at any time.

Maybe we generalized certain experiences from earlier childhood and continue to retain a particular kind of language and bias, which we use indiscriminately, regardless of whether new experiences actually match up. In any case, these maps enforce certain biases. Maybe we have deleted crucial information from our descriptions of past experiences, making new more nuanced and adaptive responses to future similar experiences impossible. We may continue to distort our apprehension of reality, and consequently our feelings and thoughts, until we revisit these maps and identify the impoverished parts.

Today, redefining the population’s linguistic maps through public messaging “incantations” has become the “new normal.” From “re-imagining policing” to “two weeks to flatten the curve” and “protecting loved ones” from a virus with a 99% survival rate, these incantations have been amplified by MSM outlets 24/7, and then strengthened by a series of cues, anchors and other nudges.

As mentioned, the first spell book was the UK Institute for Government’s 2010 MindSpace document, which we looked at in “MindsSpace, Psyops, and Cognitive Warfare: Winning the Battle for the Mind.” Since then, there have been two sequels: EAST (2012) and Behavioural Government (2018). These manuals, perhaps more than anything else, make plain the “structures of magic” underlying the public messaging. Without these techniques, the radical transformations that have taken place across the Western world would have in all likelihood never been possible. Now, with behavioural scientists and social engineers discussing going “beyond nudging” to shape responses to a financial crisis, the environment, healthcare, education, lawmaking, it is high-time citizens understand precisely how these “Nudgers” and NLP wizards are not only crafting current spells, but future ones.

As we outlined in the previous article, the 2010 MindSpace document presented a chart detailing the various characteristics of the two fundamentally different parts of the human mind:

As the document explained, framing policy issues and reality from the standpoint of “automatic motivations,” rather than the “traditional” approach of providing people with information and allowing them to make conscious decisions, represented a new cutting-edge ability to fundamentally modify human behaviour:

“In broad terms, there are two ways of thinking about changing behaviour. The first is based on influencing what people consciously think about. We might call this the ,rational‟ or ,cognitive‟ model. Most traditional interventions in public policy take this route, and it is the standard model in economics. The presumption is that citizens and consumers will analyse the various pieces of information from politicians, governments and markets, the numerous incentives offered to us and act in ways that reflect their best interests (however they define their best interests, or – more paternalistically – however policymakers define them).

The contrasting model of behaviour change focuses on the more automatic processes of judgment and influence – what Robert Cialdini calls “click, whirr” processes of mind. This shifts the focus of attention away from facts and information, and towards altering the context within which people act. We might call this the “context” model of behaviour change. The context model recognises that that people are sometimes seemingly irrational and inconsistent in their choices, often because they are influenced by surrounding factors. Therefore, it focuses more on “changing behaviour without changing minds.” This route has received rather less attention from researchers and policymakers.

(MindSpace – Page 14)

Understanding the fundamental distinction between the traditional means of public messaging vs. the “context model” becomes crucial to understanding how these new forms of propaganda, “trance warfare,” and mass hypnosis may be effectively neutralized. MindSpace even specifically highlights what it considers the failure of previous attempts by governments to make policy under the assumption that people could be trusted to make the right “rational” decisions:

“Tools such as incentives and information are intended to change behaviour by “changing minds.” If we provide the carrots and sticks, alongside accurate information, people will weigh up the revised costs and benefits of their actions and respond accordingly. Unfortunately, evidence suggests that people do not always respond in this “perfectly rational” way.

In contrast, approaches based on “changing contexts” – the environment within which we make decisions and respond to cues – have the potential to bring about significant changes in behaviour at relatively low cost.”

MindSpace authors then presented nine powerful influences on our automatic processes i.e. unconscious minds, in the form of a mnemonic — MINDSPACE:

MindSpace’s purpose was to teach senior policy-makers how to craft messages that could harness the full power of “nudging” people’s “automatic motivations,” so as to direct the population into a desired policy direction without requiring conscious knowledge and consent. From “two weeks to flatten the curve” to “the benefits outweigh the risks,” public messaging across the board has been embedded with “nudges” that move the unconscious mind in a desired direction.

For example, most mainstream outlets have been framing headlines using phrases like “according to research” and “scientists say.” However, despite wearing a scientific veil these are not scientific statements, they are appeals to group think; the statements are designed to leverage our perception of authority and cause our mind to take a mental “shortcut.” Research on this work was done by Michael Cialdini, the author of Influence. Cialdiniexplained how the perception of authority could be a powerful behavioural influence because authority is often perceived as a mental shortcut for people.

For example, we go to the doctor and follow the doctor’s advice because they have studied medicine and received many years of formal instruction. So, according to Cialdini’s research, having physio therapists plaster all their degrees, awards and diplomas on their office walls increased patient compliance with recommended exercise regiments by 30%. Thus, leveraging the appearance of authority in the eyes of the population becomes a key factor in “nudging” them into taking a mental “shortcut” when faced with complex and multi-faceted problems. We can see this with the sudden increase in use of simplistic phrases like “according to experts,” “scientists say,” “research says” to increase the perceived authority of a source or “messenger” — without in any way speaking to the truth or validity of findings.

A doctor’s or scientist’s recommendations is a “shortcut.” However, anyone who has ever listened to several different doctors diagnosing a health issue or recommending various treatments will likely find that the individual opinions of doctors can vary widely, especially when it comes to new and experimental treatments.

However, the unconscious mind takes many “shortcuts” and has many “defaults.” The second influence in the MindSpace checklist is “incentives.” The checklist describes incentives in the following manner: “our responses to incentives are shaped by predictable mental shortcuts such as strongly avoiding losses.”

On page 20 of MindSpace, the authors describe this powerful behavioural influence — “losses loom larger than gains” — in the following manner:

“We dislike losses more than we like gains of an equivalent amount. Most current incentive schemes offer rewards to participants, but a recent review of trials of treatments for obesity involving the use of financial incentives found no significant effect on long-term weight loss or maintenance. An alternative may be to frame incentives as a charge that will be imposed if people fail to do something. One recent study on weight loss asked some participants to deposit money into an account, which was returned to them (with a supplement) if they met weight loss targets. After seven months this group showed significant weight loss compared to their entry weight. The weight of participants in a control group was not seen to change. The fear of losing money may have created a strong incentive to lose weight. Therefore, policy-makers could emphasise the money that people will lose by not taking an action, rather than the amount they could save.

Fast-forward to the Behavioural Insights Team‘s 2018 Behavioural Government report. It describes the use of NLP “framing” techniques regarding the framing of policy decisions in terms of deaths, rather than lives saved, and the profound impact it can have on decision-makers:

“Framing effects refer to how the presentation of an issue, not its substantive content, can determine whether it is noticed and how it is interpreted. For example, the figure below shows that politicians and civil servants were more likely to choose a risky policy option when it was presented in terms of how many deaths it might prevent (rather than how many lives it might save).

© Behavioural Insights Team

Alas, despite the virus having a 99% survival rate, the primary frame of reference given to both elected officials and citizens is that they could lose someone they care about and they could give the virus to their own “loved ones,” resulting in death. The computer “modelling” of predicted deaths put out by the London Imperial College created a doomsday scenario centered on the number of deaths, not unlike the climate doomsday modelling put out by another UK university.

As reported by the UK Column’s Brian Gerrish, two teams were identified as leading the covid-19 response in Britain:

The first is the team at Imperial College led by Neil Ferguson, which claims to be able to use its computer models to forecast the spread and impact of the disease. The second is the army of behavioural “scientists” who have been “nudging” us at every opportunity into making decisions which favour the preferred options set by global policy makers.

In the previous article, we looked at “Four Messages that Can Increase the Uptake of COVID-19 Vaccines.” These messages were designed to harness the powerful influence of natural “defaults” in the human decision-making process. Not surprisingly, the most effective message for increasing vaccination uptake was “protecting loved ones”:

Having studied MindSpace findings on “automatic motivations,” the top-ranked message comes as no surprise: if someone is faced with the choice of “protecting loved ones” from an existential threat — whether real or perceived — the decision is automatic. From the standpoint of “defaults” (losses looms larger than gains), most empathetic human beings will not want to risk losing loved ones — a major loss — for the sake of (say) attending some social function — a minor gain. Moreover, they will be willing to make great sacrifices in order to avoid even larger losses, whether potentially real or perceived.

Another particularly nefarious and vicious example of these coercive “framing” techniques would be the example of a speech given by current Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a recent campaign stop for the 2021 Canadian Federal Elections. Referring to the “anti-vaxxers” outside the campaign event, Trudeau made the following remarks: ”

They are putting at risk their own kids, and they’re putting at risk our kids as well.” Emphasizing the nature of the commitments made by the population, Trudeau added, “Canadians made incredible sacrifices over the past year and a half.”

These seemingly simple statements frame reality in very specific terms. They target the natural “automatic motivations” found in all healthy human beings in a very precise manner, namely, the desire to protect one’s offspring. The narrative suggests there exists two fundamentally opposed groups — arbitrarily defined as the vaccinated and unvaccinated — and suggests one group is actually threatening the other group’s children. This is perhaps one of the most aggressive, inflammatory, and divisive remarks any government official could make because it directly targets one of the most primal instincts in human beings: the desire to protect one’s offspring. However, all the scientific evidence absolutely demonstrates how little at risk children are, the chance of death from covid-19 among those below 18 being upwards of 99%. Despite these facts, the narrative frames the threat of danger against the in-group’s children as an existential threat from the out-group i.e. “the unvaxxed.”

Moreover, in respect to “two weeks to flatten the curve,” we can observe the use of NLP “timelines.” NLP practitioners might give the example of time serving as a powerful frame of reference for shaping someone’s motivation and mental state. If someone is told they have one hour to write an essay vs. two weeks to write the same essay, the emotional response and mental state will be markedly different. In this respect, virtually no one would have accepted two months or two years to flatten the curve, but “two weeks” was an initial commitment that most reasonable good-intentioned people were willing to commit to. In NLP terms, the emotional response to lockdowns and the “timelines” for flattening the curve were then simply “calibrated,” with new “timelines” used to reframe future scenarios and responses.

While some of these techniques may be considered intuitive, and definitely not new, consider the use of “timelines” for shaping behavior more generally. While warnings of climate doomsday scenarios with biblical floods and fires have been around for a while, the MSM and related climate “experts” have recently given humanity “12 years.” 12 years suddenly became the number defining timelines for creating global legally-binding climate responses dictated by supranational institutions.

We are given a 12 year timeline before it’s too late to prevent the biblical floods, fires, and tornados. But is this “the science,” or is it an NLP “timeline” meant to nudge people into a given direction without any actual science or alternatives?

What if we don’t have only 12 years to stop the world from boiling over? What if we have 20 or 50 years? What if the 12 year conclusion is fundamentally wrong because its assumptions and methods are fundamentally flawed and have led to previous wrong conclusions? What if we have time to introduce a fusion economy before we transition away from fossil fuels?

So, today the many public messaging incantations by governments across the Five Eyes make use of NLP frames and NLP devices like cues, anchors, unconscious priming, and the targeting of natural “defaults” in our decision-making process. With these various techniques, MindSpace authors created a framework by which policy-makers could begin to use the “context model” in order to effectively harness the power to influence and guide people’s unconscious minds into making decisions which they otherwise would not make, were they approached with the “traditional” model of behaviour change.

Unfortunately, since the initial release of MindSpace, two other spell books were released: EAST, and Behavioural Government. Both build on the initial insights of MindSpace. Today, the leaders of these new behaviour modification programs speak of going even “beyond nudging” in such a way that the behaviours and makeup of society can be transformed on previously unimagined scales across all spheres of life, including the economy, the environment, healthcare, and even the reorganization of the financial system. UN agencies and other supranational bodies have now all become busy introducing these insights to fundamentally alter the shape of humanity.

This takes us to our next example, found in the EAST manual.

EAST

Following the 2010 MindSpace document was the mnemonic device EAST. It continued to build on the initial insights laid out in MindSpace, elaborating additional insights like the idea of “make it social,” which we can now see put into practice everywhere.

As the EAST introduction explains:

“In the early years, we often used the MINDSPACE framework, and indeed some of the team were centrally involved in developing it. We still use this framework. But we found in seminars that its nine elements were hard for busy policy makers to keep in mind (itself reflecting ‘cognitive chunking’). At the same time, we found in our day-to-day trials and policy work that some of the most reliable effects came from changes that weren’t easily captured by MINDSPACE, or indeed by much of the academic literature. For example, we have often found that simplifying messages, or removing even the tiniest amount of ‘friction’ in a process, can have a large impact. For these reasons, we wanted to develop a shorter, simple mnemonic — the EAST framework.^[3]

EAST lays out four basic strategies for increasing the population’s compliance with government policy:

• Make it easy
• Make it attractive
• Make it social
• Make it timely

The description of “Make it social” found in the Executive Summary on page 5 serves as a useful example of the overall approach and its power.

Consider the sudden rise of “Zoom calls” ritualizing the collective sacrifice of the population by “making it social.” The sudden rise of feel-good moments premised on compliance with government-mandated policies were turned into ritual social events, framing the government’s enactment of emergency measures as a means for people to embrace collective sacrifice for the sake of “protecting loved ones” and humanity as a whole. Zoom calls among atomized individuals became a way of honoring their “commitments” to flattening the curve. A significant portion of all covid-19 messaging was framed as a question of personal and collective sacrifice for the greater good — ritualizing it — essentially exploiting people’s innate goodwill and good nature.

At this point, we should point out that these efforts are not new. They represent the culmination of a century-long effort to perfect psychological warfare by the top echelons of the Anglo-American oligarchy. In his 1931 The Scientific Outlook, Lord Bertrand Russell, a descendent of one of the oldest imperial lines of Britain, outlined this outlook:

“The scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless and contented. Of these qualities, probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researchers of psycho-analysis, behaviorism and biochemistry will be brought into play… all the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called “cooperative” i.e.: to do exactly what every body else is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished will be scientifically trained out of them.

Bertrand Russell — The Scientific Outlook (1931)

Whether personal sacrifice, a commitment to “protecting loved ones,” or the suggestion that “most healthcare workers” are getting vaccinated, almost all public messaging policies are framed to target these “automatic motivations” and trigger the unconscious and effortless parts of our minds in order to create a “cooperative” population.

Trance Warfare

Putting a name on these techniques is key to forcing the unconscious processes into the reflective parts of the mind. In respect to trance and hypnosis, we should point out that the pioneer of hypnosis, Milton Erickson, based his approach to hypnosis on language that was “artfully vague,” but intentionally and systematically so. Today, we are bombarded with public health messages, supposedly crafted by the leading health experts and senior public policy-makers, which despite all their credentials and expertise consistently and precisely uphold an “artfully vague” narrative.

The narrative encourages people to take vacciness meant to “stop the spread,” but which by design do not prevent transmission and only reduce symptoms. Definitions like “herd immunity,” “fully-vaccinated,” appear to be subject to consistent revision. People are made to stand in line and adhere to strict distance protocols one moment, only to then crowd into a plane, store or elsewhere moments later. The population is made to follow very strict masking policies, despite there being no studies supporting the effectiveness of masks.

The instinctive response by many rational people is to suggest systemic incompetence. There may be a lot of that, but there are also many nudges and trance-inducing techniques meant to harness the power of automatic motivations, which by their nature involve natural trance states. Moreover, as the co-creator of Neuro Linguistic Programming and world-leading hypnotist — Richard Bandler — states in his Guide to Trance-formation: “inducing confusion increases suggestibility.”^[4] He studied Milton Erickson’s hypnotic patterns which were described as intentionally “artfully vague,” but systematically so. This allowed the patient to supply their own meaning, and enforced the appearance of sovereignty in decision-making.

The more stacked with ambiguities a statement is, especially when in a trance state, the more patients, clients, or targets become open to new suggestions and develop an ability to supply their own meaning, solidifying beliefs into the “deep structures” of their psyche and making their choices look free. Additionally, while the decision to wear masks may simply be the result of incompetence, from the standpoint of Nudging and Neuro Linguistic Programming, masks, arrows on the floor telling people where to walk, and signs consistently reminding people to hyper-vigilantly monitor their behavior all function as effective “cues” and “priming” in the nudging process.

We can thank the Behavioural Insights Team and the “army of behavioural psychologists.” These recent developments echo what one of the fathers of all psychological warfare and brainwashing, the Tavistock Institute’s Brigadier John Rawlings Rees, described as the need for an army of “psychological shock-troops” that could be strategically positioned throughout society to guide the population into accepting the policy designs of a ruling class — what was and continues to be a small Anglo-American international financial establishment, centered in London and its extension, Wall Street.

In this light, since covid-19 messaging is being crafted according to these specific concepts and terms, we believe people should be versed in the language used by the spell casters. Knowing this language also seems to be the easiest way to reverse the incantations. For, once a name is put on any of these nudges and “structures of magic,” they become conscious objects of attention, meaning they can no longer function at their automatic “click whirr” speed.

By knowing what the frames are, such as time, or what defaults have been targeted, such as our desire to avoid losses rather than make gains, it becomes easy to see how people are placed into trance-like compliance with arbitrary instructions.

Alas, two weeks become two years (or perhaps longer). As long as the initial unconscious nudges and automatic processes are not revisited in a conscious way, many may continue to operate on their initial commitments for indeterminate periods of time. In fact, on page 14 MindSpace authors specifically observed how once automatic motivations are activated, these unconscious processes can continue operating until completion without conscious monitoring.

“The two systems have different capabilities: the reflective mind has limited capacity, but offers more systematic and “deeper” analysis. The automatic mind processes many things separately, simultaneously, and often unconsciously, but is more “superficial”: it takes short-cuts and has ingrained biases. As one academic source explains, ‘once triggered by environmental features, [these] preconscious automatic processes run to completion without any conscious monitoring^[5].’

Furthermore, using other NLP techniques like “anchoring,” “cues” and “priming,” not only can the process can go on without an individual being aware that their unconscious processes are being targeted, they can be steered in real time.

Just as curing a disease of the soul requires a different approach than one of curing a disease of the heart, so too does breaking trances, NLP spells, and mass-hypnosis require a more nuanced and two-fold approach: first putting a name on the unconscious frames, nudges, and anchors placed in the minds of hypnotized people; and then, once a new connection is established between the automatic and reflective processes, attempts at breaking the spells with common-sense arguments rooted in reason should follow. In a word: the automatic parts of the mind and the reflective parts of the mind are wired differently and consequently respond to language differently. Assuming one can sway the emotive and “automatic” part of the mind using rational language and argumentation belies the fact that covid-19 public messaging has been geared towards the unconscious “automatic” and emotive parts of the mind. Both of these parts must be addressed if rational discourse is to occur among the hypnotized.

As in hypnosis where certain individuals are more susceptible to trance-inducing techniques than others, likewise, certain sectors of the population have been more susceptible to the trance-inducing public messaging incantations, often preying on those who consider themselves good empathetic citizens. Knowing the “structure” of these incantations lies at the heart of knowing how they can be reversed.

Breaking the Spell

When considering the current and future use of these kinds of techniques for “behaviour change,” especially in regards to the “climate crisis,” let us remember the words of the early social engineering enthusiast and descendent of one of England’s oldest imperial lines, Lord Bertrand Russell. Over a half a century ago, Russell remarked:

“The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.”

Bertrand Russell — The Impact of Science on Society (1951)

While Freudian psychology and its application by people like Edward Bernays signalled a significant leap in the establishment’s ability to influence “Popular Opinion” and the unconscious minds of the population, the development and applications of social psychology and behavioural science over the recent decade or so represents a fundamentally new age of precision in psychological warfare and behaviour modification techniques: an age of “trance warfare” and “mass hypnosis” guided by the subtle steering of “automatic motivations.” Neuro Linguistic Programming and Nudging have thus been adopted as the key instruments to convince people that “snow is black.”

Finally, concluding his optimistic musings on the future of social engineering techniques, Russell wrote:

“Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.

Bertrand Russell — The Impact of Science on Society (1951)

So, we have come full circle. However, despite the seemingly sophisticated nature of this new age of trance warfare, these propaganda methods rely on a very formulaic approach that becomes hard to un-see. From the importance of time to “losses loom larger than gains” to “social proof” i.e. 97% of scientists agree, our world is constantly being “re-framed.”

Rather than simply exposing the falsehood of one given body of information, we should identify the frames and consciously decide whether we are happy with or agree with the given choice of frame. We should ask others if they agree with the frames, or ask them how they feel about subtly different alternative frames which may have vastly different implications. We should experiment ourselves to see how easy “re-framing” the world actually is. Any average creative writing college-level student could easily become a top-tier social engineer with a basic “how-to” reframing guide.

When new information appears, before attempting to even assess it, we should ask ourselves what the frames are. For, the “magic” lies in how the incantations are framed, rather than in the information itself. Once named, the magic fades.

In conclusion, contrary to the typical “conspiracy theory” where everyone is “in on it,” PSYOPS should be understood as the opposite of a Hollywood conspiracy thriller: most people involved are not “in on it” because the operations are designed to appear organic, effecting change almost “magically.” People genuinely believe they are making their own decisions, unaware of the mechanisms and environmental “context models” influencing how they unconsciously respond to frames.

Citizens should have the right to decide if they want to be nudged in a predetermined direction, or further evaluate the frames and decide for themselves whether there may be a more nuanced reality and reasonable approach. Otherwise, imagine what future “timelines” might we be in the event of a new crisis, perhaps, a sudden systemic crisis in the financial system caused by a sudden “cyber attack“?

While the author whole-heartedly believes rational arguments, science, and the light of reason should and can prevail, part of that task necessarily implies identifying where and what the nature of the emotional and psychological blocks are which prevent people from internalizing rational arguments. As we said, what we are witnessing with the application of these new 21st century cutting edge insights from behavioural science and social psychology is trance warfare based on targeting “automatic motivations.”

To win the war, we must break the spell.

Notes:

[1] Behavioural Insights Team – Who we are

[2] Fabian Society – Live, The Guardian, January 17, 2009 .

[3] Page 3

[4] Bandler, Richard.

[5] Todorov and Bargh (2002) Automatic sources of aggression. Aggression and Violent Behavior 7:53 – 68.

David B. Gosselin is a poet, translator, and linguist based in Montreal. He is the founder of The Chained Muse poetry website and the founder of the New Lyre Podcast. His new collection of poems is entitledModern Dreams.