Hypnosis, Stockholm Syndrome, and Hegemony
Exploring the psychodynamics of the Covid crisis
I. A new/old theory of the case
As you know, here on my Substack I’ve been trying to understand why the last four and a half years have felt so incredibly weird. I agree with Debbie Lerman that we are in uncharted territory. But I’ve struggled to define the psychodynamics of this strange new society we are living in.
I haven’t written for a couple weeks because I was traveling to participate in a small gathering of dissident scholars (and then recovering afterward). At the meeting I had a fascinating short conversation with two fellow writers that provided a plausible explanation for what we are all seeing:
Writer 1: Toby, I was fascinated to hear about your intellectual journey, starting out on the left to where you are now.
Me: Honestly, I don’t think I’ve changed much. I just applied my principles to the current crisis. It’s my tribe that abandoned me.
Writer 2: Same here. My values are the same.
Me: What I cannot get over though is just how profoundly weird the last four and a half years have been. The intellectual and moral traditions built up over the last 250 years collapsed overnight.
Writer 1: It was hypnosis!
Me: But it’s still going on four and a half years later!
Writer 2 (interjecting) —It wouldn’t have to go on that long.
Me (continuing): —I could see a stage performance of hypnosis lasting maybe an hour. But four and a half years!?
Writer 2: It’s Stockholm Syndrome.
[*And THAT’S when the penny dropped for me.* Writer 2 continued:]
It actually makes a lot of sense. Think about it — if you’re a captive of someone who possesses overwhelming and superior force, you’re going to be miserable either way [whether you fight back or submit]. But from an evolutionary standpoint, if you go along with the more powerful force, you improve your odds of survival, somewhat. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true. It’s rational. This is a glitch in human evolution [because it rewards cowardice] and it’s been going on for thousands of years. In Covid, the other side took advantage of this evolutionary glitch, and capitalized on it.
Me: Holy sh*t, that’s it!
/end scene
This struck me as the best explanation I’ve heard for what we’ve been through — the insanity of the last four and a half years is the result of Stockholm Syndrome across the developed world. The biowarfare industrial complex figured out how much force and fear would be required to flip the switch in people’s brains from rational, decent, democratic people to fascists who love their captors. And that’s what they did starting in January of 2020 — it was the U.S. military’s Shock & Awe doctrine applied to the American people and the citizens of Europe and Australasia. By mid-March 2020 the operation was complete and just required occasional reminders to keep people afraid. Once the switch is flipped it stays in that position until a new, more powerful force comes along. This is not mass formation and it’s not hypnosis, it’s Stockholm Syndrome. For me it completely changes how we think about the problem.
I will revise this theory and add to it below. But I believe it’s a great starting point for thinking about the psychodynamics of this crisis.
II. Stockholm Syndrome
The fact pattern of the original case study is as follows:
In 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson, a convict on parole, walked into Kreditbanken, one of the largest banks in Stockholm, Sweden, and fired a submachine gun into the ceiling shouting, “The party begins!” He failed to escape with the money and he then took four employees (three women and one man) hostage. As part of his demands he negotiated the release from prison of an even more notorious bank robber, Clark Olofsson, who joined him inside the bank. They held the hostages captive for six days (August 23–28). When the hostages were released, none of them would testify against either captor in court; instead, they began raising money for their defense.
Later, one of the hostages asked Clark Olofsson to father a child with her (according to the author of Six Days in August: The Story of Stockholm Syndrome)!
Psychologists studied this case for decades to try to understand the mechanics of brainwashing.
Applied to Covid, Stockholm Syndrome might look like this:
The bank robber was replaced by doctors in white coats.
Firing the machine gun into the ceiling was replaced by fears of a virus ginned up by images of people dropping dead in the streets of Wuhan.
We are the hostages.
Many people reasoned that their odds of survival increased by going along with the white coats.
Once they had submitted to what was perceived as a more powerful authority, commitment bias prevented a more thorough evaluation of the situation.
It turns out that the captors are genocidal psychopaths and they began to systematically kill the hostages. This carnage is the new normal.
However, there are enormous problems with the casual use of “Stockholm Syndrome” to describe submission to authority under conditions of stress.
Ironically, the bank robbery that gave rise to the term Stockholm Syndrome is actually NOT a very good example of the submissive dynamic that psychologists are attempting to describe. Interviews with the hostages revealed that the authorities behaved horribly towards them. Police put hostages in the line of fire. The hostages spoke with the Prime Minister, Olof Palme, who said that they should expect to die because he refused to negotiate with the robbers. The authorities locked the hostages and their captors in the bank vault. Under those circumstances, the hostages’ hostility toward the authorities makes better sense.
Also intriguing:
A 1999 report by the FBI containing more than 1,200 hostage incidents found that only 8% of kidnapping victims showed signs of Stockholm syndrome. When victims who showed only negative feeling toward the law enforcement personnel are excluded, the percentage decreases to 5%.
By contrast we have well over 50% of society submitting to a clearly unjust, unscientific, and genocidal regime. So I think that something akin to our original understanding of Stockholm Syndrome is going on with Covid and beyond, but perhaps we can refine and supplement our understanding of this strange but now ubiquitous phenomenon.
III. Hegemony
I’m embarrassed that I didn’t connect the dots earlier because it’s so obvious. But there is another term for what we’ve been going through over the last four and a half years and it’s “hegemony”.
I am NOT referring to “hegemony” in the way that historians use it. When historians refer to hegemony they just mean empire, power, or control over a region. In my view this is the LEAST interesting view of hegemony.
I’m referring to “hegemony” in the way that early 20th century Italian anti-fascist Antonio Gramsci used the term. Obviously he was a communist but he was a heckuva social psychologist and everyone from both the left and right can benefit from his writings on hegemony.
Gramsci used “hegemony” a lot like how I define “bougie” — a set of economic incentives, structures, and habits that bend thoughts and culture to conform with dominant power structures in society. Hegemony is like gravity — it’s invisible but always felt, it has a power and force, it pulls people in a certain direction.
The members of the bourgeoisie just know — it’s an intuitive, felt sense — that it’s easier to align their interests with the ruling class than to fight against it (even though the ruling class despises them and would be happy to be rid of them).
So for Gramsci, everything about culture becomes about embracing and internalizing the ruling class’s perspective as one’s own (even though you’ll never be in). In our era, that includes mainstream films that celebrate Wall Street avarice, rappers from impoverished backgrounds celebrating bling rather than fighting against corporate predations, and women thinking that Fifty Shades of Grey is sexy.
Hegemony is not just limited to these few examples. Hegemony shapes EVERYTHING. Thoughts, actions, careers, values, science, medicine, culture, laws, religion, art, etc. all align to support and reproduce existing power structures and send the message to the middle and lower classes that it’s better to obey. We all exist within this system of hegemony and are constitutive of this system.
Hegemony was in full force during Covid:
Doctors and nurses killed the patients in their care because they just knew it was what the dominant class wanted. It was automatic and instantaneous. It produced no guilt and felt virtuous.
The entire profession of public health implemented a genocide across the developed world because the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wanted it to be done.
The mainstream media and the government just knew they had to censor anyone and everyone who questioned the dominant narrative no matter how well sourced because that’s just what good people like them do (even though it’s never been done on this scale before).
Colleges and universities just knew that they had to force the students in their care to inject themselves with toxic substances even though all data showed that this would kill more students than it would help — because that’s what the dominant culture called for.
And intellectual titans including Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, James Surowiecki, and others were reduced to grotesque sniveling gollums who abandoned all of their education and principles to demand that people serve the fascist Pharma state.
This radical transformation of society did not even require much coordination because it all operates through hegemony — the gravitational pull and evolutionary glitch that causes people to obey.
No one on the political left wrote about Gramsci’s view of hegemony during Covid because nearly the entire political left was consumed by the black hole of hegemony and came out the other side as neofascists. Meanwhile the political right has never been keen on this sort of anti-corporate social psychologizing so it never crossed their minds that power and control work on these subconscious levels (even while they participate in the hegemonic system).
We now face the worst ruling class in human history. They are not content to have more money than they could ever spend in 1,000 lifetimes and more power at their fingertips than any king, dictator, or Pharaoh. Our present moment is characterized by a ruling class that is systematically stealing all wealth throughout the developed world and genociding the population with vaccines even as the members of the bourgeoisie eagerly dedicate themselves to implementing the ruling class agenda.
At this point, I can only be friends, colleagues, and family with people who are ANTI-HEGEMONIC because at the end of the day hegemony does not care about what’s good or true or beautiful, hegemony is only a measure of what’s dominant and on top today. And people who cannot see the operations of hegemony all around us and who are not actively working to resist and dismantle it are just not that interesting. Because all of mainstream society is set up in service of hegemony, I reject all of it.
What’s interesting to me about the Christian story is that it was the first global counter-hegemonic movement — flipping tables of the money changers, challenging existing power structures (religious, political, familial), asking what’s eternally true rather than what’s currently dominant. By the fourth century, Rome figured out how to subvert Christianity to serve empire. But the Resistance in every era has always been about listening to that “still small voice” that calls us to challenge hegemony and seek out what’s actually true (in spite of the enormous cost to ourselves).
That’s the human story and the human condition — the struggle between what’s dominant versus what’s true, between succumbing to the dark versus seeking the light, between fitting in versus standing up for what’s right. And our challenge during the Age of the Iatrogenocide is to see and name the operations of hegemony and dismantle them in service of humanity.
Blessings to the warriors. 🙌
Prayers for everyone fighting to stop the iatrogenocide. 🙏
Huzzah for everyone building the parallel society our hearts know is possible. ✊
In the comments, please let me know what’s on your mind.
As always, I welcome any corrections.
What is the function of hegemony, in Gramsci's sense? Ultimately it is the pleasurable illusion of belonging to a ruling class. The so-called elites are always tormentors whose own hermetically sealed hegemony floats above the drab hegemony of compliant adoration. For the compliant, consuming herds, not thinking itself becomes a pre-requisite for pleasure: escapism is always titillating and money alone makes this drug available. Hegemony, in Gramsci's sense, shunts the masses away from the anxiety with its redemptive powers as proposed by Kierkegaard. Comfort, offered up through hegemony, is therefore the poisoned chalice. Ultimately, as we have seen, the poisoned chalice morphs magically into the poisonous syringe and hordes of hegemonists are then lining up to be mass-murdered. The whole thing starts with an inner emptiness which is the offshoot of materialism and consumerism. To fill the void in your gut you buy stuff. To fill the void in your brain you buy into stuff. The stuff you buy and the stuff you buy into are equally toxic and pre-processed. The marketplace itself is a premeditated assault on human liberty. With Convid, the marketplace became by all definitions a lab and a slaughterhouse. Hegemony, to sum up, is therefore the comfort of yielding, through obedience, to immediate reward. It stems from a certain flaccidity in human character amplified in the mass and easily manipulated by mass media (which of course today is called social media).
My husband got into a big argument with his brother-in-law on the family camping trip. What it reminded me of was popular v. unpopular groups at school. My husband's sister and the bro-in-law were the popular kids at school. They got all the shots, they support the war in Ukraine and there is no talking to them. They always opposed war under the Bush regimes, but now it's ok. The sister said she wanted me to let her know if my kids got chickenpox, so the cousins could be exposed. Then when they did, she was too busy to drive over. She took all the shots. I think they went along because if you did, you were in the "In" crowd. We were the evil fringe of unvaxxed assholes killing our grandparents. I think it's that simple. They really truly care what other people think about them and we don't.