LUMPENPROLETARIAT—[Friday, 13 MAY 2022]  Here are some of today’s media notes to help us track and make sense of this plandemic dystopia we all find ourselves living through in the 2020s.  (Please see below, after this commentary and after today’s salient observations, for samples of today’s news cycle and more.)  

For the most part, Americans are out of touch with reality.  The mass formation event continues.

“Out of Touch” by Hall & Oates (1984)

Other salient observations:

• I’m feelin’ Kendrick‘s new album, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.  A fellow worker was not as impressed.  ‘He can get as grandiose as he wants.  It’s not “Money Trees”.’  What do you think, dear reader? Have you heard it yet?
  • “The priority of import also informs Adorno‘s stance on art and politics, which derives from debates with Lukács, Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht in the 1930s (Lunn 1982; Zuidervaart 1991, 28–43). Because of the shift in capitalism’s structure, and because of Adorno’s own complex emphasis on (modern) art’s autonomy, he doubts both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of tendentious, agitative, or deliberately consciousness-raising art. Yet he does see politically engaged art as a partial corrective to the bankrupt aestheticism of much mainstream art.” [ 1 ]
• Other new music out today (more notes below) [ 1 ]:
  • A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile
  • Drop Out Boogie by The Black Keys
• On today’s edition of The Gary Null Show, Health & Healing Information; U.C. Berkeley Professor John A. Powell on the dangerous myth of race and the untold history before the ‘invention of whiteness’; Yuval Noah on digital twins (cf. Alison McDowell, et al) and the new class warfare from above transhumanism racing towards a Gattaca future; a commentary entitled “Escaping America’s Sinking Ship”; and more. (More notes below.)
• WBAI is in the midst of its 2022 Spring Fund Drive.  Please support free speech radio; and help democratize terrestrial radio.
• On this week’s edition of free speech Pacifica Radio‘s excellent On The Ground: Voices of Resistance From the Nation’s Capital, ‘ON THE GROUND’ SHOW FOR MAY 13, 2022: SENATE FAILS TO AFFIRM NATIONAL ABORTION RIGHTS… PRO-CHOICE PROTESTERS RALLY AT THE SUPREME COURT… SETTLEMENT IN 2020 ATTACK ON BLM PROTESTERS NEAR WHITE HOUSE… AND MORE…’ (More notes below.)
• KPFA is in the midst of its 2022 Spring Fund Drive.  Please support free speech radio; and help democratize terrestrial radio.
• This week’s edition of Black Agenda Radio (WBAI, free speech Pacifica Radio) included an excellent commentary from the late Glen Ford about the importance of supporting and helping to liberate all political prisoners. Glen Ford (b. Glen Rutherford 1949-2021) ‘was an American journalist, who, along with Bruce Dixon and Margaret Kimberley, co-founded Black Agenda Report. He was a socialist, a Vietnam War-era military veteran and a member of the Black Panther Party. He served in the news media/press over many years in his professional life’.
• RETROSPECTIVE > “Glen Ford: A Remarkable Revolutionary” by Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report, 4 AUG 2021.
• RETROSPECTIVE > “Theodor W. Adorno” by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (First published Mon May 5, 2003; substantive revision Mon Oct 26, 2015)
• “US pours billions into Ukraine proxy war while keeping public in the dark” by The Grayzone [Pushback with Aaron Maté], 13 MAY 2022.
• “Gravitas: US stocks lose $7 trillion in 2022” by WION, 13 MAY 2022.
• QUESTION > If Joe Manchin is an obstructionist problem for the Democrat Party, who doesn’t reflect the alleged values of the Democrat Party, why don’t the Democrats vote him out of the Party? Is Joe Manchin an excuse for Democrats to avoid meaningful accountability?
• “Neurological Issues After Vaccination – Plasmapheresis” by Drbeen Medical Lectures [via YouTube], 13 MAY 2022.

@LumpenProles, last modified/edited/updated on 27 MAY 2022 at 12:08 PDT

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MEDIA/PRESS NOTES, NEWS, VIEWS, WORKING CLASS BLUES, INFORMATION, INSPIRATION, PERSPIRATION, AND AGITATION FROM A WORKING CLASS PERSPECTIVE

[Notes will be modified/edited/updated as time and labor constraints allow.  Working class solidarity. ✊🏽✊🏼✊🏿✊]

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New Kendrick album out today…  Please support artists.  “The priority of import also informs Adorno’s stance on art and politics, which derives from debates with Lukács, Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht in the 1930s (Lunn 1982; Zuidervaart 1991, 28–43). Because of the shift in capitalism’s structure, and because of Adorno’s own complex emphasis on (modern) art’s autonomy, he doubts both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of tendentious, agitative, or deliberately consciousness-raising art. Yet he does see politically engaged art as a partial corrective to the bankrupt aestheticism of much mainstream art. Under the conditions of late capitalism, the best art, and politically the most effective, so thoroughly works out its own internal contradictions that the hidden contradictions in society can no longer be ignored.” [ 1 ]

“Kendrick Lamar – Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers (Full Album)” by Revive Music, 13 MAY 2022.

[T] [I]

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I’ve read Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism; and I recommend it to everyone, who wants to understand AND PREVENT totalitarianism.  I disagree with Arendt conflating authoritarianism with communism because communism can be libertarian or authoritarian.  But her book is still a valuable work by a holocaust survivor, who paid close attention to the crowd psychology, the mass psychology around her, as people uncritically accepted state gaslighting (although she didn’t use that term, I don’t think).

Another important book to help us understand the looming threat, or reality, of totalitarianism today is Dr. Sheldon S. Wolin’s excellent book, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton University Press, 2008).  Thanks to Chris Hedges for bringing this to the nation’s attention.  I would combine Dr. Peter Phillips’ book, Giants: The Global Power Elite (2018), not to mention C. Wright Mills‘ 1956 classic, The Power Elite.  But that’s getting into the politics of power.  But we must delve deeper.  We must also understand the psychology of power. And, toward that end, a number of us eagerly anticipate Prof. Mattias Desmet‘s forthcoming book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism. [ 2 ]

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“Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Aby Aqla’s funeral sees violence – BBC News” by BBC News, 13 MAY 2022.

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07:00 PDT / 10:00 EDT, WPFW > On The Ground with Esther Iverem

NOTES: [L8] “OnTheGroundShow.org” | ‘ON THE GROUND’ SHOW FOR MAY 13, 2022: SENATE FAILS TO AFFIRM NATIONAL ABORTION RIGHTS… PRO-CHOICE PROTESTERS RALLY AT THE SUPREME COURT… SETTLEMENT IN 2020 ATTACK ON BLM PROTESTERS NEAR WHITE HOUSE… AND MORE… | “The Women’s Health Protection Act, guaranteeing safe and legal abortion nationwide, fails to pass the Senate this week after demonstrations around the country and here at the Supreme Court. And while Congress failed to support reproductive justice, it did vote to give $40 billion dollars more to Ukraine for what is openly acknowledged now to be a U.S. proxy war against Russia. But while signs of system failure and insanity abound, add D.C. bus drivers to the recent wave of victories for labor across the United States. Plus a legal update on the June 1, 2022 on Black Lives Matter protesters near the White House and headlines. | The show is made possible only by our volunteer energy, our resolve to keep the people’s voices on the air, and by support from our listeners. In this new era of fake corporate news, we have to be and support our own media! Please click here or click on the Support-Donate tab on this website to subscribe for as little as $3 a month. We are so grateful for this small but growing amount of monthly crowdsource funding on Patreon. PATREON NOW HAS A ONE-TIME, ANNUAL DONATION FUNCTION! You can also give a one-time or recurring donation on PayPal. Thank you!”

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07:00 PDT, KPFA > UpFront with Janine Etter(sp?) and Brian Edwards-Tiekert

NOTES: [L31] News Headlines with Christina Aanestad: Russophobic biased reporting on Ukraine; no mention of The Grayzone, Richard Medhurst, Scott Ritter, Alfred de Zayas, et al. | (c. 8:15) Janine Etter(sp?) and Brian Edwards-Tiekert play a rerun of John Nichols selling his book: more COVID-19 gaslighting with pseudo-critical narratives from John Nichols, whose book Coronavirus Criminals, functions as a red herring to deflect attention away from the far more critical and compelling book by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, which the establishment media has censored and/or banned. Instead of playing that John Nichols rerun ten times, why not play it nine times and play Dr. Gary Null’s interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. once? Or why not play that John Nichols rerun five times and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. five times? RFK, Jr’s book is far more compelling. Yet, most of the Pacifica Radio Network editorial bosses and newscast bosses have also censored and/or banned this book, basically disappeared it and pretended it doesn’t exist.  Dr. Gary Null is a notable exception, who interviewed RFK, Jr about his book, upon its publication. | (c. 25:10) Brian Edwards-Tiekert, fundraising, whilst gaslighting on COVID-19. | (c. 30:10) News Headlines with Christina Aanestad … ‘Climate Courage Budget’, Suzanne Potter(sp?) (reporter) … | (c. 33:11) Back to UpFront with Brian Edwards-Tiekert and Jeannine Etter(sp?): more clips from the John Nichols rerun on his book, which functions as a red herring to deflect attention away from the far more critical and compelling book by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, The Real Anthony Fauci. … | (c. 53:00)  JE name-dropped El Gavilan (“Miguel Molina”).  This smacked of pandering in the context of reality, which is Mr. Molina is almost never heard on UpFront, never included, never heard speaking on UpFront.

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07:00 PDT / 10:00 EDT, WBAI > Heart of Mind with Kathryn Davis > [notes pending; haven’t listened yet]

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08:00 PDT, KPFA > A Rude Awakening with Sabrina Jacobs

NOTES: [L18] “A Rude Awakening with Dr Matthew T Huber” | “On Today’s Fund Drive special, I’ll speak to Dr. Matthew T. Huber on his latest publication, “Climate Crisis as Class War” And, as always, I’ll have our special fund drive guest, Kevin H! | Give, Share, Support, or call us at 1-800-439-5732″ | News Headlines with Aileen Alfandary & Christina Aanestad: Russophobic biased reporting on Ukraine; no mention of The Grayzone, Richard Medhurst, Scott Ritter, Alfred de Zayas, et al. | reproductive rights | oil, climate change | (c. 8:10) BEGIN INTERVIEW … (c. 10:30) “class analysis ” of ‘the climate crisis’. But what about class analysis of the economy, writ large? This reminds us of Against the Grain, where they’re fine with engaging in class analysis toward addressing racism, but not the economy writ large. It’s an interesting, and seemingly unnecessary narrowing of discourse, not unlike Dr. Noam Chomsky’s early 1990s description of “the liberal bias.”

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08:00 PDT / 11:00 EDT, WPFW > Community Watch & Comment – Friday with Ron Pinchback(sp?), Tom Williams(sp?), and Chip Jones > real talk, call-ins respected like human beings (except for one dude, wasn’t allowed a “follow-up” question, when he called in a second time), Roe v. Wade; January 6th updates; price inflation, supply shocks, & price gouging; Finland [and Sweden] to join NATO; Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Aby Aqla’s funeral disrespected by Israelis; and more, plus call-ins. | News Headlines with Sue Goodwin 

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09:00 PDT / 12:00 EDT, WBAI > The Gary Null Show

PRN.live video list (for Friday, 13 MAY 2022):

1. Will the Future Be Human? – Yuval Noah Harari (part 2)
2. The Great Reset | Dystopian Sci-Fi Short Film
3. Max Blumenthal: US is Arming Neo-Nazis in Ukraine
4. Lara Logan blows the lid off Ukraine
5. Charlie Chaplin – Final Speech from The Great Dictator
6. What It’s Like Being a Millennial (Give Me the Respect I Didn’t Earn)

NOTES/COMMENTS (re: Gary Null Show for 13 MAY 2022):  (09:00 PDT)  Health & Healing Information:  benefits of blueberries regarding dementia | Yale Study: 1/3 of new big pharma drugs have all manner of adverse effects. | (c. 19:45) Harvard Study on intergenerational benefits of exercise. | University of Copenhagen study corroborated the power of solution-orientated thinking or mindset in cognitive outcomes. |  (c. 24:30) (c. 09:25 PDT) U.C. Berkeley Professor John A. Powell (“Professor of Law | Professor of African American Studies and Ethnic Studies | Robert D. Haas Chancellor’s Chair in Equity and Inclusion | Director, Othering & Belonging Institute”) | Yuval Noah on digital twins (cf. Alison McDowell, et al) and the new class warfare from above transhumanism racing towards a Gattaca future.  I am not a futurist, like Jacques Fresco or Peter Joseph.  But science fiction provides humanity with many cautionary tales; so, new generations don’t have to waste time reinventing the wheel. | (c. 49:00) A commentary by Dr. Gary Null entitled “Escaping America’s Sinking Ship” … (c. 54:06)  ‘Although politicians frequently raise their concern for the sanctity of human life and the environment, their actions are just the opposite. To the contrary, Marx’s 19th Century warning about infinite capitalist growth goes unheeded.  Grow the economy in the name of progress by depleting whatever natural resources are available in order to prevent the gross domestic product from falling.  …’ | (c. 55:00) WBAI News Headlines with Sue Goodwin

RELATED READINGS/RESOURCES:

• “Algorithmic Man: Yuval Noah Harari’s Timid Transhumanism” by Charles T. Rubin, Public Discourse, 28 JUN 2018. [R0]

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10:00 PDT, WBAI > Lopate at Large > An interview with an entomologist. (cf. “liberal bias“)

10:00 PDT, KPFA > Economic Update with Prof. Richard Wolff > [archive removed from KPFA archives for some reason, which does not meet the needs of working class listeners, who would like to listen again, or who missed the original broadcast.]

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11:00 PDT, KPFA > Fund Drive Special > “Spring Fund-Drive Special”

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11:00 PDT / 14:00 EDT, WPFW > Resistance Radio with John and Regan

NOTES: [L15]  brainwashing schools/residential schools/boarding schools for indigenous children, funded by Congress in for 150 years since 1819, literally genocide, unmarked graves found … (c. 5:00) ‘In its heyday 83% to 85% of all Native kids were ripped from their homes and sent to these prison-like schools. 85%! And we’re talking about ages four to 18. … This wasn’t about civilizing Native children or helping…’

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12:00 PDT, KPFA > It’s Going Down with Liam O’Donohue(spelling not provided in program description) > “Fund Drive Special with Natasha Lennard” | “It’s Going Down speaks with journalist and author Natasha Lennard from The Intercept, who talks about the recent attacks on abortion rights, reproductive freedom, and LGBTQ people across the US and the need for people to organize instead of looking for salvation from elected leaders.” Salvation? How about accountability?

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13:00 PDT, KPFA > Project Censored with Mickey Huff

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13:00 PDT / 16:00 EDT, WBAI > Sojourner Truth with Margaret Prescod

NOTES:  [haven’t listened yet; usually revolutionary, but soft on Dems and the two-party dictatorship]  “Synopsis” from archive page:  “Today on Sojourner Truth, 2022 marks 50 years since the launching of women for wages. Today we bring you audio from the recent women for wages book launch and its writers: Selma James and Nina Lopez.”  |  “Info/Links”:  ‘AudioPort.org‘ 

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14:00 PDT / 17:00 EDT, WPFW > Sojourner Truth with Margaret Prescod > topic: ‘October 31st to November 13th, UN Climate Change Conference Glasgow, Scotland, the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP 26). Webinar hosted by California People’s Campaign from Sunday, 14 November 2021. | (c. 5:00) News Headlines with Christina Aanestad (KPFA) | audio from webinar. | (c. 35:00) ‘Earth Minute’ | (c. 36:30) Back to Margaret Prescod (c. 37:20) … (c. 44:00) ‘endocrine disruptors that come out of those smokestacks‘

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14:00 PDT / 17:00 EDT, WBAI > Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley

NOTES:  [notes pending]

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15:00 PDT / 18:00 EDT, WPFW > News Views with Garland Nixon > [L12] [TW] Commentary about “disinformation”  ….  ‘Recall July 23rd’ (c. 10:30) “They’re [establishment media] lying to you about Ukraine.”

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“US pours billion into Ukraine proxy war while keeping public in the dark” by The Grayzone [Pushback with Aaron Maté], 13 MAY 2022.

Quotation from video description:  “The US House has approved another $40 billion for the proxy war in Ukraine, all while the realities on the ground are being concealed.  Seth Harp, an investigative journalist and US army veteran who recently reported from Ukraine, on the hidden realities of the dangerous conflict.  |  Guest:  Seth Harp.  Journalist, contributing editor at Rolling Stone, and US Army veteran, who served in Iraq.  https://twitter.com/sethharpesq”

NOTES:  [L17]  …  (c. 18:13)  ‘Even on that list, Ukraine shows as the most corrupt country in Europe.’

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16:00 PDT, KPFA > Hard Knock Radio > [haven’t listened yet]  “Fund Drive Special: Requiem for the American Dream”  |  Quotation from KPFA archive description:  “In Requiem for the American Dream, renowned intellectual figure Noam Chomsky deliberates on the defining characteristics of our time—the colossal concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few and fewer, with the rise of a rapacious individualism and complete collapse of class consciousness. Chomsky does this by discussing some of the key principles that have brought this culture to the pinnacle of historically unprecedented inequality by tracing a half century of policies designed to favor the most wealthy at the expense of the majority, while also looking back on his own life of activism and political participation. The film serves to provide insights into how we got here, and culminates as a reminder that these problems are not inevitable. Once we remember those who came before and those who will come after, we see that we can, and should, fight back.”

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17:00 PDT, KPFA & KPFK > Flashpoints with Dennis Bernstein > [notes pending; haven’t listened yet]

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18:00 PDT, KPFA > The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays > [notes pending; haven’t listened yet]

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20:00 PDT,  KPFA > La Onda Bajita > [notes pending; haven’t listened yet]

NOTES: 

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22:00 PDT, KPFA > The History of Funk > [notes pending; haven’t listened yet]

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“John Dukakis on Skull and Bones Members George Bush and John Kerry (1988)“ by The Film Archives, 13 MAY 2022.

Quotation from video description:  [pending]

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If Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema do not reflect the alleged values of the Democrat Party, why are they allowed to obstruct the entire party? Are such outliers allowed outsized party power because they provide an excuse for the Democrat Party whenever they want to pretend to represent their constituency, but always look for an excuse for failing to deliver? every time?

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“Gravitas: US stocks lose $7 trillion in 2022” by WION [via YouTube], 13 MAY 2022.

NOTES: (c. 2:45) ‘The Fed [i.e., the Federal Reserve System of Banks] is focused on controlling inflation. So, it is planning a series of interest rate increases.  Unfortunately, what WION failed to say was that the inflation has nothing to do with interest rates because most of the price inflation is either due to supply chain failures and supply shocks or capitalist price gouging, as we learned on PRN.live (20 MAY 2022) from Dr. Jack Rasmus. And I’m sure other economists would agree, including Dr. Stephanie Kelton, Dr. Richard Wolf, Dr. L. Randall Wray, Dr. Michael Hudson, et al. The only thing the interest rate increases will do is benefit the financial industry and harm the working class by making it more expensive to get loans.

RELATED READINGS/RESOURCES:

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• “Investors snapped out of their brief post-Fed euphoria and rushed to the exits Thursday, with high-priced tech among the most punished stocks.” by Kyle Woodley, Kiplinger, 8 MAY 2022.
• “Why the U.S. Stock Market Is Tumbling in 2022” by Reuters, US News & World Report, 11 MAY 2022.
  • N.B.: This article suffers from “the liberal bias.” Reuters cited anonymous “analysts” to support the article’s establishment narrative, which falsely blames profligate social spending for inflation. But the real villains were the capitalists price-gouging and creating false bottlenecks and supply chain failures.
• “The Anatomy of Inflation” by Dr. Jack Rasmus, 20 MAY 2022.

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“Neurological Issues After Vaccination – Plasmapheresis” by Drbeen Medical Lectures [via YouTube], 13 MAY 2022.

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[ 1 ]  According to a fellow worker, there’s a lot of new music out today on various music distributors, most of which are strictly digital audiostreaming services.  Since Tower Records and Star Records closed in San Mateo (where I’d run into DJ Cameron Paul, as a kid), then Rasputin’s stores were shut down, new music releases have faded from view for many of us.  People seem to learn about new music through their existing channels, which are usually narrowed to a single genre.  It’s a shame the younger generations may never experience what it’s like to immerse oneself, not in what Prof. John Vervaeke calls “the having mode,” but “the being mode”.  Daydreaming in record stores is one environment where generations of young people fostered peace and justice.  We used to camp out to wait in line for concert tickets or music festival tickets.  By the late ’90s, online sales allowed corporate buyers to scoop up blocks of tickets before the most devoted fans would line up earlier than others to have ‘first dibs’.  Places like the Shoreline became lame when corporate types took over the front rows.  A lot of times, they’d be empty because they didn’t really care about the musical artists.  They just horded the tickets as a corporate asset to incentivize and entreat.  At any rate, browsing for new music seems to have been digitized.  We gotta get back out in the real world, bring back physical wrecka stowes.  |  The New Music Fridays podcast has been updated with a number of new albums, bringing the current roster to 58 music albums, which have made Apple Music’s curated list. Some albums are dropped from the list, as new albums are added.  From our salience landscape, we highlight the following:
Drop Out Boogie by The Black Keys, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar; A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile (with Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood); Krewella at Project Glow DC, 2022 (DJ Mix).  Our fellow worker also gave the first track from Red Balloon by Tank and the Bangas a listen; but he wasn’t really feelin’ it.  What’s it sound like?  ‘It’s just basic R&B.’  Hm.  I’d like to listen to the new Krewella before investing time into another uninspired, derivative R&B album.  Onyx has a new album, Onyx Versus Everybody. “Duh-duh-dah, duh-duh-dah! Let the boys be boys! Slam!!”

“The priority of import also informs Adorno’s stance on art and politics, which derives from debates with Lukács, Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht in the 1930s (Lunn 1982; Zuidervaart 1991, 28–43). Because of the shift in capitalism’s structure, and because of Adorno’s own complex emphasis on (modern) art’s autonomy, he doubts both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of tendentious, agitative, or deliberately consciousness-raising art. Yet he does see politically engaged art as a partial corrective to the bankrupt aestheticism of much mainstream art. Under the conditions of late capitalism, the best art, and politically the most effective, so thoroughly works out its own internal contradictions that the hidden contradictions in society can no longer be ignored.” (qtd from “Theodor W. Adorno” by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy )

“Adorno regards authentic works of (modern) art as social monads. The unavoidable tensions within them express unavoidable conflicts within the larger sociohistorical process from which they arise and to which they belong. These tensions enter the artwork through the artist’s struggle with sociohistorically laden materials, and they call forth conflicting interpretations, many of which misread either the work-internal tensions or their connection to conflicts in society as a whole. Adorno sees all of these tensions and conflicts as “contradictions” to be worked through and eventually to be resolved. Their complete resolution, however, would require a transformation in society as a whole, which, given his social theory, does not seem imminent.” 

[ 2 ] I’ve read Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism; and I recommend it to everyone, who wants to understand AND PREVENT totalitarianism.  I disagree with Arendt conflating authoritarianism with communism because communism can be libertarian or authoritarian.  But her book is still a valuable work by a holocaust survivor, who paid close attention to the crowd psychology, the mass psychology around her, as people uncritically accepted state gaslighting (although she didn’t use that term, I don’t think).

Another important book to help us understand the looming threat, or reality, of totalitarianism today is Dr. Sheldon S. Wolin’s excellent book, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton University Press, 2008).  Thanks to Chris Hedges for bringing this to the nation’s attention.  I would combine Dr. Peter Phillips book, Giants: The Global Power Elite (2018), not to mention C. Wright Mills’ 1956 classic, The Power Elite.  But, now, we’re getting into the politics of power.  But we must delve deeper.  We must understand the psychology of power. And, toward that end, a number of us eagerly anticipate Prof. Mattias Desmet’s forthcoming book, The Psychology ofTotalitarianism.

Before Hanna Arendt wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism, Gustave Le Bon wrote about crowd psychology in his 1895 book, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, ‘which is considered one of the seminal works on crowd psychology.’  We also know Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung have also written to some extent about crowd psychology.  But Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, bears the distinction of developing Freud’s ideas and other ideas to develop crowd psychology theories, not for helping the public, but for manipulating it for mass marketing purposes, during what filmmaker Adam Curtis called The Century of the Self.

Psychology seems to perpetually get weaponized by capital for controlling people as passive consumers and idle observers of war profiteering and big pharma profiteering, completely depoliticized, demobilized, and disenfranchised.  9/11 toppled habeas corpus. The police state response to COVID-19 might close the open society.  Chris Hedges described SCOTUS Justice Amy Coney Barrett as a “cultist”.  He is correct.  When cultists, like Amy Coney Barrett want a Gilead reality, and Justice Alito is citing a ’17th Century Mysoginist’, as Joy Reid put it, our nation is in serious trouble.  As Dr. Noam Chomsky said, quoting an establishment figure, the American people never see danger until it is at their throats:

“Presidential historian Thomas Bailey wrote in 1948, at the time we were setting off on a new war, The Cold War, he wrote, ‘Because the masses are terribly short-sighted and generally cannot see danger until it is at their throats, our statesmen are forced to deceive them into an awareness of their own long-run interests.  Deception of the people may in fact become increasingly necessary, unless we’re willing to give our leaders in Washington a freer hand.’  And in 1981, as the United States was launching a new crusade for freedom, Samuel Huntington the professor of government at Harvard,  said in a private but published discussion and interchange, ‘You may have to sell intervention or other military action in such a way as to create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union, that you are fighting.’  That’s what the United States has been doing ever since the Truman Doctrine, which is quite accurate and gives a certain insight into the nature of the Cold War, in particular into the nature of the war against Nicaragua, which is what he specifically had in mind.  Well, these concerns over, uh, controlling the public mind tend to rise to the surface, particularly, after periods of war and turmoil […]”  …  (c. 17:00) https://youtu.be/_jk59-NFWx8  “

All we have to do is unsubscribe from the absurd narrative.

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From Dr. Robert Malone’s Substack blog;
By Guest Author: David Marks

Historians analyzing the Covid-19 pandemic will one day consider what was going on in the minds of those who supported a narrative that only served profits and power. Looking back, they will greatly appreciate the analysis of contemporary experts, particularly Mattias Desmet, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University in Belgium. He is recognized as a leading thinker in his field, and has written over one hundred peer-reviewed academic papers.

Desmet has presented his understanding of human behavior in response to the pandemic and vaccine policies to forums and international media. His book on the topic, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, will be published in June of 2022. It examines the emotional climate that has allowed a singular, focused, crisis narrative that forbids dissenting views and relies on destructive groupthink.

The central tenet of Desmet’s evaluation of the emotional response to the pandemic rests on the psychological concept of mass formation. It is a general term that applies to individual, group, and crowd behavior as influenced by the manipulations and conduct of dominant social forces. The concept is not new—nor is it in any way a stretch to apply it in analyzing the extensive anxiety driving the attitudes and demeanor of billions of people during the world-wide pandemic.

Mass formation can be associated with mass psychosis, a disturbance in the minds of small or large groups—to the degree where there is a loss of contact with reality—often with an eclipse of morality and objectification of an imagined enemy.

The hostile and dismissive response to Desmet’s perspective on the pandemic’s emotional climate is both fascinating and revelatory.

Enter The Media

Desmet was interviewed by a number of prominent individuals in a variety of media outlets, with his views on the current rise of mass formation taken seriously by some of the public and media professionals with open minds. Detractors quickly appeared in an attempt to minimize his impact.

When Dr. Robert Malone, respected veteran expert in molecular biology and a pioneer in mRNA research, discussed and amplified Desmet’s theory on the “Joe Rogan Experience,” a threshold seemed to have been crossed. Mainstream media and medical websites went into high gear pronouncing mass formation as discredited and bunk. The disdain for anyone invoking the term was overt. Medpage Today reported, “It sounds like the name of your friend’s failed high school band.”

The vast majority of criticism had little to say about the reasonable theory that government representatives, a huge portion of the medical profession and at least one-third of the general population had fallen into a trance. And most importantly, there was no willingness to consider that there might be a powerful psychological force skewing judgment and provoking irrational behavior.

In a show of reflexive impulse bias, media coverage claimed that the concept of mass formation did not exist. This response simply revealed how the process of mass formation blinds the minds of scientists and journalists.

Widely attributed press sources, including Reuters, quickly found experts who said that, “Mass formation psychosis is not an academic term recognized in the field of psychology, nor is there evidence of any such phenomenon occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic.” To ensure readers need not fear they were under any spell, they advised, “numerous psychologists have also told Reuters that such a condition is not officially recognized.”

Mass formation was also dismissed in a number of articles because it is not mentioned in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a simplified clinical guide to individual psychiatric disorders that does not cover crowd psychology.

Not Necessarily The News

The blast of commentary was presented as objective news, yet the press response directly conflicts with the knowledge of prominent psychotherapists, including luminaries who enriched the modern understanding of the human psyche, such as Scipio Sighele, Gustave Le Bon, Elio Cannetti, and Hannah Arendt.

In his 1921 book on Crowd Psychology and Ego Analysis, the founder of psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud, discusses mass formation and its ramifications, saying, “The strangest and at the same time most important phenomenon of mass formation is the increase in affectivity evoked in each individual (as) exaltation or intensification of emotion.”

The preeminent psychiatrist, Carl Jung, highlights mass formation in his prescient 1957 book, The Undiscovered Self, on the state of mankind and the dangers of modern materialism [cf. corporate capitalism]. His perspective is foundational, relative to Desmet’s recent findings:

“Under the influence of scientific assumptions, not only the psyche but the individual man and, indeed, all individual events whatsoever suffer a leveling down and a process of blurring that distorts the picture of reality into a conceptual average. We ought not to underestimate the psychological effect of the statistical world picture: it displaces the individual in favor of anonymous units that pile up into mass formations.”

Despite a wealth of historical precedents, the reaction to Desmet’s ideas was bizarre and unfounded. A renowned and respected psychotherapist had postulated that we might need to reconsider the unconscious response to lockdowns and mandates—and his ideas were summarily dismissed by the voice of the state [cf. establishment].

The diagnosis is clear. Deriding mass formation and dismissing its influence during a global crisis is in itself a verification of the phenomenon. Mainstream media demonstrates how it perpetuates mass formation by indulging in another well-accepted psychological phenomenon: denial. Considering the degree of unwillingness to confront the reality of ineffectiveness and dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines [cf. experimental injectable COVID-19 drug products], an evaluation of the news media’s response to the current plague can also be deemed delusional.

The Syndrome Persists

In recent decades, studies have shown that psychological problems are increasing geometrically. Rather than attempting to reverse this dysfunction [cf. as cognitive scientist Prof. John Vervaeke’s “Awakening From the Meaning Crisis” lecture series seeks to do], powerful forces in government and the corporate press continue to mislead and prey on an expanding susceptible population, who in the face of crisis, cling to authority.

It is the vulnerability of dissatisfied populations that allows mass formation.

Desmet suggests that a number of factors, including isolation, a sense that life is meaningless—and particularly free-floating anxiety, frustration and aggression—independently or in unison, can lead to mass formation and its repercussions.

Jung also viewed precursors to dysfunction in the context of a modern age where the “State” and “Scientific Rationalism” play critical roles in supporting mass formation, saying:

“Science supplies us with, instead of the concrete individual, the names of organizations and, at the highest point, the abstract idea of the State as the principle of political reality. Apart from agglomerations of huge masses of people, in which the individual disappears anyway, one of the chief factors responsible for psychological mass-mindedness is scientific rationalism, which robs the individual of his foundations and his dignity. As a social unit he has lost his individuality and become a mere abstract number in the bureau of statistics. He can only play the role of an interchangeable unit of infinitesimal importance.”

The concept of mass formation and its relevance to the pandemic are undeniable when our current crisis is examined carefully, particularly when the inadequacies and inconsistencies of prevention and treatment are analyzed and understood.

Vaccines were initially presented as the only viable way to stem a deadly disease. A subsequent admission that they did not stop transmission was revealed in the context that they continued to be effective and safe. Any serious analysis of these claims confirms this also is a fabrication.

There is an important and viable inquiry asking how a false and deadly narrative continues to be accepted. Policies supporting repressive controls and ongoing vaccination have no foundation other than nonsensical dictates and support from a public bolstered with questionable data, prodded to near-hysteria.

The very forces that are responsible for the false narrative can only take a defensive position when light is shed on their methodology. The dogmatic negation of the idea that a mass formation is responsible for blind compliance and irrational acceptance of dangerous therapies is striking and revelatory.

As time passes, the induced fear and coerced consent will continue to be exposed as part of a scheme promoting selfish narratives, and verifiably nothing to do with good health.

Eventually this epoch will be recognized for its essential impetus; the nefarious entrancement of a vulnerable world.

David Marks, guest author, at Dr. Robert Malone’s Substack blog. David Marks is a veteran writer and documentary film producer. He was the originator and lead investigator for the BBC/PBS co-production of Nazi Gold — revealing the role of Switzerland in World War II — and one of the most widely viewed documentaries on television. David’s new book, The Way, is an interpretation of the Chinese classic, the Tao Te Ching, available at LaoTzu-TheWay [dot] org

cf. https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/dismissing-reality?s=r

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[13 MAY 2022]

[Last modified/edited/updated on 27 MAY 2022 at 11:53 PDT]