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Integral World: Exploring Theories of Everything
An independent forum for a critical discussion of the integral philosophy of Ken Wilber
Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion, SUNY 2003Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).
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THE CORONA CONSPIRACY
TABLE OF CONTENTS | REVIEWS

David Icke: “QAnon is a Psyop, a Scam!”

The Corona Conspiracy, Part 21

Frank Visser

When Prophecy Fails

It's always good to be critical of globalism and its intended or unintended side-effects. But being delusional is something different.

With the demise of Donald Trump as President of the United States, QAnon followers have been in turmoil. Remember, as I described in Part 18, QAnon was largely a pro-Trump campaign in the guise of a LARP (Life Action Role Play) game. Trump supposedly was destined to "drain the swamp", arrest and convict (if not execute) Democrats and Hollywood celebrities because they were guilty of many crimes, child abuse being the most popular of these. Many QAnonists yearned for the day of reckoning, "the Storm", in which this spectacle would take place—not unlike the yearning of religious sects for a Last Judgement. The storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the day the Election vote count would be finalized in Congress, heated up by Trumps incendiary speeches, signaled the beginning of this very process.

Yet, the attack on democracy, even if it came across as rather unorganized and naive, was fended off and democracy prevailed. On January 20, Joe Biden was inaugurated as 46th President of the United States, without any major irregularities. But Trump persisted in his conviction that he had not lost the elections, and most of his millions of followers shared that delusional sentiment. All of his lawyers had failed to present solid evidence, and dozens of judges had refused to take his claims seriously, up to the Supreme Court. Ironically, not being able to take his losses, Donald Trump goes down in American presidential history as the Greatest Loser, given the record number of votes he got (but Biden trumped even that). Twice impeached. Twice lost the popular vote. That really hurts for someone who lives by his popularity ratings.

"Three weeks inside a pro-Trump QAnon chat room",
Stuart A. Thompson, Jan. 26, 2021 (New York Times)

And this persistent denial of facts, especially when they are very unwelcome to one's sense of identity and self-worth, is very dangerous indeed. When prophecies fail, as is well known in the social sciences since the 1950s,[1] true believers rarely give up their cherished beliefs. Instead, they double down, and become even more rigid. The cognitive dissonance between their beliefs and the plain facts of hard reality is just too unbearable. Perhaps Trump would still prevail by playing the long game and return to center stage? Perhaps only after eight years of a Biden Presidency, to stage an even more spectacular day of reckoning? But some felt betrayed: after all Trump failed to do as promised. What should a movement around a strong and charismatic leader do when the leader has left the stage?

Transatlantic Conspiracy Wars

In a recent video David Icke, the King of Conspiracy for the past three decades, bluntly stated that "QAnon is a Psyop".[2] Now the first thing that comes to mind is pot and kettle, but let's dive into this topic somewhat deeper. The term "Psyop" is used for "operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals."[3] For some lockdown or pandemic skeptics, the whole media coverage of the past twelve months is such a Psyop, being selective in presenting a certain view of the pandemic, while neglecting or covering up other views.

QAnon is a Psyop - Wake Up People! - David Icke Dot-Connector Videocast

Icke condemns the core belief of QAnon that the US President and his loyal military and intelligence supporters will take care of everything, at the expected Day of Reckoning, and we as true believers have only to sit back and watch the spectacle. "There is a Plan!" It is a "Come and save me diversion", as he calls it. But does he really believe this operation was set up by the Elite (i.e. the Deep State, the Democrats or the Establishment) as a false flag operation or a form of controlled opposition? So that after Trump has gone down, his supporters will share this fate?

"Three weeks inside a pro-Trump QAnon chat room",
Stuart A. Thompson, Jan. 26, 2021 (New York Times)

That seems rather far fetched, to put it mildly. True, instead of Democrats being jailed, as was expected and hoped for, now many of the QAnon supporters who stormed the Capitol are going to prison. In my opinion, it is much more likely that Donald Trump managed to mobilize feelings of resentment and disempowerment in the rural areas of the United States, with false promises of MAGA ("Make America Great Again"). And a very smart digital campaign ("memetic warfare") has been set up by Roger Stone, Donald Trump jr. and others to create a modern mythology in which Trump is their Savior.[4]

It is quite remarkable that Icke is not joining forces with his transatlantic conspiracy brothers, but puts them down as controlled opposition. He says he has seen these movements come and go—and come again. Is he trying to win back followers and convert them to his Reptilian Overlords fantasy world?

He then embarks on his now familar view of the pandemic. Briefly, as far as he is concerned, there is no virus to begin with—it just doesn't exist. And the test which supposedly tests for this virus is "not testing for the virus", but for some unspecified generic genetic human material, everybody has in his or her body (hence the many false positives). Whatever science claims to know by now about the viral genome is equally untrustworthy, he claims, because it is basically all made up on a computer screen. With this faulty test the government is only interested in creating a "casedemic" (see Part 14), which offers them a basis for imposing ever more stringent measures on the population.

He also asserts that anything can count as a symptom of COVID-19 these days—including hiccups—allowing the government to endlessly claim the disease really exists, where in fact there is none, if we have to believe David Icke.

Wearing masks is therefore without purpose, he continues, or it must be to deprive us of oxygen and make us sick (because we inhale our own carbon dioxide and microbes). Besides, viruses would be too small to be held back by masks anyways. Perhaps most hospitalized patients just have the flu, he suggests (so that virus does exist?) Vaccines, likewise, don't have any purpose, except the implantation of genetic material that changes our DNA. And by carefully adjusting the settings of the PCR tests, the government can reduce the number of cases at will, as if these vaccines have really worked, or increase them, to impose more restrictions.

But behind all these deceptions, the real truth according to Icke is that 5G has made us sick, and the COVID-19 scheme is just covering that up (see Part 1). More specifically, 5G uses frequencies that prevent oxygen uptake to happen in a normal way, but is imposed on us to enable large scale surveillance. It could even enable evil governments to remotely control our DNA through the vaccine implants given to the whole population.

And the recent more contagious (and harmful?) UK mutations that have been observed? Just a few keyboard clicks and voila!

Now, we have debunked these rather ludicrious opinions throughout The Corona Conspiracy. To recap: the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been photographed and its full genome sequenced to the very nucleotide (all 30.000 of them), and subsequent mutations have been tracked by again and again assembling these genomes. If these sequences would contain just random human genetic material, they would not align so perfectly. A PCR test has been designed to spot exactly this particular virus (or the family of SARS viruses it belongs to), with the exclusion of other coronaviruses such as the common cold. Hundreds of these tests are now in place and have been validated by test labs all over the world (see Part 20).

Ian MacKay's Swiss Cheese Model about personal and shared responsibilities to prevent the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

As to mask wearing, socials distancing, lockdowns or even curfews, the scientific evidence seems diverse, but the consensus is that in concert they are our best means to prevent the virus from spreading and infecting more and more people (the Swiss Cheese Model). 5G has nothing whatsoever to to with this pandemic, nor is there any evil government that has created the pandemic to control and humiliate its population (except if you believe in the lab origin story of this virus, see Part 17). Vaccines don't inject any material that changes our DNA (it works at the level of RNA, outside of the cell nucleus where the DNA is stored, and is relatively short-lived).

And these UK mutations were discovered precisely because some of the PCR tests stopped working. It was quickly found out an upgraded test—yes, with a few keyboard clicks—would correctly spot them again.

To escape from this rather distopian view of society, which Icke calls "fascist" without any reservation, he calls for a population wide resistance and non-compliance to the various lockdown measures in place. He openly fantasizes about all the 75.000.000 Trump voters just refusing to cooperate with their government! We can only reclaim our freedom, it is believed in these conspiracy circles, when we pretend that all is fine with the world, and there is no virus to worry about. Anything that takes this freedom from us, is deemed to be evil.

That these lockdown measure are put in place precisely to return to a situation where our freedom will be restored because the virus has been beaten (or at least made less harmful by vaccines), doesn't seem to occur to them. Nor is their insistence on their supposedly violated fundamental rights balanced by any sense of responsibility for the wellfare of others. Some even go to court to reclaim their freedom.

David Icke: “QAnon is a kind of a secret grouping, literally an anonymous grouping, that came out during the early years of the Trump administration.” (2:15)

The Great Reset, Not So Bad

This general attitude of "resistance" as promoted by lockdown skeptics seems to focus more and more on the so called "Great Reset".[5] This is a programme of long-term goals proposed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2020 with the stated aim to move the world economy towards several Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which were formulated by the United Nations in 2015.

From the WEF website:

THE CONTEXT The Covid-19 crisis, and the political, economic and social disruptions it has caused, is fundamentally changing the traditional context for decision-making. The inconsistencies, inadequacies and contradictions of multiple systems - from health and financial to energy and education - are more exposed than ever amidst a global context of concern for lives, livelihoods and the planet. Leaders find themselves at a historic crossroads, managing short-term pressures against medium- and long-term uncertainties.

THE OPPORTUNITY As we enter a unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery, this initiative will offer insights to help inform all those determining the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons. Drawing from the vision and vast expertise of the leaders engaged across the Forum's communities, the Great Reset initiative has a set of dimensions to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being.

More specifically, these goals are formulated in this quite ambitious list[6]:

  1. No poverty
  2. Zero hunger
  3. Good health and well-being
  4. Quality education
  5. Gender equality
  6. Clean water and sanitation
  7. Affordable and clean energy
  8. Decent work and economic growth
  9. Industry innovation and infrastructure
  10. Reduced inequalities
  11. Sustainable cities and communities
  12. Responsible consumption and production
  13. Climate action
  14. Life below water
  15. Life on land
  16. Peace, justice and strong institutions
  17. Partnerships for the goals

SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals (as stated by the World Economic Forum)

Call me naive and idealistic, but hardly anybody alive could object to these goals.[7]

Yet, opposition has come from various corners. While politicians such as Trudeau, Biden and Johnson have endorsed them, Naomi "No Logo" Klein criticized the idea as yet another rebranding effort of the World Economic Forum,[8] and "an attempt by the rich to make themselves look good."[5] But from conservative corners, some see a socialist and dictatorial agenda on the horizon, as if zero hunger and clean water, healthcare and climate action is something horrible.

It's always good to be critical of globalism and its intended or unintended side-effects. But being delusional is something different. This is how conspiracy has twisted this concept of SDGs to fit their paranoid purpose:

The conspiracy theory of the Great Reset first spread following the initiative's announcement. It spread in response to the plan alleging that "global financial elites" and world leaders have planned a pandemic, deliberately letting loose the coronavirus to cause the conditions that will allow a restructuring of the world's governments. It alleges that the main goals of the Great Reset are to take global political and economic control by instating a Marxist totalitarian regime and by extension, the New World Order. It is claimed that such a regime would abolish personal ownership and property rights, send the military into cities, impose mandatory vaccination, and create isolation camps for people who resist. Examples claimed by proponents as evidence of a conspiracy include a 2016 WEF piece describing what life might be like in 2030, Joe Biden's campaign slogan "Build Back Better", and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's September 2020 speech. According to The Daily Dot, this is merely discourse illustrating how to create a more just and sustainable world. In some variations of the theory, then-US President Donald Trump was the only world leader keeping the scheme from happening, based on a video from August 2020 which has been viewed over three million times. (Wikipedia)

When conspiracists like David Icke and many others complain about our current governments as being "fascist dictatorships"—and this phraseology is copied by many lockdown skeptics in other countries—they don't have the slightest idea of what it is to live under a real dictatorship. And wasn't it exactly Donald Trump, the Hero of QAnon—with his one-man show politics, his craving for adulation, his sympathy for the strongmen of this world, his disdain for a free and critical press and his glorification of violence—who would fit the label of proto-fascism, or at least a decidedly pathological mindset?[9]

Says conservative political commentator Robert Kagan, painting a damning and rather prescient portrait of Trump and Trumpism, at the time he was still running for President:

Trump has transcended the party that produced him. His growing army of supporters no longer cares about the party. Because it did not immediately and fully embrace Trump, because a dwindling number of its political and intellectual leaders still resist him, the party is regarded with suspicion and even hostility by his followers. Their allegiance is to him and him alone...

This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac "tapping into" popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party—out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear—falling into line behind him.[10]

It is precisely this intimate alliance between right-wing extremism and delusional conspiracy thinking (either autocratic or anarchistic) that presents a real danger to society. Where conspiracy comes to the real world.

NOTES

[1] Festinger, Leon; Henry W. Riecken; Stanley Schachter (1956). When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World. University of Minnesota Press. See: "When prophecy fails", Wikipedia.

[2] "QAnon is a Psyop - Wake Up People! - David Icke Dot-Connector Videocast", www.davidicke.com, January 22, 2021.

[3] "Psychological operations", Wikipedia.

[4] Daniel Morrison, "'Qanon' is propaganda, and we know who's responsible", medium.com, November 18, 2020.

[5] See: The Great Reset, weforum.org, and "Great Reset", Wikipedia.

[6] Mandë Holford and Tolu Oni, "A little chaos could be just what the SDGs need: here's the sense behind it", weforum.org, November 6, 2020.

[7] Thanks to Dutch standup-comedian Harry Hol, who expressed this opinion in this video: "Agenda 21 en The Great Reset", YouTube, December 11, 2020.

[8] Naomi Klein, "The Great Reset Conspiracy Smoothie", The Intercept, December 8, 2020.

[9] Tanya Lewis, "The 'shared psychosis' of Donald Trump and his loyalists", Scientific American, January 11, 2021.

[10] Robert Kagan, "This is how fascism comes to America", www.brookings.edu, May 22, 2016. (Originally appeared in The Washington Post, May 18, 2016).


Check out: 27 Covid-19 Myths &
83 Vaccine Myths from docbastard.net
To all those who claim SARS-CoV-2—or any virus—does not exist: the virosphere consists of 4 realms, 9 kingdoms, 16 phyla, 2 subphyla, 36 classes, 55 orders, 8 suborders, 168 families, 103 subfamilies, 1421 genera, 68 subgenera, 6590 species. Take that. https://talk.ictvonline.org/taxonomy/

A summary of early parts of this series has appeared in the Dutch magazine Skepter 33(3), September 2020, as "Viruses don't exist" (covering Parts 1-5). German: Skeptiker (December 2020); English: Skeptic.org.uk (January 2021)







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