A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic - Laura Dodsworth (the first e reader .txt) 📗

just me? If just me, then why? How would it move and inspire me? Although he raved about it, he couldn’t actually describe the course content clearly or explain why it would benefit me. It wasn’t enough to convince me to part with a few hundred pounds and risk falling into this brand of inarticulate euphoria. My then-husband decided to sign up for it though.

‘I want to touch you, move you and inspire you,’ said my husband when he came home, late, the first evening of the course. Oh dear. Same words. Same euphoria. Same inability to describe why it was so good and why I should do it. Extremely unnerved, I was now absolutely certain I should not do the course, but research it instead.

In the end, my husband and a few friends all took the Landmark Forum ‘human potential’ course. It’s a ‘Large Group Awareness Training’ programme which has polarised people around the world. Some claim it has miraculously changed their lives. Some warn it is both a pyramid-selling scheme and a dangerous cult.

I learnt that Landmark Forum used some very particular techniques: the training room had no natural daylight or clocks so participants felt disorientated, and therefore more suggestible; specific vocabulary that needs explaining to the outside world, such as ‘racket’, which is your state of being; very specific and limited break times so participants were hungry, thirsty, and needed the loo, making them feel physically uncomfortable but also infantilised and disempowered; emotional manipulation; hard selling to get new members; long hours and homework, so the rest of life is just crowded out, making the experience more intense. I became interested in how cults work in general.

When I told my husband I thought he had been ‘brainwashed’ he was shocked and deflated. There was a feeling I had ruined this for him. He completed the course but, to my relief, didn’t take the next level.

When we locked down in March 2020, I noticed that aspects of the situation, how we were ‘managed’ by our leaders, and people’s responses matched elements of cult programming. I wasn’t alone. In July, Peter Hitchens wrote in his Mail on Sunday blog:

‘When this madness began, I behaved as if a new and fanatical religion was spreading among us. Be polite and tolerant, I thought. It may be crazy and damaging but in time it will go away. Now it is clear that a new faith, based on fear of the invisible and quite immune to reason, has all but taken over the country. And it turns out to be one of those faiths that doesn’t have much tolerance for those who don’t share it.’1

There are close parallels between cult induction, religious conversion and political propaganda. The similarity in techniques is the subject of Battle for the Mind, by William Sargant. As he said, ‘Religious conversion techniques… often approximate so closely to modern political techniques of brain-washing and thought control that each throws light on the mechanics of the others.’ He noticed that Chinese Communist Party experiments on mass excitation and reconditioning of groups were comparable not just with religious conversion, but also group psychotherapeutic treatments. The politician, priest, police officer and psychologist all have much to learn from each other.

As with the Landmark Forum, we all had to learn a new language at the outset of the Covid epidemic: social distancing; flatten the curve; self-isolate; build back better. We were captive indoors and although our curtains could open, the days soon blended and we lost sense of time. Extreme emotional manipulation was standard fare from politicians and through the media. We were denied relationships, dating, to go out to work, to decide the minutiae of our lives – we were infantilised and disempowered. People gleamed with the heady fervour of cult novitiates.

I am not suggesting that an overarching sinister cabal deliberately inducted us into a cult, or that Boris Johnson is a cult leader. But there are some parallels with cult leadership and induction. Perhaps it is simply the case that these techniques are naturally employed by particular types of leader who wish to command their subjects.

Dr Margaret Thaler Singer, author of Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace was an expert in the steps required to ‘brainwash’ people into joining cults. She described a thought reform programme, whereby a person or an organisation puts into place a coordinated programme of coercive influence and behaviour control. The novitiate puts their old value system aside and makes decisions based on what the cult leader wants and will reward, and stopping the behaviour that will get them in trouble.

Cults tend to be totalitarian. The leader has the power and decision-making. Our government ruled via ministerial diktat from March 2020. Questioning, doubt and dissent are discouraged in the cult, and cult leaders use feelings of shame and guilt in order to influence members. Often this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion below the level of consciousness. This book has explored the tactics that were used on the British public.

Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t have to be a vulnerable or damaged person to be recruited to a cult. Anyone can join a cult! The recruiter will narrow your attention in a controlled situation and create an experience which leaves you panicky or disorientated. Remember Fright Night? That’s when it began with a big bang, but it really began with little fizzles when you read doom-mongering headlines or watched China’s ‘Stunt Covid’ videos. You are most susceptible to the cult when you are stressed and emotionally vulnerable.

Next comes the love-bombing. While you are emotionally vulnerable you are flooded with affection and validation. A mere four days after Fright Night, most of the nation was clapping appreciatively in common purpose for the NHS. We flicked in a flash from fear to adulation. The media covered stories of death and the dangers of Covid (creating fear and vulnerability) as well as Covid heroes (love-bombing, feel-good stories and aspirational behaviour).

Cults need