Written By Rodney Atkinson
This article was first published on freenations.net and we republish here with kind permission.
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Psychological operations (PSYOP) are operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behaviour of governments, organisations, groups, and individuals. It is in this sphere that the British Government’s “nudge unit” the Behavioural Insights Team operates. Some of its members were working at the Institute for Government, where they were commissioned by the Cabinet Office to write a report on influencing public behaviour. The Report ** was called“MINDSPACE – – influencing behaviour through public policy” which in a world of elitist corporate State monopoly power, increasingly unaccountable to democratic process, is a dangerous development.
Government taxation, allowances and social legislation allow Government to “achieve desired public policy outcomes”. Now we need to persuade people, say the authors of the Report “to change their behaviour, their lifestyles and their existing habits”!
It is but a dangerously short step from this list to changing “their attitudes, their language, their views, their choices, their politics, their voting”. Goebbels’ Nazi Propaganda Ministry would be proud of their logic!
Such arrogance and control freakery would not be a threat in a genuine democracy where the representatives of the people were the chief power in deciding public policy. But the leftist/corporatist State political system which has emerged over recent decades has bypassed the voter and consumer, the parliament and the nation to create an elitist un-sackable corporate and State (and Superstate) paid class which feed off each other economically and politically. It not only feels able to act politically without reference to voters but to expect their ideas to be put into effect ABOVE the heads of parliament and the people.
The chief source of many of these power structures and ideas are those most remote from nations, democracies and elections – supranational government like the EU and the UN and their various agencies. Sometimes the peoples’ own governments conspire to create these blatantly fascist systems – although they are as adept at promoting corporatist fascism in eg the European Union as they are at imposing Marxist Gramscian social policies on powerless families, communities and educational and media systems.
These power structures are today so out of control and their operators enjoy such self righteous dominance that they feel they can treat their peoples as behavioural toys to be manipulated “for their own good”, not as emancipated voters and free consumers whom they must serve.
COVID STATE ELITISM
As it happens we have seen in the COVID crisis the utter incompetence of the supranational corporatist, leftist view of the world and the openly dismissive attitude of governments to parliament and people. The nodding through, without parliamentary debate, of draconian lockdown legislation, the attacks on legitimate demonstrations, the arrest and abusive treatment of people in public places, increasing attacks on free speech, and the postponement of elections in New Zealand by a far left administration whose fellow ideologists attacked Trump for suggesting the same for the US elections and for exactly the same reason – the COVID crisis.
The very title of the MINDSPACE report is an admission of mass psychological treatment – a short step from “conditioning”. At the very front of the report is a pear shaped illustration of the words and concepts they associate with their Mindspace programme. I list them here:
Mood, intent, motivation, choice, reciprocity, framing, influence, resources, affects, design and then in large boxed letters:
AFFECT
MESSENGER
PRIMING
COMMITMENT
SALIENCE
HABIT
EGO
NORMS
INCENTIVES
DEFAULTS
NORMS
DANGEROUS GOOD INTENTIONS
Of course most if not all those involved start from democratic principles, a desire to do good and to make Government policy effective. But computer companies built personal data systems in the 1930s which were then used by the Nazis to identify and round up Jews and political opponents. In the 1930s and 1940s British and American big business collaborated with Nazis to increase trade and business links but thereby sustained an evil and murderous regime.
Today in the COVID crisis personal data and DNA are being collected by Governments – but with little parliamentary debate and public scrutiny. Who knows to what uses they will be put?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
It is significant how in recent years in the UK, in the Brexit crisis and now in the COVID crisis it has been academics, civil servants, lawyers and State agencies which have driven the decisions which have angered the people. Politicians, being dangerously inexperienced and poorly qualified individuals have gone along with the unelected “experts” – or rather they have chosen which experts to listen to! They did not listen to the Swedish experts but rather to Professor Niall Ferguson who said that 85,000 Swedes could die (when the outcome so far is 6,000 – a lower death rate than in the UK which followed his advice).
This MINDSPACE behavioural change programme started with a summit in 2009
“which brought together senior policy, strategy and insight officials from across government, alongside a number of external experts.”
The report
“……is grounded in a series of interviews with senior civil servants, academics and behaviour change experts”
And the good intentions are framed in relatively uncontroversial areas:
“For policy-makers facing policy challenges such as crime, obesity, or environmental sustainability”
Just like facial recognition technology is sold as “catching crooks” and “if you have not got anything to hide why should you worry?”. But it is of course the State which has potentially much to hide – not least its infamous lack of control of its own data and the selling of information to others, never mind the political and economic manipulation of voters/consumers for reasons of politics and profit.
So what is important is not the promoted reasons for this kind of psychological method of making government effective but the psychological methods themselves. So when this Report refers to:
sophisticated communications techniques.
and
existing tools such as incentives and information can be greatly enhanced by new evidence about how our behaviour is influenced……..Tools such as incentives and information are intended to change behaviour by “changing minds”.
Now that is the extreme danger. For “changing minds” has of course two meanings. Firstly and simply that when presented with an argument individuals could, of their own volition, “change their mind” and do something different – and then perhaps “unchange it” again.
Secondly and most insidiously (with the effect of the total resources of monopoly Government behind the programme) it could mean changing the human mind itself by conditioning it to react in specific ways in future in a way pre-determined by Government or the State apparatus. Individuals, families, communities and nations would effectively lose their free will and become mere tools of the State. The “psych ops” would not have to be 100% effective – just enough so that the unaffected were intimidated as powerfully as the majority were conditioned.
The good intentions of those who wrote this MINDSPACE Report are evident in words like the following:
Government legitimacy rests on the fact it represents and serves the people, and thus it is vital that their views are taken into account when considering any attempt to influence their behaviour.
But “taken into account” is not very re-assuring when combined with the following:
Government needs to take a lead on issues despite public opposition, since these public attitudes may actually shift in response to the introduction of the policy.
And who measures the “shift”? – the very powers including the corporatist media who are dependent on corporate and political patronage.
CHANGING INDIVIDUALS THROUGH CORPORATIONS
Of particular interest – given the corporatist State power base to which we have referred above – is the following distinction between Individuals and companies:
On the one hand, there is a good case that the freedoms of people, rather than institutions, count the most – and government can change the behaviour of companies in ways it could not for private citizens.
A good example is the way in which companies and their employees are now being subsidised by the State to adopt electric cars. Employees will not be taxed on the benefit of their company car – if it is an electric one! This is a big subsidy! We know that people in general are not buying such cars but here we have a classic corporatist pincer movement between business and State to co-erce people into doing what they would other wise not do (and covertly paying for it in higher taxes!)
So whether it is health, COVID, freedom of expression or electric cars the problem is not that such matters are the concern of Government but that unaccountable elites of business and politics have accrued such power at the centre (and neutered the votes and voices of parliamentary democracy and even national sovereignty itself) that psychological and behavioural manipulations of the populace are so dangerous. Such programmes in the hands of a powerful elite, even with good intentions, will inevitably gravitate towards totalitarian systems.
**
The Report: “MINDSPACE – influencing behaviour through public policy”
FEAR is the key – UK establishment has the advantage of practice with Project Fear introduced when they realised they might lose the Referendum and so have been super successful at instilling Covid Fear – Many have taken on the Fear in a sort of Stockholm Syndrome and like it and it has become part of their life and do not want to lose it – Those in authority have assumed an inflated crises ego and they like it and to the do not want to give it up and seek ways to extend the crises – The Billion Dollar vaccine is a prize that becomes worthless with herd immunity and everyone involved in that wants the crises to continue so as to get the Billions – Those who do not have the Fear see it all as insane but those with the Fear now desire a government/parent to protect them from the fear which has become part of them – Meanwhile the death and disaster following the Lockdown/Mask/Curfew that can only postpone death of the very few will kill the many.
FEAR. You are right there lindsay. The first project fear got big business (e.g. C.B.I.) on board anti brexit.
Covid Fear seems to have affected a wider spread of the people. As you say TPTB like it, and how, backed by BIG PHARM and all the millions to be made from a vaccine.
I think the author RA was alluding to a massive overdose of “Common Purpose”
Anybody else think the same?
and if so perhaps there is somone out there who will connect the dots, because to be quite honest, I only have the vaguest idea of something I have heard about, but never seen “outed” except The Rotherham episode where an official foster mother had her charges removed because she had shifted her political position from Labour to UKIP and therefore she was a “danger” to the upbringing of a child
(I suppose fed the `wrong` propaganda)
Roger, I don’t know exactly what ‘common purpose’ is.
But I am truly shocked to hear about that foster mum. My god wasn’t Ukip a dreadful threat to us all.
Pauline, I realised since you posted that I needed to know a lot more about Common Purpose so looked it up and found an expose by Brian Gerrish from UK Column under the heading of ” Common Purpose Exposed”
And in roughly a two hour video exposed they are by this brilliant commentator, there’s a second part to the video which deals with how the family courts “steal” children which is truly frightening.
Brian does ” join the dots for me ” and I am quite convinced CP under the guise of a benevolent charity is a sinister channel of covert “Trojan Horse ” type network of enemy within organised by the elite coached to be graduates of the system so they don’t have to declare their interest as members.
One slight word of warning, one anti commentator refers to Gerrish’s ” paranoia” with the subject of CP, but if you can make it through the whole video I’m sure you will note all his findings are “evidence based”
Very good interesting article. We were asking yesterday why so many people appeared to be passively accepting the Covid Dictatorship. Perhaps this article explains that.
Some of us seem to have avoided the mind altering effects outlined by R.A. Thinking back I can see how I have. Interesting if others do the same.
Err . . yes. British Telly and MSM do figure in the equation.
Passive acceptance. Deplorably there’s plenty of that. But is the fear now more of fines than of the virus? We really do need huge numbers to defy anyway and refuse to pay the fine. That is the ONLY way out. But first the population needs to wake up to what’s at stake if they don’t (we’re losing EVERYTHING so what have we to lose by fighting?)
Mary I thoroughly agree with you, I have certainly got that particular bug, a £1,000 fine is a substantial part of my Government wage (OAP)
£50 is of significance in my budget and thus I regard £1,000 as MONSTROUS and so I would regard this or any government’s attitude in imposing such a PENALTY.
To me, there is a difference between a fine and a penalty, in that one should be able to bring forward ameliorating reasons why the fine should not be imposed – a fixed penalty there is no redress and even no assessment of how the actual cost of the penalty is calculated.
I know in building contract terms arbitrators dislike penalties.
mary and Roger. I agree. The FINES are truly frightening.
They are yet another example of how we are now living in a dictatorship.
A comparatively new derogatory term is “Covidiot”.
It is used, in the comments section of newspaper articles,to describe those who don’t wear masks, observe social distancing etc.
I point out that the true “Covidiots” are those who have been so brainwashed and indoctrinated by “Nanny State” that they are no longer capable of independent critical thought, or of assessing evidence.
It usually shuts them up.
Perhaps I should go on to point out that, to have written their comment, they must have access to a computer, therefore why can they not use it to discover an alternative view.
Whch brings me,via Critical Theory, to Cultuaral Marxism. Marcuse coined the term “liberating tolerance.” It called for tolerance of any ideas coming from the left but intolerance of those from the right. One of the overarching themes of the Frankfurt School was total intolerance for any viewpoint but its own. That is also a basic trait of today’s political-correctness believers.
So, like it or not, “Our Boris” might hide behind a large Blue Rosette for election purposes, but behind it he is, at the very least, Pink.
Oh dear! Here was I referring to someone I saw driving alone with all the windows closed and wearing a mask as a Covidiot. My bad. (Not that I’m going to change my use of the term.)
Need new parties Fox Farage?
I my opinion a brilliant article. RA, you have been the best at exposing post war fascism. The teaming up of socialism and corporatism may have been the answer Orwell was looking for when he settled on ‘bully’ for the best English person’s synonym.
Unfortunately fascism I believe runs deep and into the very core of the human condition with all the negative qualities such as greed ego arrogance elitism unscrupulous behaviour, and others, coalescing into the evil of fascism.
Is it a coincidence that this report was compiled in the very year of the Expenses Scandal 2009? We have become sensitive to coincidences and so called ‘conspiracy theories’ for good reason. Nothing surprises us anymore.
In a fascist totalitarian state, what is left? There are NO winners. We are all sick, sick, sick of these educated idiots.
As to what to do, could I suggest fight! Start with slogans, memes, writings, graffiti, leaflets, pamphlets, comments, placards, badges, tea shirts, anything and everything. Keep people awake and wake people asleep, support growing suspicions, and confirm independent ideas. Shout at the top of the hill and at the top of your voice, discuss debate, expose.
If and when that succeeds, purge, make the unaccountable accountable make examples of them. Install a proper British Constitution that has individual freedom and respect at its heart.
“…fascism I believe runs deep and into the very core of the human condition…” I like to think Fascist bully types are usually psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissopaths forming only a smallish proportion of the population. Not true of most people I hope. But other factors are the collapse of the “Love thy neighbour ” principle and children being taught that there is no absolute right or wrong. Welcome to the post Christian, post democratic era .
PS Slogans. Vernon Coleman’s motto is a good one : “Distrust politicians. Distrust the Media. Fight the Lies”
I reckon Vernon Coleman was right about vaccinations too, Mary. And many other things. Shame he’s nearly as old as me. We wont be around much longer!
PS re bully types : Another factor, the mental conditioning of police trainees which turns them into monsters when dealing with opponents of the Govt. I would imagine that only people with fascist bully characteristics are recruited to the police.
A prescient warning which all should heed. Government has experienced a level of control which is unprecedented in the lifetime of most of us. We must not accept it, not just for our own benefit, but for that of our descendants yet to be born.
Time for people to stop shouting “conspiracy theory” and consider the facts. Some of those facts must be deduced from events but others such as the intent to reduce world population by a massive amount, although openly declared, might be harder for most to admit.
The usual suspects such as the UN, Gates, Soros and their globalist chums are behind it and assisted by many in government who accept their proposals; maybe they cannot see that they are being used.. Like it or not we are at war with them even if not openly declared.
As I understand it, the BIT is responsible, amongst other things, for the tsunami of inacurate and inexplicable representations in advertising and programming. On a daily basis the public is forced to engage with a dominant narrative presented as natural and realistic. This is sometimes called gaslighting. The evidence supporting the arguments made in this article can be seen with a few hours watching ‘British Telly’.
You don’t even need the ‘telly’. I don’t have one, as I was fed up with and resistant to the ‘message’ a long time ago, yet the ‘message’ is inescapable in all forms of advertising.
Very interesting article and I totally agree R.A. It seems though at least some of the population are now refusing to be either nudged or ordered, perhaps we could say that you can nudge some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time. Certainly despite all the advertising and nudging the NHS app seems not to have gone down very well except with the BBC audience and MSN, presumably many of those would have been seen in the street clapping the sky earlier this year.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. This needs correcting ; TPTB do not have good intentions towards us, quite the reverse ; or at best they dont care a toss about us. . So I suggest this should read “the road to hell is dressed up with the appearance of good intentions.”
Very true.
Agreed.
But what do we do about it..
UKIP is too blinded and internally manipulated.to work that one out.
And Mr Atkinson has no hints.
Luckily the population is beginning to notice but it needs all the help it can get
Who on earth can we turn to.
Well we can’t start ’till BREXIT is done. Although we should have.
But writings like this is essental for background reading.
Ukip is gone. Some hope in the future provided we get any more elections because Covid with the likes of Heritage and Reclaim rocking up. However our best hope is safety in numbers: if everyone refused to wear a mask in shops or to leave the pubs at 10pm there is nothing the Medical Dictatorship and its minions can do about it. When it’s only one person in an entire supermarket or pub they can be swiftly targeted and dealt with. Unfortunately most people are far too trusting, abiding by “laws” knocked up on the back of an envelope with no oversight or parliamentary scrutiny, and without the intelligence to see how compliance to one arbitrary edict simply leads to more and more of the same being spewed out by the junta.
We can’t rely on anyone but ourselves; we have been totally abandoned by the establishment; 300 MP’s (including my own egregious MP needless to say) could not even be bothered to turn up for Wednesdays vote re renewal of draconian Covid legislation. One of the most momentous votes in our history, to determine whether or not we slide permantly into a totalitarian hell yet they couldnt even be bothered to turn up. . Civil disobedience is the only way.