I discovered this book through the venerable Mark Tapscott. He exposed me to Stella Morabito.
Periodically, a book comes along that is essential reading in order to understand a particular period or movement in history. James Burnham’s“Suicide of the West” in 1964 for the inevitable decay of modern liberalism and Paul Johnson’s“Modern Times” for the spread of totalitarianism in the 20th century come immediately to mind.
Neither of those classics were the first products of their authors, both of whom were well-established as heavyweights in their respective fields. “The Weaponization of Loneliness” is, however, Stella Morabito’s first effort and it is a sterling one that is essential reading for anybody who hopes to grasp at the deepest levels why the decline of individual liberty and freedom of thought and belief has so accelerated in recent decades.
Morabito’s subtitle captures the heart of her analysis: “How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide and Conquer.” As Morabito explains in her introduction:
“Americans have long sensed tyranny creeping into their lives. The disquiet hovered in the background for a long time, though most couldn’t put their finger on it. When signals surfaced — such as anti-speech codes written into federal law in the 1990s allegedly to curb hate — we tended to shrug them off.
“After all, wouldn’t acceptance of the code simply mean we were promoting civility over hate? It was too frightening to believe those speech codes could really lead to direct attacks on freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.
Stella Morabito in her own words, quoting from her book:
But the fuel for acceptance comes from within each individual’s psyche: our need to belong and our terror of social rejection. Through various methods that play on those needs and fears, people suddenly will clam up about their opinions and attitudes if they perceive that expressing such opinions will get them ostracized. They will lie about what they believe and even about what they see before them.
and,
So, most of the power of group pressure—and our susceptibility to the conformity impulse—comes from the illusion of unanimity. But whenever that unanimity is punctured—even by just one voice—the power of the group starts to collapse. This is a critical point. It reveals why propagandists always insist on shutting down every single voice that challenges their narrative. Partnering busts up the manufactured illusion of unanimity, making it easier for others to create a cascade effect by chiming in with an opposing view.
this as well,
Noelle-Neumann’s central point in her spiral-of-silence model is that our deep fear of loneliness often dictates whether or not we express our beliefs to others. The stronger the fear, the more likely we will go along with the majority view, or, rather, the perceived majority view, or perhaps the view deemed acceptable by the authorities.
In the context of political correctness, this means that people tend to keep quiet when they think their opinion is considered unacceptable or held only by a ridiculed minority. Conversely, when people believe their view is held by the majority in a society, they’re far more likely to express it. Those social forces then take on a life of their own, creating a spiral of silence for the perceived minority viewpoint even if it is, in reality, the majority viewpoint. The term “silent majority” grew in part out of this.
and,
But it wasn’t a sudden development. Public acceptance of gender ideology was a highly organized campaign decades in the making. It depended upon an availability cascade in which the illusion was repeatedly injected into public discourse, though we barely noticed. It reached critical mass during 2014–2015 when it exploded on the scene with a Time Magazine cover story “The Transgender Tipping Point,” and Vanity Fair’s cover story on Olympian Bruce Jenner’s new identity as female, titled “Call Me Caitlyn.” Popular culture was soon saturated with transmania.
Many in the general public quickly got on board as the transgender lobby rallied all the forces it had been cultivating for decades: the courts, Hollywood, the medical establishment, the media, state legislatures, academia, large corporations, and their “allies” in the military and religious institutions. Very quickly, any dissent or questions about the agenda would get you socially destroyed. More people started falsifying what they believed and went along with the propaganda, adding to the spiral of silence and promoting the illusion of consent.
There is so much to see and know here. I could go on and on.
The Weaponization of Loneliness by Stella Morabito.
Read everything linked and mentioned here. Read it all. RTWDT.
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