Savage Minds

Jeffrey A. Tucker, founder of the Brownstone Institute, discusses pandemic mitigation measures in the US and around the planet that he has previously termed “central planning in the 21st century.” Detailing how governments and the media have failed to transmit accurate information regarding at-risk demographic groups for COVID-19 while failing to address how pathogens are part our biological world, Tucker delineates how lockdowns “only prolong the pain at best.” Highlighting the current social segregation within many countries where vaccine passports have been rolled out and virus mandates brought in, Tucker analyses the political theatre set up to make the public believe that they are are “safer” when in reality there is no data to demonstrate that masks or plexiglass dividers have served any function in virus mitigation. Maintaining that these devices, among other virus mitigation measures, exist as liturgies to demonstrate the citizen’s willingness to participate in what he calls an “obedience test,” Tucker argues that our humanity has been taken away from us and that our task is now to take it back. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Sophie Scott CBE, British neuroscientist and Director of the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, discusses the neurobiology of human vocal communication, specifically that of laughter and crying and how these non-verbal vocalisations share similarities from the involuntary communicative repertoire to their more specific uses as communication, produced in similar ways while informing our identity as humans. Touching upon the ongoing culture war, Scott frames the prevalent quasi-religious pushback against rationality and science by those who seek to confirm their beliefs through the politicisation of science and the search of identity. Discussing how science is the accumulation of the direction of knowledge—not about what is right or wrong—Scott elaborates the field of science as a “movement of understanding the world” and not a journey with a determined end. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Mattias Desmet, Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences of Ghent University, discusses how the handling of the coronavirus pandemic has lacked a rational approach such that measures used to mitigate the transmission of the virus may potentially claim more victims than the virus itself. Examining how mass formation functions within the current socio-political situation of a global pandemic whereby the political “solutions” offered up result in people being unable to take any critical distance from what is happening, Desmet elaborates the current atomisation of the individual upon which totalitarian power relies and notes how mass formation emerges from the “belly of the population.” Desmet analyses how large-scale mass formation emerges in society when specific conditions are met—social isolation, the lack of meaning in life, free-floating anxiety, and frustration and aggression—all interacting to create a situation whereby society is extremely vulnerable to the rise of a totalitarian state. Desmet details mass formation describing how a narrative is circulated about an anxiety (eg. a virus) while also providing a strategy (eg. lockdowns) for dealing with the collective anxiety over a global pandemic such that the previous free-floating anxieties of the masses permit the subject to connect to the collective object of anxiety, the virus. In this way populations are willing to participate in the strategy of the pandemic such that their free-floating anxieties and frustrations find grounding in a real anxiety, thus creating a new—if not problematic—social bond and meaning-making where the aggressions and frustrations are now directed at those who refuse to participate in this mass formation. Desmet compares this process to hypnosis whereby all of society’s psychological energy is directed at the pandemic while the masses are uniquely focussed upon the victims that the virus might claim while they are not at all concerned with the potentially greater collateral damage of the measures they support. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Arun Dohle, Director of Adoptee Rights Council and Against Child Trafficking, discusses how adoption is never conducted in the best interests of children, but instead protects the interests of adoption agencies, adoptive parents and other vested organisations. Covering some of the legal quagmires between international conventions like the Hague Adoption Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, national laws, and inter-country adoption, Dohle vituperates the practice of adoption, considering it a form of child trafficking, replete with human rights abuses to both the adoptee and parents as the state, private organisations and western agents take it upon themselves to offer their economic advantage as the “better life” for the impoverished child from situations—both familial and national—perceived to be perennially “in need” of adoption. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Joachim Allgaier, Professor of Communication and Digital Society at Fulda University of Applied Sciences in Germany, discusses his research on communication and cooperation in the digital society to include disinformation and conspiracy theories in online media. Beginning with his 2019 study, “Science and Environmental Communication on YouTube,” Allgaier explains his research project wherein he analysed 200 YouTube videos related to climate change concluding that videos peddling conspiracy theories received the highest number of views. Discussing conspiracy videos from migration to COVID, Allgaier discusses how the various algorithms from YouTube to search engines navigate the user through its system giving the illusion that the user alone controls her own journey through online sites. Discussing the spread of misinformation within social media, Allgaier chimes in on how the pandemic has affected the proliferation of conspiracy theories and videos on platforms whose existence depends upon peddling addictive visual input such as TikTok where younger generations find life offline as “exotic” and where binge-watching is now a social norm, something he categorises as both interesting and worrying. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dr Petra Bueskens, psychotherapist, writer and Honorary Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, discusses her op-ed last year on JK Rowling which which went viral opening up a debate within the Australian Sociological Association and led to a minority of members denouncing her as a “transphobe.” Lending a sociological perspective, Bueskens discusses the Balkanisation of cultural and political debates around this issue into “silos of unreason” which do not follow the pre-digital rules of debate. Jumping from the Jarod Lanier who has been outspoken about the destruction wrought by social media where outrage results in more online engagement, Bueskens discusses how online culture has resulted in social groups that are almost entirely based upon an identification with oppression noting how both sides of this debate are “limbically hijacked.” Turning to a class criticism within identity politics, Bueskens analyses the betrayal of the working class by the left which has taken over the institutional managerial class composed of baby boomers who sold out the left as careerists and the younger generation who lack the tools to critique this discourse. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Karen Davis, host of the Youtube channel “You're Kiddin', Right?” discusses her recent episode where she addresses those within the gender-critical movement who undermine the credibility of their own arguments whereby, on the one hand, they insist that gender is harmful to women and that sex-based language is vital to for women’s rights and, on the other, they reinforce the delusions of “mentally ill people” while treating the category of woman as an “honorific” that reduces women to a fantasy or an aspiration. Analysing the questions that Julia Long posed at a recent conference in the UK, Davis observes the elitism that has authorised certain gender-critics to recreate a privileged class of their “true trans” friends, while insisting that others obey these women’s exceptions, further exacerbating the class and intellectual divide. Davis demonstrates how calling any men “women” is a losing strategy for those who fundamentally don’t believe in the strength of their own arguments as they claim that certain men are not women, but others are. Explaining that it is simply not possible to “be kind” as some of the more privileged gender-critics believe themselves to be while also transmitting a coherent argument that humans simply cannot change sex. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

German-born artist, Jess De Wahls discusses the controversy that erupted statements she made in her 2019 blog that “a woman is an adult human female. (Not an identity or feeling)” and “humans can not change sex” resulted in the Royal Academy removing her work from its gift shop after complaints were raised as to De Wahls’ alleged “transphobia.” In this episode, De Wahls discusses the fallout to her career from the these accusations, the larger horizon of free speech within the art world, specifically for women, where “understanding basic human biology and knowing that humans can’t change sex” is now considered controversial. Examining the institutional capture that has emboldened the managerial class, to include those in power within art institutions, De Wahls analyses how those claiming to be oppressed have paradoxically become de facto gatekeepers without thinking through the consequences to the freedom of expression. De Wahls compares the current era where people are afraid to speak on the unconvertible fact of human sexual dimorphism to what occurred under the Stasi of East Germany while analysing the ways that various communities that claim to be Marxist have bought into identity narratives that flow directly to and from capitalism recycling extremely sexist stereotypes and exerting control over women’s language and bodies. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Kathleen Lowrey, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, discusses her dismissal from an administrative post as Undergraduate Programs Chair in her department after student complaints about her opposition to gender identity ideology and her criticism of trans activism.  Discussing how trans activists “use a familiar language of structural injustice” through “aggressive male entitlement,” Lowrey analyses how calls for politeness are weaponised against women by both the the gender lobby and many gender-critics in order to silence the “less polite” women who push back against this ideology. Lowrey examines the paradox of “bad faith” within this ideology—from its focus upon women who are forced to accomodate men, the rehashing of old-world sexism, to the exhortations of women to “be kinder” to men while men are expected to do nothing. Observing how transgender ideology and its conterminous activism advances extremely conservative narratives, Lowrey notes how identitarianism fails to address class issues and imperialist wars as universities are becoming a space of advancing neoliberal ideological purity. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Ceri Black, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and a campaigner for child protection and for the rights of women and girls, discusses child sexual exploitation and protection today, discussing her own journey from victim to activist. Discussing the normalisation of paedophilia today to include child trafficking and the growing exploitation of children within so-called “leftist” communities that sexualise children (eg. Drag Queen Story Time), Black frames her horror of seeing the social media reactions to the Wi Spa incident in Los Angeles, especially that of Laurie Penny who suggested the child exposed to a naked man in the woman’s section of the spa “not to stare at other people’s genitals without their permission.” In response to Penny’s comment, Ceri wrote a Twitter thread about how to protect children by spotting predatory behaviour. As a result of her tweets, the Northern Ireland police have been threatening to arrest Black. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe