The Manipulators’ Playbook

Authored by Gigi Foster via The Brownstone Institute,

[Here is the text of my TedX talk in Australia, October 2024, which the sponsor refused to post]

Every four years, when I was growing up in the US, my mother and father would go to the polling booths and cancel each other out. They’d come home and say as much, with a smirk. Then they’d clink their glasses and have “cocktail hour” together, and enjoy the end of another day of married life in each other’s arms.

Mom was a lifelong Democrat and Dad a lifelong Republican. Back then, people firmly positioned on opposing sides of politics could talk to one another – and even, apparently, marry each other and produce kids! Do you think that is common today? The “cancellation” my parents joked about 30 years ago has, today, become no laughing matter.

Diversity is one of humanity’s greatest gifts. Despite outward appearances, the person right next to us typically does NOT share exactly the same beliefs, perspectives, or assumptions that we hold. Look at that person now, being aware of this reality. Shock horror! You are not sitting next to a mental clone of yourself! Well, thank god for that, some of you may be saying. How boring would the world be if no one we met could teach us anything new?

I have grown all my life, as have you, by being exposed to new and different ideas, methods, and mindsets. At a societal level, all growth in quality of life ultimately comes from innovation. Innovation in turn can be seen as the manifested potential of diversity: the discovery of an idea or an approach that’s different from what is circulating in the mainstream. This is one of the crowning lessons of my home discipline of economics.

Yet individual and societal access to the potent and progressive power of diversity of thought was acutely damaged during the Covid era. 

This damage was done by the mainstreaming – by politicians, bureaucracies, large companies, the media, whole professions, academic disciplines, and even families – of a single accepted view on many Covid topics. On the subjects of lockdowns, masks, and vaccines, it was made very clear by those in authority that one way was correct, and alternatives were wrong. Not only were other views wrong, but anyone who challenged the mainstream view on lockdowns, masking, or especially mass Covid vaccination was labelled as a danger to public health, a tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorist wedded to wacko, fringe ideas. Probably a prepper. Or a cooker. Maybe a “religious nut-job.” Almost surely a “far-right” adherent, and probably racist to boot.

In short, there was denigration, gaslighting, and suppression of dissenting (that is, diverse) voices on those topics, with this suppression of a core societal strength done in the name of preserving the health and strength of society.

That sounds ironic, but actually it’s a well-worn playbook from history.

This is the same trick that has been pulled in other historical tragedies, from the Cultural Revolution to the rise of the Third Reich. 

In the case of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese citizens were urged by those in authority to “smash the four olds” – referring to old habits, old customs, old culture, and old ideas – and instead to “cultivate the four new,” which allegedly would rejuvenate the great nation of China by accelerating the “proletariat revolution” after the tragic failure of the Great Leap Forward that left tens of millions dead or starving. The Great Leap itself was the ideological progeny of the Chinese authorities, rather than a grassroots movement – and naturally those authorities never directly admitted its failure. 

During the Cultural Revolution, Chinese citizens – weakened by the tragedy of the Great Leap – dutifully sacrificed what they and their ancestors had previously been taught for centuries to revere. Ancient temples were destroyed, shopkeepers and others associated with “old ideas” like capitalism were denigrated and abused, and even elderly people were assaulted and killed, just for being old. 

Such actions ran strongly against traditional Chinese values, so performing such actions and aiding and abetting those who performed them was a significant sacrifice in terms of morality, and even personal identity, for many Chinese people. Individuals who did not conform with the mainstream line were socially excluded or punished in other ways. Of course, the result of the Cultural Revolution was not a successful, nationally rejuvenating revolution, but even more death and destruction.  

In the case of the rise of the Third Reich, those in authority preyed upon the economic and moral suffering of the German people after the Great War. As National Socialism rose to prominence in Germany, Jewish people, those with sympathies for communism, and others were demonised as “enemies of the state.” 

The sacrifice eventually asked of the suffering German citizens, allegedly in order to strengthen the “fatherland” that they loved, was essentially to dehumanise other human beings. The Biblical phrase “He who is not with us is against us” was used to implicitly encourage the quashing of dissident views and those who held them. 

This nudge to see dissenters as dangerous was coupled with heavy censorship, such as book-burning and criminalising the act of listening to foreign radio stations, and the creation and promotion of state propaganda that mainstreamed the accepted viewpoint, including through films like Triumph of the Will. Of course, the result of the Nazis’ reign was not a strengthening of Germany but rather total defeat, moral bankruptcy, and international humiliation.

In both of these tragic historical cases and in the more recent tragic case of Covid policy, the pattern is this: People in authority assert that the many sacrifices they are proposing are necessary to preserve and enhance the nation, simultaneously quashing any alternative views. Those who object are denigrated and despised as not caring about the nation, or about whoever or whatever is supposedly receiving the benefits of the sacrifice. 

Think about how this pattern played out in the Covid era. 

Do you remember calling anyone a ‘granny killer’ in the Covid era – or being called one yourself? I do. From March 2020 onwards, I advocated against lockdowns, seeing how costly they were to health and wealth, and seeing no scientific evidence of their medical efficacy. 

But for years, I was insulted and denigrated in mainstream circles by those following the standard Covid policy lines. I was called a granny-killer and a “neoliberal Trumpkinaut death cult warrior.” I received death threats and, worse, people made memes about me. (I don’t really know what this one means, but the Harry Potter fans in the audience might.) 

I was defamed on Twitter even though I’ve never had a Twitter account. I was smeared as being anti-health and anti-“saving lives,” and these smears were used in attempts to get me to shut up about the costs of the lockdown policy that was being promoted in the mainstream as the ONLY way to preserve health and save lives. 

Well, I didn’t shut up, and four years on after the start of the madness, hundreds of books, academic papers, and tragic personal stories now confirm I was right: the Covid lockdowns didn’t save lives, but were instead a massive human sacrifice induced by fear, politics, and money. The lockdowns did not lead to victory over Covid, but rather to a weakened nation with more debt, less societal strength and cohesion, and less health than before Covid. I’ve written here in detail about the massive damage inflicted on Australia, and particularly Australian youth, by Covid lockdowns. 

The well-worn playbook is as follows: when populations are weakened, such as by severe economic distress or a great fear of some external threat, the people in charge advocate for policies that happen to be good for them politically and turn out also to be destructive to society (something often admitted in history books only much later), while wrapping their policies at the time in the “red threads” of altruism, pro-sociality, strengthening the nation, or preserving health, as a sales pitch to the weakened population. The implicit message is “If you really love something, you should be willing to sacrifice for it, and this is the sacrifice that is now required.” 

Why does this work? For two reasons: fear and love.

First, it works because fear makes us forget about everything except the feared object, weakening our ability to reason and think for ourselves, making us easy targets.

Second, it works because our love for things outside ourselves – including our country, our parents, our children, and our gods – is a powerful motivator of our thoughts and our actions, and so we are vulnerable to being manipulated by it.

Understanding love is crucial in explaining human behaviour, which is why I co-wrote a book about it over a decade ago. Love is the most important thing in the world: it is the building block of societies, and the ultimate source of joy and meaning. If we are not careful, we can be manipulated by our loves when we are fooled into believing that some sacrifice is needed in order to preserve the welfare of something we love. If we can be convinced of that, then we will often willingly make the sacrifice.

People’s fear, combined with their pro-social connection to one another and to their society, was used during the Covid era as it has been at so many other points in history to manipulate them into supporting policies that actually, in the long run, harmed that society. When told that we had to lock down, mask up, pull our children out of schools, and mass-vaccinate against Covid, many Australians willingly went along with these enormous sacrifices, because of their fear and their love. 

That is a testament not only to the power of fear, but to how much we love each other. Yet tragically, our loves – including our children, our parents, and the nation of Australia – were greatly harmed by these policies. If you’re interested in exploring this topic further, I have co-authored this book with Paul Frijters and Michael Baker, The Great Covid Panic: What happened, why, and what to do next, published in 2021.

My loving advice to you today – the one thing I want you to take away from my talk – is to be alert to those in authority who would manipulate you by exploiting your loves. This manipulation usually starts with an implicit request that you sacrifice some moral principle, some right, or some assumption that you previously took for granted as patently obvious, with that sacrifice supposedly going to benefit something that is universally loved. 

That universally-loved beneficiary might be planet Earth – in the case of green energy subsidies, the “net-zero transition,” and the sacrifice of ignoring the fact that cheap, dense fuels are critical to human thriving and a key ingredient in lifting people out of poverty. It might be people’s desire to find the truth – in the case of internet censorship and denigrating some views as “misinformation” or “disinformation,” thereby ironically sacrificing the right to decide for yourself what is true. It might even be women as a group – in the case of the #metoo movement and the sacrifice of denigrating half the human race as dangerous sex predators whose “toxic masculinity” threatens women.

In all such cases, ask yourself: Is the proposed sacrifice truly going to help the alleged and universally loved recipient? Would people in power directly benefit in some way from this sacrifice, politically or monetarily? Am I being manipulated by my loves into being just another nodding head, helping those in positions of authority to weaken my society?

The most powerful antidote to this clear and present danger is the seeking out, preservation, and uplifting of diversity of thought. Allowing dissent holds the power to reveal false promises for what they are.

How can you personally promote diversity of thought, and nurture an environment in which open dissent is possible?

You can promote and celebrate forums where people are allowed and encouraged to think, discuss, critically analyse, and ponder aloud together, respectfully, confidently, and joyfully, becoming closer to one another as they do, sharing their common humanity without the crutch of also sharing beliefs and perspectives.

You can support alternative schools of thought, like this one called Academia Libera Mentis that has just started up in Belgium. 

You can be part of Big Dialogues about contemporary social, economic, and political issues, dialogues that help us rebuild a society capable of discussing meaningful ideas with one another, across aisles of perspective, belief, experience, and mindset. 

You can join a grassroots movement focused on restoring the respect that used to be embedded in Western culture for individual freedom – including expressive and academic freedom – and the scientific method, using which people have horse-raced competing ideas since the Enlightenment.

Initiatives like these help restore our societies by honouring our deep and powerful diversity. They help to fend off and thwart the constant manipulation attempts of elites hungry for power, while building respect and nurturing progress for all. They help us build robust red threads – bonds of love for one another based not on conformity with “right-think,” but on the joy of discovering who others truly are, and expanding ourselves by contemplating and revelling in their differentness.

What will always win in the end is love, joy, confidence, tolerance, and an unshakeable belief in the infinite potential of every unique individual in the human species. But these precious things will only win in our lifetimes if we live and breathe that love, joy, confidence, tolerance, and belief, while purposefully rejecting the attempts of the powerful to manipulate and divide us by destroying our diversity. This is what eternal vigilance looks like.