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Crowd Psychology: Can We Really Trust Those in Authority?





(Susanne Posel) According to a recent study , which surveyed 2,000 Iraqi families in 100 regions in Iraq, the number of deaths cause by the US initiated Iraq War numbers close to 500,000 (or half a million people).

The study concluded that of those deaths:

• 60% were caused by violence
• 40% were caused by health issues related to the invasion

Amy Hagopain, author of the study and program director of the University of Washington (UoW) School of Public Health (SPH) commented: “I hope that one of the takeaways from this paper will be that when we invade a country, there are many health consequences that aren’t directly related to violence.”

The US Military used, among other things, LRAD devices that are tantamount to a smaller scale version of directed energy weapons that may have been used during 9/11 to bring down the Twin Towers.

Public outrage at this study should be rampant, considering the number of Iraqi citizens that are dead because of the US invasion of that nation; however this is not the case.

Then US president George W. Bush publically declared that Saddam Hussein deserved the “ultimate penalty . . . for what he has done to his people.”

Bush went on to assert: “[Saddam] is a torturer, a murderer, and they had rape rooms, and this is a disgusting tyrant who deserves justice, the ultimate justice. But that will be decided not by the president of the United States, but by the citizens of Iraq in one form or another.”

Shockingly, 61% of Americans in 2007 who were polled said that they believed the US “should have stayed out” of Iraq.

And yet, the social temperament of the crowd was not strong enough to over-take the political rhetoric over and displace the official story.

This is a prime example of crowd psychology (CP) not working. As the players gave the initial narrative, the American people began to divide – and not in their favor.

When the invasion began in 2003, 47 – 60% of Americans were supportive , and yet 4 years later, US citizen’s support for the war they had dropped as 58% said that the first strike was “a mistake”.

CP, a.k.a mob mentality, was determined first by Gustav Le Bon . Many others wrote their own interpretation of Le Bon’s work, such as:

• Sigmund Freud
• Edward Bernays

Le Bon maintained that crowds existed and evolved in 3 stages:

• Submergence
• Contagion
• Suggestion

At the first stage, the individuals lose their sense of individuality and sense of personal responsibility. Research shows that this occurs because of the sense of anonymity to the individual that is fostered by the crowd itself.

The second stage reveals the propensity of the individual to follow the crowd unquestioningly toward a directed set of goals and emotional responses that over power the individual’s personal knowledge of right and wrong.

When the third stage kicks in, uncivilized behavior overtakes the crowd as a wave through the individual’s unconscious because of a single person’s beliefs and ideas which can be implanted into the crowd and adopted by all individuals.

Because of this, Le Bon said that crowds were a force for destruction as evidenced by the morality and cognitive abilities of crowds were dependent on the least capable members.

Modern day examples of this phenomenon dominate our social landscape.

In 1973, Dr. Gene Sharp wrote “From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation”, based on his thesis paper.

Sharp’s book is “a substitute for war and other violent action.”

Its effectiveness has been seen in the seemingly grassroots revolutions that have rocked recent history. Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Libya and Iran have fallen victim to the ideology set forth by Sharp and its application that is facilitated by citizens who unwittingly participate in the over-throw of their government which happens to compliment the agendas of the US government.

The color scheme adopted by these revolutions (yellow, red, green) is one of the hallmarks of Sharp’s recommendations.

The icon of the fist and the peace sign is also communications between the members of the revolution and a sign to others that a change is taking place. Using slogans like “people demand removal of the regime”, “selection is not election” and “where is my vote” are transferred to posters for protesters to carry during demonstrations. The use of chains to convey civil disobedience is often used. Handing flowers to oppressors such as the police that block the protest is another trademark of Sharp’s plans toward toppling governments by way of the people.

The 198 “nonviolent weapons” outlined by Sharp include the methods mentioned above as well as mock funerals and boycotts. These methods were designed to defy tyrannical governments “because they give people an alternative.” Sharp believes: “If people don’t have these, if they can’t see that they are very powerful, they will go back to violence and war every time.”

The only time Sharp’s suggestions were put into use by the people under an oppressed government without having been a manufactured event was in Milosevic, Serbia, between 1998 and 2003.

The International Republican Institute (IRI) learned of the successful nonviolent resistance and gained the secrets of the “trade” from the inner circles of the leadership within the nonviolent movement.

After years of tutelage, the IRI took this new knowledge and began manufacturing nonviolent resistances all across the Middle East as the easiest way to install a regime change.

Albert Einstein was quoted as saying: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

The methodology outlined by Sharp that has been adopted by Otpor! and the IRI, points out how effective a weapon it is and how the same weapon can be used for good and evil in our own country.

When a nonviolent resistance is pitted against mob mentality, the crowd will over power every time.

In fact, it is the unconscious desire of the individual to assemble into crowds and follow as directed that the ground-breaking Asch Conformity study (ACS) so brilliantly demonstrated.

Our inherent desire to conform to the cultural norms of the groups we participate in that is the decider of actions and beliefs about the agenda of the crowd.

This is why good soldiers can perform heinous acts during overseas deployments in the name of Democracy.

The real danger is when the individuals have assimilated to one mind because it is in that decisive action, the individuals of the crowd cease to be individuals at all.

If the agenda of the crowd is to involve a member standing up and speaking to the crowd, those suggestions are more likely to be adopted as the governing ideology of the crowd.

This is why a provocateur can quickly change the outcome of a protest; as well as a single figure-head like Hitler can rise to ultimate power over a nation of people.

When the individual succumbs to the agenda of the crowd, those people are ready for infiltration, surveillance agency – directed social decent, and participation in their own tyrannical government.

And all of this is accomplished without the individual’s awareness of their participation.

This is how movements can be co-opted, such as the Tea Party through the Koch Brothers.

It was Mark Meckler , the co-founder and former national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots (TPP) who was found to have accepted bribe money from the Koch Brothers in exchange for insider access to the TPP.

Interestingly, Meckler is now the president of the Convention of the States Project (CSP).

The CSP have tasked themselves with the mission of “stopping the runaway power of the federal government.”

Their ideology expounds that they believe “Washington, DC, is broken and will not fix itself” and the “federal government [is] taking liberty from the people.”

However they are currently engaged in a subversive effort to initiate a civilian coup utilizing crowd psychology.

When the individual can recognize their tendency to fall into mob mentality and consciously refrain, they no longer can be controlled by the masses.

Regardless of the official story in the mainstream or alternative media, the individual can remain so by questioning the group they belong to and facilitating debates within the group to deter would-be subverters from infiltrating the minds of the group’s members.

Perhaps then we can make a truly independent decision as to how we want to proceed.

Not a decision out of coercion that a creditable show of force is the initiation of a civilian coup; but rather that the minds of the people individually come to an accord about the state of our nation and what we can do to change it.

Article appeared first on Occupy Corporatism