The Great Reset, page 11
Physicist Denis Rancourt drew the parallel. “COVID = Large-scale application of the Biderman chart of coercion, which is an expert torture method for prisoners of war,” Rancourt explained.28
Sanjeev Sabhlok agreed. “Indeed—there’s a very strong overlap between communist or Nazi propaganda techniques and the techniques being used during this pandemic by allegedly free societies,” Sabhlok wrote.29
Biderman’s work has been used by human rights organizations and anti-abuse groups. The Wheaton, Illinois, Family Shelter Service used Biderman’s research to illustrate the warning signs of domestic violence.
“Domestic violence experts believe that batterers use these same techniques,” the Family Shelter Service chart handout explained. The chart includes language that literally describes the COVID lockdowns:
Isolation
Deprives victim of all social support…
Makes victim dependent upon abuser
Control or Distortion of Perceptions
… Eliminates information that is not in agreement with the abuser’s message
Punishes actions or responses that demonstrate independence or resistance…
Humiliation or Degradation:
… Heightens feelings of incompetence
Induces mental and physical exhaustion
Threats
Creates anxiety and despair…
Demonstrating Omnipotence or Superiority or Power
Demonstrates to victim that resistance is futile
Enforcing Trivial Demands
Demands are often trivial, contradictory and non-achievable
Reinforces who has power and control…
Occasional Indulgences
Provides positive motivation for conforming to abuser’s demands.30
Biderman’s Chart of Coercion, a tool developed to explain the methods used to brainwash prisoners of war and break their will. Office for Social Science Programs, Air Force Personnel and Training Research Center, Air Research and Development Command
Amnesty International has also featured the chart.31
Inside Australia’s “Covid Internment Camp”
“Hayley Hodgson, 26, moved to Darwin from Melbourne to escape the never-ending lockdowns—only to find herself locked up in a Covid Internment Camp without even having the virus” reported Unherd TV in December 2021.
“It all began when a friend of hers tested positive. She recounts how investigators came to her home shortly afterwards, having run the numberplate of her scooter to identify her as a ‘close contact,’ ” Unherd reported. “So then the police officers blocked my driveway,” Hodgson explained. “I walked out and I said, ‘What’s going on, are you guys testing me for COVID? What’s happening?’ They said, ‘No, you’re getting taken away. And you have no choice…. ‘I just said, ‘I don’t consent to this.’ ”
Hodgson detailed her fourteen-day internment in the camp: “You literally get put on the back of a golf buggy with your bags. And these people are in hazmat suits and everything. They don’t want to come near you because they think you’re infectious. And they literally drop you to your room. And they leave you. They don’t come and say anything, they don’t check up, they don’t do anything. You get delivered your meals once a day. And you are just left…. You feel like you’re in prison. You feel like you’ve done something wrong, it’s inhumane what they’re doing. You are so small, they just overpower you. And you’re literally nothing. It’s like ‘You do what we say, or you’re in trouble, we’ll lock you up for longer.’ Yeah, they were even threatening me that if I was to do this again, ‘We will extend your time in here.’ ”32
“Pure Psychological Torture”
One furious mother in Brooklyn laid out the prisoner-of-war mentality created by these arbitrary COVID lockdowns.
“It wasn’t actually the virus that I was afraid of, but the lockdowns. I was so deeply psychologically damaged from the NYC lockdown in the spring that I lived in perpetual terror of it happening again,” explained “NYC Angry Mom” in a series of viral tweets in May 2021.
“[Governor Andrew] Cuomo spent the entire summer and fall threatening and browbeating us for our ‘bad behavior’ and I deeply internalized this message. I remember screaming at my neighbors and telling them that if they didn’t put on a mask, they were going to face my wrath if my kids’ school was closed. At one point, Cuomo put us into an arbitrary microcluster and we escaped closed schools by only a few blocks. I spent the entire school year watching every stupid metric and desperately trying to get three steps ahead of Cuomo.”
She also said, “To be clear, I never supported the lockdowns. I thought they were an abomination. Pure psychological torture. Masks felt like the compromise to keep us out of lockdown, and I got angry when everyone wouldn’t comply to keep us out of lockdown.”
“If you go back and watch Cuomo’s briefings, the threat of closures (dependent on our behavior!) was a daily phenomenon. And when they happened, they were metric-free, indefinite in nature, arbitrary and capricious. Completely at the whim of one man, and one man only.”
She explained how a society was imprisoned:
Lockdowns were something completely out of our control.
We opened the door to something new and nefarious—(inept) governments having 100% power over their citizens’ doings, with fear as a powerful motivator for compliance….
It shouldn’t need to be explicitly stated that it’s not sustainable (or humane) to demand people sacrifice:
Time with loved ones
Education
Livelihood
Socialization
For months on end, or even YEARS.
Yet, this was/is unapologetically the expectation in many parts of the US.33
Stockholm Syndrome
Not everyone living under lockdowns wanted their freedom back. Many people seemed to be suffering from what is known as Stockholm Syndrome, after a phenomenon first noted almost forty years ago.
“When it became clear to Jan-Erik Olsson that he wouldn’t be able to flee the bank he was attempting to rob, he decided to take hostages. For six days in August of 1973, the four hostages and their captor got to know each other, and once rescued, the hostages not only refused to testify against Jan-Erik, they actually raised money for his defense,” Devin Balkind explained in a June 2020 article at the Gotham Gazette. “This bizarre phenomenon, where ‘hostages develop a psychological alliance with their captors’ is now known as Stockholm Syndrome.”
Balkind observed, “As coronavirus lockdown begins to lift in New York City and residents begin to resume their lives in the ‘new normal,’ the signs of Stockholm Syndrome are all around us.” He pointed out, “Despite overseeing what is objectively the world’s least effective response to coronavirus in the entire world, resulting in the deaths of a staggering 0.2% of the city’s population, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio had, as of May 6 [2020], unfathomably high approval ratings of 81% and 63%, respectively.”
As Balkind noted, “During the peak of the crisis in early April [2020], Rolling Stone published ‘Andrew Cuomo Takes Charge,’ a glowing piece of journalistic pomp; a prominent local politics magazine showcased Cuomo as ‘the most popular man in America’ and ‘the nation’s most eligible bachelor’; and another publication called him ‘America’s Governor’ while he made friendly interview appearances all over cable news and those stations also carried his daily briefings live for weeks, growing his allure. Trevor Noah and Ellen DeGeneres came out as #CuomoSexual at the same time over 500 New York City residents were dying a day—the most of any city in the world.”34
Despite this appalling track record, Governor Cuomo’s COVID policies had some big fans—including one Dr. Anthony Fauci. “New York got hit worse than any place in the world. And they did it correctly by doing the things that you’re talking about,” Fauci gushed in July of 2020.35
“The Fear of Freedom”
Stockholm Syndrome infected lockdown victims globally. “I’m Loath to Admit It, But Part of Me Is Frightened of Leaving Lockdown,” was the headline of a February 24, 2021, column by Simon Kelner for United Kingdom’s i newsaper.
“Desperate though we all may be for life to open up again, I can’t be the only person in England who’s pleased that Boris Johnson has opted for a cautious approach towards ending lockdown.
“Not because I’m worried from an epidemiological point of view. It’s more that his exit strategy will give me the time to come to terms with this strange and unnerving feeling I have—the fear of freedom,” Kelner wrote.
“It’s a curious form of Stockholm syndrome. Like captives preparing to emerge into the daylight, we will soon be forced to acclimatize to real life again after being conditioned by lockdown to exist within narrow horizons, and with limited expectations,” Kelner explained.
“There is a peculiar comfort in having no freedom of choice,” he added.36
“A Decade or Longer”
In December 2021, when the omicron variant of COVID-19 arrived, UK public health seemed regenerated by the new scare and declared another five to ten years of mandates to battle the virus. “Covid will be a threat to the NHS for at least the next five years and testing and vaccines may be needed for a decade or longer, the government’s scientific advisers have said,” The Times of London reported. “Ministers have been told that it will take ‘at least a further five years for Covid-19 to settle to a predictable endemic state’—where the virus lingers in the background but does not threaten to rapidly overwhelm the health system.”37
The Northwich Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom echoed these sentiments. In an April 2021 column titled “ ‘Lockdown Stockholm Syndrome’ Sets in as Restrictions Ease,” a columnist writing under the moniker “The Fly in the Ointment” admitted, “In some ways, I feel that I may be suffering from some kind of coronavirus lockdown Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve quite liked being locked down and working from home and the idea of opening up society too quickly fills me with a degree of anxiety and more than a little apprehension.
“My real fear is that we have been here before, opening up too quickly with the resultant rise in Covid infections, hospitalizations and subsequent deaths. I can’t help but think there have been times during this pandemic the government has put public wealth before public health.”
He concluded, “So excuse me if I don’t join the wave of lockdown relaxation euphoria and rush out to the shops just yet.”38
Amy Hobbs, a research associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health explained, “I expect that wearing a mask will become part of my daily life, moving forward, even after a vaccine is deployed.”39
“Ver Are Your Paperz!”
Statistician William M. Briggs rejected the entire approach to COVID that utilized lockdowns and mask mandates. “Raise your hand if you’re tired of hearing from ‘experts,’ ” Briggs wrote.40 “Stay inside or die!” Briggs mocked, noting, “Ver are your paperz! comes to the good ol’ USA.”41
The Resistance
But some people were willing to risk their livelihoods to oppose this new normal.
The old story of individuals standing against tyranny was played out around the country. A New Jersey gym in Bellmawr refused to be shut down, and the owners racked up over $1 million in fines. Ultimately Atilis Gym owners Ian Smith and Frank Trumbetti were arrested and charged with “fourth-degree contempt, obstruction, and violation of a disaster-control act” for staying open and refusing to follow the state’s lockdown orders.
“ ‘After Atilis Gym refused to comply with multiple criminal citations and Superior Court orders, including a contempt of court order issued, today law enforcement entered the premises to ensure closure of the gym and to abate the public health risks,’ a spokesperson for New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said in a statement” on July 27, 2020.
Gym owners Smith and Trumbetti were greeted by flag-waving supporters chanting “U.S.A.” for defying New Jersey’s lockdown orders on business. “Welcome to America 2020, where feeding your family and standing up for your Constitutional rights is illegal,” the gym’s Facebook post stated, adding that New Jersey governor Phil Murphy was “flexing his little tyrant muscles finally.” A defiant Smith declared, “We will not be backing down under any circumstances,” despite the arrests and fines of more than $1.2 million.42 “Free men don’t ask permission. Or for forgiveness,” Smith averred.43
Matt Strickland, the owner of food-truck-turned-restaurant Gourmeltz in Fredericksburg, Virginia, defied the lockdown orders and mask mandates and faced a blizzard of local, state, and federal coercion to make him comply.
Virginia’s attorney general filed an injunction against Strickland and attempted to convince a circuit court judge to force him to shut down. But Strickland made the following argument: “We’ve been operating this way since June [2020] and there have been zero cases linked back to my restaurant. My employees have never been positive for COVID nor myself…. How I’m a substantial and imminent threat to the community, I’m not so sure.”
The circuit court judge ruled in Strickland’s favor, allowing his restaurant to stay open.
“I realized all of these mandates and regulations that the governor was putting into place was about something other than our health and safety ’cause they just made—they made no sense. And they were actually stripping my customers, my employees, and my constitutional rights and freedoms from us,” Strickland explained.
“So I decided not to be a part of that, and decided to let my, my customers decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to wear a mask and sit at a bar,” he said.
“I fought my whole, my whole adult life in Iraq and Afghanistan against things like that—dictatorships, which is what this is kind of starting to be.”44
“An Inflection Point”
The coronavirus lockdowns and other restrictions played a central role in advancing the Great Reset upon the world. The COVID theater of stay-at-home orders, masks, curfews, and contradictory and ever-changing rules to make us all “safe” hit the public like a giant psyop, moving everyone closer to accepting future public health restrictions without questioning them.
“We are at an inflection point—I believe in human history—the largest and most critical inflection point that human humanity has ever encountered. For many years totalitarian or authoritarian states have used the power of fear to engineer compliance in populations,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said.
During the Great Depression, Kennedy added, “we were very lucky that we had a leader, Franklin Roosevelt. And he said, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’ He understood that fear would drive us into totalitarianism.” In contrast, said Kennedy, “Hitler could point at the Jews and say, ‘Those are the big threat, we need to be frightened of them, and you and everybody else needs to obey so that we can fight them off.’ ”46
“Totalitarian Inclinations”
“They were able to tap into the deep well of totalitarian inclinations of ‘politicians’ everywhere and at the same time so clearly demonstrated how they can be led around by the nose. These totalitarians now command the police and armies and they discard and ignore the very laws that founded their countries/states only to introduce personal mandates.
“Hence, they were able to create whole prison nations (Australia and New Zealand being the most notable, but there are many others) and semi-tyrannical despotisms (U.K., Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, and many states as well as the Federal Government in the US, Canada, and others) where none existed before.
“They were able to enlist, very effectively, most major media in most countries as sources of propaganda and brainwashing, and they have profited from it. —Roger W. Koops, a chemist who worked in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry for over twenty-five years45
Naomi Wolf echoed Kennedy’s analysis. “North Korea and China have indeed utilized the cordoning off of entire regions and putting them under no-movement rules for everyone. The Chinese Communist Party, long before the COVID pandemic, was among few modern societies to restrict citizens’ physical movements nationally and regionally. As dissident escapees from North Korea report, North Korean nationals have also long been unable to move freely around the country without proper documentation, even for family visits,” Wolf noted. She then described how Jews in Nazi Germany also lost the freedom of movement:
Europe is not immune to this in the past—it has seen such regional and national “lockdown” too, but that was in countries that suffered from fascist leadership: In 1935–36, the passports of Jews in Germany were restricted. Eventually, restrictions on leaving the country would keep Jewish Germans from escaping altogether.
From 1939 to 1941, laws imposing various increasing restrictions on the movements of Jews put members of the Jewish community into effective “lockdown” as citizens within the larger German society (“infection” was a frequent trope used by anti-Semitic literature about the threat of Jews intermingling with Aryans). These laws prevented Jews from entering certain neighborhoods, and from traveling on buses. Walled Jewish residential areas, called ghettos, were often traditional in European cities; but state-mandated restrictions during the Nazi occupation turned them into residential prisons.
As Wolf explained, “On 16 November 1940, the gates were closed to the Warsaw Ghetto, a community of 400,000, thus making it impossible for the Jewish inhabitants to earn livelihoods; this closure and denial of the power of earning a living was instrumental in the weakening of potential resistance on the parts of victims of this segregation.”
She concluded, “But large-scale totalitarian-style restrictions of citizens’ movements by the state are new to the postwar democratic West and unheard-of in actual open societies; even past pandemics… have not been excuses in such societies to venture into this drastic territory.”47
