How Laura Dodsworth helped me stay sane through the COVID nightmare

How her book A State of Fear helped me to make sense of the world at a key time

Hey Gang,

Not long ago, I published a piece about Laura Dodsworth in which I described some of the influence that she had on Nevermore.

Although Laura Dodsworth is definitely not an anarchist, she has shown tremendous courage in breaking some of the main political taboos of our times, and in the process, has ended up having a noteworthy impact on the anarchist truth movement.

I began telling the story of Laura’s impact on Nevermore in a piece called “SLAYER OF TABOOS”, which you can find here:

The aforementioned piece ended before I even got around to mentioning her tour-de-force A State of Fear, which I believe is one of the one of the best books that came out of the COVID nightmare.

In order to explain the impact that this book had on me, I’d like to take you back to 2021.

A few things happened in quick succession and together, they led me to decide to leave Canada.

For one thing, the anarchist collective that I was a part of was evicted.

I was part of a collective called 777 which continued to hold events throughout lockdowns. As far as I am aware, we were the only anarchist collective in Canada which stayed active throughout the entire pseudo-pandemic.

At one point, cops showed up at an event and saw some DJ equipment set up. They contacted the landlord, who gave us 48 hours to get out.

It was pretty crushing, although we tried to have a positive attitude about it.

It really felt like Canada had declared war on art. Playing music live was forbidden. Having dance parties was forbidden. Theatre performances were illegal.

And it felt like we were the only ones who cared.

When I think about it, I still feel a great bitterness. I feel that over the course of my career as an activist and artist in Canada, that my friends and I made the world around me a more exciting, magical place. I organized countless events that had as their common thread the celebration of human freedom and the creation of community. But I don’t feel like my contributions to society were valued much. I feel like I was seen more like a degenerate bum than an artist.

Around this time, we discussed having a bonfire in which we burned a large amount of artwork as a protest of the conditions which basically made it impossible to be any kind of performing artist.

I wish that we had done that. That would have provided a fitting visual illustration of how we felt at that time. It would have been the perfect parting message.

But we decided it would better to keep a low profile. It was hard not to be paranoid back then.

Around the same time, a friend turned up dead under mysterious circumstances.

I have written about the death of Matt Cicero before, and have often referenced it, because it really affected me at the time. I still think of him often, not so much because we were close friends, but because his death symbolizes the cruelty of the Canadian activist culture.

The circumstances of his death were mysterious. Apparently, the police told his mother that he had fallen out of a tree. I was a part of a group that visited the tree, and we all agreed that it just wasn’t possible that that had happened. Not only was the tree not very tall, it was a spruce tree, and it would have been impossible to climb without breaking branches, and no branches were broken. What is known is that he died of blunt force trauma and the police didn’t rule it a suicide.

Shortly thereafter, I went to Montreal for Mayday, where we intended to distribute a bunch of issues of the Nevermore magazine. My friend and I were harassed by police at the rally. All we were trying to do was hand out some magazines, which I had poured a ton of creative energy into.

At the time, Montreal was under a curfew, and my friend and I decided to defy it. There had been rumours of plans for some kind of night-time protest, which as far as I know never materialized.

Anyway, we ended up getting stopped by police for walking down Sainte-Catherine street, and I was handcuffed at one point, although I wasn’t taken to the cop shop. We ended up getting issued $1000 tickets. All this for walking down the street!

Around this time, my immediate family all got jabbed.

The combination of these things were too much for me. I felt that it was impossible for me to be me in Canada, and then people were unwilling to hear what I had to say, so I decided to leave the country.

I moved out of my apartment in Hull, sold everything I could, and bought a ticket to Panama City.

At the time, Panama was one of the only countries that would let me in. Canada had cancelled all flights to Mexico and the Carribean, and due to activism-related criminal charges, I’m not allowed into the U.S.

So I flew to Panama.

What does all of this have to do with Laura Dodsworth, you might ask?

Well, it was in Panama that I started listening to the audiobook for A State of Fear, and it ended up having a tremendous impact on me, because it helped me to understand what was going on in the world around me.

At the time I was reeling from what had happened to my homeland. I don’t want to be over-dramatic, but I do think that I was somewhat traumatized.

I had dedicated my life to trying to open people’s eyes to what was happening, and for the most part, I felt that I had failed. It was an awful feeling.

I couldn’t understand how people could allow themselves to put up with being put on house arrest for no reason, or how they could fail to notice that a totalitarian system was being implemented on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Even now, it’s painful for me to think about this time in my life. I felt betrayed, alone, like I had lost the network I had built up over the course of my whole lifetime.

That said, I was also very relieved to be out of Canada. I had a good time in Panama City and met some great people. The sun shone and I felt freer than I had in a long time, despite the fact that Panama was by no means exempt from COVID insanity.

Indeed, in the city’s main bus terminal, there were signs up everywhere which had pictures of a mime telling people not to speak!

This video captures the spirit of that time pretty well, I think.

In a funny twist of fate, I ended up meeting the mime whose face was used in these ads and interviewing him:

From Laura’s book, I learned that behavioural psychology had been weaponized by the U.K. government, which also was advising governments around the world on how to use fear to coerce people into complying with measures that no person in their right mind would ever consent to.

In July of 2021, I wrote something about A State of Fear in a piece called COVID is the Devil:

It is a now an indisputable fact that governments are deliberately employing tactics to frighten populations in order to make the citizenry more compliant.

Governments around the world use teams to psychologists called “nudge units” to influence the behaviour of the public towards actions desired by the state.

A must-read book for those who want to understand the world in 2021

The amazing Laura Dodsworth has done an amazing work of exposing the U.K.’s nudge unit in her book “A State of Fear“, which we have reviewed here. We highly recommend this book to people seeking to understand how fear-conditioning works.

The U.K.’s nudge unit, the Behavioural Insight Team, was originally a government agency, but boasts on its website that it is now “independent of the U.K. government”.

It is a for-profit, private-public partnership with offices in New York, Melbourne, Wellington, and Toronto. The B.I.T. has worked in at least 31 countries and trained at least 20 thousand government employees.

There are obvious ethical implications in deliberately frightening millions of people.

Governments want us to believe that this is all for our good, but when is it a good idea to trust people who are using fear to manipulate you?

We highly recommend checking out the excellent video essay “Fear and Social Control” for an exploration of how fear-conditioning has been fundamental part of statecraft for thousands for years.

There is of course nothing new about governments using fear as a method of control. If for not for fear, why would anyone submit to the forceful imposition of a social order in which power is concentrated in the hands of a ruling cabal?

John Adam put it bluntly: “Fear is the foundation of most governments.”

No doubt, the first method of employing fear in politics was that of brute force: “Do not challenge me or I will kill you.” This method of governance, dominance hierarchy in its pure form, has long since been surpassed by superior methods of social control.

Since ancient times, rulers have sought to cast themselves as the protector of the people, as the Father of the nation. The surest way to pull this off is to use the people’s fear of a threat, real or imaginary, to convince them that their authority is beneficial and needed.

For example, around 1600 B.C. Egypt was threatened by an invasion of foreign rebels. After the threat had subsided, and the invaders driven off, the rulers of Egypt artificially maintained a state of fear, finding that a terrified populace was easier to control.

Probably this tactic is much older than Egypt. Does anyone really doubt that a clever hunter-gatherer would have been able to make people do his bidding by invoking the fear of demons in them through lurid and salacious tales?

A considerable influence on my thinking around this time was the Academy of Ideas YouTube channel, and they had produced several videos on how governments use fear-conditioning to induce citizens to comply.

I think that H.L. Mencken said it best:

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

Laura’s book helped me to learn more about the actual means by which modern-day propagandists use. Specifically, she introduced me to the idea of nudge psychology.

Nudge theory is the concept in behavioural science which uses insights about our behaviour to ‘nudge’ our decision-making. Nudges are not mandates: they are subtle suggestions, and they happen without you even being aware.

We don’t always make decisions rationally; we simply don’t have time to evaluate each decision we make carefully. If you understand the psychological drivers beneath the surface thinking, you can positively influence people’s decisions and behaviour.

The person who coined the term ‘nudge’, Cass Sunstein, said, ‘By knowing how people think, we can make it easier for them to choose what is best for them, their families and society.’ Isn’t it great that there are people who know what is best for you? And who can change your thinking and behaviour without you even being aware of it? Rest assured, there are many behavioural scientists and their advocates embedded and advising within the UK government, nudging you towards what is best for you.

Britain is one of the pioneers in nudge theory. The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), unofficially known as ‘the Nudge Unit’ was set up in 2010 under David Cameron’s government. Britain is so good at behavioural insights that we export it all over the world.

The Nudge Unit is now a profit- making ‘social purpose limited company’ with offices in London, Manchester, Paris, New York, Singapore, Sydney, Wellington and Toronto. It has run more than 750 projects and in 2019 alone worked in 31 countries. It has conducted over 1,000 workshops for governments around the world, training 20,000 civil servants in behavioural insights.

Essentially, Britain is teaching governments around the world how to follow its model of nudging citizens into doing what is ‘best’ for them. Nudge has become a big business and it’s still growing.

I found all this shocking and appalling, but at least it helped me make sense of what had happened to my family, friends, and former friends.

Truthfully, up until that point I had held them responsible for what happened, which in my mind amounted to a near-total destruction of Canadian culture, and specifically the counter-culture that was so near and dear to my heart.

I had a really hard time accepting what had happened, but ultimately I decided to blame government, Big Pharma, doctors, scientists, and behavioural psychologists.

Eventually, I put down some of my feelings in writing in what is still the most popular thing I have ever written.

In that piece, which was called Compassion for the COVID Cult, I wrote:

At the end of the day, though, I know that I´m not doing myself any favours by holding on to anger and bitterness. I know that I can choose to have a different perspective on things. The fact of the matter is that human beings are highly suggestible, and the propaganda tactics that were employed by the powers that be are extremely sophisticated. Powerful weapons were employed against an unsuspecting public, and innumerable civilians became casualties in this new era of warfare.

In my heart, I know that I should have compassion towards these casualties. Would anyone blame a civilian deafened by an explosion for being in the blast radius of a powerful bomb? Of course not. They´d be seen as a victim. 

I think that the analogy is fair. A powerful weapon has been deployed, and it has removed a human capacity. The only difference is that instead of removing the ability to hear, the Propaganda Machine has removed its victims´ability to think. 

The difference is that a person deafened by an explosion is unlikely to deny that they have been the victim of an attack, whereas Covidians are very committed to remaining in denial. 

Furthermore, our hypothetical deaf person probably wouldn´t begin attacking others, whereas the Covidian horde, much like zombies, resolutely strove to infect others with their affliction. But does that mean that they are underserving of compassion?

Let´s try a thought experiment. Let´s say that a bio-weapon existed that turned human beings into zombies, and that their illness caused them to attack innocent people. Let´s say that in doing so, they infected others with their virus. How morally culpable are the zombies?

Hmmmm.

Now, let´s pretend that this bio-weapon was deliberately deployed by a Lex Luther-type supervillian. Let´s pretend that this person oversaw the development of this bioweapon and used it as part of a deliberate strategy to seize power at the expense of the zombified masses.

That changes things, doesn´t it? 

When insurance companies attempt to determine who is at fault in a car accident, they ask which party was most able to prevent it. I hate insurance companies, but credit where credit is due. That´s a useful principle.

So who is more morally culpable in the case of the whole COVID fiasco? I would argue that people are guilty to different degrees. I think that we can all agree that the guiltiest party is that which developed and deployed this weaponry, followed by their co-conspirators, accomplices, dupes, rubes, stooges, and lackeys. […]

At the end of the day, I think that all of us plebs have been the victims of this massive global psy-op, and that the brunt of our ire should be directed towards the puppet-masters, propagandists, politicians, pharma execs, and people in leadership positions who utterly failed in their duty to protect the public.

So, there you have it. Ultimately I decided to blame government and big business for brainwashing people, rather than hating people for being brainwashed.

In part, I have Laura Dodsworth’s A State of Fear to thank for helping me understand what had happened.

Really, I owe her a debt of gratitude. Thank you for writing that book, Laura, it really helped me get through some difficult times.

I think that Laura did an amazing job of blowing the whistle about the nefarious use of behavioural psychology and fear-conditioning.

Before reading her work, I was unaware of the existence of nudge psychology, despite psychology being one of my favourite subjects.

I really feel like the truth movement should be do more to understand it. It’s very relevant.

For instance, have you ever heard of Susan Michie?

Back in July 2022, she was appointed the Chair of the World Health Organization’s Technical Advisory Group for Behavioural Insights.

Fun fact: she has been a member of the Communist Party of Britain for 40 years.

Susan Michie replaces Cass Sunstein, who literally wrote the book on nudge.

Clearly, nudge psychology has played an important role in the World Health Organization’s strategy.

Really, truly, I believe that it’s absolutely criminal what the Behavioural Insights Team and their counterparts at the World Health Organization did, and I believe that they should be tried for crimes against humanity.

If there ever is a Nuremberg 2.0, let’s not forget what the key role that behavioural psychologists played.

Unfortunately, however, neither I nor anybody reading this is in a position to bring these people to justice.

What we can do, however, is learn more about them and their tactics in order to recognize, understand, and neutralize them.

In this, Laura Dodsworth is again leading the way.

Back in May, she published a book called Free Your Mind, which is all about how to resist manipulation and avoid being nudged into doing or believing things that are not ultimately in your best interests.

Stay tuned for a review of that book!