Mattias Desmet, author and Professor of Clinical Psychology at Ghent University (Belgium), is recognized as the world's leading expert on the theory of mass formation as it applies to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this interview, Mattias fields questions on totalitarianism, including the impact of propaganda on an individual’s psychological state, the cultural groupthink that exists throughout society, the dangers of our current cultural landscape, media consumption, and reliance on manipulative technologies and how governments and mass media use fear, loneliness, and isolation to control, demoralize, and persuade populations to act against their own interests.

Countering Totalitarianism Q&A

Global

Mattias Desmet, author and Professor of Clinical Psychology at Ghent University (Belgium), is recognized as the world's leading expert on the theory of mass formation as it applies to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this talk, Mattias emphasizes the impact of propaganda on an individual’s psychological state. He calls out the cultural groupthink that exists throughout society and cautions against the dangers of our current cultural landscape, media consumption, and reliance on manipulative technologies. Watch as he describes how governments and mass media use fear, loneliness, and isolation to control, demoralize, and persuade populations to act against their own interests.