Hi folks – I haven’t yet read the whole of the critique nor the whole of Desmet’s study but the critique seemed way off the mark – not something I would say about Whitney’s own work!
The critique:
“By the final chapter of the book, Desmet’s apparent blindness to the criminal intentions of the ruling class reaches near farcical levels. Having earlier claimed that “The only consistency within the experts’ discourse is that the decisions always move toward a more technologically and biomedically controlled society” (p. 133), he goes on to write:
With every ‘object of anxiety’ that has emerged in our society in recent decades — terrorism, the climate problem, the coronavirus — [technocratic thinking] has leapt forward. The threat of terrorism induces the necessity of a surveillance apparatus, and our privacy is now seen as an irresponsible luxury; to control climate problems, we need to move to lab-printed meat, electric cars, and an online society; to protect against COVID-19, we have to replace our natural immunity with mRNA vaccine-induced artificial immunity (p. 176).
Why can Desmet not see that these escalating attacks on human freedom are by design, and that the threats he mentions have all been artificially manufactured for that very purpose? Were it not for the seriousness of the subject matter, there would be an almost touching political naïveté about the views of this psychology professor, whose book on the psychology of totalitarianism only really deals with totalitarianism in its middle section (57 of 188 pages excluding bibliography — about 30 percent of the content).
The anxiety to which Desmet (2022, 176) alludes is necessary to manufacture consent for the “inevitability” of transhumanism and invasive bio-surveillance. Although Desmet seems rightly uneasy about the prospect of these dystopian agendas, he nevertheless appears to accept — inexplicably — their inevitability (and is, to that extent, thus, himself a victim of fear-based propaganda):
The fourth industrial revolution, in which man is expected to physically merge with technology — the transhumanist ideal — is increasingly seen as an unavoidable necessity. The entire society has to change into an internet of bodies, in which the human body is digitally monitored, tracked, and traced by a technocratic government. This is the only way we will be able to master the problems of the future. There is no alternative. Anyone who refuses to go along with the technological solution is naive and ‘unscientific’ (p. 176).
This is an entire standalone paragraph. There is no critical commentary on the remarks made. It would be nice to know from whose perspective transhumanism is both an “ideal” to aspire to and precisely why it is an “unavoidable necessity.”
This critique of Desmet turns Desmet’s view on it’s head - “Although Desmet seems rightly uneasy about the prospect of these dystopian agendas, he nevertheless appears to accept — inexplicably — their inevitability “
How can these authors possibly make the above statement when this is what Desmet wrote in full just prior to and just after the selected quotes on page 176 above:
“CHAPTER 11 Science and Truth
Totalitarianism is the belief that human intellect can be the guiding principle in life and society. It aims to create a utopian, artificial society led by technocrats or experts who, based on their technical knowledge, will ensure that the machine of society runs flawlessly. In this view, the individual is completely subordinated to the collective, reduced to being a cog in the machine of society (see, for example, Bertrand Russell in The Impact of Science on Society).1
The ideal of a technocratic society was inherent to the Enlightenment tradition, especially in its positivist branch. Positivist thinkers like Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte expressed their fanatical belief in a humanistic-technocratic society in which scientists and technocrats would take the place of popes and priests.2 Not God, but human Reason should be glorified. This is the way to a utopian society without war or conflict, a Realm of Freedom.
Nazism, and even more so Stalinism, are the most ambitious historical attempts to put totalitarian ideology into practice. They would realize paradise, and to this end, everything was considered justified: exclusion, stigmatization, and ultimately industrial extermination of every population group that did not fit within the ideal image. In both historical examples, the new utopian society had to be created through the ruthless application of a rock-solid logic (see chapter 7).
However, it would be a capital mistake to identify the phenomenon of totalitarianism only in totalitarian regimes. There is an ever-present, totalitarian undercurrent that consists of a fanatical attempt to steer and control life in far-reaching ways on the basis of technical, scientific knowledge. Technocratic thinking always walks on two legs. On the one hand, it appeals to people by intimating a positive image of an artificial paradise with which it claims we can be delivered from all adversity and suffering. On the other hand, it imposes itself based on anxiety, as a necessity to solve problems. With every “object of anxiety” that has emerged in our society in recent decades—terrorism, the climate problem, the coronavirus—this process has leapt forward. The threat of terrorism induces the necessity of a surveillance apparatus, and our privacy is now seen as an irresponsible luxury; to control climate problems, we need to move to lab-printed meat, electric cars, and an online society; to protect ourselves against COVID-19, we have to replace our natural immunity with mRNA vaccine–induced artificial immunity.
The fourth industrial revolution, in which man is expected to physically merge with technology—the transhumanist ideal—is increasingly seen as an unavoidable necessity. The entire society has to change into an internet of bodies, in which the human body is digitally monitored, tracked, and traced by a technocratic government. This is the only way we will be able to master the problems of the future. There is no alternative. Anyone who refuses to go along with the technological solution is naive and “unscientific.”
Totalitarianism and technocracy like to present themselves as the pinnacle of rationality and science. The technocratic paradise will make the population happy and healthy; or at least offer the greatest chance of achieving this. With subcutaneous sensors, every biochemical change can be registered and reported. Anyone showing signs of illness can be immediately examined and receive adequate treatment. In order to achieve this in an efficient way, everything has to be permanently and monotonously exposed to the artificial light of monitoring and government control. The fact that the human being is like a flower that only blooms when it can enjoy the shade of privacy once in a while is of minor importance in a technocratic worldview. Anyone who refuses to go along with the system lacks civic sense, considers oneself more important than the collective. Your health is no longer your personal business, because some diseases are contagious. However, even within an objectifying biological-reductionist perspective, it has been clear for decades that too much (government) control is harmful to health in itself. ”
.The critique appears to want Desmet to write a “whodunnit” - fine for a novel but suicide for a serious study in the global defamation world – but the critique completely fails to appreciate the nuance of language by which Desmet explores this subject and in doing this the critique becomes a nonsense.
The whole of Desmet’s final chapter is worth its weight in gold imo. ( It’s 8 pages long so I will not be able to append it to this post, but can message it for those without access to the original)
cheers