In the last weeks, the European working class has been on an accelerating political offensive. There have been mass health strikes in Belgium and Spain, tech strikes over wages in Finland, anti-war protests in Denmark, and a massive mobilization of a half-million workers in Britain. But in France……..
President Emmanuel Macron is planning to raise the pension age in France by two years to 64. In response there have been two huge mobilisations against these plans, the first on January 19th, the second on January 31st.
The first mobilisation saw 2 million out on the streets. This was exceeded on the second mobilisation. There were 250 demonstrations throughout France.
In Paris 280,000 came out on the streets. There were a lot of creative placards, including ones like“Metro-Boulot-Tombeau”(Undergound-Work- Grave) and “Metro-Boulot-Caveau” (Underground-Work- Burial Chamber) adaptations of the old May 1968 slogan Metro-Boulot- Dodo (Underground- Work- Sleep). There was a large turnout by high school and college students.
Bitter clashes broke out as police assaulted demonstrators in Nantes, Rennes, and Paris, where police repeatedly charged and beat peaceful protesters. Riot police units even attacked the security detail of the trade unions at the head of the march in Paris, after which riot police faced off against the protesters, including units of striking firemen who put on their gear to withstand tear gas.
The highly persuasive Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet burst onto the covid resistance scene in the late summer of 2021 with his explanation of the terrifying global march of the Covidian Cult. I was completely seduced by his theory of mass formation hypnosis, expounded in a series of interviews between August 2021 and March 2022. With each interview he did, his star seemed to burn brighter.
But then he published his book The Psychology of Totalitarianism in June 2022. And that’s when his seemingly wonderful exposition, hitherto hung on a series of brilliant one-hour interviews, started to fall apart. If ever there was an argument for forgoing a disquisition in favour of keeping things simple on YouTube, the curious incident of the hypnotic psychologist seems to be it.
Desmet was attacked by the likes of Peter Breggin, a US psychiatrist no less, who accused him of blaming the victims of totalitarianism instead of the perpetrators and, far more sensationally, of having “protected a mass murderer in his therapy practice.” Robert Malone soon discovered that Breggin’s wrath knew no bounds as Malone himself was maligned for being an alleged promoter of Desmet’s theory.
Malone, having none of it, is now suing Breggin for a cool $25 million and, reading between the lines, Breggin seems worried. C J Hopkins, with his trademark devil-may-care insouciance, has delighted in attracting the ire of Desmet’s fan club by trashing the mass hypnosis theory in less than diplomatic tones.
Et moi? For starters, I have checked the above paragraph to ensure it is libel-proof, such is the febrile atmosphere surrounding the mass formation brouhaha. I must also disclose that I have gone from being a fully paid-up acolyte of the mass hypnosis theory to being less convinced. I have gone from exhorting friends to listen to Desmet interviews to co-authoring a two-part critique of the hypnosis part of the theory – one questioning whether hypnosis is really at play in mass formation and another suggesting that a hard core of Covidians are not under a hypnotic spell but rather may simply be crisis addicts. I always emphasise that the second piece is not offered up as a neat, self-contained single explanation of the cause of the violent lurch towards totalitarianism but rather as a rejection of one simple theory and a discussion of one (among many) potential psychological catalysts in a complex political crime.
So, the ‘we’ in the title to this piece clearly does not refer to the Breggins and Hopkins of the world who poured petrol and lit a match on Desmet’s theory at the first opportunity. It refers to the likes of me, who started out ‘hypnotised’ by mass hypnosis theory and then became sceptical after reading the book and hearing other critiques.
Months-old protest becomes a ‘fight for survival’ as mainly marginalised residents of eight villages resist government’s move.
Villagers holding a protest march on January 26, India’s Republic Day [Astha Savyasachi/Al Jazeera]
Azamgarh, India – Cradling her toddler in one arm, Arti Sharma adjusts her saree with another as she picks up the placard that says: “Zameen nahi denge, jaan bhi nahi denge [We will neither give our land nor our lives].”
It is a placard her husband Deepak Sharma had made, days before he succumbed to a heart attack at 31.
Oblivious to the reality, the toddler tries to wipe his mother’s tears as she marches to Khiria Bagh in Uttar Pradesh state’s Azamgarh district, where a protest against the acquisition of land for expansion of an airport has been going on for months.
Arti clutches the placard close to her chest. “It keeps our struggle warm with his memories,” she tells Al Jazeera.
Arti, wife of late Deepak Sharma, with her son holding a placard [Astha Savyasachi/Al Jazeera]
Tens of thousands of people residing in eight villages of Azamgarh call their protest a “fight for survival” and it looks like one. On January 26, as India celebrated its 74th Republic Day which marks the adoption of its constitution in 1950, hundreds of villagers were protesting at Khiria Bagh park.
A 90-year-old man, his frail legs shivering with cold, held a small tricolour – the national flag – in his hand as he declared, “We will fight till our last breath. We won’t move until they bring the bulldozer and run it over us.”
There was an air of desperation at the park. A man in his 30s dragged his wheelchair with a tricolour tied to its handle. A woman held a placard as she ran barefoot on the damp mud. A handful of coins clunk to the walls of the rusty tin box meant to collect donations for the protest – meagre savings from meals skipped to feed the movement.
Children had skipped school, women left their chores half-done, daily wage workers who had not earned for months, farmers forced to postpone weeding of their crops – all stood under the sea of tricolours waving over their heads, protesting against the land acquisition for the proposed international airport at Azamgarh.
A 90-year-old man joins the protest at Khiria Bagh park [Astha Savyasachi/Al Jazeera]
‘Which caste are you from?’
In 2004, an airstrip was built in this eastern district of Uttar Pradesh. It was not used until November 2018 when state Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced its expansion and building of an international airport under an ambitious scheme aimed at upgrading India’s underserved air routes.
A budget of nearly $2.4m was allocated the following year for the proposed airport. According to the statements by Vishal Bharadwaj, the district magistrate of Azamgarh, about 270 hectares (670 acres) of land were meant to be acquired from eight villages – Gadanpur, Hichchanpatti, Jigna Karmanpur, Jamua Hariram, Jamua Jolha, Hasanpur, Kadipur Harikesh, Jehra Pipri, Manduri, and Baldev Manduri – for the project.
An escalation of gang violence, political instability and a deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti has left half its children relying on humanitarian aid to survive, Unicef says.
Children sleep on the floor of a Port-au-Prince school that was turned into a shelter after they were forced by gang violence to leave their homes. Photograph: Odelyn Joseph/AP
At least 2.6 million are expected to need immediate lifesaving assistance this year as the overlapping crises leave Haiti’s children in the worst position since the earthquake of 2010, Unicef’s Haiti representative, Bruno Maes, told the Guardian.
“Haitian children don’t just face challenges accessing food and potable water while the health system collapses around them,” Maes said. “There is also a lack of protection. Children are being abused, young…
…………I woke up thinking I was on a long long swing. We had a nice view of a wide grey sea, but the cabin was high up and swayed like crazy…
Between the weather, the price of diesel, and the tragedy of the year before, the ferry company was bankrupt. Now it was a workers Coop.. it’s creditors had been paid something by the Credit Union, who had socialized it. So we got the star treatment from the happy staff…
Doctor Lucia is fun to travel with, and now I was in fine form, we went out on deck that evening, exhilarated by the wind and spray, and ate our sandwiches. Maxie’a support group had given Lucy a good portable with satellite net access. We could watch Pools TV, or a billion other possibilities, and chat with our families and friends…………
An alarm woke us at three am. So she could take part in an Asian Net TV show for ‘Women’s Rescue’. (See Glossary. p444)
Lucy is a therapist or a sort of healer, as well as an expert in deconstructing institutions. And this was more than an online agony aunt show for Freenet TVs. I managed to shine two lights on her, adjust the little camera on her face and position the mike securely.
She had come prepared, and dressed in a spectacular yellow and scarlet cloth, like a sari shirt. With a violet headband that hid her lack of hair.
She was on this show every week. It was mid morning in Karachi or Mumbai, a popular time, with husbands and keepers and children out of the house.
Millions of women now have the chance, open or clandestine, of watching or copying Free-Net TVs. Including this show. Real life solutions to common misogynist horrors. Physical, money, cultural and religious semi slavery… [refs.11. p454]
I had taped the camera down, and she tried to sit relatively straight. Though they might see her leaning strangely into the awful swell. I even adjusted the mike to cut wind noise.
She had me massaging her head and neck, while we watched the first part. My hands shook a little, thinking how she’s the same age as my dead mama.
Her skin is smooth and dark chocolate brown. Awesome and slippery as warm silk.
We heard newsclips from Women’s Rescue groups all over. They do have money and lawyers, and I never knew that Doctor Lucy was so famous. She was sipping from the flask of maté tea, to perk herself up. Massaging herself under her flowing robe, shuddering with the ship, while I fiddled with the settings. Then she was being connected.
Lucia was a smash hit. They loved her. And I’m sure she saved one woman’s life. Guessing the root of her persecution straight away, and persuading her to seek refuge.
It was a dowry dispute over ownership of herself. With an unproven accusation of attempted adultery, and her husband’s clan honour bound to kill her!
They had her answering problems where they really could help.
Her voice infiltrated vibrations of healing.
A sister link.. I’m vulnerable like you.
A shared assumption..Of course I’m safe here and they help me.
And an assertion implied but convincing, that..:
In my real world, outside the nightmares you’re trapped in,
of course we share and are cared for. We won that battle.
I’m already in that real world.
My friends are waiting for you
Here are the keys!
All with a few odd words, inflections, tones, intimate female body language, touching and reaching. All mixed into her answers on the show.
And more I didn’t get…I’m a clown, and I know about the acting in public, but I could learn a lot from Lucia. She’s an ace.
I heard a million voices saying ‘thank you Lucy’. Sure it was lack of sleep and the wind.
I imagined secret copies of the show.
Discs or tapes or memory sticks, swapping hands and multiplying,
invisible and powerful, through the immense thronging markets of Asia.
I saw, that dawn, on the yawing ferry.. that those women would dynamite patriarchy. Really undermine and replace horrible outdated customs and laws. Slavery and brutality and unfair privilege. And not just to benefit some State or God or Corporation.
They had a small studio audience who applauded like crazy.
Then they were gone.. I was clapping and getting hugged, a public of one.
Our ship let a mighty blast, real close.
We ducked in shock and laughed,. She kissed my cheeks.
The sea was calmer now, we must be arriving.
-‘Let’s hope we find Maxie fast.’- I said. Peeping out the porthole.
We were gliding safely into the harbour.
***
note.. the theme of Womens Rescue runs through The Free, but it’s hard to select pages as it’s woven in the story.
..here’s the Glossary entry
… Womens Rescue*Starts as a resource for getting and giving help and advice online. Anonymously if necessary. Develops with strong volunteer local and international groups. Harnessing online potential. Seeks to undermine physical, cultural, economic, religious and sexual semi-slavery of hundreds of millions of women.Lucia stars in popular advice and healing sessions on Free-Net TV stations, Offshoot of the self-help immigration Soli-Fest network..
and references in back of book.
11.Feminist anarchism. Anti patriarchy pages 37 138 etc
To further check out the concepts behind this scene you can check the complete references HERE, …fascism, un-schooling. CLANs, gay, etc … and click to the links for various books in the Anarchist Library.
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ways you could maybe help
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The Free 