He cites a famous experiment in which a person can be made to say that one line on a diagram is the same length as another, when in fact it is longer, if seven or eight actors have pretended to come to the same conclusion before him.

Desmet is writing mainly about the coercive psychosis of Covid. But the same arguments apply to the current collective psychosis about Russia. For years and decades now, we have been fed horror stories about Russia. These have of course only increased in intensity since the invasion of Ukraine. We have now reached a situation in which entire sections of the media, and their respective national governments, claim to believe things which are simply impossible.

The latest example is the apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Russia has been immediately blamed but the accusation is not credible, for the following reasons. I defy any person endowed with normal critical faculties to show the opposite.

The Americans have been opposed to Nord Stream 2 for years.

It was Germany, on the orders of the USA, that decided not to open the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in February. Joe Biden said in front of Olaf Scholz, 'We will put an end to it.' When asked how the US would do this, he replied, 'I promise you, we'll be able to do it.'[1] Victoria Nuland made it even more clear in January.[2]