(Via email from MNN Mohawk Nation News)

 

MNN.  May 8, 2009. As African songwriter, Bob Marley, told us in effect:  "If you don't know where you are coming from, how can you know where you are going to?" The early l950s and l960s writers explored mass consciousness, mass movements and fanaticism.  Marshall McLuhan worried that the media and advertising would take advantage of mass consciousness.  He thought the "global village" would bring humanity's tribal memory under the electronic control of a single consciousness.  He thought that individuals could be manipulated, exploited and controlled in a group.  [1964 www.leaderu.com].   How right he was.   

Eric Hoffer wrote in the "True Believer", 1951, that mass movements can be created to serve the evil purposes of a few.  People could be recruited, particularly the fanatical, driven, unreasonable, those convinced of their rightness, infallibility and inevitability of their cause.  To draw them in, the lives of the poor, misfits, outcasts, adolescents, selfish, bored and seekers of redemption have to be made miserable, insecure and hopeless.  www.mekong.net/hoffer.htm] With the collapse of the economy and social programs, people are overcome with insecurity and uncertainty.  They are seeking substitutes and made ripe for the picking.

Along comes an opportunistic charismatic leader or figurehead who has all the answers.  He promises refuge from their anxieties and meaningless lives.  He will free them from their worthless selves to become the masters of the human race.  Hitler told the Germans, "If you follow me, you are going to control the world for a thousand years. They are convinced that they are a mighty people.  They know, when they are broken down, they are meek and frightened individuals.

The charismatic tells them to look over the horizon to a glorious future, not at the present.  In today's pyramid sales schemes only the top guy makes all the money.  Those below do all the work and make a pittance.  Eventually they burn out.

A mass movement needs men of words, the fanatics and the practical men of action.  After a while the fanatic keeps groping for extremes which is provided by the leader[s].   

He subconsciously or directly tells people their lives today are dire and they have no future.  People don't really want to be free because this means taking responsibility.  They want to hand their fate over to some other ephemeral entity that has taken over their lives.  A mass movement gives them an excuse to hate, bully, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse.  They accept a big brother who watches everything they do.  It's as though they are marching towards some mythical goal like Dorothy who was seeking to find the Wizard of Oz.  She found out he was a deceiving imp mouthing great words through a loudspeaker.

They will be freed from the created meaninglessness of their lives.  Their short comings and self condemnation is transferred onto hatred of others by doing grave injustices against them.  They have to infect themselves with hate toward an identifiable group of people by hurting them.  The masses are brought together to direct their anger at one scapegoat.  It's like a school of sharks who smell blood, or a group of hyenas who surround their prey.  Tormenting people satisfies their blood lust.  They feel reassured when they see our downfall.    

An enemy is created as a scapegoat.  Unifying agents are hatred, imitation, persuasion, coercion, action, suspicion and intolerance to dissent.  It suppresses their inadequacy, worthlessness, guilt and other shortcomings.  Their self-contempt, helplessness and cowardice are taken out on others.  They are driven by feelings of personal inadequacy, a desire to tear down others or to rise into higher levels of the totalitarian hierarchy.  

Presently there seems to be a campaign to attack the "guardians of the eastern door" of Great Turtle Island, the Mohawks.  There is an invasion by these forces of European-spawned fanatical movements. We, the flint people, are the first to meet this onslaught.  Our way of dealing with these forces is by calm, reasonable and analytical weighing of all issues before arriving at a consensual democratic decision over the council fire of the Rotino'shonni:onwe, Iroquois.


In the new world order, the people will become like little mice running on a treadmill to nowhere.  The war lords are gaining control through consolidation of politics, commerce, military, police, media and colonial agents of change such as new age psychobabble movements.   This mishmash of beliefs catches people who are insecure in their ideas and identity.   

When the French got fed up with the gluttony and brutality of their aristocracy and royalty, they killed them.  Then a dictator came in, Napoleon.  The people handed themselves over to him.      

Motivations for mass movements are interchangeable: religious, nationalist and class-based.  They use the same tactics:  sacrifice themselves and others for the future goals; devalue the past and present; and escape by creating an imaginary self and joining a movement. 

Cynical mass movements around the world are based on secret plans by a select group of elites based on lies and threats.  By the time the people find out, it's too late.  They have been destroyed or taken over.  They are dispossessed and made to feel they have no hope unless they follow the leader who is taking them to a destiny of destruction or enslavement. 

Hoffer says that after a fanatic destroys his enemies, he makes enemies of his cohorts.  The problem with hatred is that the participants lose those values they at one time set out to defend.

The true believer can be dangerous and deadly, especially when they have nothing to lose.  The only way to defeat the true believer of a false cause is to tell the truth about how deceived they are. 

Kahentinetha, MNN Mohawk Nation News, www.mohawknationnews.com