[AGTRT-BA27] In the second phase of The Great Reset, the people are divided and opposition is eliminated, and stigma plays a central role in it

Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team

Dit blog first appeared on laurensbuijs.org on 15 March 2024

Stigma plays a central role in the second phase of the rollout of totalitarianism through “The Great Reset.” The Wimpy stigma was used during the corona pandemic to defuse people critical of government policies and vaccines, but still plays a vicious role in the totalitarian rollout. The stigma now leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the stigmatized group internalizing the stigma and increasingly exhibiting the behaviors expected of them based on the stigma. Self-reflection and “shadow work” within resistance movements are essential to address hypocrisy and stop divisiveness.

Structure of this blog

1. Introduction
2. The Great Reset and the Rise of Totalitarianism
3. Mass formation and the Wimpy stigma
4. Internalized stigma and the self-fulfilling prophecy
5. Conclusion: breaking the self-fulfilling prophecy with shadow work

1. Introduction

Last August, I wrote a blog following the fall of the fourth Rutte administration in The Netherlands, and the mass departure of politicians that followed. In my mind, that heralded the beginning of a new phase of The Great Reset, the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) initiative to completely reshape the global economy in response to the corona pandemic.

As I described in the August blog, I think it is useful to divide the rollout of totalitarianism into three phases: mass formation (phase 1), duality (phase 2) and centralization (phase 3). I list them again here:

Phase 1: 2020-2023	Mass Formation	Contain fundamental rights and create unity through crisis and shock.
Phase 2: 2024-2027	Duality	Incite division and eliminate opposition through the Wimpy stigma.
Phase 3: 2028-2031	Centralization	Introduce central AI-driven high-tech control state via social credit system.

In that blog, I marked the start of the corona pandemic in 2020 as the start of Phase 1, and the fall of the fourth Rutte administration in the Netherlands in 2023 as the start of Phase 2. Whereas phase 1 is all about mass formation and the curtailment of fundamental rights, phase 2, in my view, is in the service of increasing social divisions, playing off the population and destroying the opposition.

In this blog, I want to take a closer look at that second phase and how I have since come to look at it. For how exactly does this dividing of the people work, and in what way can the opposition actually be eliminated? In my view, the concept of stigma plays a central role in this, especially the way the Wappie (Wimpy) stigma functions concretely. So that’s what I’m taking a closer look at in this blog.

2. The Great Reset and the rise of totalitarianism

But I begin by making explicit some basic assumptions I make about the current times we live in so that those who don’t yet know me well can better place me. I express this in terms of Androgyny-Based Gender Theory (ABGT), the Carl Jung-inspired new gender theory I have been working on for several years now.

• I look at the present time in terms of the development of patriarchy (see AGTRT-BA9), a cultural system that began 12,800 years ago with the Neolithic revolution (see AGTRT-BA1, AGTRT-BA3 and AGTRT-BA4). This cultural systee runs on vertical power structures and authoritarian, top-down ways of institutionalization, and is the result of the way male and female knowledge are arranged in the psyche (see AGTRT-BA24).
• In my experience, for several decades we have been living in the “late patriarchy,” or the last tail in the cultural evolution of patriarchy. This time is characterized by increasing resistance to the patriarchal order, but also by the patriarchal order making an ultimate attempt to establish itself definitively through a totalitarian regime. I describe this final stage of patriarchal cultural evolution and how it stems from the previous stages in my forthcoming book Androgynous Humanity (see AGTRT-BA20). In a general sense, I believe that Flemish professor of psychology Mattias Desmet has adequately described the way in which today’s totalitarianism functions – through hypnosis and mass formation around progressive themes.
• This totalitarianism seeks to establish itself through the implementation of a political-economic system that, in my view, is best described by the term “high-tech surveillance capitalism” by Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff. This is a bizarre mix of centralist-communist thinking and neoliberal-economic thinking, brought together by high-tech innovations such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. The underlying ideology of high-tech surveillance capitalism can be well described as “transhumanism”: behind it is an idea of “human enhancement through technological innovation,” which would allow people to escape the daily worries and struggles of being human.
• I think the conspiracy movements are characterized by all kinds of radicalization and extremism which also leads to all kinds of noise in the claims they make. At the same time, I believe that the conspiracy movements see some main lines well: there is a global totalitarian power grab, there is increasing coordination therein by a “shadow government” or Deep State based in Europe and the United States, and despite the great challenges there is also an opportunity to seize this crisis precisely for “good” and for creating a “new world” based on love and trust.
• The “new world” that might open up is what I describe in gender terms in my forthcoming book Androgynous Humanity as the transition from patriarchy to matriarchy (see AGTRT-BA9 and AGTRT-BA19). So it is about a possible shift from the oldest cultural foundation of human civilizations worldwide, all of which are currently patriarchal to varying degrees. A matriarchal culture is characterized by horizontal institutionalization, by equality and mutual trust, and by individuals with an “integrated” (trauma-free) psyche. I agree with Carl Jung that this matriarchal world can only be achieved if we, as a collective, dare to look our “Shadow Side” in the mouth, or our complicity in pure wickedness (see AGTRT-BA7, AGTRT-BA26 and AGTRT-BA28).
• In my view, the period 2020 – 2040 can be seen as a transition period, determining whether the earth will continue on the dystopian track of patriarchal surveillance capitalism, or the utopian track of the matriarchal New World (see AGTRT-BA9 and AGTRT-BA19).
• I think that The Great Reset by the WEF can perfectly well be seen as a “blueprint” by which the patriarchal world elite seeks to establish a totalitarian high-tech global surveillance system. The totalitarian forces are not limited to the WEF, nor can the WEF’s interests be interpreted solely in terms of totalitarianism. The trend toward totalitarianism is complex and characterized by both messy bottom-up tendencies and coordinated top-down “nudges.” At the same time, The Great Reset does offer a glimpse into the plans and planning of the world elite toward more and more totalitarianism, and I think 2030 is also a reasonable estimate of the year by which totalitarianism must largely stand.

3. Mass formation and the Wimpy stigma

As mentioned above, in this blog, I take a closer look at Phase 2, and how it works. How is it possible that in a once democratic rule of law, opposition can be eliminated altogether? That is certainly a realistic scenario, and to understand it, it is important to understand the concept of stigma well.

In the social sciences, the standard work on stigma was written by Erving Goffman in the classic book Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963). Goffman describes stigma as a negative social reaction an individual experiences when he or she is associated with a trait or characteristic that is considered deviant or undesirable in a particular social context. This can lead to social exclusion, discrimination and avoidance of interactions with stigmatized individuals.

We saw this around the Wappie (Wimpy) stigma during the corona pandemic. People who opposed the measures, were critical of the vaccines and pointed out the underlying power agenda were dismissed as Wappie (Wimpy). With this label, they were associated with ignorance, confused conspiracy thinking, extremism and selfishness.

By one-dimensionally dismissing the group of critics as Wimpy, the mass formation that was central to Phase 1 was able to get off the ground. Indeed, a group identity always comes about relationally: you are “one of us” if you are not “like them.” By designating the Wimpies as “the Other,” the masses could form and identify themselves as the opposite: rational, scientific, moderate and inclusive.

Erving Goffman describes in his work why stigma can be so persistent. You could think of stigma as a label that is very sticky and persistent, and that doesn’t just go away, even if the original reasons for the stigma have disappeared. This is because, according to Goffman, stigma is created in an interaction between the stigmatized group and the broader society.

Goffman explains that stigma is shaped on the one hand by the characteristics of the stigmatized, and on the other by how others in society respond to those characteristics. That reaction then strikes back at the internalized group. In this interaction, the stigma can always be reinforced.

First, the broader population develops a variety of stereotypes, prejudices and discriminatory attitudes toward the stigmatized group. These prejudices are often based on superficial characteristics of that group. In doing so, the stigmatized group is never mapped in a nuanced way, but often focuses on a few extremes, or excesses. Stigma makes those excesses the norm. In other words, the idea arises in the broader society that the whole group is like the excesses.

The prejudices about the stigmatized group, according to Goffman, then become intertwined with power structures that hold the broader society together. Increasingly, those in power point to the stigmatized group to scapegoat them again and again, thus legitimizing their own position and policies over and over again. In this way, prejudices and negative sentiments about the stigmatized group become stronger and stronger.

In this way, stigma can persist for a long time, according to Goffman even after the original reasons for stigma have disappeared. Indeed, we see that the Wimpy stigma still exists even though the pandemic is long gone. If stigmatization of a group is prolonged, there is then a risk that this group may even internalize the stigma. Thus the stigma becomes even more persistent and deepened.

4. Internalized stigma and the self-fulfilling prophecy

According to Erving Goffman, there is a great danger in stigmatizing groups, and that is that over time the stigmatized group will internalize the stigma. He emphasizes that when a particular group is consistently stigmatized and treated as deviant or dangerous, that group may eventually begin to act in accordance with society’s expectations of them. This phenomenon is known as the “labeling theory” or labeling theory, in which individuals begin to exhibit the behavior expected of them based on the labels assigned to them.

Goffman thus suggests that by stigmatizing certain groups, society can create a self-fulfilling prophecy in which individuals within those groups may begin to exhibit behaviors consistent with the negative stereotypes with which they are associated. This can lead to a vicious cycle of stigma and behavior, with the stigma influencing the attitudes and actions of those being stigmatized, and with the broader society seeing in it in turn confirmation that the stigma is justified. In this way, more and more divisions and duality arise in society, causing the population to break up into two groups that are diametrically opposed.

This process is clearly observable right now. The stigmatized group of Wimpies is now so on the defensive that they are increasingly clumping together and also losing the critical ability to hold each other accountable for extremism. It is precisely because the establishment is cracking down on and also disadvantaging all kinds of leading figures in the resistance, such as Donald Trump, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, Thierry Baudet and Dries Van Langenhove, that members of the stigmatized group are developing an ever-increasing need to protect each other and keep their hands off each other.

In this way, the blind spot for all the intolerable and extremist behavior within the Wimpy group grows. The obvious major downside of the leaders of the Wimpy movement is thus increasingly lost sight of. This leads to all kinds of hypocrisy and double standards. For example, the trail of corporate deceit and sexual abuse that Donald Trump has been chasing for a lifetime is becoming increasingly difficult to discuss among the stigmatized group, the FVD is getting away with increasingly extreme statements about multiculturalism, colonialism, apartheid and Judaism, and it is increasingly taboo to simply state that Andrew Tate has a demonstrable “track record” of terrible and unacceptable behavior toward women.

Here we see the venom of stigma in action: a group is scapegoated, stigmatized as deranged and extreme, put on the defensive to such an extent that it loses self-criticism, internalizes the stigma, and ultimately exhibits the behavior that society expected of that group based on the stigma.

Internalizing stigma is often misunderstood. It is then thought that that would be about the minority group that actually consciously comes to believe for themselves that the stigma about them is true. In this particular case of the Wimpy stigma, that would mean that Wimpies themselves come to believe that they are indeed extremist, dangerous and derailed. But internalization does not occur so consciously; the stigma is internalized by group members at an unconscious level. Without realizing it, stereotypical expectations are assimilated, and so they unknowingly start behaving according to the images that exist about them.

5. Conclusion: breaking the self-fulfilling prophecy with shadow work

Totalitarian forces are thoroughly evil, history has proven time and again. They pull all the tricks out of the bag of tricks to divide the people and seize power themselves. In this, as always, the idea of scapegoating, stigmatization and the self-fulfilling prophecy plays a leading role.

Wimpies are currently walking right into the very trap that was laid out for them years ago. They are so defied to the extreme that they uncritically join together to form a group churning with rage, no longer looking critically at their own leaders and no longer applying to themselves the principles by which they judge the regime they are fighting against. This confirms to the broader population the stigma: the Wimpies are extremist and hypocritical, and thus not to be taken seriously.

It makes sense that the Wimpy movement would want to close ranks and protect its own leaders. It is maddening that people like Baudet, Trump and Tate are continually negatively framed and even persecuted, while WEF cadres remain out of harm’s way. It is particularly frustrating that their extremism is magnified while extremism on the left is not even recognized or seen. As a result, we tend to stand up unconditionally for our own leaders, and unconsciously turn a blind eye to the problems that do simply exist in their attitudes, behavior or history.

But it is precisely this sense of injustice that the evil totalitarian forces want to evoke in us. They play on our tendency to stick up for the underdog, so that we lose our critical capacity with respect to our leaders and no longer judge them along the bar of ethics and morality by which we accuse our opponents. In this way, the resistance movement becomes not only hypocritical, but also susceptible to prosecution, because the leaders are not critically vetted and get away with all kinds of misconduct by their own supporters.

The negative spiral of stigmatization and group formation that has begun has made resistance to totalitarianism particularly vulnerable at this time. And that, of course, was always the intention. It was always intended to make the Wimpies internalize the stigma against them, so that they will embody the prejudices against them and thus make themselves impossible. The more the current polarization gets out of hand, the more the resistance will cut itself in half. The regime can sit back and do nothing to eliminate us: we already do that ourselves.

There is only one solution, and that is to face our blind spots. We must put our own group members and especially its leaders along the same bar as our opponents, and put an end to hypocrisy and double standards. We ultimately do this only through shadowing (see AGTRT-BA7 and AGTRT-BA25). We will have to build a self-critical resistance movement that always looks at itself before pointing the finger at others. If we do not, we remain vulnerable to the trap of internalized stigma, and we will ultimately lose out.