Groupthink Is Counter to Democracy. Censorship Divides.

 Two years ago I wrote this article called "A Simple Explanation of Groupthink." Since that time, groupthink has become the standard of the land. I am reprinting this article with further commentary. Please come to your senses before it's too late. Wake up!

My friend. Consider this article an invitation to take a deep breath and relax a bit. I am writing to you because my heart is saddened by your current level of fear, anger, and confusion. There is a primal level of angst in the land, with ever-deepening divisions. Our political meme chords are hardening into a primitive form of brutish tribalism through the force of rhetoric and propaganda. If we aren't careful, violence will increasingly replace vitriol. My friend, this is not the American way. 

*In the two years since this article was posted, riots, burning, and looting have raged across America. Divisions have widened to the point where neighbors can no longer speak to one another. Social media censorship has ensured that people can not read each other's posts, preventing us from widening our range of thinking and stopping us from discussing important social and political events with one another.

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." [Charles Mackay, 1841, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"]

Negative effects of groupthink on teamwork, Dale Carnegie Institute

Let's talk about "groupthink" for a minute. Groupthink is when individuals stop thinking for themselves and adopt memes that are held and propagated by the group as a whole. Grouppthink occurs, for example, when you read an article or a facebook post and believe everything in it, no matter how outrageous, and then endorse it with a thumbs-up and send it on to your friends. Contrast that with coming across the same information and weighing it rationally, using due diligence to verify claims and consider opposing arguments, and then endorsing or rejecting the memes, irrespective of who said what. Not nearly as much fun, is it?

Groupthink memes rely upon mass delusion for energy; and the end result is never good. Oftentimes, groupthink memes would be literally unthinkable if it were not for the influence of the group over personal will. Mob violence is a perfect example of groupthink--no one in their right mind would pick up a stone and throw it at their neighbor for no reason whatsoever... were it not for the fact that twenty other neighbors were already throwing stones at the poor soul.

The particular groupthink I'm concerned with in this article has to do with your enthusiastic endorsement of political and economic philosophies you know nothing about in your effort to speak truth to power. Have you actually studied history? Do you understand the effect of various political and economic memes on societies in the past or halfway around the world? Do you have a working knowledge of economics? I think it's safe to say that few of my friends have studied these subjects in depth. (Of course, out there in the larger webiverse I know a few of you have, so don't take offense.) All I'm saying is now that social media and the web have given voice and influence to any fool with a cellphone, it's more important than ever to do your research. 

*The strategy currently adopted by social media is not to give voice and influence to "any fool with a cellphone" as I originally put it, but to only give some fools with cellphones voice and influence in order to slant the coverage of current events. Over the past couple of years social media has decided to actively block everyone the elite at the top disagree with, including yours truly on occasion. Even mainstream media openly blocks and slants coverage of the news to ensure compliance with elitist goals. If I were to chat with my neighbors about current events and politics, at least half of them would have never even heard the topics I'm raising. 

Now, let's imagine our country is a large organization that needs to function well in order to survive and prosper so that we all may reap the benefits. Surely, that is a goal we all share.

*We all share the desire to be safe in our homes, to prosper at work, to freely assemble with others, and to speak our minds without being hit on the head with a brick.

Consider the following advice for overcoming groupthink, from Dale Carnegie Institute's article, "The Curse of Teamwork: Groupthink":

• Create an organizational environment where individuals can freely voice their ideas, challenges, and concerns. Individuals must feel comfortable with taking interpersonal risks, admitting hesitations, and challenging one-another. Absent an inclination to avoid conflict, a team can easily discuss and debate different perspectives.
• Think about the right information required to make sound decisions. Consider the strongest counter-argument to every idea.
• Do not suppress disagreements or dominate the dissenters. Carefully examine the reasons and implications of alternate viewpoints.

Now think about this: have you really stopped to consider the other side of the political debate? Have you really tried to see why half of your neighbors disagree with your position? Can you explain their memes in non-inflammatory language? In other words, do you understand what the adversary is saying and the facts behind their claims? If not, why not?  (One reason why not, as we all know by now, is due to the ideological filters social media platforms put on posts to keep us sorted into tidy categories. Another, self-selected, filter is the one-sided news channel you choose to watch.)

My brother, Dr. Bill Puett, used to share the following advice about critical thinking with his departing Philosophy students. Sounds a lot like Carnegie's anti-groupthink lesson.

"Other than your living a loving and compassionate life, I wish for you more than anything that you become autonomous. Be fully informed on all important matters and apply critical thinking before making choices. Regard no one as an authority, challenge all beliefs, but listen to others before reaching decisions. Before offering criticism, know an opposing position so well that you can argue it better than the opponent proposing it. In so doing, you may risk your own position. ..."

I think it is time for us to settle down and return to reason. Emotion, particularly fear and righteous indignation, is not getting us anywhere except upset. A steady diet of inflammatory rhetoric is ruining our faith in the nation. And it's not doing any favors for your health or mental well-being, either. Step One is stop feeding the fear. 

*Hate and anger cannot build; they can only destroy. Hatred tears down and rips apart; love builds and brings together. Do not expect that building a better America will rise from the ashes of hatred; it will not. Hatred brings ruination, less security, less prosperity, and ever increasing divisions that cannot heal. Look inside yourself--are you operating out of Hatred?

"We go out of our course to make ourselves uncomfortable; the cup of life is not bitter enough to our palate, and we distill superfluous poison to put into it, or conjure up hideous things to frighten ourselves at, which would never exist if we did not make them." [Charles Mackay, 1841, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"]

Remember the Simple Explanation's Golden Rule:

Our job is to reach out to others with love, information, and assistance to build something greater than ourselves.

***************

Cyd Ropp has a Ph.D. in Rhetoric from The University of Memphis. Her specialty is meta-level analysis of ideological divides and their ultimate resolution.

 Buy the Simple Explanation book by clicking here.

Simple Explanation Blog Shadow Banned by Big Tech

The Simple Explanation blog has been up and running for over ten years. I've written about 300 original blog articles and have reposted a number of blog articles from controversial web sites, such as mercola.com.  

The author in happier times--Esalen gardens

Yesterday I sat down with a friend to show her this Simple Explanation blog. It was nowhere to be found, not even when we typed in the exact URL for the blog site. This is called "shadow banning." The blog is obviously there, but it can no longer be reached, not even by typing in the exact URL address. It can only be accessed by forwarding links to others. At this point in time, you are still allowed to view the blog if you click on a personally-forwarded blog link. 

The sneaky thing about shadow-banning is that it's difficult to spot. I did not know the Simple Explanation was banned because my computer finds it without difficulty. If you are a regular reader of the Simple Explanation, you wouldn't know it either, because your computer remembers and recognizes the blog's URL. But on someone's computer who has never before read the Simple Explanation, the blog will not show up, even if you type in the URL directly. You can test this out for yourself by using a friend's computer.

In these days of covid, my blog posts began to be "corrected" by the faceless drones that work for google. Funny how my paradigm-shifting science and spirituality blog never wrote anything deemed controversial prior to the covid pandemic. Ha! Just ask any conventional scientist working in academia if my hypotheses are controversial. Of course they are! They have always been outside of the mainstream! Yet, over the past ten years my hypotheses have been proven correct time and time again by ongoing scientific research and new discoveries.

But now, google has finally seen fit to label yours truly as a purveyor of false information. For example, here is an article I wrote on herd immunity back before full-out censorship of minority views became ubiquitous. That would have been all the way back on April 22, 2020, when I wrote an original article called, "A Simple Explanation of Herd Immunity to Defeat Covid-19."  Very  quickly, the google algorithms and human drones that work for google deemed the article to be a danger to community standards and a source of false news. The powers-that-be did not want ordinary people to know about the concept of herd immunity to defeat covid-19. They slapped this disclaimer at the top of my blog article: 

"Fact check: Herd immunity would not prevent corona virus from spreading completely -- News The Palm Beach Post."

The reason the powers-that-be, whoever the heck they are, do not want you to know about herd immunity, is because they are pushing for universal vaccination, and before that happens, universal lockdowns and surrender of human rights--human rights we all took for granted as recently as February of 2020. Human rights like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of worship. 

But now we know we aren't even allowed freedom of thought. Freedom of thought and independent inquiry have been officially deemed to be dangerous. We might come to believe things we are not being force-fed by the mainstream media and their social media minions.

However, just this morning, the officially sanctioned news coming across the news feed on my iphone tells me it is alright to consider herd immunity again. Newsweek reports that the journal called "Science" has published an article regarding herd immunity: 

HEALTH

Herd Immunity Threshold for COVID-19 Could Be Just 43 Percent

BY KASHMIRA GANDER ON 6/24/20 AT 5:06 AM EDT

The percentage of people in a population who need to be immune to the coronavirus to protect others, or the threshold of herd immunity, may be lower than previously thought, according to a study.

Herd immunity could potentially be achieved if 43 percent of a population is immune to the coronavirus, the authors of a paper published in the journal Science said. This is "substantially less" than the level of 60 percent given by vaccinating the population, the mathematicians from the University of Nottingham and University of Stockholm wrote.

Read my article and you will find that my original claim has finally been acknowledged to be true: there is a true alternative to social isolation and universal vaccination--herd immunity.  You are now allowed to know this--Newsweek reported it!

Please forward this blog article to your friends. The Simple Explanation blog can not be found if you don't. Thank you.

Cyd Ropp, Ph.D.

China and Big Pharma Censoring Scientific Articles on the Web

Here is another article reposted from Mercola.com concerning internet censorship of unauthorized factual data. You will be want to read this.

One of my own Simple Explanation science articles was denounced just this week. Do you really need to be protected from the truth?  

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

·    NewsGuard recently announced that my site has been classified as fake news because we have reported the SARS-CoV-2 virus as potentially having been leaked from the biosafety level 4 laboratory in Wuhan City, China, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak

·    According to NewsGuard, “There is no evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the outbreak, and genomic evidence has found that the virus is 96% identical at the whole-genome level to a bat coronavirus”

·    NewsGuard’s position is in direct conflict with published scientific evidence suggesting this virus was created in a lab and not zoonotically transmitted

·    SARS-CoV-2 appears to be a bat coronavirus modified to integrate spike proteins that allows the virus to enter human cells by attaching to ACE-2 receptors, as well as an envelope protein from HIV called GP141, which impairs immune function

·    Many mainstream media, U.S. and U.K. government officials, and even Chinese researchers, report that suspicions about SARS-CoV-2 having been created in and leaked from the BSL4 facility in Wuhan cannot be discounted, and that directions to censor reports about the virus’ origin is coming from the Chinese government

NewsGuard has classified mercola.com as fake news because we have reported the SARS-CoV-2 virus as potentially having been leaked from the biosafety level 4 laboratory in Wuhan City, China, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.

NewsGuard’s intern Nina Zweig (edited by deputy editor John Gregory) referred to my February 4, 2020, article, “Novel Coronavirus — The Latest Pandemic Scare,” in which I stated:

"In January 2018, China’s first maximum security virology laboratory (biosecurity level 4) designed for the study of the world’s most dangerous pathogens opened its doors — in Wuhan.^1,2 Is it pure coincidence that Wuhan City is now the epicenter of this novel coronavirus infection?

The year before, Tim Trevan, a Maryland biosafety consultant, expressed concern about viral threats potentially escaping the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory,³ which happens to be located just 20 miles from the Wuhan market identified as ground zero for the current NCIP outbreak.⁴”

According to NewsGuard,⁵ “There is no evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the outbreak, and genomic evidence has found that the virus is ‘96% identical at the whole-genome level to a bat coronavirus.’”

Evidence Suggests SARS-CoV-2 Is a Modified Bat Coronavirus

Sure, as detailed in my April 26, 2020, interview with bioweapons expert Francis Boyle, who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, SARS-CoV-2 started out with a bat coronavirus, but scientific evidence has revealed much more about this virus, none of which NewsGuard is bothering to take into account before classifying and censoring reports as “misinformation.”

Importantly, there’s compelling scientific evidence published in many prominent scientific journals showing this virus was indeed created in a lab and not zoonotically transmitted (transmitted naturally from animal to human).

As explained by Boyle, SARS-CoV-2 appears to be a bat coronavirus⁶ that was modified to integrate spike proteins that allow the virus to enter human cells by attaching to ACE-2 receptors. It’s also been modified to integrate an envelope protein from HIV called GP141, which tends to impair the immune system.

Additionally, Boyle strongly suspects nanotechnology was used in its creation as well, as its exceptional ability to stay airborne for long periods of time is a nanotech hallmark.⁷

NewsGuard’s arbitrary dismissal of my February 4 article as fake news is equally inappropriate even if the virus is “all natural” and zoonotically transmitted. As reported by The Daily Mail, April 11, 2020:⁸

“The laboratory at the center of scrutiny over the pandemic has been carrying out research on bats from the cave which scientists believe is the original source of the devastating outbreak.

Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday show the Wuhan Institute of Virology undertook coronavirus experiments on mammals captured more than 1,000 miles away in Yunnan — funded by a $3.7 million grant from the US government. Sequencing of the Covid-19 genome has traced it to bats found in Yunnan's caves.”

Governments Are Not Dismissing Possibility of a Leak

An April 14, 2020, report^9,10 by The Washington Post highlighted the fact that U.S. State Department cables from two years ago warned there were inadequate safety precautions and procedures in place at Wuhan’s BSL4 facility, and April 15, 2020, Fox News reported¹¹ that “State Department leaked cables renew theories on origin of coronavirus.”

Yet NewsGuard, the thought police advertising front group for industries like Big Pharma and tobacco, simply dismisses and wants to bury this information. Such censorship has no room in a democratic and free society. I would argue that shutting down conversations about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is a direct threat to democracy and indeed to science itself.

Will NewsGuard classify The Washington Post’s and Fox News’ articles as “misinformation” as well? Fox News quotes Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff¹²

"It should be no surprise to you that we have taken a keen interest in that and we've had a lot of intelligence take a hard look at that. I would just say at this point, it's inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural, but we don't know for certain."

As you may have noticed, in my “flagged” February 4 article I didn’t even make an assertion, I merely asked the question: “Is it pure coincidence that Wuhan City is now the epicenter of this novel coronavirus infection?”

February 16, 2020, Chinese scientists even raised the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 is the result of bioweapons research leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. See the video below for this report.

Since my February 4 article, I’ve become increasingly convinced — through reviewing the scientific literature that NewsGuard ignores or is unaware of — that SARS-CoV-2 may in fact be a synthetic virus, likely created and released (inadvertently or not) from one or more laboratories that worked on weaponizing SARS and bat coronaviruses.

According to an April 5, 2020, article¹³ in Daily Mail, British government officials are also considering the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the Wuhan facility, stating the possibility of this “is no longer being discounted.” Will NewsGuard classify Daily Mail as a misinformant?

Will they accuse Gen. Milley of spreading fake news? How about Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr, who tweeted¹⁴ an April 16 Fox News report¹⁵ about SARS-CoV-2 being leaked from the Wuhan lab “as part of China’s efforts to compete with U.S.”?

Ironically, Carr even commented, “I’m old enough to remember when posting this would get you deplatformed.” Apparently, the abusive power of censorship that Twitter and other tech platforms have has not escaped the FCC.

Is NewsGuard Protecting Chinese Interests?

Interestingly, an April 16, 2020, report¹⁶ by CNN reveals the censorship of articles mentioning the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may have leaked from the Wuhan BSL4 facility appears to come from China, which means NewsGuard is functionally protecting Chinese interests and inhibiting scientific inquiry. CNN writes:¹⁷

“China has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the novel coronavirus, according to a central government directive and online notices¹⁸ published by two Chinese universities, that have since been removed from the web.

Under the new policy, all academic papers on Covid-19 will be subject to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts …

The increased scrutiny appears to be the latest effort by the Chinese government to control the narrative on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic …

According to the directive issued by the Ministry of Education's science and technology department, ‘academic papers about tracing the origin of the virus must be strictly and tightly managed’ …

A Chinese researcher who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation said the move was a worrying development that would likely obstruct important scientific research.

‘I think it is a coordinated effort from (the) Chinese government to control (the) narrative, and paint it as if the outbreak did not originate in China,’ the researcher told CNN. ‘And I don't think they will really tolerate any objective study to investigate the origination of this disease.’"

US Funded Wuhan Laboratory

As I mention in my interview with Boyle, while the biosafety level 4 (BSL4) lab in Wuhan may have leaked the virus, the U.S. may have played a role in its creation. For starters, the chairman of the Harvard department of chemistry, nanoscience expert, Charles Lieber, Ph.D., was arrested earlier this year by federal agencies, suspected of illegal dealings with China.¹⁹ Lieber has denied the allegations.

Lieber allegedly oversaw the Nano Key Laboratory, a joint collaboration by the Wuhan University of Technology and Harvard, although Harvard officials claim they had no knowledge of the lab before 2015. In our interview, Boyle dismisses the idea that Harvard was unaware Lieber was working on nanotechnology for biological materials with the Chinese as “preposterous.”

NPR, which summarized the allegations as being centered around a Chinese recruitment program, added even more serious allegations, saying Lieber:²⁰

“… faces charges of trading knowledge for money and lying about it. Prosecutors allege he set up a lab in China in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from the Chinese government and then denied knowledge of those payments to U.S. investigators … others watching the case say it raises important questions about ethics, scientific openness and possible racial profiling in an era of geopolitical tension.”

Lieber’s attorney declined to comment on the charges, NPR said. It’s also noteworthy that both the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research have funded research at the Wuhan BSL4 facility, including research on bat coronaviruses.^21,22

Arizona senator Martha McSally told Fox news,²³ “The NIH must immediately stop deploying American tax dollars to China for this dangerous research.” Justin Goodman, vice president for advocacy and public policy for the White Coat Waste Project added:²⁴

“The U.S. government’s spending spree that we’ve exposed at the notorious Wuhan Institute of Virology is outrageous and unacceptable. Taxpayers should never be forced to bankroll China’s hazardous bio-agent experiments, which put human life around the world gravely at risk. We’ll continue to work with our advocates and Congress to put an end to this egregious misuse of Americans' tax dollars."

April 14, 2020, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz tweeted,²⁵ “At best, Americans are funding people who are lying to us. At worst, we’re funding people who we knew had problems handling pathogens, who then birthed a monster virus onto the world.”

NewsGuard Also Promotes Censorship via Public Libraries

NewsGuard has set itself up as the self-appointed global arbiter of what information is “trustworthy” based on nine “credibility and transparency” factors, not only for information viewed on private electronic devices, but also for information accessible in schools and public libraries²⁶ — more than 700 libraries across the globe so far.²⁷

Librarians will even provide instructions to patrons on how to install the NewsGuard extension on their personal computers, tablets and cell phones. Once you’ve installed the NewsGuard browser plugin on your computer or cellphone, the NewsGuard icon rating will appear on all Google and Bing searches and on articles featured in your social media news feeds.

The NewsGuard ratings are meant to influence the reader, instructing them to disregard content with cautionary colors and cautions. Fake news is certainly a problem. But determining who should have the final word on credibility and what is “truth” is not a simple one. Who is going to verify the credibility and transparency of the verifiers, i.e., NewsGuard?

NewsGuard Protects Big Industries

To understand NewsGuard’s agenda, you need to know something about its creation and funding. Aside from internet giants Microsoft²⁸ and Google, NewsGuard is backed by companies that are involved in advertising and marketing of pharmaceutical products, cigarettes and unhealthy junk food to kids.

NewsGuard's $6 million startup was funded in part by the Publicis Groupe,²⁹ the “third largest global communications group” according to the Publicis website.³⁰ Publicis was founded in 1926 by Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, a French entrepreneur, with the goal of improving the image of advertising and turning it into “a real profession.” In fact, Publicis Groupe’s name is derived in part from the French word for advertising.³¹

The Publicis Groupe has been manipulating what people think about commercial products for nearly a century. Over that century, this advertising and communications firm bought or partnered with targeted advertising avenues, beginning with newspapers, followed by radio, TV, cinema and the internet.

With revenue avenues secured, Publicis’ clients and partners built a global presence that dominated the advertising world. Be it tobacco or sugar, Publicis Groupe found a way to promote and strengthen big industries. In 1983, Publicis introduced the concept of global communication driven by marketing.

Within the Publicis Groupe are four networks serving its clients,³² including Publicis Health,³³ which once boasted on the website that its clients are "some of the biggest and most exciting names in health and wellness,” but has now taken that claim down and moved it to job postings.³⁴

Publicis Scoops Up Top Vaccine Companies

The list of clients that once appeared on the health site’s wallpaper has also been taken down, but were proudly listed in an October 2019 Business Wire news release on Publicis’ third quarter revenue report — which, by the way, was up an impressive 17.3%.³⁵

The report shows that Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur and Regeneron, just to name a few, have come onboard — showing that Publicis is now working for Big Pharma’s top dogs: vaccine companies.

By happenstance, Regeneron just announced that it’s working on a coronavirus vaccine and treatment.³⁶ Regeneron is also partnering with Sanofi to find a COVID-19 treatment; Sanofi is independently working on its own COVID-19 vaccine.³⁷

The Publicis Health board also consists of a power pack of high-profile individuals with Big Pharma position backgrounds or affiliations.^{38,39,40,41,42,43} Leo Burnett, the ad company famous for creating the Marlboro man ad campaigns that made Marlboro the best-selling cigarette in the world and led to the nicotine addiction of millions, many of whom died from smoking, is also part of Publicis.^44,45

To put icing on the cake, Publicis has also added Google and Facebook Messenger to their repertoire.⁴⁶ When you consider that Publicis now describes its business model approach as putting clients and their needs and objectives at the center of all they do so their clients can “win and grow,” it’s easy to see what’s driving NewsGuard.

What You Can Do to STOP This Abuse

Overall, NewsGuard is just another big business aimed at keeping the chemical, drug and food industries, as well as mainstream media, intact by discrediting and eliminating unwanted competitors and analysts who empower you with information that runs counter to any given industry’s agenda.

You can learn more about NewsGuard in my previous articles, “Beware: New Plan to Censor Health Websites” and “Thought Police NewsGuard Is Owned by Big Pharma.”

If you’re as disturbed by censorship as I am, be sure to contact your local library today to find out if they’re one of the more than 700 libraries using NewsGuard. If they are, then ask them if they’re aware of NewsGuard’s censorship of truthful news that is now encroaching on scientific freedom and threatening the very roots of our democracy.

If your local library is using NewsGuard, it would be helpful to start a campaign to get it removed. Contact your neighbors and let them know Newsguard is owned by a pharmaceutical public relations firm that censors information damaging to their clients' interests.