Gaslighters Gotta Gaslight

Behavioural psychologists are little more than manipulative charlatans who use gaslighting as a tool of the trade. The government is currently worried about the vaccine refuseniks and how to persuade them to change their minds. This bit is interesting.

“This can be a wide range of things,” cognitive psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky, from Bristol University, says.

Research suggests reminding people of the common good – protecting a grandparent or parent – helps them realise “they have a social responsibility – and they may be more willing”.

Given that people who have been vaccinated can still get the bug and still pass it on, protecting others is perhaps the weakest argument in their arsenal – and, no, we do not have a social responsibility to get the vaccine. You don’t get vaccinated to protect others, you get it to protect yourself – and if it works as planned, should you contract the virus, you will experience milder symptoms. But the common good and protecting others is pure bunkum, so it isn’t an argument that would persuade me.

The other problem from their position is this – I despise them all and don’t trust them. This does not mean that I am an anti-vaxxer or some sort of conspiracy theorist. I am perfectly able to see from their own figures that they have been systematically lying to us (not to mention personal experience and observation). I am perfectly capable of recognising hysteria when I see it and I will not be manipulated by people just because I am in an abusive relationship with them.

While many are taken in by propaganda, no matter how good it is, no matter how persuasive it becomes, there will always be those who are immune to it. I’m not sure why that is, but there will always be those who recognise the big lie for what it is and refuse to comply, regardless of how much we are demonised by government, psychologists in SAGE or the scum of the press.

“Some can’t be bothered – but if it’s around the corner and you give them a free hotdog, like in Germany, then that can be really successful.”

Fer chrissakes! Given that Tesco couldn’t persuade me to change my mind with a ten quid bribe, I doubt that a free hot dog will do it either. If every man has his price, mine’s a damned sight higher than that.

A team in south London is also trying to locate the elusive vaccine hesitant.

Well, they can stay in London, frankly. However, I would suggest that we are easy enough to identify given that the initial invitation comes from the GP and any refusal will be logged on their system. They long since gave up on trying to persuade me. No psychologist will change that.

8 Comments

  1. I have had the jab, when I got it the nurse gave me a little talk on the fact that it would only reduce symptoms and would not prevent me from catching or spreading the virus, therefore I still needed to wear a mask, keep my distance, sanitise myself, blah blah blah. Now it seems that the official line is that the vaccine does indeed work like a conventional vaccine and prevents people from catching and passing on said virus. I am surrounded by people who don’t seem to have a problem with the government and media altering reality at will. They are happy to believe what they are being told even though they previously believed the opposite. These people are not idiots and I find it quite baffling.

    The name Stephan Lewandowsky is ringing some alarm bells. If memory serves me correctly he is the guy who was infamous for doing a hatchet job on so called climate change deniers.

  2. “…why people often embrace beliefs that are sharply at odds with scientific evidence.”

    He was studying the sceptics when it was the alarmists that he should have had in his sights. I say studying, rather that speaking to sceptics directly to find out why they believed that the alarmists are wrong, he asked climate activists what they believed the sceptics were thinking. He then published a paper based on that.

  3. “Research suggests reminding people of the common good – protecting a grandparent or parent – helps them realise “they have a social responsibility – and they may be more willing”.

    Bullshit. I protected my mother, who was dying from other causes, from this thing for eighteen months without taking their jab. Weighing up the relative risks, I was happy for her to have it (I was buggered if, having survived WWII, she was going to be finished off by some damned communist bat virus) but saw no need to rush into it myself. On the contrary; I could take measures to protect the household from the virus, but actively volunteering for something which might cause serious side-effects that would render me unable to look after her seemed reckless.

    The real problem for all these smartarse psychologists is that they haven’t the faintest idea why people haven’t taken it. Given the circumstances, do they really think we’re telling them the truth? I said I was too busy with my mum, just to get the buggers off my back.

    “The other problem from their position is this – I despise them all and don’t trust them.”

    Nail, head… wallop.

    “While many are taken in by propaganda, no matter how good it is, no matter how persuasive it becomes, there will always be those who are immune to it.”

    It’s said to be an apocryphal Orwell “quote”, but it’s still a good ‘un: “True propaganda does not seek to persuade; it seeks to create a climate of thought in which dissent is seen as something akin to madness“. A better description of what they’ve done over the last year-and-a-half hasn’t been written.

  4. “While many are taken in by propaganda, no matter how good it is, no matter how persuasive it becomes, there will always be those who are immune to it.”

    Those would be the people who are well informed enough to know that you are lying. There is no “common good” in relation to the Covid vaccine. It offers partial protection to the jabbed individual only. Just as in the case of his previous attack on the climate sceptics, he is missing the obvious, the reason that we don’t believe it is because it isn’t true.

    • “The common good” is one of the most terrifying terms in the English language. As you say, there is no common good. It is a tool for tyrants and should be viewed as such.

    • That begs another question: what are they really after here? Who benefits? Is it really as important as it seems to someone, somewhere, that a few more people are pressured into taking this stuff that it’s worth spending what must now be significant additional sums (of taxpayers’ money of course, which may actually be “free” from some points of view) per increasingly resistant persuadee?

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