With Nancy Robertson
(PART II of 3 Parts)
Stella Morabito is a journalist whose work I respect immensely. Her new book “The Weaponization of Loneliness,” is a tour de force examination of how tyrants move populations toward their totalitarian interests. Stella’s perspective as a historian of Russian and Soviet propaganda, is filtered through the lens of Soviet tyranny and herewith is her detailed and brilliant discussion with Nancy Robertson, which I find extremely valuable.
I have studied the tyranny underlying the gender industry from a capitalist perspective. In other words: Tyranny, American style. A capitalist market that is unfettered, uncontrolled, and left to run away, by its design, forces all the wealth of society upward, into the hands of oligarchs who then instill their tyranny on the populace via the market, which we see repeatedly with the gender industry and elsewhere.
An ideology of transhumanism, positioned as a human right for a male sexual fetish of owning womanhood, is being forced into our universities, institutions, public policies, laws, and language, by capital, and those governing the capital. Oligarchs, such as the Pritzker family, Marc Benioff, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk, and capital assets management firms such as Black Rock and Vanguard, who have technological and medical investments in transhumanism and the profits to be garnered from transhumanist augmentations, are tyrannically forcing on the public an ideology that is anti-reality/anti-human. They are doing so with the threat of financial isolation and abandonment from the market, The unfettered capitalist market has functioned as well as any dictator with an ideological bent and a drive for absolute control. It has led to a commoditization of all life, manifesting extreme isolation for all of us, from our families, from our communities, from meaningful rituals, from our land base, and now, with the burgeoning gender industry, from our bodies.
All avenues of tyranny lead us to the same dark place from which we will eventually be unable to resist. I hope this discussion inspires you to political action soon. It is my assessment that we are rapidly running out of time to resist this global, totalitarian, juggernaut.
Many thanks to Nancy Robertson for outlining and facilitating this important discussion.
- Jennifer Bilek
The following transcript has been edited for clarity.
NR: We all need to understand the enemy’s playbook. How the “transgender” movement weaponizes loneliness. But you've made the surprising point that the particular ideology such as “transgenderism,” Communism, or Nazism is secondary to the tyrant's quest for power and control. That ideology doesn't really drive the totalitarian agenda. That the real goal is the quest for power. Can you tell us more about that?
SM: Yes. In the chapter of my book, where I talk about the totalitarian impulse, I concluded that ideology is secondary to propaganda. Propaganda used to be the vehicle for ideology, but that seems to have flipped. Because ideology is now the avenue for propaganda. In other words, propaganda doesn’t serve the ideology. It serves the tyrant’s path to power. Jacques Ellul wrote about this in his book, “Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, (1965.)
When so many corporate leaders push “transgenderism,” it all boils down to what I call “self-supremacy,” the quest for power. That's what this propaganda serves, and we have to see it that way when we look at the totalitarian impulse, and how it operates to break down a person's sense of self in order to isolate them and control them.
That's what I mean when I say the ideology being secondary. “Transgenderism” isn't really the goal. Power is the goal. So they are destabilizing people’s sense of self. That’s a form of isolation that allows for social control. The people pushing it don’t care about people who disown their sex for whatever reasons they may have. Those people comprise only the smallest fraction of one percent of the population -- if you limit it to people who have a type of body dysphoria. So much of this is being manufactured through social contagion.
Jennifer Bilek has done superb work on the connection between “transgenderism” and transhumanism. It’s really a path to nihilism, nothingness. By following that path, we basically abolish ourselves in the process. But advocates of transhumanism view it as a quest for immortality. It’s like Ponce de Leon’s old search for the Fountain of Youth.
They're all searching for eternal life -- on earth or off the earth. Transhumanists think that they can upload their consciousness and travel through the universe. It's science fiction. But they’re willing to destroy anyone they think is standing in the way of their immortality. They want to become like gods. Ray Kurzweil actually put it that way. He yearns for what he calls the “Singularity,” the point at which he says humans will merge with machines.
That’s a roundabout way of saying that “transgenderism” isn't really the goal of this. The real goal is power and immortality.
NR: Totalitarian movements have popped up every so often for hundreds of years. And you cover that in The Weaponization of Loneliness: Cromwell’s Puritan Revolution in England, the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, the Communist Revolution in Russia, the Nazis, and the Cultural Revolution in China. Can you tell us about the parallels with what we’re seeing now?
SM: I think anybody who studies history should be able to see the patterns, and how they reassert themselves today. If you look at Cromwell's Puritan Revolution in England in the seventeenth century, you’ll see the first hard push for a cult-like purity of thought. People knew they could not deviate from the narrative, or they’d be punished. Cromwell’s Utopian idea was to establish a kingdom of God on earth. And all totalitarian movements have that in common.
Next, in the French Revolution we see the three main components of the machinery of loneliness at work, what we now call identity politics, political correctness, and mob agitation, all used to control and socially engineer the population. Again, we see that happen in all Utopian revolutions.
In identity politics, people are divided into groups of good guys and bad guys based on their demographics. All Utopian revolutions borrow from religion. The Jacobians’ reign of terror in the French Revolution intended to replace Christianity with a new secular religion that demanded adherence to the narrative and submission to the State’s power. If you didn’t identify with that, then you had no identity, and you were considered an enemy of the state.
Identity politics does not treat you as an individual. It says “No. You are a certain demographic, and that's all you are. You are not a unique individual who has a personality, a sense of humor, or anything else. You are just your demographic.”
The second component of the machinery of loneliness is political correctness. If you say anything that questions the narrative, you become the enemy. This fear induces us to self-censor. Political correctness was very much alive during the French Revolution, as well as in communist Russia, Nazi Germany and Mao’s China. And, of course, today.
The third component of the machinery of loneliness is mob agitation to enforce compliance and conformity. Mobs serve the tiny minority of elites that uses the mob to gain and keep power, and for socially engineering the population.
So you have those three components: identity politics, political correctness, and mob enforcement and agitation. And there are other bells and whistles on that machinery of loneliness as well, such as the criminalization of comedy, propaganda, censorship, and snitch culture.
NR: Yes. Today, not even comedy is safe. And the country’s top comedians (Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock) refuse to perform at colleges and universities.
SM: That’s right. Real comedy is generally illegal in totalitarian systems. And the Bolshevik Revolution took many cues from the French Revolution. Vladimir Lenin pretty much declared war on the private sphere of life. This really took off with his Josef Stalin's Reign of Terror in the 1930s. And that resulted in a horrific war on private life and private relationships that denied the role of parents and families as the true guardians of their children. That was part of the education process.
My fourth historical example is Nazi Germany, where we see strong parallels with today’s identity politics. The Nazis demonized certain demographic and ethnic groups, and eventually worked to destroy them. First, the Jews, then the Roma, and a little later, the Slavs, including the Russians and Poles, were added to the list. It just went on and on. You can see that today in the demonization of anyone who's considered “white” or male or deemed “cisgender,” for example. It’s the same process, the same pattern at work.
The fallout of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution in communist China was tens of millions of lives lost. A key tactic to root out perceived state enemies was the “struggle session” in which people had to publicly (and often falsely) confess their crimes of deviating from the established narrative. They didn't even have to be guilty to be considered “guilty.” And all it took was a finger pointed at you by a Red Guard, and you became a pariah. You’d be paraded around and humiliated and beaten by the mob. We see the same kind of patterns to a lesser extent today. I think we can all feel it, especially in social media.
So, the weaponization of loneliness has been used in radical Utopian revolutions for a very long time. The methods that I just mentioned – identity politics, political correctness, and mobs—are the same as in the past. And the goal of the machinery of loneliness today are the same as those that were used in the past. The goals are the consolidation of a centralized power and the development of a socially engineered society.
But there are three main differences today. First, the reach is now global. It’s not just confined to a region like Germany, France, Russia, or China. Second, far-reaching communications technologies, are now pushing this whole thing forward very quickly. Third, we don’t see a single dictator as we have in the past, like a Hitler, a Stalin, or Mao. Instead, we today have what I call a hydra-headed beast. We've got these corporate CEOs, big tech, the heads of all these institutions, Hollywood, and more. It permeates so much. All at once. That's what we have to deal with, and it’s a major challenge.
NR: We also have revolutionary new technology that's coming on board, like ChatGPT and surveillance that seems to make today's tyrants more powerful than ever.
SM: Yes, absolutely. Still, there are ways around that, and they know it. For example, they still feel threatened by even one individual who speaks the truth. But these new technologies are frightening to us because they’re meant not only to be around us. They're meant to be within us. And that’s the scary part. Like the horror movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers!
NR: Yes. It’s just like Invasion of the Body Snatchers where the alien mind virus starts by infecting people one by one but soon takes control and spreads rapidly through the local community and then the entire region. So what can we do to defeat them?
SM: We first must build a lot more awareness of what we’re up against, of the weaponization of loneliness. I think people are waking up to it, even as those on the other side are pushing it hard. I fear the new technologies enhance the power of surveillance and allow people to inform on anyone who doesn’t follow the narrative. And that builds the social distrust that destroys the human relationships from which we get our strength to speak.
People also get a lot of inner strength through faith. If you have faith in something beyond all these worldly machinations of the little tyrants all around us, if you have faith in a much greater power, if you have faith in God, if you have faith there is something else to live for, that faith give you a lot of inner strength. It results in strengthening your resolve to speak up, despite the threats.
In fact, that’s why religion has always been targeted by tyrants. Tyrants need to rob people of all their sources of inner strength. They don't want you to feel that you have a relationship with God, especially if they’ve isolated you from family and friends, and everybody else. They need you to feel totally isolated to break your morale.
NR: Religion can give people a great deal of inner strength. Just the other day, I was stunned to hear Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous atheist, state that humanity needs religion “in order to flourish and prosper.” Most tellingly, it was Dawkins’ rejection of harmful gender ideology and the fear people have about speaking out against “transgenderism” that caused him to realize religion’s value even though he remains an atheist.
Unfortunately, some of our most important mainstream religions have been captured by woke ideology.
SM: Yes. We need to understand how dangerous this is. When transgenderism takes over churches and other traditional institutions of faith, that moves this battlefield much closer to all other relationships, closer to taking over the private sphere of life altogether. Once it becomes part of your religion – and, let’s face it, gender ideology is a religion that cannot live in peace with other religions – then it has taken over a big part of your mind.
If we allow the ideology to take over our Faith, it disrupts our relationship with God. It also serves to break down the one-on-one relationship of trust that we might have with our spouse or close friend. The whole idea of friendship is that it gives us someone we can speak to in confidence. And confidence means loyalty, fidelity, and trust. You absolutely need privacy—a private sphere of life – to establish those healthy, trusting relationships.
But with the totalitarian mindset, the only loyalty is to whoever is in charge. We need to be much more aware of that and how that mindset destroys our personal lives, our sense of reality, and our sense of contentment and happiness.
NR: Today, people are discouraged from maintaining relationships with anyone who disagrees with the woke narrative. That message is trumpeted through all the relationship columns in The New York Times and the Washington Post. If your friend doesn’t share your woke political views, you are told to end the friendship.
SM: That is part of the demonization campaigns that go hand in hand with the weaponization of loneliness. The machinery of loneliness demonizes anyone who doesn’t promote the tyrants. By the way, we ought to define the word “tyrant.” It means anyone who tries to control the lives and minds of others.
A tyrant is anyone who pushes to control others. This is especially true when you have a global elite, the Billionaires Club, that feels they have the right to dictate not only what people are allowed to say and what people are allowed to think, but whom you're allowed to talk to. This is so dehumanizing, and needs a lot of pushback.
NR: Some people wonder whether there might be foreign actors involved in promoting this. Do you see any evidence of that? Or do you think that idea has no merit?
SM: Well, I think that whenever there is a hostile actor on the world stage, they’re happy to see any destabilizing influences in their perceived opponent. This has always been the case. I'm sure China is pleased that Americans are falling into this chaos.
The question is to what extent are they behind it? There’s a point beyond which these things take on a life of their own. And today we have the hydra-headed beast with CEOs of major corporations, the entire banking industry, and Hollywood all involved. People who aren’t with the narrative have seen their bank accounts frozen.
There are so many different actors, who may each have their own special interests. The big tech pusher might be invested in the idea of transhumanism. They’d feel that traditional ideas are in the way of their quest for immortality. Corporate CEOs might feel like it's all about their own bottom line. Who knows what set of interests is in the minds of the actors who push all this stuff? But they do have a common outlook. And their outlook is that they know better than we do. They’re in charge. Some of them may even believe this is about the greater good. It's just a whole hash, a whole hydra-headed hash. Certainly there are actors who push for globalism and see it as a means to impose social control on a mass scale. But there isn’t one specific actor.
The totalitarian impulse has been active in human society since ancient times.
If we look at it through a theological lens, Orthodox Christians like me would say that human beings are often tempted to play God. And that’s what we see. The actors who push for social control want to play God.
We don’t have to delve into any “conspiracy theories” because they come right out and say it. Again, Ray Kurzweil openly stated that his quest for immortality is all about becoming God.
NR: Now we have a perfect storm of all these actors and high technology that are working to destabilize society. And it’s not just today’s technology, but all the emerging technologies that will soon be unleashed on us. The other day I learned about a special type of ear pod that was announced during a presentation given at the World Economic Forum. The ear pod is a new, wearable device that allows someone to read a person's thoughts.
SM: that is really, really creepy. And what's even creepier is that they’re not hiding it. Again, it comes right down to trying to play God in some sense. Although the God I believe bestows free will that allows you to express dissent, if you choose to.
But this is a dictator who doesn't allow any choices and wants to read your thoughts. No good human being wants to read the thoughts of everybody else. Of course, we can say to someone, “A penny for your thoughts.” This invasion of privacy is one more way to destroy relationships, the private sphere of life, and any potential for contentment or happiness.
NR: The most fundamental thing about being a human being is the ability to have our own private thoughts. Without our own private thoughts, we don’t have a life. We have nothing.
SM: Oh, absolutely! Let’s consider your point in light of the first amendment of the US Constitution. It’s divided into five individual rights. And remember: Congress shall make no law to abridge them. The first right is called freedom of religion and that includes your freedom of thought, your freedom of conscience. The second right is the freedom to express those thoughts. The third right says you can record those thoughts in various media. The fourth right is your freedom to associate with the people you want to associate with. Finally, you have a right to complain, to petition your grievances against the Government if you feel your rights are violated.
So when you look at the first amendment, in my view, it really is the main protector we have of the private sphere of life, of the right to think your own thoughts, and of course to express them.
[END PART II]
PART I CAN BE READ HERE: https://www.the11thhourblog.com/post/defeating-transgenderism-and-tyranny-a-conversation-with-author-stella-morabito-part-i
PART III COMING SOON
Stella Morabito is a senior contributor at The Federalist. She is author of "The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer." Her essays have appeared in various publications, including the Washington Examiner, American Greatness, Townhall, Public Discourse, and The Human Life Review. In her previous work as an intelligence analyst, Morabito focused on various aspects of Russian and Soviet politics, including communist media and propaganda. She has a Master's degree in Russian and Soviet history.
Nancy Robertson graduated from Barnard College with a BA in psychology and then received a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Stanford University. Nancy is retired and has written articles for WoLF, and Women are Human. She grew up in New York City in the middle of the last century. In 2022, she learned that three daughters of a deceased, old college friend were trying to become men through they/them pronouns, wrong sex hormones, and mutilating surgeries. She realized a strange cult of "transgender" madness had sprung up, infecting the US and much of the world. Nancy began to research and write about the gender industry to stop it.
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