Over the last few days, I have been looking for references which illustrate why so many people, both online and in the real world, appear to exhibit behaviour which is best described as a type of ‘madness.’

This madness, akin to a mass hysteria, usually accompanies any event which captures the public’s attention, and are almost always high-jacked by those who see these events as an opportunity to not only further enhance their status as purveyors of the real ‘truth’; but to basically rinse every penny they can from it.

One doesn’t have to do a whole lot except use a few well placed ‘trigger’ words and phrases, as many people can, in my experience of carefully observing the world (and the people) around me, be steered and ultimately controlled, and will eagerly chase each and every carrot that is dangled before them.

Many of the big noises who exist within the Alternative Media use these tactics.

The mainstream media and the establishment owe their continued existence to it.

The American motormouth Alex Jones and his ‘Prison Planet’ website is a perfect example, as like the majority of ‘Truthers,’ he never fails to emphasize how you, the eager listener or viewer, are ‘enslaved’ and are being spoon fed bullshit on a daily basis by the establishment and the mainstream media, yet never once offers a practical solution.

You need look no further than his apoplectic and wholly inaccurate reporting on the recent Tommy Robinson case, and how he promotes what has been shown to be complete garbage, to see this for yourselves.

Jones, like others of his ilk, will never offer practical solutions, simply because frightened, misinformed and ultimately desperate people – are the source of their revenue streams.

Because if you took some time out to think about it, it will become clear that if solutions are offered by any of these people, their incomes become non-existant.

Spreading fear (particularly online) is a very lucrative business, and these new-age charlatans and digital harbingers of doom have a proven track record of using fear to their advantage.

That being said, what of those who are not making a living out of muck-spreading and disseminating wholly inaccurate information?

What drives them?

What is it that makes what appear (on the surface at least) to be rational, intelligent and level-headed people, like and share widely the output of these agents of mischief, all over their social media pages?

It has become so prevalent at present, that I am currently in the process of ‘pruning’ my Facebook and Twitter contacts to the point where I no longer have to scroll through page upon page of that type of rubbish every time I log on to social media.

The same applies to the ‘Satan Hunters’ and ‘VIP Paedophile Accusers’ and the ‘Satanic Ritual Abuse’ pushers and the purveyors of the #paedobritain and #pizzagate tripe, who more often than not, attach themselves to genuine survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, and are causing complete chaos within credible groups and attack genuine agencies which deal with CSA and Child Protection issues.

What of them?

And why do they so rabidly push these stories, and then proceed to collectively harass and violently threaten anyone who questions them, or confronts them with facts which ultimately destroy their claims?

And before I forget, I did find one reference which may prove helpful …. or not!

‘There are in fact many people who never cease to be small children in their emotional lives. Such individuals need authority figures whom they can idealise and trust unreservedly as they did their idealised parents; but they also need ‘bad’ authority figures, scapegoats on whom they can blame all their misfortunes and whom they can hate and attack with a clear conscience.

Moreoever such individuals tend to identify with the idealised parent-authority and to see themselves, too, as altogether perfect.

In the grip of such fantasies, men (and women) can develop into murderous fanatics. But what dominates the minds of murderous fanatics is to some extent present in the minds of almost everybody. In medieval Europe normal religion was experienced largely in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parental figures.

This is less true in the twenty-first century; but even today, people who have attained a relatively high degree of maturity may, in situations of stress and fear, find themselves using again those infantile emotional mechanisms. Worse still the process can occur on a mass scale. Where there is widespread suffering and above all, a widespread sense of disorientation and impotence, a wholesale regression to infantile modes of thinking and feeling, can occur quite easily.

And when it does, nightmarish fantasies of ‘bad’ parents can still influence the attitude and behaviour of a modern society.’

‘Warrant for Genocide’, A Case-Study in Collective Psychopathology – Norman Cohn 1966