Totalitarianism and the Covid Cult

Part 3 - Religion

The previous instalment of this series hinted at the quasi-religious aspect of cults with its references to doctrine, inculcation of unquestioning belief, and an ultimate moral vision for ordering human existence.

This part delves deeper into the religious aspect of the Covid cult.

---

Totalitarianism and Political Religion

Once more, there are continuities with totalitarianism. A well-established academic literature exists, for instance, on totalitarianism as “political religion,” i.e.,

a bastardized derivative of traditional religion that seeks to motivate absolute adherence to a secular cause among its followers by borrowing the language, concepts, and mythology of traditional religion and twisting them for its own ends. (Hughes, 2013, p. 354)

The Nazi sympathizer Carl Schmitt wrote in his book Political Theology (1922) that “All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts” (Schmitt, 2005, p. 36). The idea of an omnipotent God, he argued, had been recast as that of the sovereign lawgiver (as per Descartes’ claim that “It is God who established these laws in nature just as a king establishes laws in his kingdom”).

However, whereas Enlightenment rationalism saw the sovereign as presiding over the law, rather than intervening in it, Schmitt (2005, pp. 41, 47) argued that the legal order could be suspended by an act of sovereign decision — as happened to the Weimar Constitution in 1933. The leader of a totalitarian society (the Führer in Nazi Germany) thus assumed an omnipotent, god-like status, not only standing above the law, but capable of acting outside of it.

Early Nazi circles were influenced by Theosophy, Ariosophy, and the Thule Society, whose swastika emblem they adopted.

Himmler’s SS was permeated by occultism, viz. the use of runes in its symbol, pagan rituals, mythic imagery (including the black sun), ancestor-worship, timing of important events to coincide with the solstices, astrology (including “cosmic ice theory”), and the styling of the organisation as a modern knightly order. With its “Death’s Head” emblem and its treatment of fallen members as martyrs who joined mythic ancestors, the SS was a death cult.

Yet, Nazi policy as a whole was hostile to occult organisations. Freemasonry, the Theosophical Society, the Anthroposophical Society, and the Mazdaznan movement were all banned in 1935.

Therefore, contrary to simplistic postwar attempts to blame the Nazi past on a demonic Hitler and “Nazi occultism” — which spawned a large body of sensationalist literature and documentary films (Goodrick-Clarke, 1992) — National Socialism was not, fundamentally, about occultism (notwithstanding its Aryan race mythology and paramilitary death cult).

Rather, National Socialism in this context was about inventing a pseudo-religious identity to replace Christianity (cf. Koonz, 2003, p. 143). A blend of Germanic mythology, Romantic nationalism, occult pseudoscience, and racial ideology served to sacralise National Socialism, replacing Christianity with a cult of race, blood, and destiny, to which total allegiance and self-sacrifice was owed.

The Covid Cult’s Subversion of Christianity

The Covid cult similarly served as a secular subversion of Christianity, as was not lost on observers at the time. According to pathologist Claire Craig (2022), for instance,

Since spring 2020 we have seen the birth of a new religion. A religion that has its own:

• chosen prophets ([Imperial College, London, Professor] Neil Ferguson),

• anointed priests ([Chief Medical Officer Chris] Whitty and [Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick] Vallance),

• evangelical sermons ([Downing Street] press briefings),

• ritualistic practices (mask theatre, elbow bumping),

• blasphemers (“anti-vaxxers”),

• sacred texts ([government] guidance), and of course

• heretics (anyone questioning the data of the narrative).

Craig went on to list what she called “the 10 Covid Commandments.”

Simon Elmer (2021) observed that the idea that “we are born into a defective biological state of which it is the right and duty of the state to cure us, reveals, if nothing else, the religious basis to the UK biosecurity state.” Thus, Original Sin was replaced by asymptomatic carriage. Priests were replaced by Big Pharma salesmen. Dog collars were replaced by stethoscopes. Fear of divine retribution was replaced by fear of the virus. Religious fundamentalism was replaced by “biopolitical fundamentalism.”

The following Covid-related take on the Lord’s Prayer appeared anonymously online:

Our Pharma who art in Heaven

Hallowed be thy vein

Thy 4th jab come

Blair’s will be done

In Blighty as in Israel

Give us this day our daily jab

And condemn our decliners

As I too condemn them

For the NWO is the Kingdom

The Power and the Glory

Tongue-in-cheek it may be, but it, too, captures the Covid cult’s subversion of Christianity.

Cultic Celebration

In a “totalist” (cult) environment, Lifton (1989, p. 434) observes, “Existence comes to depend upon creed (I believe, therefore I am), upon submission (I obey, therefore I am) and beyond these, upon a sense of total merger with the ideological movement.”

Similar was true of the Covid cult with its quasi-religious qualities. The late Graeme MacQueen (2021), for instance, offered a tongue-in-cheek “Covidian Creed”:

I believe in Covid-19, the Danger Almighty,

Terror of heaven and earth.

I believe in The Vaccine, his only Son, our Lord.

I believe in the World Economic Forum,

the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,

the World Health Organization,

the digitizing of loneliness,

the covering of our faces,

and the lockdown everlasting.

Amen.

The Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben (2020), recognised that the Covid cult was all-pervasive, demanding total submission: “the whole life of human beings must become the place of an uninterrupted cultic celebration. The enemy, the virus, is always present and must be fought unceasingly and without any possible truce.”

The idea of “cultic celebration” here has something in common with Lifton’s (1989, p. 411) description of Chinese brainwashing as “a cult of enthusiasm (enthusiasm in the religious meaning of rapturous and excessive emotional experience), with a demand for total self-surrender.” “Celebration” and “enthusiasm” are about giving oneself entirely to the cult.

All aspects of human life had to be subordinated to the “Covid-19” cult. As the Canadian philosopher David Cayley (2020) remarked, “Medicine’s cult is now total because it can prescribe every gesture we are to make and proscribe the practices of competing cults.”

For example, wedding ceremonies and funeral rites were corrupted by new cult practices that were rendered “normatively obligatory” (Agamben, 2020). Hand sanitizer replaced holy water as a ritualistic marker of attention to the difference between the inside and the outside (Pageau, 2020), and handwringing has connotations of guilt/sin. Standing apart from one another, wearing masks, and bumping elbows became ritualistic forms of antisocial behaviour that replaced “rituals that are inherent to our human condition — handshakes, hugs, kisses and many others” (Schwab & Malleret, 2020, p. 159).

Belief in the Ineffable

In cults, doctrine is “the one and only truth: [...] it encompasses everything”; it is, therefore, to be “accepted, not understood,” and the adherent is instructed to “try to work harder and have more faith so he will come to understand the truth more clearly,” even though that goal is unattainable (Hassan, 1990, p. 79).

The Science™ works in much the same way: it is to be accepted as an article of faith, even if it is not understood, as per the mantra, “trust the science.” To quote a Forbes headline from July 2020, “You must not ‘do your own research’ when it comes to Science” (Siegel, 2020).

Instead, the people should trust the scientific priest class of “experts,” much as the medieval priest class claimed religious authority by being able to read Latin Scripture before the Bible was translated into the vernacular.

Even though they could not clearly define God, medieval theologians still laid down rules in His name for others to live by. Similarly, although the World Health Organisation (2020, p. 4) noted that “Many aspects of the virus and disease are still not understood,” and even though WHO officials claimed to be constantly learning about the virus (Mendez & Towey, 2021), they and government officials prescribed rules for how the public had to live under threat of “Covid-19.”

The virus acquired a kind of magical, unknowable quality, keeping people frightened of a threat that could never be fully understood. “We must be humble in the face of this virus” was a phrase used repeatedly by ministers, as though it were some kind of malevolent deity (“COVID-19: ‘Come forward and get your jab,’” 2021; George, 2021).

Unverifiable Cult Doctrine

According to Eric Hoffer, the most effective cult doctrines are “unverifiable and unevaluable” (cited in Hassan, 1990, p. 79). They are “so convoluted that it would take years of effort to untangle them,” and cult members are steered away from doing so in favour of more practical activities, such as fundraising and recruiting (Hassan, 1990, p. 79).

By the same token, virology is an ideal form in which to present a cult doctrine, because so few people have any real understanding of it. Some commentators have called the entire field into question, comparing it to a form of superstition (Cowan & Morell, 2020).

“SARS-Cov-2” was presented in a highly convoluted manner. In a typical influenza season, people simply talk about “the flu.” In contrast, “SARS-CoV-2” mutated into Kent, South African, Brazilian, and Indian variants. Geography was then replaced by Greek letters as the variants became Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. But those were just WHO “variants of concern.” There were also “variants of interest”: Eta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, and Mu, not to mention “former variants of interests”: Epsilon, Zeta, and Theta. It was impossible — by design — for any ordinary member of the public to be able to make sense of all this. Trust instead had to be placed in the scientific priest class.

The Science™ as Religion

A cult must maintain “an aura of sacredness around its basic dogma,” which represents a “blend of counterfeit science and back-door religion” designed to prevent cult members from gaining the knowledge and experience necessary for genuine self-expression and for personal development (Lifton, 1989, pp. 427-429).

Today, scientism — the unverifiable and therefore unscientific belief that science can provide solutions to all problems — serves as such a dogma. As Wood (2018, p. 138) notes, “Technocracy subsumes Scientism as a religion where technocrats represent the priesthood that worships the god of Science and Technology.” Scientism is, moreover, “hostile toward Christianity and pointedly rejects the Bible as truth.”

In the “Covid-19” context, Agamben (2021, p. 45) noted that “Science has become the religion of our time.” He thus referred to the “new religion of health,” “the medical religion,” and “medicine-as-religion” (Agamben, 2021, pp. 9, 52, 64). This blending of pseudoscience and ersatz religion is the hallmark of a cult.

Face masks served as what Hertzberg (2021) called “a religious symbol of virtuosity of a fanatical cult of irrational beliefs that has completely forsaken [rational] thinking for the cult members (like lone drivers wearing masks in their cars).” There never was a sound scientific rationale for mask mandates (Hughes, 2024, pp. 134-138), yet belief in The Science™ left many people slavishly devoted to the grotesque gag that covered their airways and obscured expression of their personal identity.

The “Vaccine” Cult

US talk show host Sean Hannity told the public what to think: “I believe in science. I believe in The Science™ of vaccination” (“Sean Hannity, ‘I believe in Science,’” 2021).

Iain Davis, building on his earlier work on “vaccines” in the context of the Andrew Wakefield case (Davis, 2019), observed in July 2020 that a Covid “vaccine cult” was forming. For those in the vaccine cult, he wrote,

a restricted, officially approved, tranche of medical science has transcended into the puritanical certainty of ‘scientism.’ All that is required is an announcement, from their priests and priestesses in white coats, for the anti-rationalist to obey without hesitation. (Davis, 2020)

A fitting emblem of the Covid cult’s reverence for white coats was the unveiling of a giant statue of a doctor apparently engaged in, or inviting, some form of religious devotion (Riga, Latvia, January 2022).

Neuroscience professor Chris Shaw (2021, p. 272) reflects on his professional experiences in a chapter titled “Vaccine Ideology and Religion.” “The whole subject of vaccinology and the application of this to medicine,” he writes, “was very much like a religion, or worse a cult [...] in that one had to accept all of the catechism or be cast out.” Shaw’s research into harmful adjuvants put him on the “path to excommunication.”

In the Covid cult, dissent appeared as blasphemy, critical thinking as heresy, and those who sought to hold power to account were cast as “sinners who must be shunned and excommunicated” (Broudy & Kyrie, 2022).

UN Secretary-General António Guterres (2020), in a speech about “misinformation,” claimed “The vaccine is trust.” Indeed, it was entirely an act of faith to imagine that a product developed in only nine months, with only a few months’ data from clinical trials, would be suitable for everyone and would not cause immediate or long-term harm.

Demonstrating an irrational willingness to risk one’s own health, potentially one’s life (and possibly also the life and health of future offspring) to signal loyalty to the Covid cult and its insane anti-human practices was the ultimate baptismal rite. Yet, billions of people took the shots.

In the UK, churches and mosques became “vaccination” centres — spectacularly, in the case of Salisbury Cathedral (Sherwood, 2020; Gant, 2021; “Birmingham mosque becomes UK’s first to offer Covid vaccine,” 2021; Shoker, 2021).

Salisbury Cathedral as a “vaccination” centre. Source: Daily Mail.

Pope Francis referred to getting “vaccinated,” first as “an act of love” and then as a “moral obligation” (Watkins, 2021; Winfield, 2022). He apparently forget that his namesake, St. Francis, embraced lepers and that visiting the sick is a work of mercy (Agamben, 2021, p. 36).

The Archbishop of Canterbury advised people “to love one another — as Jesus said — get vaccinated, get boosted […] Loving our neighbour is what Jesus told us to do. It’s Christmas: do what he said” (cited in Newman & Wright, 2021, cf. William, 2021). The echoes of NIH Director Anthony Fauci’s infantilising instruction to “Do what you’re told” (cited in Farr, 2020) are undeniable.

These grotesque pronouncements by two of the most senior figures in all of Christendom demonstrate that the vaccine cult was, at the time, more powerful than institutionalised Christianity — a sign of deep spiritual malaise.

When Rio de Janeiro’s famous landmark, Christ the Redeemer, was illuminated with the words “VACCINE SAVES” in May 2021 (“Christ the Redeemer lit up with vaccine message,” 2021), the Covid cult’s subversion of Christianity could not have been more blatant.

Source: Reuters.

A Death Cult

There was something satanic about the Covid cult’s appropriation of salvation messaging (“save lives”) while everywhere spreading fear, terror, loneliness, despair, and death.

Harradine (2020) referred to the Covid cult as a “doomsday cult,” noting that “Masks generate fear and help keep the cultish behaviour going. [...] Defeating the virus is the impossible aim that keeps the cult leaders in business.” For Dymond (2020), “some malign necromancy” (i.e., various forms of psychological programming) had turned previously well-adjusted people into “the crazed adherents of some apocalyptic cult.”

The Covid cult was, in the final analysis, a death cult, as reflected in the daily death reporting, the obsession with death and disease, and the millions of deaths caused by the “measures” (including the injections), which were duplicitously rolled out in the name of “protecting” the public.

As Hopkins (2021) opined, “What you’re looking at is the pathologization of society, the pathologization of everyday life, the physical (social) manifestation of a morbid obsession with disease and death.”

Martin Geddes observed that “It feels as though the masses are involved in a medical death cult right now, and it’s awfully painful to watch” (Good Vibrations Podcast 210, 2021, 26:23).

On February 15, 2021, UK Column reported on the unnecessarily elaborate staging by the BBC below when interviewing Bill Gates:

This is the Natural History Museum in London. It is dark outside, and the lighting creates an almost cathedral-like background, a temple of science. The interviewer is positioned in line with the jaws of death and pales in significance compared to the much larger Gates. The subliminal message is that death will come for “insignificant ‘man’” unless the “Saviour’s” words are heeded.

The death cult was not peculiar to the West. In China’s Qingming Festival, for instance, paper vaccines and masks were offered to the dead to help fight “Covid-19” in the afterlife (Yip, 2022).

Forgiveness

When subverting Christian principles, cult leaders’ power is “nowhere more evident than in their capacity to ‘forgive’” (Lifton, 1989, p. 424). This, in turn, requires the ability to persuade cult members that they are in some way “sinful.”

The “asymptomatic transmission” narrative in 2020/21 rendered all human beings as potential vectors of disease, and atonement was to be sought through “vaccination.” As Broudy and Kyrie (2022) put it, “practicing the rite of receiving a piercing puncture and risking a life-altering injury atone[d] for the original sin of an unclean, diseased, infectious bodily state.”

With 2025 being a Catholic Jubilee year, one wonders if some new form of forgiveness is in the offing. For example, one means of bringing to an end the unsustainable debt-based fiat currency system would be to manufacture a global financial crisis that only ends with the forgiveness of all debt in exchange for the public’s consent to transitioning to an asset-based technocracy in which all financial transactions are digitally monitored.

At that point, the global cult leaders would have complete, and potentially irreversible, control.

References

Agamben, G. (2020, May 2). Medicine as religion. An und für sich. https://itself.blog/2020/05/02/giorgio-agamben-medicine-as-religion/.

Agamben, G. (2021). Where are we now? The epidemic as politics. Rowman & Littlefield

Birmingham mosque becomes UK’s first to offer Covid vaccine. (2021, January 21). BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-55752056.

Broudy, D, & Kyrie, V. (2022, July 5). The serpent and the staff: Symbols of safety and security in the propaganda of a global medical tyranny.” Propaganda in Focus. https://propagandainfocus.com/the-serpent-and-the-staff-symbols-of-safety-and-security-in-the-propaganda-of-a-global-medical-tyranny/.

Cayley, D. (2020). Pandemic revelations. International Journal of Illich Studies, 7 (1), 22–69. https://journals.psu.edu/illichstudies/article/view/62314.

Christ the Redeemer lit up with vaccine message. (2021). Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/idOVED7US0X/.

COVID-19: “Come forward and get your jab” — Indian variant fears spark fresh vaccine take up calls. (2021, May 18). Sky News. https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-come-forward-and-get-your-jab-indian-variant-fears-spark-fresh-vaccine-take-up-calls-12309651.

Cowan, T., & Morrell, S. (2020). The Contagion Myth. Why Viruses (including “Coronavirus”) Are Not The Cause of Disease. Skyhorse Publishing.

Craig, C. (2022, March 8). As we leave Cloud-Covid Land, perhaps people will start to see the craziness of what they were asked to believe [Tweet]. X. https://x.com/ClareCraigPath/status/1501105299511558147.

Davis, I. (2019, May 6). The evisceration of Dr. Andrew Wakefield. https://iaindavis.com/wakefield/.

Davis, I. (2020, July 22). We must inoculate ourselves against the crazy anti-rationalists. https://iaindavis.com/anti-rationalist/.

Dymond, G. (2020, December 13). Why this campaign of terror? OffGuardian. https://off-guardian.org/2020/12/13/why-this-campaign-of-terror/.

Elmer, S. (2021, January 8). Our default state: Compulsory vaccination for COVID-19 and human rights law. Architects For Social Housing. https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2021/01/08/our-default-state-compulsory-vaccination-for-covid-19-and-human-rights-law/.

Farr, C. (2020, November 12). Fauci says U.S. has “independent spirit,” but now is the time to “do what you’re told.” CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/ 2020/11/12/fauci-says-us-has-independent-spirit-but-now-is-the-time-todo-what-youre-told.html.

Gant, J. (2021, January 20). Queues in the pews: Salisbury Cathedral is turned into a mass coronavirus vaccination hub as jab drive continues amid concern at slowdown in rollout. Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9167803/Salisbury-Cathedral-turned-mass-coronavirus-vaccination-hub.html.

George, R. (2021). Working from home to return as Prime Minister unveils Covid ‘Plan B.’ Evesham Observer. https://www.eveshamobserver.co.uk/news/working-from-home-to-return-as-prime-minister-unveils-covid-plan-b/.

Goodrick-Clarke, N. (1992). The occult roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan cults and their influence on Nazi ideology. New York University Press.

Good Vibrations Podcast, Vol. 210, Martin Geddes [Video]. (2021). Odysee. https://odysee.com/@davidahughes:6/Martin-Geddes-on-Good-Vibrations.

Guterres, A. (2020, April 15). Message by António Guterres on COVID-19 and Misinformation. United Nations Indonesia. https://indonesia.un.org/en/92948-message-antonio-guterres-covid-19-and-misinformation.

Harradine, K. (2020, October 23). Why so many believe in the Covid cult. TCW. https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/why-so-many-believe-in-the-covid-cult/.

Hassan, S. (1990). Combatting cult mind control. Park Street Press.

Hopkins, C.J. (2021, April 21). The Covidian Cult (Part II). Consent Factory, Inc. https://consentfactory.org/2021/04/21/the-covidian-cult-part-ii/.

Hughes, D. A. (2013). Liberal warfare: A crusade twice removed. International Studies Review, 15, 351–373. https://doi.org/10.1111/misr.12062.

Koonz, C. (2003). The Nazi conscience. Harvard University Press.

Lifton, R. (1989). Thought reform and the psychology of totalism (2nd Ed.). University of North Carolina Press.

MacQueen, G. (2021). Covidian creed. Global Research. https://www.globalresearch.ca/covidian-creed/5749185.

Mendez, R. & Towey, R. (2021, July 30). WHO officials try to figure out why delta is so much more dangerous than earlier Covid strains. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/30/who-officials-try-to-figure-out-why-delta-is-so-much-dangerous-than-earlier-covid-strains.html.

Newman, J., & Wright, J. (2021, December 22). Jesus would get a vaccine, Archbishop of Canterbury suggests as he says getting the jab is “not about me and my rights to choose—it’s about how I love my neighbour.” Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10334569/Archbishop-Canterbury -says-unvaccinated-immoral-love-neighbour.html.

Pageau, J. (2020, August 7). Masks as veils. The Symbolic World. https://thesymbolicworld.com/videos/masks-as-veils/.

Schmitt, C. (2005) Political theology: Four chapters on the concept of sovereignty, (Trans. G. Schwab). University of Chicago Press.

Schwab, K., & Malleret, T. (2020). COVID-19: The Great Reset. World Economic Forum.

Shaw, C. (2021). Dispatches from the vaccine wars. Fighting for human freedom during the Great Reset. Skyhorse Publishing.

Sherwood, H. (2020, December 12). Church of England gives space for Covid vaccination and testing for up to a year. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/12/church-of-england-gives-space-for-covid-vaccination-and-testing-for-up-to-a-year.

Shoker, S. (2021, April 15). Covid: “Getting the vaccine in Ramadan helps others.” BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-derbyshire-56715038.

Siegel, E. (2020, July 30). You must not ‘do your own research’ when it comes to science. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/07/30/you-must-not-do-your-own-research-when-it-comes-to-science/?sh=7893a15f535e.

Watkins, D. (2021, August 18). Pope Francis urges people to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Vatican News. https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2021-08/pope-francis-appeal-covid-19-vaccines-act-of-love.html.

William, H. (2021, December 21). Getting Covid-19 jab is a moral issue, Archbishop of Canterbury says. The Independent. https://www.the-independent.com/news/health/justin-welby-archbishop-canterbury-vaccine-moral-b1980400.html.

Winfield, N. (2022, January 10). Pope on COVID vaccines says health care a “moral obligation.” AP. https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-pope-francis-health-religion-093068b2ca50eb1680f8c440cff1fd18.

Wood, P. (2018). Technocracy. The hard road to world order. Coherent Publishing.

World Health Organization. (2020, March 2). Laboratory testing for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in suspected human cases. Interim Guidance. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331329/WHO-COVID-19-laboratory-2020.4-eng.pdf.

Yip, W. (2022, April 5). Battling Covid even in the afterlife — paper vaccines and masks are being offered to the dead during the Qingming ‘tomb sweeping’ festival. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/qingming-battling-covid-in-the-afterlife-with-paper-vaccines-masks-2022-4.