Bernard L'Hermite: "How did we get here?" Part One: Setting the Stage

June 2021, updated August 2021

Many people are beginning to see that the year 2020, and specifically what has come to be known as the Covid-19 pandemic, was a watershed in the history of humankind. What brought us to this point? The intention of this article is to bring together elements from various sources to craft a more or less coherent and comprehensive account of the different tendencies and actions that have led us to the current situation. Naturally each one, taken on its own, could be refined and criticized; it is the cumulative effect that is important to grasp. If we understand how we got here, we can more easily see what can and should be done.

Background Influences: A New Religion

History knows no absolute beginning. For our purposes, we can begin with the change in mentality from the medieval to the modern era. This involved the shift from a God-centered to a human-centered worldview, from the notion of an organized cosmos ruled by divine providence to an open universe where human beings were not necessarily at home. Spiritual concerns were replaced by material ones. The scientific revolution played a key role in this shift. In addition to its great achievements and the sense of liberation it fostered, it engendered a new form of fear, not of divine wrath, but one summed up in the words of the seventeenth-century mathematician Blaise Pascal: “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.” The contemporary world has inherited both of these characteristics, on the one hand an exaggerated confidence in the work of human hands (which the ancients would have called hubris), and a feeling of homelessness in a universe which is at best indifferent and more likely hostile to human advancement.

The rise of science was paralleled by the gradual shift from a feudal to a capitalist economic system. This seemed at first to make a new equality possible, since hereditary privileges were leveled by the rule of money. But in fact new elites quickly arose, based not on blood or on divine right but on ingenuity and the ability to compete well, often to the point of ruthlessness, in a kind of “survival of the fittest.” Science and economics came together in the development of technology, whereby the discoveries of research were exploited to change the face of the earth and make life more secure and comfortable, at least for those for whom they benefited.

The new scientific and technological establishment created a class of “experts” who replaced the priests of the old regime. These new clerics offered salvation just as their predecessors did, albeit a this-worldly one, and there was the same price to pay: a blind confidence in them, since they possessed a monopoly of knowledge. The average layman or laywoman was incapable of understanding their deliberations and so had to take them on faith.

In short, a new creed was slowly arising from the ashes of the old religions. Some of its basic tenets can be summed up in this way:

• Rather than being the creation of a benevolent deity, the universe is an

autonomous reality which is indifferent to human beings and thus implicitly hostile. On the one hand it is viewed as a deposit of raw materials that human beings can and should pillage and transform as they wish, on the other it contains perils, such as diseases and natural disasters, from which we have to defend ourselves.

• Reality is determined not by the tenets of religion, nor by personal feelings and desires; it is what can be measured and expressed in numbers and equations (the so-called Galilean reduction). Science infallibly reveals to us the truth of beings and things.
• The main instrument to accomplish the transformation of the earth and to defend ourselves against perils is applied science, or technology. Technology gives us mastery over the universe and so promises us a life which is safer and more comfortable.
• In the field of technology, despite temporary delays and obstacles, constant progress is the norm. By means of science and technology, humanity will find solutions to all the problems posed by the recalcitrant character of reality. In any event, it is up to us alone to defend ourselves; otherwise we will perish, since life is a constant struggle for survival.

This new faith arguably provided the theoretical underpinnings for the present crisis.

A Case in Point: Germ Theory

It is natural for human beings to be concerned about their physical well-being. This is particularly true when any notion of a life after death has become largely irrelevant. So it stood to reason that people would expect modern miracles from scientists working in the field of health. It is hard to deny that certain impressive discoveries in biology and medicine fueled these expectations. Today many once-fatal diseases can be easily cured, and previously crippling conditions are alleviated by relatively simple surgical procedures. People live longer today and are generally healthier than their ancestors, although it must be added that the contemporary world has created new disorders of its own. We can mention widespread obesity, clinical depression, and more recently autism and auto- immune diseases as examples that beset our affluent societies.

For our topic, a key episode in the development of modern medicine is the germ theory of disease, linked unavoidably to the name of the French scientist Louis Pasteur (1822- 1895). This theory affirms that most diseases are caused by organisms invisible to the naked eye, which invade the human body and cause harm. The body defends itself against these microorganisms by producing antibodies, which wage war against them. By the process of vaccination, injecting people with a weaker variant of the disease, the body is led to produce these antibodies without suffering all the consequences of the disease itself.

A complete investigation and critique of the germ theory would take us far beyond the limits of this paper. Suffice it to say that its basic premises made a good fit with the mentality of the day: illness as an attack from without by an invisible but potent enemy; the importance of defending one’s borders under the implicit assumption that the interior of a healthy individual is sterile; the real possibility of always finding a single “magic bullet,” usually a vaccination, to eradicate the disease. The entire theory, in fact, is rooted in metaphors of war and battle. And the lucky scientist who finds the cure is seen as a hero, a modern demigod similar to those encountered in the myths of old. This narrative is expressed in classical form in Paul De Kruif’s work, Microbe Hunters, first published in 1926 and still in print almost a century later. The book arguably has caused many individuals to dedicate their lives to biological research.

This congruence between the mentality of the time and the prestige of researchers such as Pasteur caused the germ theory to take hold rapidly. It is still part of biomedical orthodoxy today, though increasingly disputed in favor of a more holistic approach to health. Pasteur’s own role has been severely criticized: his overweening ambition led him to falsify his own findings and to plagiarize many discoveries made by others.[1] His “original sin” has cast its shadow over the entire history of bacteriology and, later on, virology.

In Pasteur’s day, the invention of the microscope made it possible to view the microbes, known as bacteria, believed to be responsible for many illnesses. When these illnesses declined in importance, due mainly to improved sanitation and diet, and other diseases arose where no bacteria were present, biologists hypothesized that they were caused by even smaller organisms, which they called viruses. The invention of the electron microscope enabled smaller units of genetic material to be found in cell cultures, and this seemed to confirm the theory. Viruses, defined as bits of genetic material surrounded by a protein, can scarcely be considered to be living organisms wishing to attack anyone, but the martial images were so deeply rooted in the mindset not just of ordinary people but of scientists too, that to call this into question was unthinkable.

Today, virology is a multi-billion-dollar concern, and that leads us to our next point.

The Biomedical Industry

If there is a place where science, technology and the economics of profit and consumption come together in a mutually reinforcing way, it is surely the biomedical industry, notably what has come to be called Big Pharma. Producing medications and getting them to patients, usually but not always with physicians as intermediaries, has been important for a long time. In the old days most remedies were natural or homemade, but there were always individuals out to make a buck by hawking “patent medicines,” the value of which were usually limited to what is now called the placebo effect. In fact, convincing people that taking a particular medication will lead to a cure has always been a fertile field for quackery and manipulation and, in a capitalist system, a sure source of profits.

One can assume that many medications in use today and developed scientifically serve their purpose of reducing pain and other symptoms of ill-health. But since the pharmaceutical companies also need to maximize their profits, in a consumer society they are inevitably led to follow the logic of other industries: creating and reinforcing new needs through advertising, assuring a loyal following by vast public-relation campaigns targeting medical professionals, manipulating the scientific studies to enhance the value of their products and to camouflage their blunders. This began a long time ago: the son of a snake-oil salesman, John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) extolled the benefits of medicines made from petrochemicals and waged a successful campaign against traditional and herbal remedies, transforming the entire medical establishment in the process. The fact that a petroleum tycoon set himself up as a health expert can legitimately awaken suspicions of ulterior motives. The same thing can be said today of his successors, the hi- tech magnates.

The development and production of vaccines has always been a particularly important cash cow for Big Pharma. Since they are not meant for those already ill but as a means of warding off disease the potential list of clients is vast, in many cases comprising the entire population. And because of their relationships to epidemics and to defense, they have often benefited by legal immunity from liability for harmful side-effects. In fact, a serious case can be made that the benefits of vaccines are extremely exaggerated, and indeed are far outweighed by the dangers.[2] In addition, a standard history on the subject states that “military research programs throughout history have made significant contributions to medicine and, in particular, to vaccine development. These efforts have been driven primarily by the effects of infectious disease on military conflicts.”[3] And, one might add, by the fear of germ warfare in which, as in other areas such as nuclear weapons, defense imperceptibly shades over into deterrence.

The increasing sophistication of modern biology and medicine means that it has become an exorbitantly costly endeavor. We have left far behind the era in which a self-taught inventor in a homemade lab could make important discoveries on his or her own. “Probably the most important scientific development of the twentieth century is that economics replaced curiosity as the driving force behind research.”[4] In our day funding is all-important: those who control the purse-strings determine the direction of biomedical research, the priorities and often the results, by suppressing any studies that do not support their agenda. True creativity is increasingly funneled into channels acceptable to those who control the field.[5]

Recent Trends

With all this as a background, let us now enumerate some more recent trends that also play a role in the current situation.

Economic collapse. The increasing financialization of the economy and the outsourcing of productive jobs to countries with lower costs and wages has generated a trade deficit and a corresponding explosion of debt. This has led to a series of economic crises, in essence artificially created bubbles which then inevitably burst, the last major one being in 2008. The only solution offered by the financial elites has been so-called quantitative easing, in other words printing more virtual money which immediately is sucked back into the financial sector to keep the wheels turning in a vast Ponzi scheme. It is an open question how long such an unreal system can last before it explodes, but in the meantime it has led to an unprecedented level of inequality in income distribution, whereby a tiny elite controls more and more wealth and resources, plunging the vast majority of the population into hardship, while the middle class is rapidly being eliminated.

The breakdown of politics. If politics in a democracy is defined as the process by which different social groups can work together peacefully for the common good of the nation by means of such things as free and fair elections, public debate and compromise, then it should be clear that nothing even remotely like that exists any more, if it ever did in the real world. Political theater continues, resembling more and more a war of all against all, while in fact the rich and powerful inevitably exert a determinative influence from behind the curtain. The mere costs of running for office ensure that office-holders are either extremely wealthy themselves or beholden to their patrons. The decisions that matter are taken behind the scenes in what has come to be called the deep state, even if sometimes they are rubber-stamped by votes in Congress or Parliament. Fragmentation and polarization are the order of the day: identity politics and the woke ideology on the one hand, and retrograde chauvinism on the other, ensure that the mass of the population are divided and set against one another on the basis of race and gender, thus nipping in the bud any widespread organized resistance to the current state of affairs.

Propaganda and censorship. Authentic journalism, which used to be known as the Fourth Estate, has traditionally been supposed to exercise a watchdog effect upon society by reporting the news with accuracy, independence, integrity and accountability. The fact that today the mainstream media is almost entirely in the hands of the economic elite means that such critical journalism is no longer a reality. The mainstream media has become little more than a mouthpiece for the agenda of the elite, generating predictable reactions in the public by the choice of news stories and the way they are presented. The internet has thankfully made possible alternative sources of news, but recently a insidious form of censorship has become widespread, exercised not directly by the government but by the largest social media platforms, which are, not surprisingly, in the hands of the same elite that controls the mass media.

The rise of the surveillance state. Modern technology makes possible forms of control that dictators of the past would have greatly envied. These forms of control are as efficacious as they are subtle. Since to live as part of society today one is inevitably connected to the worldwide information network through one’s computer, smartphone, smart TV, and similar devices, it is child’s play for governments and corporations to monitor the choices and behavior of citizens. A space of personal freedom, where one is free from prying eyes and ears, is increasingly a thing of the past.

The Mega-event

Society is in constant motion. The privileged classes must maintain and even increase their wealth, power and influence if they are not to lose them. This occurs by means of conscious decisions as well as by the action of institutions that blindly follow their pre- progammed routines. It is not necessary, incidentally, to assume evil intentions on the part of those who strive to intensify their hegemony. They may and often do sincerely believe that their actions are beneficial to society as a whole as they conceive it. Indeed, if they are convinced of their own rightness it is easier for them to achieve their aims, since they are not inhibited by residual guilt feelings.

Although the expansion of power by the elites is most often a gradual process that takes place in a multitude of ways, at times it is the result of conscious planning. One does not have to speak of a conspiracy, that much-maligned word, to see it as natural that the so- called leaders of society, the rich and powerful, periodically meet to reflect on the evolution of the world and to find ways of dealing with potential setbacks and crises. A host of international institutions regularly bring together global leaders and experts for this purpose, often quite openly: the World Economic Forum, the Bilderberg group, the World Health Organization, and so on. It is not always recognized, however, to what extent such planning helps to determine the actual course of events, since expectations are created which cry out to be satisfied in what becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If society becomes convinced that over the next decade the number of, say, Asian immigrants incarcerated for criminal behavior will greatly increase, police will be more attentive to crime by Asians and so many more of them are likely to be sent to prison.

All of this gives rise to what we can call an Event. An Event is a large-scale disturbance, a crisis which calls for a radical and long-lasting response involving different sectors of society—economic, governmental, scientific, technological, and so on. By its nature it thus transforms society, since nothing will be the same afterwards. An Event begins with a Trigger, which may be momentous or, more likely, rather unimportant when taken in itself. For example, World War I, the first major Event of the twentieth century, began with the assassination of an Austrian archduke in Sarajevo by a Yugoslav nationalist.

As soon as the Trigger has occurred, a Narrative begins to be shaped by the official organs of government in collusion with the mass media. Ostensibly the Narrative exists to explain what has happened, but on a deeper level it creates the Event by setting the Trigger in the context of other things that are happening or are presumably going to happen. It exploits the emotions of the public and seeks to direct them in the appropriate direction. Thus the Narrative generally awakens anxiety and pernicious uncertainty in the population, that fear of death and destruction which always lies just below the surface in our world, while at the same time it gives people the feeling of security that the experts are in control of things and, if their instructions are followed, all will be well. So finally, the Narrative leads to a Praxis, a series of things that must be done. Again, this is ostensibly to ward off the dangers of the Event, but in fact their import is largely symbolic: they play the same role as a fetish in so-called primitive religions, defined by the dictionary as “an object believed to have magical powers to protect or aid its owner.” In addition, they create a community of the like-minded, something akin to the true believers in a cult, and by so doing they exclude and stigmatize the recalcitrant.

Two recent Events in our time were the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and, more consequentially, what has been known as 911. The first was triggered, characteristically, by a seemingly minor discovery: five men in Los Angeles, active homosexuals, were found to have problems with their immune system. The virus hunters went on the warpath and the five men were viewed as a “cluster” indicating a new and dangerous pathogen. A likely candidate was eventually found and baptized HIV. Large numbers of people, primarily but not exclusively gay, who fell ill and died of many different diseases, were pronounced AIDS victims and tests were quickly developed to identify the virus. No successful vaccine was ever found, but a host of treatments were tried, including some, such as AZT, which were extremely toxic and even lethal. The Wikipedia article on AIDS states: “After the HIV/AIDS outbreak in the 1980s, various responses emerged in an effort to alleviate the issue. These included new medical treatments, travel restrictions, and new public health policies in the United States.”[6] Sound familiar? Despite widespread fears, however, the epidemic never spread to the population at large, and so the Event slowly vanished from public awareness.[7]

The Event of September 11, 2001 had an even more dramatic impact on the United States and the world. This was perhaps in part because the Trigger was much more sensational: commercial airliners commandeered by Middle Eastern terrorists smashing into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. That, at any rate, is how the Narrative expressed it, and it led, characteristically, to a “war on terror.” A new Federal Department of Homeland Security was created, and travel restrictions imposed. The Praxis involved close screening in airports and the confiscation of all liquids brought on a plane, due to the claim that terrorists could fabricate a bomb in the restroom from these liquids. Twenty years later the restrictions are still in full force, although no attempts at making a toothpaste or shampoo bomb have ever been remotely discovered.

But these Events, significant as they were, and other smaller ones like them, can be seen with hindsight as dress rehearsals for an even greater Event, a Mega-event, the Covid-19 pandemic. Many people wonder how, in the space of a few short days or weeks, the entire planet could have been turned upside-down by this Mega-event, the far-reaching consequences of which are still unknown. Hopefully this article has helped to answer that question: the current Mega-event was well prepared by a multitude of Events and by a whole series of developments in the world going back centuries. Some of them were societal trends that continued to evolve; others were conscious choices made by particular actors. In short, Covid-19 was a Big Idea, a Monolith whose time had come.

Notes [1] Ethel D. Hume, Béchamp or Pasteur: A Lost Chapter in the History of Biology (1923); Gerald L. Geison, The Private Science of Louis Pasteur (1995, 2016).

[2] Suzanne Humphries & Roman Bystrianyk, Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccine, and the Forgotten History (2013). Tetyana Obukhanych, Vaccine Illusion (2012). See also https://childrenshealthdefense.org/

[3] https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/us-military-and-vaccine-history

[4] Kary Mullis, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field (Pantheon Books, 1998), p. 113. Ironically, Mullis won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1993 for inventing the PCR test.

[5] Judy Mikovits & Kent Heckenlively, Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science (2020).

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_the_United_States

[7] See Peter Duisberg, Inventing the AIDS Virus (1996); Torsten Engelbrecht et al., Virus Mania (2007; 2021). See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEudVUvDzBk; https://odysee.com/@jermwarfare:2/David-rasnick-hiv-aids:8.

Bernard L'Hermite is the pseudonym of an outsider who, from his hilltop, views contemporary society with dismay, compassion and occasional amusement.