The Highwire with Del Bigtree - ARE YOU DELUSIONAL ABOUT COVID?

Episode Date: January 15, 2022

The phrase ‘Mass Formation Psychosis’ broke the internet when it was dropped on Joe Rogan’s podcast featuring two Highwire favorites, Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Robert Malone. Del talks to Mark McDonald, MD, author of United States of Fear, about this psychological phenomenon and why the mainstream media is desperately trying to discredit it.#JoeRoganExperience #UnitedStatesOfFear #MarkMcDonaldMD #MassFormationPsychosisBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

There's a brand new player that has stepped up to this poker table to decide to tell the truth. This is none other than Joe Rogan with, I think, the largest podcast audience in the world. I want to say he's in the hundreds of millions of followers. And this is something that we've reached out to multiple times. I can tell you over this entire pandemic. I know for a fact, I've talked to Robert Kennedy Jr., who's reached out and said, you know, you've interviewed Dr. Peter Hotez. Why don't you interview me?

We've done the same thing. We've presented. We send information over to Joe Rogan. And he was not interested in a very long time into getting involved in this. We all know he took a giant contract at Spotify and, you know, blew that up and good on him. I mean, look, I've been watching his interviews. They're super fascinating. It was really frustrating that he wasn't diving into a topic where there was so much information.

He seemed like such a logical guy. But then, as we reported and we all watched, suddenly he came under attack because when, COVID became real to him, he had to decide what he was going to do once he was infected. And yes, there was enough information out there that he decided to take ivermectin, got attacked by CNN and all of these networks saying that he was taking horse deworming medication. We talked about how the fact that Sanjay Gupta, he got him onto the show and reamed him for lying about the fact that he was taking veterinary medicine when, in fact, he was taking a human prescription of a drug that had won the Nobel Prize in 2015.

And then the headline said he was an anti-vaxxer, something we were very sure in our communications in trying to reach out to him were not true. But this is what happens all over the world to those specialists, those scientists, those journalists that dare to ask just really obvious questions and find, you mean by simply asking a question or using a drug that when I looked at all the studies around the world was having great effect, I decided to use it on myself. I didn't force it on anyone. It's simply what I decided to do with my own body. Now I'm an anti-vaxxer. Joe, welcome to the team. Welcome to what happens to anybody that asks an honest question. I love that because really what it's doing is it's growing our movement.

They decided they would try to use a pejorative to isolate all of us, but all they're doing is taking everybody that was maybe in a middle ground zone and pushing them onto our team. And now more and more people are recognizing, wait a minute, if I'm being considered an anti-vaxxer, I'm going to have to reevaluate all those people I've been judging through the years. Well, of course, what I'm leading up to is perhaps, I think, the biggest story that is breaking right now. And it's all because Joe Rogan has decided to get into this conversation.

And he brought on to previous guests of the Highwire, other world-renowned scientists that we know and love. Our friends, Peter McCullough, who has been on multiple times and the inventor of the MRNA vaccine technology, Dr. Robert Malone. Two heroes amongst many that you just saw that have appeared on the Highwire. Well, they were finally asked to appear on Joe. Rogan's podcast and because of that the internet has been broken here is that story let's take a look at the headlines really quick in what it's done YouTube takes down anti-baxe Joe Rogan interview with Dr. Robert Malone which likened vaccines to mass psychosis calls ring out for Fauci to debate biologist after Rogan podcast appearance those are huge moves and we are starting to see this starting

to get into the mainstream perhaps Joe Rogan is that bridge into the mainstream he's certainly a bridge into the youth and the college students and the people that are questioning this but as I said simply bringing on two scientists that are now being censored now Joe Rogan's getting kicked off of YouTube at least these videos are he's now recognizing what it takes to break the internet here's what happened well the term mass formation psychosis trended over the weekend with so many searches it broke the internet when people went to search for the term on Google a couple of strange things happened some people

saw this odd disclaimer from Google saying the results were changing quickly and that it would take time for results to be added by reliable sources. What does this even mean? I thought when you Googled something, it would bring up sites relating to the topic. Why would Google need time to add results by quote-unquote reliable sources? Sounds like they're censoring search results. Well, a few hours later, when people searched for the term, a bunch of sites began to pop up, claiming it was a new far-right buzzword or one attributed to anti-vaxxers. So what is mass formation psychosis. Well, the term came recently from the Joe Rogan Dr. Robert Malone interview that aired this past Friday. And this leads into this whole issue of mass formation psychosis.

There's good modeling studies that probably half a million excess deaths have happened in the United States through the intentional blockade of early treatment by the U.S. government. But was also heard and explained in more detail during Dr. Peter McCullough's interview with Rogan. We're in what's called a mass formation psychosis. This is very important. I give credit to Dr. Matthias Desmet in the University of Ghent in Belgium. And recently, Dr. Mark McDonald, psychiatrist from L.A., Mark McDonald's got a new book out, The United States of Fear, describing how the mass psychosis developed.

What your listeners need to know is a mass psychosis is when there is a groupthink that develops that so strong that it leads to something horrific. And the examples are these mass suicides that occur in these religious cults. The example is Nazi Germany when people walk into gas chambers and were gas. These horrific things. And four elements here is very important, Joe. First, there must be a period of prolonged isolation, lockdowns. Number two, there must be a withdrawal of things taken away from people that they used to enjoy. That's happened.

Number three, there must be constant, incessant, free-floating anxiety. Number four, there must be a single solution. offered by an entity in authority. The solution was vaccination. Years ago, we were told by one of our presidents that we really don't have anything to fear, except for fear itself. But now we're told that fear is good.

Fear is necessary. In fact, fear is a virtue. Well, it's the term that broke the internet. And the book, all about this is the United States of Fear. I'm joined right now by the author. Dr. Mark McDonald. First of all, let's sort of get some things straight.

I mean, obviously this term is now all over the Internet. Everyone's talking about it. But it's not exactly the right term, right? This term mass formation psychosis. Is that the correct term of what we're even talking about? It's a bit of a mishmash between two terms that were, let's just use the word invented, in parallel between me, a psychiatrist in Los Angeles, and a psychologist. and a psychologist named Matthias Desmet in Belgium.

We both arrived at the same conclusions, but we use different language. His term is mass formation. My term is mass delusional psychosis. And McCullough and Malone's term is both combined together. Okay. Which is fine, but they mean all the same thing. Okay. And what is that actually?

In fact, in your book, and by the way, I just want to say, like reading this book, I've read several books, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s book on the real Anthony Fauci, and then Scott Atlas's book about working in the White House, and both of them filled me with such anxiety and in frustrations. I wanted to put my fist through a wall. I really have to say, for everybody out there that is a clear thinking person, find like you're in some weird dystopian novel, this book, really, I found it settling because you gave, you know, credibility and understanding and reality to those of us to really understand we are not the crazy ones and what we're seeing truly is crazy.

But to describe that craziness just a little bit, let's just take this excerpt from the book where you get into the actual term mass formation psychosis. Many parents were refusing to bring their children to see me. Frightened they or their children would catch a fatal disease simply by coming to my office. One told me his eight-year-old son had put his fist through a plate glass window at home, unable to tolerate being confined to a two-room apartment 24 hours a day for months on And another patient began wetting the bed, yet another attacked her brother with a kitchen knife later that summer in speaking with colleagues around the country at conferences and sharing clinical experiences with them through group email. I discovered that this was happening everywhere.

This was self-evident, yet a large segment of society continued to voluntarily sequester at home, wear masks, outdoors, and perform other superstitious and scientifically baseless rituals like wiping down Amazon deliveries with bleach. I knew one man whose wife insisted on taking off her clothes whenever she returned home and throwing them in the dryer for sterilization. That is insanity. Previously, normal appearing individuals had clearly lost their minds. Worse, these behaviors were not limited to a handful of people. I read reports of extreme changes in thoughts and actions from all over the country, primarily from large urban centers. Much of the nation had disconnected from basic reality, I began to call this condition a mass delusional, psychosis. So how did you come to that term and what is involved in that description?

Well, I started using the term mass delusional psychosis way back in May of 2020. And I spoke about it in Washington, D.C. at a conference in June of 2020. What I meant by that and what I still mean by that today is an entire group, an entire population, which is the American people all at the same time, losing their rational faculties, being unable to think, acting as a herd. That's what I mean by mass delusional psychosis. How is that achieved? I mean, is there a historical reference to, I mean, obviously there's been references to Nazi Germany, things like that, where you sort of have populations start moving in mass

against what would sort of be the moral standard that we'd been used to. Is this something that is only forced by, you know, larger organized groups on purpose? Well, this is where it gets interesting, Del. My argument, which I make in the book, is that their fuel for this mass delusional psychosis. It doesn't just show up. The fuel is fear. We cannot become massly, delusionally psychotic without first being scared. The fear has been the driving behind this pandemic from the very beginning.

Without fear, it all falls apart. Scientifically, medically, we won this battle at the very beginning. We've known how to treat this disease. We've known how to help people. We've known how to keep people safe from probably week to week three. But we have collapsed as a country physically, psychologically, economically, not because of a virus, but because of fear. And it's the fear that has been driving.

and driven by government, by corporations, and by media, all colluding together to perpetuate the mass delusional psychosis, meaning the irrationality, because it benefits them. Because the end stage, the end goal, the end point of this is the same as it is for every totalitarian regime throughout the 20th century. Dependency on government. Once people are dependent on government, then they don't depend on their families, they don't depend on their churches, they don't depend on their communities. They look up, but they don't look to God, they look to government. That in my view is the end game. And so how did you see this? When did you decide to write the book? I mean, you're living in Los Angeles, correct? Los Angeles, California, and where from, you know, I consider myself a

refugee. I left California just two years, two and a half years ago now to be in Texas, but still, my heart is there. So many of my friends are there. When I visit, it's a whole other level of insanity from what we're experiencing here in Texas. But at what point, did you, was it sort of the people coming into your practice? What was making you think there is something going on and it's on a mass scale versus when in your job as a psychiatrist, you're probably used to people having their own, you know, hangups, issues, phobias, whatever it is. When, you're, When did you start realizing there's a similarity across a larger body of people? I realized it when I started leaving my home in the morning and hearing the door closed behind me

and feeling the same sense of confusion and disbelief that I felt when I would walk into the locked units in the psychiatric hospital when I was a resident and the door would close behind me and I would see the people moving around the room and I would remind myself Anyone inside this locked facility that doesn't have a badge is probably crazy. When I started to feel the same way walking around outside outdoors in Los Angeles, every single person that I see walking by himself, by herself wearing a dog is probably crazy. That's when I felt that something was up. I felt like this is not just one crazy homeless person talking to himself under an overpass or a drug user urinating.

by the side of the school park. This is everyone. This is educated people. This is not just derelicts, people that you dismiss as being crazy. This is a population-wide illness, which is spreading throughout the entire city. Yeah, he had this great quote from the book because I think it really brings it in the difference between sort of a delusion and just a disagreement, right? You say in the book, this, all delusions, though, are by definition irrational. This is what makes them pathologic.

The harm they bring to the individual holds them comes from a diminished capacity to live with reality. They are also impervious to reason. Otherwise, they would simply be wrongheaded opinions that change once confronted with reality. Now, I know almost, I think my entire audience reading that knows exactly what we're talking about. But what's crazy about it is if I just took that quote

and showed it to those people that are walking in the world that are crazy, they would say, yeah, that's exactly what they feel about us, right? They think we're crazy, that we are not, you know, recognizing the obvious, incredible danger that this virus brings and the risk that we're all at in, if we're not wearing our masks, we're putting everybody at risk. They do believe that, and it's largely because of media. The media that they listen to every morning, they wake up and they listen to CNN, they read the New York times and what do they see every day and what have they seen every day for the last 18 now 20 months

cases hospitalizations and deaths from a virus that's all they hear all day long and if they hear anything else it's all the people that are denying that are all right wing conservative trump supporting crazy people right and this is the propaganda this is the hypnosis that many americans have been under now for the last two years they are no longer able to take take in information which is truthful and objective. And you couple that with the fear where they wake up scared every day, people who are afraid, they don't want to go out and slay the bear, go to work. They want to be protected.

They're like infants. And they're turning towards a higher power to protect them. And it used to be mommy and daddy. Well, now it's the government. The people who are not fearful, the people like you and I, we don't rely on those powers to keep us safe. We rely on ourselves, our families, our communities, our churches. That's what separates us.

They are dependent and they are fearful and they cannot listen or hear any alternative arguments. This is why I've been saying from day one, this is not a data war. I completely agree with Dr. McCull on Dr. Malone on the data. We are in sync there. However, they have been speaking this for almost two years and it's not making any headway. What made headway in the last 48 hours? term mass formation psychosis, which is not a scientific data term. It's a term about psychology. It's about fear and craziness. This is what broke the internet. It wasn't data points about the

failures of vaccines. It wasn't data points about the risk of healthy people to a virus is essentially nil. Nobody cares about that because they're scared. But when they notice, when Americans who are scared hear the term mass formation psychosis or mass delusional psychosis, they think, whoa, that's interesting. kind of describes me or my neighbor there's something i'm curious to know more about that and it's curiosity that has to precede the dropping of fear people who are curious but fearful they have a shot but when i talk to people who are brainwashed who are scared who have no curiosity about the other side no curiosity about what it means to be mentally ill what it means to be paranoid there's nothing you can do for them no data point is going to change their mind so is that you know

if I was, you know, and you probably already answered this, but I remember watching a film years and years ago called Jacob's Ladder, and it was one of the most terrifying movies I've ever seen because it's just about being inside of a guy who's losing his mind and doesn't know reality from not. And it really is scary to think you're losing your mind. Yet, and part of the problem is, would you know it? How do you know you're not the one from those quotes? How do we know we're not the ones that are crazy and they're right? Because we have, it's almost a, it's It's almost a 50-50 divide, it feels like, certainly here in the United States of America. I'm going to assume, based on the fact that we're very similar as a species around the world,

that there's 50% of us that are saying the other side is crazy. Is there a way to sort of a litmus test that you can have for yourself that would say, no, I'm still saying. And for those, if you put both groups into a room right now and said, I just read you the quote, here's a delusion, here's the difference between being wrong-headed or wrong-minded. or wrong-minded and delusional. What is the litmus test we run ourselves through as we check in to say,

no, I'm still good? A lot of people ask me this question in a different format. They'll say there's so much information out there that conflicts. There's so many differing views. How do you know who to trust? Because you want to be the right person. You want to follow the right people.

You don't want to be the crazy person following all the nonsense. The one that's arguing that incantations and talism are the way to get out of this. You want to follow the science. That's what we all say. Even the people that disagree with us that are scared say they're following the science. It's a very fair question. This is how I answer it. Don't follow me. Don't follow a guru. Don't follow someone who says he has a monopoly on truth. Just do the following. Ask yourself, the people that you followed, the people that you believe, the people that you trusted from the beginning from March of 2020.

Have they been right or have they been wrong? That's how you show and prove that someone is telling you the truth. It's through patterns. It's not through projecting into the future whether someone is going to be right. And I can tell you that if you look back from the beginning for March, April, May, and you look at the people like me, like Robert Malone, like Peter McCullough, people that have been speaking out, providing you with information from the very beginning, they have been right. They have been proven right time and time again. And even more importantly, when they've been wrong, they have owned up to it.

The other side has never done that. Just think about Anthony Fauci. How much of what he said has been proven to be wrong? How many times has he changed his mind and how many times has he actually owned up to it and apologized? Never. I think that's a very, very good way for any individual person who wants to be intellectually honest to see if he's on the right side or the the wrong side. Don't trust me. Look backwards. You know, this is, again, this book is just really helpful for all of you out there that, you know, I think we're, we're moving into this new year,

2022. And if I'm speaking, you know, for a lot of people out there, I have a little bit of anxiety right now. I have anxiety because I have to do the show. I'm going to have to keep saying Anthony Fauci's name and I want it to go away. You know, I'm going to be having to talk about, you know, President Biden pushing policies, schools shutting down and children not being allowed in schools, watching people forcibly, you know, putting masks on children, forcibly vaccinating children for an illness that, as you clearly state, it's full of science here also. We know this doesn't affect children. And so there's this inner rage that I think those of us that are saying, you know,

carrying a certain amount of rage can't be healthy either or sane. So what would be your advice for those of us that are finding such incredible frustration staring into the eyes of these people that are just totally brainwashed, not really home? And then they're condescending towards us as though we're the ones that, you know, aren't listening to the science and the reason. Can you give us, you know, some sort of way forward in this year? Because I think we've still got a ways to go to get to the end of us, even though it's crumbling down around them.

And every day they're having to backtrack or change their tune and all of that. And we've had a lot of fun with this, you know, entire experience on the highway, like you, being able to point out how many times we've been right along the way. But it's still, I think there's a lot of people that are getting a point where they just want to reach out and strangle, you know, their friend, their loved one that is just not even home anymore. What do we do for ourselves to stay sane? This is something that I faced in Los Angeles. as you know is one of the epicenters of insanity in the United States today, along with San Francisco and Portland and New York.

It's pretty bad out here. About 80% of Los Angeles are still walking around outdoors with masks on, whether they're biking, exercising, driving, pushing baby carriages, they're still wearing masks. They are not getting better here. They are still very, very sick, most insane. And I felt alone. I felt isolated. I felt that there was no one. around me that was thinking rationally. So I did this. I decided that I would actively surround myself with like-minded people. I would build a community of people here in Los Angeles that I would actually spend time with face-to-face in groups and one-on-one. That made all the difference. If you are in the camp of the rational and the non-fearful, you cannot isolate yourself. You cannot

sit in front of a Zoom screen or a news broadcast all day long because you know that those people are scared and they're going to make you sick. You have to. You have to find other people that are like you. If you live in a very isolated area, it might have to be somewhat remote. You might have to form a telegram group or a signal group or some form of online community. I get it. It's not ideal, but it's better than sitting at home by yourself. But in most places, there are other people like you. And if you start to speak out, if you start to take a risk, then you will come across other people that will be attracted to you because you are one of the sane ones. And that has happened to me more than every, I'd say the last 10 years of my life, the last 18 months, I have come across more people locally and throughout the country who are like-minded and who share my views and who are sane and rational than I have in all the years prior. And it's because I have spoken out, I have stepped up, I have taken a risk to express my views.

I've lost people in my life, but they weren't people that I actually miss losing. As I heard from Mickey Willis recently when I was filming Klandemic out in Austin and out in your neck of the woods, I didn't lose a single friend in putting together my Klandemic series because the people that left me were not my friends. And the recompense of wonderful people since then has been enormous. Trust me, this is true. It has been true in my life as well. I believe that you can attract great people by being honest and sincere and stepping up and fighting the fear. I have not been depressed or sad for the last year because I've done that and has made all the difference. I talk about it in more detail in my book in the last chapter, but I think this is the very, very most important first step to do, find like-minded people form a community.

It will inoculate you against the craziness. That's really great advice, and it's so true. It's something we've talked about. And I think it's one of the beautiful side effects of this insane time we're in is that it's really truly helping us recognize what is, you know, who are our true friends, what really is our inner family and circle. And community is huge. I had that experience. I was, you know, back visiting my family back in Boulder, Colorado, and I decided at the last minute to give a talk. There was no advertising, but my father's minister.

So let me take the church. I want to talk about vaccines in Boulder. Boulder's like an epicenter of insanity like, you know, California. I think they're bragging that there's somewhere around 85 to 90% vaccinated. And, you know, I didn't even visit a year ago because I just couldn't handle seeing my hometown in that condition. But I'll say without any advertising, I walked in there and the place was packed. I mean, to the walls, I think the room holds 700 people, standing room only, in the edges of the doorways. And one of the beautiful things about it was everyone came up to me afterwards and said,

thank you so much for having this moment. I didn't realize they were meeting their neighbors saying, I didn't know my next door neighbor believed the same thing I did. And here we all. We ran into each other here. And it's part of the problem. They have us so afraid to speak our truth that we're not being heard by someone that maybe 10 feet away that is in our community, is in our family.

It's why we've got to speak out. We've got to start standing in our truth. We are the sane ones. They are crazy. And so many stories of families that got together where the crazy wears off when they're around you long enough. They're around sane people. They start, you know, the mask starts coming down and eventually you get a hug three days into the family vacation because they're recognizing I remember what it was once like to be sane.

We've got a long road ahead of us to dig our way out of this. It's an incredible book, Mark. It really is a fantastic read. It's an easy read. But it brings sanity back to this conversation. I want to thank you for doing it. And I hope we get to have you on the show again soon, all right? This has been great.

I really appreciate it and enjoy it. Thank you. All right, you bet. Dr. Mark McDonald, keep up the good work. How do we follow you? How do we follow the work that you're doing and maybe speak engagements you might have around the country? So I just started a substack in anticipation of my firing from Twitter and Facebook, as most have gone that way recently, including Robert Malone, which is called Dissident MD, D-I-S-S-I-D-N-T, Dissident MD, which is also my website, which you have up now as well, dissident-M-D-com, where I put. post obviously this book as well as some of my opeds and recent publications that I put on on my substack account. This is where you go to find out what I'm writing. I also do a lot of posts at least until I'm canceled on my Twitter and my Facebook page, which are M. McDonald MD

and Mark McDonald MD respectively, but I get censored and shut down frequently. So I really would encourage people to go to dissidentmd.com or the substandestads where I'm going to start to post regularly every week. And also I'm going to start putting information about my book in process, which is going to cover recovery from fear, an entire book on how to recover from fear. Because I see year 2022 as the year where we recover from fear. No more mass delusional psychosis. We're recovering from fear. And I want to lead that charge. All right. Sounds good. Well, we want to help you with that charge. So important to get our lives, our sanity, this planet back in our hands. Take care. We'll talk to you again.

soon. Thanks, Stell. If you like that clip, then be sure to check out our live broadcast of the High Wire every Thursday morning at 11 a.m. Pacific Time. You can watch it on iTunes and Twitter. We'll see you there.