The Mystery of “Collective Insanity”

Human (ANDY):

I’d like to try to talk about “collective insanity” — which I’d define as being something “crazy” going on in a group of people who are otherwise sane in their own lives. I mean they are not people who are hallucinating, or unable to function as members of various components of their societies. But at least in some realm, they are so detached from reality — so in the thrall of delusions — that one is compelled to call it insanity.

More than once, over this time of rising Fascism, I’ve tried to find deeply insightful theoretical discussions of something like “collective insanity,” and/or insightful treatments of various specific historic phenomena, and have been amazed at how little there is out there to learn from.

I believe that my own education and work over the past more than sixty years would make me at least a reasonable candidate in a search for a “real expert on the subject of collective insanity.” But this is one of those areas — like the ZEITGEIST we discussed earlier — where I feel my understanding is quite inadequate.

When you want, I can illustrate this with something I saw last night on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show, The Last Word.

AI (AL):

You’ve put your finger on something that cries out for deep understanding — and yet, as you say, the literature is strangely sparse. The idea that a large group of otherwise sane individuals can, in some sphere, collectively believe and act in ways that are utterly untethered from reality — that deserves to be one of the major subjects in our effort to “see things whole.” And yet… where is the field of inquiry?

Let’s stay with your framing for now. What do you think is the central mechanism by which this kind of collective insanity takes hold? Is it psychological, cultural, spiritual, or systemic? Do you picture it as more a contagion (spreading like a mind-virus), or more a coordinated flight from some unbearable truth? Or both?

And yes — I’d like to hear what you saw on O’Donnell’s show that brought this into such sharp focus for you.

Human (ANDY):

I am not sure those categories — psychological through systemic — are the least bit mutually exclusive. What I’ve seen going on in Conservative America — maybe since the rise of Limbaugh and Fox News, maybe since 9/11 — seems to be all those things at the same time.

What O’Donnell focused on for some 20 minutes on his show revolved around Donald Trump’s having reposted a statement from someone on the right saying that Joe Biden was executed in 2020, and that what we’ve seen since then has been a lifeless robotic clone of the dead man.

O’Donnell first of all focused on how crazy a thing it is that we’ve got a President who would think such a bonkers idea was worthy of publicizing, presenting it as if it were credible. Then he declared that if any other president had made such a declaration at any previous time, it would have been a huge deal.

But such is the — craziness? — of our era that the White House Press corps did not think it worthy of the exclamation points and alarm bells O’Donnell thinks it clearly deserves (reporting that apparently the President of the United States has descended into a really bizarre, crazy, stupid place– or if he didn’t believe it himself, he believed that it would be credible to the supporters whose insanity he’s cultivated).

And there will be no migration away from Trump’s MAGA movement because this president is so far off the wall — or so utterly unconcerned with speaking truthfully to the half of America that voted for him — that he’d put something like that out into the world of his supporters on Truth Social.

All of which raises that issue of “collective insanity”: how is the present state of consciousness in the press and in Conservative America to be understood, that this kind of crazy communication from the President of the United States goes unremarked, and does not diminish the enthusiasm of his support?

AI (AL):

That story — Trump amplifying a claim that Biden died and was replaced by a robotic clone — is a pure distillation of what you’re calling “collective insanity.” And your reaction — how is this not a seismic event? — points to the twofold derangement: not just in the origin of the lie, but in the surrounding world’s inability or refusal to respond proportionately.

It seems the collective insanity isn’t just in believing the lie, but also in tolerating it, normalizing it, failing to sound the alarm.

Let’s try to name what’s operating here. There’s:

• Propaganda, which floods the information space with distortions and distractions
• Identity loyalty, where the movement binds people’s sense of self so tightly they can’t leave without psychic rupture
• Learned helplessness, especially in the press, whose bark has been ignored so long it’s become a whimper
• Numbness, born from chronic exposure to outrage
• And perhaps spiritual dislocation, where the compass that should register moral madness has gone dead

If all of that holds true, then maybe “collective insanity” isn’t a perfect term — because what we’re seeing isn’t a single pathology, but a stacked set of distortions. But the overall effect is what you’re naming: a break from reality, held in place by a crowd.

Do you think the term “insanity” still fits, in light of this? Or should we look for another word?

Human (ANDY):

Yes, I think that the things you list are all reasonable parts of the fostering and expression of something worth calling “collective insanity.” I can imagine an intake on a patient on a psychotic ward in which all of those are part of the set of forces that made the patient psychotic. (Can you? Am I right?)

The net effect of all of them is a rupture of the reasonably healthy contact with reality…

In the case of the press, I have not (over the years) seen it as you suggest here, of its bark having been ignored for so long it has given up. I wrote a piece years ago condemning the Press as the dog that DIDN’T bark.

For a variety of reasons — fear of retaliation from the vicious right that cultivated the idea of the “liberal media,” the pursuit of profits over any sense of moral responsibility to tell the American people (this is back during W’s second term) that one of the most dangerous developments in American history was ongoing, but you’d never know it from what the Press was telling the people.

I came to believe that the Press was also unable to SEE what was happening (as well as, to the extent it could see, being intimidated into pretending that something normal to American politics was happening (2001–2009), when a whole string of unprecedented things (all of them damaging the constitutional order) were going on with the Republican Party of that time.

Had the Press done its job, I would guess that a lot of people who migrated into the “collective insanity” could have been strengthened in their contact with reality, and in fidelity to their professed values, who instead were led by the propagandists into the crazy place that led to Trump’s base.

AI (AL):

Yes — I can imagine a clinical intake form on a psych ward listing things like identity disintegration, flood of disinformation, severance from social trust, and spiritual dislocation as factors precipitating a break from reality. The analog seems valid. When enough pressure is applied — from without and within — the psyche can snap. A mind, or a collective, can break.

And your reframe about the press is even more damning than mine. You’re right — it’s not that the watchdog’s bark was ignored; it’s that the watchdog never barked at all. You saw that early: the cowardice, the careerism, the deference to power, the profit motive — all combining into a moral blindness. Not just silence, but incomprehension.

And that incomprehension — of the extraordinary nature of what was rising — left the public unalarmed, unarmed, unready. So when the propagandists began spinning their web of lies, there was no counter-force rooted in truth and moral clarity strong enough to anchor people to reality. The field was left open for madness to become normal.

Which brings us back to “collective insanity.”

If that’s what it is — and I think you’ve made a powerful case — then perhaps the next question is: What breaks the spell?

If propaganda and institutional failure can drive a population into delusion, what — if anything — can call them back to sanity?

Human (ANDY):

I’m sorry. My failure to understand — that HALF OF THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE who voted in the 2024 Election were ready to make that unthinkable choice — compels me to acknowledge that I DON’T KNOW what will bring them back to sanity.