The Chart of Coercion

From June 2022, written in the context of March 2020-June 2021

Apr 24, 2024

Dear Church Leaders

Biderman’s Chart of Coercion

Until recently I was unaware of Biderman’s Chart of Coercion — a chronological list of general methods designed to break a person psychologically.

Apparently the chart was drawn up in the 1950s to illustrate the methods used by the Chinese and Korean authorities on US prisoners during the Korean War. In the early 2000s, the chart was used by US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.

Here is a summary of the methods used:

1. Isolation
2. Monopolization of perception
3. Induced debilitation and exhaustion
4. Threats
5. Occasional indulgences
6. Demonstrating "omnipotence" and "omniscience"
7. Degradation
8. Enforcing trivial demands

It's worth thinking about these in the context of the last two years or so, and especially March 2020-June 2021:

1. Isolation

Examples: lockdown, confining people to their own home; forbidding people to meet with family, friends, classmates, work colleagues; closing churches

Effect: deprives people of social support; induces intense concern with self

2. Monopolization of perception

Examples: media obsession with covid as a single issue; promotion of “The Science” while suppressing credible alternative options, e.g. protecting the vulnerable

Effect: fixes attention on one thing; promotes fear; eliminates information not consistent with demands; increases pressure to conform to the narrative

3. Induced debilitation and exhaustion

Examples: depriving people of normal social interaction; enforced working from home/online schooling (and the combination of the two); requiring screens for most interactions

Effect: weakens mental and physical ability to resist demands

4. Threats

Examples: fines or even arrests for e.g. meeting friends and family, failing to wear a mask wearing masks, opening a business, even going for a walk in the countryside

Effect: creates anxiety; renders resistance more costly than compliance, adding pressure to comply

5. Occasional indulgences

Examples: the concession of meeting up with one other person, or up to six people (“rule of six”); “eat out to help out”

Effect: gives positive motivation for compliance; hinders adjustment to deprivation

6. Demonstrating “omnipotence” and “omniscience”

Examples: “The Science” [article from September 2022] which must not be questioned — all scientists agree when the ones that don’t are censored or cancelled

Effect: suggests futility of resistance

7. Degradation

Examples: even the term “lockdown” connotes prison-like conditions; wearing face masks, which is depersonalising and associated with subjugation

Effect: demoralises victims

8. Enforcing trivial demands

Examples: standing six feet apart; wearing masks; regular testing of the healthy; no singing

Effect: develops habit of compliance

By way of note, the effects of covid lockdowns and restrictions were bad enough for those with a medium-sized house and a garden. They were a lot worse for those e.g. in a small flat and/or with no garden. Children, who have been at little or no risk from covid, have been particularly badly affected. As have the poor. And some other countries have suffered much more than the UK.

The Context

Even if there really were a particularly nasty virus circulating, we could reasonably ask if any of the above would be excusable.

But consider some of the actual context:

UK government website: “As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID) in the UK”
UK government data for the past three years shows that only two months have had all-cause deaths significantly above normal (and even the number of deaths in those two months was not exceptional in the context of the past few decades). Those two months were:
- April 2020, when there was chaos in care homes, and prescriptions of midazolam were exceptionally high [and prescriptions of antibiotics surprisingly low]
- January 2021, when millions of the elderly and vulnerable injected with novel gene-based “vaccines” that suppress the immune system (and NB the elderly and vulnerable were not included in the clinical trials)
It has been known for decades that restrictions do much more harm than good, that masks are ineffective against respiratory viruses, and that asymptomatic transmission is not a significant driver of respiratory virus outbreaks; and early in Spring 2020 this was what our public health officials were (rightly) telling us

What can we conclude?

It is often said that we should not to attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. And I share those sentiments. In Spring 2020 I was prepared to give the authorities the benefit of the doubt. I accept that there was panic. And that it would have been brave to push back. In Europe only Sweden stuck to their pandemic plan.

But I do think that, in relation to the second lockdown [and other matters], it is much harder to make the case for incompetence. Our authorities had seen what had (and had not) happened in Sweden. They knew that 2020 had not actually been so very far out of the ordinary for the UK in terms of all-cause excess deaths. And yet they locked us down. Again.

Surely “partygate” (and “beergate”) is scandalous not so much because of the rule-breaking but the rule-making? Our Government, egged on by our “Opposition” and key influencers in public health and in the media, set us rules that partygate and beergate tell us they knew we did not need. They knew too, not least from Spring 2020, that those rules would would do much more harm than good, in many different ways, and especially to the poor and to the young.

Is it a coincidence that in 2020 the government was being advised by plenty of modellers (SPI-M group) and behavioural psychologists (SPI-B group), but relatively few immunologists? There is plenty of good evidence, as documented e.g. in A State of Fear by Laura Dodsworth, that behavioural psychology was being weaponised against us.

In the context of the Chart of Coercion, is there not a case to be made that what we have actually endured is a form of textbook psychological warfare at population scale? And that the messaging has been so effective that many people do not even realise what has been done to them?