“GUILTY! And the Sentence is — Death by Vaccination!” On Corona Fascism and Guilt Manipulation

by Stephen Halbrook

When it comes to why so many are blindly going along with the COVID totalitarian scam — even to the point of taking the death shot — one explanation is guilt manipulation. Is this the only conceivable reason? No. But it seems likely to be so in many cases.

Guilt manipulation is a very powerful tool for everything from cults to totalitarian states to attain control over the minds of people. The Globalists understand this: they have made guilt manipulation one of the central pillars — if not the central pillar — in attaining mass compliance to Corona Fascism.

From the time the Scamdemic began, to the present, there has been a constant barrage of guilt-inducing slogans:

• “Stop the spread.”
• “Stay home. Save lives.”
• “Love your neighbor. Wear a mask.”
• “Wear a mask because you care.”
• “Get vaccinated. Do your part. Protect others.”
• “Do the right thing. Get vaccinated.”
• “I got my COVID vaccine.” (Implied: “some of you didn’t”)

And of course, there is the negative guilt manipulation directed against those who see through the false narrative: the “anti-vaxxers” and “conspiracy theorists” who are “responsible” for the spread.

Let’s explore guilt manipulation further, and then return to how it relates to the totalitarian Cult of Corona Fascism — and how Jesus Christ is the solution. Topics include:

• Guilt and man’s need for atonement
• Guilt and totalitarianism
• Guilt manipulation and the Scamdemic
• Jesus Christ is the solution to guilt manipulation

Guilt and man’s need for atonement

Man has an inner need to have a relationship with God. In creation, he (Adam and Eve) had such a relationship, but was separated from God due to sin. This relationship can only be restored if one’s sins are atoned for — and this can only be done by Christ’s death on the cross.

Since man was designed for communion with God, separation from God tears at the core of man’s being and renders him in a permanent unnatural spiritual state. To live without atonement for one’s sins and with the knowledge of God’s wrath is to live with crushing anxiety and guilt.

On top of all of this, fallen man is spiritually suicidal, at war with God.

Thus to have Christ is to have peace; to not have Christ is to be hopeless:

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. (Ephesians 2:11-16, ESV)

Now, imagine all the psychological problems that attend separation from God. The unsaved are truly mentally ill: hopeless, without peace. In rebellion to God, they inflict harm upon themselves and love death. Wisdom declares:

For whoever finds me finds life
and obtains favor from the Lord,
but he who fails to find me injures himself;
all who hate me love death. (Proverbs 8:35, 36, ESV)

The book of Romans says this after listing acts of rebellion against God:

Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:32, ESV)

So, the lost continue in their suicidal rebellion, despite knowledge that they are under God’s wrath.

We can see, then, how one separated from God might engage in guilt-based destructive behaviors — both of himself, and of others. R.J. Rushdoony writes,

All men outside Christ are guilty men, and guilty men are dominated by sado-masochistic activities. Because of their guilt, men either punish themselves as an act of self-atonement, or they punish others.

Rousas John Rushdoony, Systematic Theology in 2 volumes: Volume 1 (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1994), 603.

This is not to say that all destructive behaviors are motivated by guilt. But Rushdoony’s point is well taken. Of course, sado-masochism in this context includes, but is not limited, to degrading sexual acts. It can be any form of guilt-based punishment of others (sadism), or guilt-based punishment towards oneself (masochism).

An example of the former might be the husband who beats his wife; and example of the latter might be the drunk who destroys himself with alcohol.

The paper “Moral masochism: On the Connection Between Guilt and Self-Punishment” refers to a study involving the use of electric shocks, where

Recalling a guilt-inducing event made participants more willing to inflict unpleasant electric shocks on themselves.

Yoel Inbar, David A. Pizarro, Thomas Gilovich and Dan Ariely,
Moral masochism: On the Connection Between Guilt and Self-Punishment, 9. Retrieved November 12, 2021.

One article discusses the use of “victim blaming,” a tactic used by sadists:

If a projector victimizes someone, for example by committing a crime against them, they will blame the victim. For example, if a projector steals goods from someone’s home, they will say that it is the fault of the victim because they didn’t have enough security.

Michael Puskar, How Does It Work?: Projection Defense Mechanism (betterhelp, Nov. 4, 2021). Retrieved November 12, 2021.

Sadist-guilt is seen most clearly in the pagan practices of human sacrifice — where a community murders innocent victims to “atone” for their sins. Masochist guilt is seen most clearly in self flagellation and suicide.

Sadism at its worst involves the atheist, who projects his utter wickedness on God, accusing Him of all kinds of blasphemous things. When in reality, it is the atheist who is utterly vile. He doesn’t want to answer to God, so he wishes God is dead, pretending He doesn’t exist.

Since Jesus Christ is the only true way to find atonement for sins and peace with God, any attempts by the unsaved to deal with their guilt outside of Christ will be futile and destructive. Perhaps the most common way unsaved man seeks atonement is by good deeds. But his deeds cannot atone for sin, and often what he considers to be good is really evil (Isaiah 5:20).

Moreover, by not having experienced the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ, unsaved men do not truly understand forgiveness. Those who have not received true mercy and grace do not know how to give it. Thus all of unsaved man’s dealings with himself and others will be influenced by an destructive means of dealing with guilt — and an inability to truly forgive. Sadism, and masochism.

The sado-masochist bent of fallen man is captured in Alberto Moravia’s The Empty Canvas:

Humanity is divided into two main categories; those, who, when faced with an insurmountable difficulty, feel an impulse to kill, and those who, on the contrary, feel an impulse to kill themselves.

Alberto Moravia, The Empty Canvas (NY, New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961), 302. Cited in Rushdoony, Systematic Theology in 2 volumes: Volume 1, 616.

A common behavior of many unbelievers is to persecute Christians. Perhaps because a Christian’s mere presence exposes the unbeliever’s guilt before God; or, because a Christian shares the Gospel, which tells unbelievers that there is no other way to deal with their guilt. The unatoned seek to escape God’s reality — and purging the world of Christians, who speak to such reality, is an attempt to live their fiction. Such behavior is sadistic towards Christians, and masochistic towards the persecutors, who disregard the only means of atonement.

(We should note, however, that Christians are not immune from dealing with guilt incorrectly. Since even Christians are not sinless, sometimes they don’t trust in Christ like they should. In so doing, they default to one degree or another to the world’s mindset of dealing with guilt and atonement.)

Keep in mind that man’s need for atonement strikes at the heart of who he is, as man’s purpose is to serve God. This is why the Gospel is central to Christianity — it deals with man’s guilt and restoring him to God. Thus, being outside of Christ has powerful negative ramifications for all of life. All thinking is unnatural. Rushdoony notes:

Whatever the problem at hand, people bring to it, not the clear light of reason imagined by rationalists, but a guilt-ridden life and a need to discharge themselves, although vainly, of that guilt. Thus, the greater the number of people in any given social order who seek self-atonement, the more commonly are the problems and questions of that society met by sado-masochistic appeals and answers.

Rushdoony, Systematic Theology in 2 volumes: Volume 1, 603.

And so, as we see, outside of Christ, guilt is not properly dealt with. Unsaved man stands condemned for his sins, and is under God’s wrath — with no outlet. This leaves a vacuum as to how to cope with the guilt and the punishment it deserves. Since nature hates a vacuum, unsaved man attempts to discharge punishment for his guilt onto himself and his fellow man: mutually assured destruction.

Guilt and totalitarianism

This brings us to the problem of totalitarianism in a world of unsaved men plagued by guilt. As one can imagine, politics attracts those who want an opportunity to inflict their guilt-ridden sadism on a large scale.

Sadistic politicians and demagogues will target certain groups for persecution and even genocide to “atone” for national sins; and also gain compliance from others by guilt manipulation:

Those outside of Christ seek, consciously or unconsciously, an atonement by means of their own sado-masochistic plan. But, without Christ’s atonement, men are trapped in their own cycles of self-punishment, pleading guilty to the lesser offense, and to sadism, ascribing the greater and real offense to others. This sado-masochism will manifest itself in every area of our lives, and it will lead to a politics of self-abasement and self-destruction, combined with an ascription of ultimate sin and offense to a class, religion, race, or group. Sado-masochism separates men from reality to fantasy; it creates what Warner rightly calls the urge to mass destruction, often presented as the salvation of man and the world.

Rushdoony, Systematic Theology in 2 volumes: Volume 1, 613.

Indeed, it is as if the more utopian a godless society is, the more self-destructive and genocidal it becomes. Consider the French Revolution — and especially Communism and Corona Fascism. Deep down, in a twisted way, is the heaven on earth that they promise really meant to be the genocidal acts of “national atonement”? The more who die for man’s collective guilt, the better world it will be?

In any case, like the liar who sees everyone else as dishonest, the guilt-ridden sadist projects his guilt upon others. In the public sphere, an example today is identity politics employed by the Left, which viciously slanders whites, men, conservatives, and Christians. This is despite the fact that leftist policies are racist, murderous, and godless.

Projection was with us since the Garden of Eden. Satan, a liar, projected his guilt onto God by implying to Eve that God was lying when He said they would not die (Genesis 3:4). After eating of the forbidden fruit, Adam projects his guilt upon Eve and perhaps God — while Eve projects her guilt upon Satan:

The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:12, 13)

In the first murder in human history, Cain, the villain, murders his godly brother Abel, as if he was the villain. Eventually, we would see genocidal projection on a large scale, culminating in totalitarianism.

On projection, Dr. Joost Meerloo, an expert on totalitarian psychology, writes:

The torturer projects his guilt onto some outside scapegoat and tries to expiate it by attacking his victim.

Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2015), 89.

Totalitarianism thrives on projected scapegoats. Meerlo says elsewhere on projection:

In Totalitaria this vicious circle of vituperation reaches its fullest flowering. Drowned in a reign of suspicion, the citizen of Totalitaria suffers from a terrible delusion of persecution — “spyonoia,” the spy mania. He is continually on the alert, watching his fellow men. His good neighbor may at any moment become a saboteur or a traitor. The citizen of Totalitaria hardly ever looks for confusion or flaws in his own soul, but projects them onto scapegoats – until he himself finally becomes the victim of someone else’s spyonoia. Every citizen is constantly trying to search out everyone else’s innermost thoughts. Because one’s own hidden thoughts are projected on one’s neighbours, thinking in itself becomes the enemy.

Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind, 131, 132.

Beyond the sadistic side of guilt as it relates to politics, there is also the masochist side: the guilt of the citizen is a means to further political control:

Politicians use guilt heavily to control people: citizens are made to feel guilty for all the ills of the world and their country so that they might surrender more power to the state. The politics of guilt and pity is the politics of totalitarian humanistic statism.

Rushdoony, Systematic Theology in 2 volumes: Volume 1, 616.

Of course, it should be noted that the guilt use to manipulate may be a false sense of guilt: that is, a manipulated person may be led to falsely believe that he is responsible for something he is not responsible for. But by not properly dealing with what he is legitimately guilty of before God (via faith in Christ), such a person may be prone to all kinds of guilt manipulation before man.

Why is this? Maybe by rejecting God, he surrenders his conscience to man instead of God: man is deified and becomes the guilty man’s source of morality, whom he does penance for as atonement. Or maybe by punishing himself with false accusations by man, he vainly tries to atone for his true sins (a kind of spiritual self-flagellation). Perhaps much of this is done unconsciously.

Whatever the case, as sinners, we are very capable of attempting to suppress our guilt before God; and surely this must manifest itself in deranged behavior and becoming prey to guilt-manipulation. From the perspective of psychology, Dr. Meerloo writes:

Deep within all of us lie hidden feelings of guilt, unconscious guilt, which can be brought to the surface under extreme stress. … Buried deep in [man’s] unconscious is the knowledge that in his hostile fantasies he has felt himself capable of committing many crimes. …

In the political sphere … Continual purges and confessions, as we encounter them in the totalitarian countries, arouse deeply hidden guilt feelings.

Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind, 80, 81. checked

It stands to reason that masochist guilt might motivate those in free countries to embrace the oppression of totalitarianism as a means of self-punishment. Dr. Meerloo says this about embracing totalitarianism out of masochism:

It is usually neither poverty nor social idealism that makes a man a totalitarian, but mostly internal factors such as extreme submissiveness and masochism on the one hand or a lust for power on the other.

Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind, 180.

Guilt manipulation and the Scamdemic

The Coronavirus Scamdemic has brought about the worst in guilt-manipulation. This seems to largely explain why so many have blindly embraced the false COVID narrative.

At the top, we have billionaires, politicians, corporations, health authorities, the media, and others manipulating the masochistic-guilt tendencies of the populace:

“If you are a good person, you need to socially isolate yourself, sacrifice your rights, and accept the destruction of the economy. Moreover, you must destroy the health, and, if necessary, the life of yourself and your children for the greater good. Suppress your oxygen intake with masks, and take this poisoned death shot. To question us makes you a bad person.”

So many have gone along in this self-destruction — perhaps in an unconscious attempt to punish themselves for their guilt, and to attain atonement. But there are also the sadistic-guilt tendencies at work, being pushed by the same manipulators:

“The unvaxxed are the source of all of our problems. Because of them, COVID continues to ravage the world. They must be denied an income and emergency medical treatment. They must be isolated from society. They are murderers, and must be treated as such.”

And so the murderers project their guilt onto those who oppose murder. Surely many who were guilt-manipulated into blindly accepting the narrative are now blindly parroting this same slander. Perhaps, burdened by a lifetime of guilt, they find the unvaxxed a convenient scapegoat to project their sins on.

Another factor to consider regarding the Scamdemic and guilt manipulation is fallen man’s inclination to isolate himself because of guilt.

We see such an inclination in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve hid themselves from God because of their guilt. And of course, we all know from experience that guilty people can be ashamed to be around those they have wronged, or those who know — or who might know — that they have wronged others.

Have you ever avoided eye contact with someone you’ve wronged? Have you ever been embarrassed to be around those who believe you to be guilty of something?

Now, Scamdemic mandates revolve around getting man to “hide” himself: behind a mask, at home, away from others — basically, avoiding people. With fallen man already carrying guilt that fosters an isolating mentality, the added force of COVID mandates to hide oneself could be very psychologically compelling. Adding to such force is the constant bombardment of guilt for disobeying the mandates.

Conceivably, then, the guilt manipulation regarding the Scamdemic is more powerful regarding social control than the typical guilt manipulation because it plays on fallen man’s inclination to hide himself because of guilt. Due to the shame of guilt, many may be more comfortable wearing masks in public, and avoiding people in general. (This is not to say guilt is always the reason for this — some people are simply introverted.)

Then, if it is the case as Dr. Meerlo observes, that hidden feelings of guilt can become more overt to us “under extreme stress,” then guilt manipulation can be further aggravated by all of the COVID fear porn stoked by the media.

At the core of it, Corona Fascism is the typical fanatical religious cult — but with global power. Its adherents are controlled by severe guilt manipulation. Its opponents are seen as heretics who impede a heaven on earth. The heretics must “convert” by yielding to the guilt manipulation and taking the ritual death shot — or be deprived of human rights. Sadly, some have yielded.

Jesus Christ is the solution to guilt manipulation

Do not fall for the guilt manipulation tactics of the Corona Fascists. Don’t let their lies and slander manipulate you into embracing a mountain of lies and murdering yourself and your children with the death shot.

Neither become like them by projecting your own guilt onto others.

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:3-5, ESV)

When you are slandered for opposing a genocidal agenda, stand firm, like Elijah, who did not succumb to Ahab’s projection of his own guilt:

When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, “Is it you, you troubler of Israel?” And he answered, “I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father’s house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals. (1 Kings 18:17-18, ESV)

And of course, there are the religious leaders who led Israel astray who falsely projected this onto Christ Himself. Christ didn’t budge — but fulfilled His ministry of love and sacrifice.

When legalists and slanderers level false guilt upon you, then, reject it. Only Christ is Lord of the conscience. Do not live to please men, but God. If you have legitimate guilt to deal with, don’t punish yourself, thinking that doing so can atone for your sins.

Rather, look to Christ, Who has paid for all sins on the cross. Believe this. Confess your sins to Him, and seek to repent by His power. And, conform your mind to the word of God — not to the guilt-manipulating sound-bites of the Corona Fascists:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2, ESV)

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Tagged Christianity, Coronavirus, Deception