Hello everyone. Welcome to the program. I am so excited for today's guest. We are talking with one of the foremost leading authorities on something called mass formation as it pertains to COVID-19. This is, of course, Dr. Mitya Tess Metzmet. He is a professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium. Hey, Mattia, so great to have you back here with us today.

Thanks for joining us.

Well, thank you for inviting me again, Dr. Martí.

And this is the book.

We're talking about this one right here.

If you get it, which you absolutely should,

it won't come with all these note marks and everything.

Matthias, I marked up this book more than any other book I've read

in years because you were just hitting me with line after line. It's the psychology of totalitarianism.

What is totalitarianism very briefly so we can set the stage? And is this something people

need to be concerned about today?

Oh, well, yes, totalitarianism.

If we are talking about totalitarianism, we are thinking in the first place about communism,

Nazism, the Soviet Union and so on.

And that were indeed the first totalitarian systems.

So the first authoritarian systems in the first part of the 20th century.

Before the 20th century, totalitarianism did not exist.

That's important to know.

Many people confuse totalitarianism with classical dictatorships, but it's something completely different.

A classical dictatorship is very simple.

The psychological structure of a classical dictatorship is very simple.

It's a group. It's the population that is scared of a small group of people, the dictatorial regime.

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