The Mind Virus | Jerm Warfare

**Jerm** (0:30)
My name is Jerm, this is Jerm Warfare, the battle of ideas. John Leake, thank you for joining me in the trenches.

**John Leake** (0:38)
Thanks for having me, delighted.

**Jerm** (0:40)
So you were just saying, the last time you and I spoke would have been, what, four years ago. Can you believe it?

**John Leake** (0:45)
Yeah, yeah. I was the principal author of my first book with Peter McCullough.
I think I even might have it here. It's kind of a walk down memory lane, the courage to face COVID-19.

**Jerm** (0:59)
Yes, I've got that book.

**John Leake** (1:02)
It was about the pandemic response. And you interviewed us about that. And I remember it being a fun interview. And then, you know, you look up and four years have gone by.

**Jerm** (1:14)
Do you think that the world has changed for the better or for the worse since then?

**John Leake** (1:22)
I think that a large swath of our populations, whether it be in the United States or South Africa or the UK, has awakened. Now, the question is, does that awakening put us in a better position relative to our governments the next time our government tries to do some dreadful act of tyranny? I fear not. I fear that, to put it in a way that might sound a little melodramatic, I fear our government apparatus, a sort of oligarchic structure of ruling the world, has come unmoored from true representative government. So it kind of feels like we, at least we're allowed to talk with each other. We're not just being banned and censored outright, but I'm not sure how much our conversations in this quarter of the Public Forum are resulting in any kind of correction of governance. I kind of feel like we're ruled by people that basically do whatever they want. And the theme of my new book is, it seems like as soon as we have a bit of peace and repose in the Public Forum, we're blasted with another crisis, another disaster, another war, another pandemic, whatever it may be. And then all of a sudden we once again sort of feel like we're back to square one. But my prescription is that government just, we can't trust it.
It's come, it's no longer responsive to the desires, the prudent instructions from we, the people. The government does what it wants, yeah.
Or it answers to what I believe is something like an oligarchy. Now, that should come as no surprise. I think most of human history, mankind has been under the thumb more or less of an oligarchy.

**Jerm** (3:31)
Yeah, your book that you're referring to as Mind Viruses, America's Obsession, sorry, America's Irrational Obsessions. By the way, I still want a copy of that book. It's obviously just come out and I wanted it personally signed by you.
I love the theme. Mind Viruses and I'm I'm just I was thinking about this a moment ago. What is the difference between a Mind Virus and a bad idea?

**John Leake** (3:58)
A Mind Virus, it's obviously a metaphor. I'm borrowing from Elon Musk parlance. He talks about the woke Mind Virus and I do address that concept in the book. But I'm using that metaphor to refer to any irrational idea.
That it is irrational. It does not comport with basic standards of common sense, evaluating factual evidence. It's just kind of a nutty idea. But because of man's social and imitative nature, this idea can start to spread kind of like a contagion. And you know, you'll know you're in the presence of a Mind Virus or someone who's infected with one.
When you stop and consider that just, you think, well, just like 18 months, if this man had proposed this idea at this dinner party 18 months ago, everybody would have looked at him like he's completely insane. But the idea has sort of, you know, gained currency and caught on. And so suddenly people are adopting it. And you know, I give multiple examples of this where there's no factual evidence available, you know, in the public forum in the world to support this idea. And yet here we are with, you know, millions of people embracing it. I'll give you an example in the United States. Just by, we know the pandemic, and I have multiple chapters on pandemic, on the pandemic, but I'll give you another one. So Barack Obama was sworn in as the, and touted as America's first African American president. And initially, I would say within the first six months, we were sort of basking in the glow, kind of congratulating ourselves of how far the country had come since the days of the Jim Crow South, segregation, widespread bigotry. This was before the Civil Rights Act of 1964