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Notes -
"Mass Formation Psychosis" just seems like a buzzword.
There's definitely something self-sustaining to lockdownism that makes it uniquely powerful as a variant of totalitarianism. Most ideologies have some sort of engine that, whether by design or by accident, sustains them, by bringing in new people and stopping them from leaving. Dawkins would have described it as a meme by his original intent: a self-replicating bit of culture, some of which are far better at self-replicating than others and of which lockdownism might just be the best ever at spreading.
But I don't think there's anything spooky like "Psychosis" explaining this. I think it's rather simple, actually. The core tenants of lockdownism are self-sustaining. That is to say, if you actually believe in these restrictions and carry them out, then the process of doing this will sustain your own belief in lockdowns:
They control behaviour by robbing people of everyday life. They destroy bonds of friends, family and work, and replace these bonds with bonds to distant figures like Fauci. They make people financially reliant on leadership (i.e the government) for survival. They isolate people from dissenting information by keeping people locked up in their houses, unable to hear or even see those who disagree - all outside sources are dismissed as not merely wrong, but actively dangerous. Any contact with people who don't agree with lockdowns is frowned upon above and beyond that of contact in general - they disagree, therefore they are more likely to be infected, and are more likely to kill you. Through masking, your empathy towards others is decreased. At a broader scale, political pluralism and serious disagreement are de facto outlawed via a combination of bans on public meetings and censorship of alternatives to public meetings...
The weakness is in the long-term. Once everyone is entrenched in this system, the economic wellbeing of society inevitably tanks to the point where it becomes unsustainable. These systems of control don't function once you have rolling blackouts knocking out information control infrastructure, seized up supply networks blocking deliveries, and people emerge from their isolation in desperate search fulfilling basic needs. They also don't function once people notice that the prophesies are failing, and the sinners aren't all dead - Bill down the road is one of those disgusting anti-vaxxers, and you've not spoken to him in months, but somehow his car keeps coming and going. In this regard, vaccine mandates could be seen as a way to resolve this discomfort - a way to make manifest in the real world the sufferings that are meant to befall the prophesized enemies, after they fail to emerge as a result of their sins.
It really shares quite a lot in common with the strategies that cults use to manipulate members. It's just that in this case, the policy prescription of lockdowns is inherently manipulative, rather than (or alongside) being intentionally so. Unlike a cult, it never replaces comradery with the outside world with comradery with the cult itself, instead just leaving a miserable void. Perhaps it's long-term instability is similar to Nazism and Communism, rather than religious cults - it feels good while you're killing Jews/Kulaks/whatever, but inevitably the reality that you can't sustain a society based on killing imaginary enemies sets in.
I don't know if this is a steelman of Mass Formation Psychosis, however. Maybe this is what those people are really getting at, beneath the layers of buzzwords.
This is a really good comment, and I'd like to add to it: part of the effectiveness of lockdownism as a meme is that it fills a screaming gap. The populace at the moment of lockdown had a deep desire for a rational, moral explanation of why thousands of people were dying. People want there to be a reason why some are felled by the disease and others are not, they want a sense of control, they don't want their or their loved-ones' fates controlled by seemingly random variables or by variables set by choices many years ago. Lockdownism offers that: stay inside, wear a mask, do what Fauci says and you'll be safe. Do it not, and you will die.
At the start of lockdowns in my state, the nation was seeing a 9/11 a week in Covid deaths. People are going to want a Just-World explanation that allows them to get out of it. Of course, there is no just world, some small portion of young healthy people die after triple masking and triple vaxxing, some people survive despite being fat and unvaxxed. It's life, no ideology survives contact with reality.
If it weren't for all the media attention would most people have been able to tell? Where was their deep desire for a rational moral explanation of why thousands of people were dying of heart disease?
How about this, rather than filling a gap, lockdowns created the need for lockdownism. I'm coming round to the idea that the most people are simply statists (maybe less true in the US), and such massive government action created the deep desire for a justification. Not in the sense of demanding a justification, but rather wanting to justify it. It is perhaps the same psychological mechanism that allows totalitarian governments to survive for so long just by going big: The state acts, victory!
I mean, it's all the fuck around us dude. I can't walk down a supermarket aisle without being assailed by various low-fat, low-carb, heart-healthy, diet, etc foodstuffs. Walk into a GNC you'll find a hundred supplements designed to help with heart health. The buildup of superstitions about, and inefficient societal reactions to, heart disease probably adds up to plenty if you spread it over time.
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