(b. Sept 21, 1954) a US deep state functionary who served as “regulatory czar” in the Obama administration and . He defended the US government’s official narrative about the events of September 11, 2001 and the necessity of the US COVID Lockdown.[1] Sunstein co-authored a now infamous 2008 paper, entitled “Conspiracy Theories; Causes & Cures” which tried to link questioning governments’ official narratives with violence, and suggested that “the best response [to “conspiracy theorists”] consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups”.[6] He “advocates for the control of society through subversive means of influence (nudging) while allowing people to continue believing that their choices are actually their own.”[2]
“Once we know that people are human and have some Homer Simpson in them, then there’s a lot that can be done to manipulate them.” – Cass Sunstein [3]
Sunstein suggests that the government should use conspiracies (i.e., cognitive infiltration, social interference via cognitive diversity) to stop debates about governmental conspiracies – an absurd idea which he articulated in several papers. Sunstein is known for his “nudge theory” of behavior modification (cf. linguistic thought control and subliminal indoctrination).
In his co-authored “scholarly” essay, the authors (Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule) wrote “the existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks to the government’s antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be.”
Not one to simply draw criticisms, the pro-active Sunstein laid out five possible strategies which the social engineers managing the population could deploy to defuse this growing threat saying:
- Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.
- Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.
- Government might itself engage in counter speech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories.
- Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counter speech.
- Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help”.
Various commentators have roundly criticized this intellectual stance.[7][8] who argue that it would violate prohibitions on government propaganda aimed at domestic citizens.[9] Sunstein and Vermeule’s proposed infiltrations have also been met by sharply critical scholarly critiques.[10][11][12] The paper was cited in a 2015 speech by François Hollande in which he recommended that governments censor any such questioning from the internet.
In 2021 Mark Pulliam termed Adrian Vermeule & Cass Sunstein “Leviathan’s Apologists”, observing that “for its enthusiasts, the possible unconstitutionality of the administrative state doesn’t matter.”[4]
In 2014 Sunstein wrote an article Fighting Crime by Going Cashless which suggested that a cashless society could reduce crime.[13]
Sunstein, who served as “regulatory czar” in the Obama administration, seemed well suited for his position. Sunstein wishes to regulate just about everything. In Republic.com, his 2002 book, Sunstein suggested extending the fairness doctrine to the Internet. Sunstein then proposed allowing animals to sue humans for their rights, and more recently urged a ban on hunting throughout the United States. Having been on the job for only a few months, Sunstein may well come up with other eye-catching suggestions bound to please leftist radicals everywhere.
More insidious yet are the proposals included in Sunstein’s best-selling 2008 book, Nudge (coauthored with Richard H. Thaler and published by Penguin Books). The central idea of this book, it would seem, is that the political elite have the right to decide what is best for the majority of Americans, whom Sunstein calls “somewhat mindless, passive decision makers” (p. 37).
As Sunstein would have it, the more-enlightened members of the intellectual class, with whom Obama stocked his administration, knew what was best for ordinary citizens. Since they knew what was best for our health and happiness, we were obliged to submit to their far-fetched schemes for our betterment — schemes that often involve wealth redistribution and the enlargement of governmental powers.
To his credit, Sunstein is the first to admit that his attitudes are “paternalistic.” With remarkable presumptuousness, he insists that those whom he calls “choice architects” (p. 11), of whom he is presumably one, have the right to design and limit choices for everyone else.
But what is it that confers the title of “choice architect” on Mr. Sunstein and his fellow left-leaning academics but not on others? If Sunstein is going to claim that title for himself and for those with whom he agrees on public policy, why can not any American claim it for himself? And if we are all choice architects trying to “influence people’s behavior,” how does that differ from what Americans have always done: expressing their opinions freely in speech and writing, talking politics at watering places, and casting their votes on election day?
From the examples cited in Nudge, it would seem that only left-liberal academics, a great many of them social scientists or professors of law at universities associated with Obama, have the right to choose the appropriate lifestyle for the rest of us. It does not seem to have occurred to Professor Sunstein that his fellow citizens, all 300 million of them, may treasure the liberty to live as they wish; nor that they may deeply resent the “nudges” that he and his fellow social scientists have dreamed up.
The fact is that what Sunstein calls a “nudge” is in most cases a good deal more than that. Whenever choices are structured by a centralized bureaucracy, as Sunstein appears to favor, human liberty has already been curtailed. Whenever government is entrusted with that much power, it is not long before all choice will be taken away.
“Whenever choices are structured by a centralized bureaucracy, as Sunstein appears to favor, human liberty has already been curtailed.”
As Sunstein ominously suggests, “in some cases, forced choosing is best” (p. 250). Nudging is a step on the slippery slope toward a command-and-control government. It is not just the economy that Sunstein wishes to influence. It is an entire range of choices, from individual investing, school choice, organ donation, environmental regulation, and the “privatization” of marriage.
The chilling fact about Sunstein’s conception of behavioral economics is that it is to be applied to all aspects of private life, not just to “fixing” healthcare and social security (as if these fixes were not scary enough). For those who consume too many Big Macs, Sunstein has a plan to nudge them off of burgers and onto vegetables. For those whose waistlines are too large, he has a scheme to shame them into losing weight.
For those whose earnings seem a bit too high, he offers government campaigns to convince them to fork over a portion of their wages for the public good. Sunstein, as he admits, does “not share the view that all redistribution is illegitimate” (p. 245). We can be assured that his current employer agrees with him.
But why stop at income redistribution? Ideologues in other lands have extended the hand of government much farther, and it would appear that Sunstein wishes to do so here. One such proposal is that “states should abolish ‘marriage’ as such and rely on civil unions instead” (p. 228). The terms of such unions might be adjusted on an a la carte basis, with prenuptial agreements for all, on the expectation that one’s marriage is likely to end in divorce.
Now we all know that Sunstein spent the following years working as Obama’s Regulatory Czar alongside an army of fellow behaviorists who took control of all levers of policy making as outlined by Time Magazine’s April 13, 2009 article ‘How Obama is Using the Science of Change’. As the fabric of western civilization, and traditional values of family, gender, and even macro economic concepts like “development” were degraded during this period, the military industrial complex had a field day as Sunstein’s wife Samantha Power worked closely with Susan Rice in the promotion of “humanitarian bombings” of small nations under Soros’ Responsibility to Protect doctrine.
After the Great Reset Agenda was announced in June 2020, Sunstein was recruited to head the propaganda wing of the World Health Organization known as the WHO Technical Advisory Group where his skills in mass behavior modification was put to use in order to counteract the dangerous spread of conspiracy theories that persuaded large chunks of the world population that COVID-19 was part of a larger conspiracy to undermine national sovereignty and impose world government.
The head of WHO described Sunstein’s mandate in the following terms:
“In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries are using a range of tools to influence behavior: Information campaigns are one tool, but so are laws, regulations, guidelines and even fines…That’s why behavioral science is so important.”
Today, hundreds of Obama-era behaviorists have streamed back into influential positions of government under the new “scientifically managed”, evidence-based governance coming back to life under Biden promising to undo the dark days of President Trump.
For 27 years, Sunstein taught at the University of Chicago Law School. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School. Sunstein is married to Samantha Power, the 28th United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
Sources:
Chronological History of Events Related to Cass Sunstein
The German Club of Clear Words Report: Exposes the network of individuals and organizations responsible for the COVID scam
Snowden Leaks Docs on Secret Government Agency Online Manipulation & Subterfuge Tactics
