The Revolution Starts Once You Gain the Power to Say ‘No’
Description
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
Mainstream media and authorities use labels like “crazy” to discredit dissenters, transforming psychiatry from healing into a control tool that silences opposition throughout history
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has expanded to classify normal behaviors as disorders, with 69% of its authors having financial ties to pharmaceutical companies, promoting medication over addressing root causes
Psychopaths disproportionately rise to leadership positions in politics and corporations, reshaping institutions to reflect their lack of empathy, creating what’s called a “pathocracy” or sick system
The experiments of Stanley Milgram, Ph.D., showed that witnessing one person’s defiance dramatically reduces obedience to authority, proving that individual courage can trigger collective resistance and systemic change
Research reveals single fake news stories rarely change behavior, but repeated exposure creates “illusory truth”
Mainstream media is one of the most common ways to shape the collective psyche of a nation. Figures of authority use them as loudspeakers to deliver whatever narrative they wish to maintain control. However, not everyone falls for it, which is why they resort to censoring dissenters, even putting them in prison.
This forms the basis of The Corbett Report documentary film “Dissent Into Madness,” featured above. The film explores how rebels are often branded as dangerous, and how academic and medical institutions reinforce this circle of oppression.1
I encourage you to watch the entire film, as it will teach you the tricks psychopaths use to get into positions of power and what you need to do to break free from them.
When ‘Crazy’ Becomes a Weapon
“Dissent Into Madness” opens with a bold statement — words like “crazy,” “insane,” and “deranged” are not harmless insults. Instead, they are tools of control. Broadcast clips from major news networks are shown, where guests and hosts casually use these labels to ridicule people who question official stories.
Corbett argues that these words are meant to discredit your judgment and push you out of public discussion. As he explains, when rulers or media call someone “crazy,” it’s often not because that person is wrong, it’s because they are inconvenient.
A tool of oppression — Throughout history, people in power have used the diagnosis of “insanity” to remove those who opposed them. The film highlights how labeling someone as mentally unwell can justify locking them away, drugging them, or silencing them under the banner of “treatment.” It warns that this tactic doesn’t just happen in dictatorships or the past — it’s a recurring pattern whenever authority feels threatened.
Then the film flips the usual story — Instead of asking what’s wrong with the dissidents, it asks what’s wrong with the rulers. “What if the ‘delusions’ of the dissidents are in fact real?” the narrator asks.
<label class="hide-text" contenteditable="false">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label>What if the people being called paranoid are actually seeing the truth about corruption or injustice? The film argues that maybe it’s not you who’s “crazy” for questioning power — but that the systems leading society are the ones showing signs of sickness. It also introduces the idea that political leaders can display traits of psychopathy — manipulation, lack of empathy, and obsession with control.
The film invites you to question your own assumptions about sanity and authority — Instead of viewing dissenters as “mad,” you’re asked to see them as people reacting normally to a corrupt environment. The narrator ends the introduction with a challenge — perhaps the real madness is not in those who resist, but in the society that accepts cruelty, deceit, and control as normal.
<label class="hide-text" contenteditable="false">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label>This shift (from blaming the individual to diagnosing the system) sets the stage for the rest of the documentary’s investigation into what it calls “political psychopathy.”
When Medicine Became a Tool for Power
Psychiatry was not always about care or healing. Instead, it was often used as a weapon to control people who questioned authority. Corbett reveals how Soviet leaders labeled political dissidents with a made-up diagnosis called “sluggish schizophrenia.”
In essence, anyone who spoke out against the government could be declared mentally ill, locked up in psychiatric hospitals, and given drugs or even placed into induced comas. These were not patients — they were citizens silenced under the banner of mental health.
Other governments followed the same playbook — Nazi Germany used psychiatry as part of its brutal eugenics program, known as Aktion T4. Doctors decided who was “fit” to live and who was not.
<label class="hide-text" contenteditable="false">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label>In Japan (during and after World War II) and in Revolutionary Cuba, similar abuses occurred — people seen as threats to the state were forcibly medicated or electroshocked into compliance, revealing a troubling pattern. When governments merge with medical authority, the result is often cruelty disguised as care.
<label class="hide-text" contenteditable="false">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label>Then the film turns westward, highlighting that Western nations were not innocent observers of these crimes. American institutions, including the Rockefeller Foundation, helped fund early German eugenics research through the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes. U.S. laws even inspired Nazi sterilization policies.
Disturbing figures from early American psychiatry — Dr. Benjamin Rush, called the “father of American psychiatry,” believed rebellion itself was a mental illness he named “anarchia” — an “excess of the passion for liberty.” His so-called treatments involved confinement in darkness, sleep deprivation, and even spinning patients on a gyrator.
Diagnosing Rebellion — How Normal Behavior Became ‘Disorder’
Modern psychiatry has shifted from treating illness to labeling normal behaviors as diseases. The film examines the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (known as the DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association.
Introduced as a clinical guide in 1952, the DSM has grown into what Corbett calls “the psychiatric diagnostic Bible.” With each edition, more human emotions and behaviors have been reclassified as disorders, expanding the market for prescription drugs.
Doctors contribute to the problems, too — Corbett presents striking data from research at the University of Massachusetts Boston, published in 2012 by Dr. Lisa Cosgrove. According to the findings, 69% of the experts who wrote the DSM-5 had financial ties to drug companies — some as paid consultants or spokespeople.
The film also confronts the growing medicalization of everyday life — It cites surveys showing that one in six U.S. adults now takes psychiatric medication, while prescriptions for children, especially for antipsychotics like risperidone and olanzapine, have surged over the past two decades.
<label class="hide-text" contenteditable="false">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label>These drugs are not neutral — they shape behavior, limit emotional range, and teach children that compliance is chemical. Instead of asking why people feel anxious, restless, or angry, society simply tells them to take something for it.
Defiance is being treated as a legitimate mental illness — Dr. Bruce Levine, featured in the documentary, gives a chilling example — “Oppositional Defiant Disorder,” or ODD. He explains that this label targets children who question authority or refuse to obey adults, even when they’ve done nothing illegal or harmful.
<label class="hide-text" contenteditable="false">Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published</label>The DSM’s definition describes behaviors like arguing with teachers or resisting instructions as symptoms of a mental disorder. Levine calls this “pathologizing rebelli
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