Irving Janis published Groupthink in 1972, expanded in Victims of Groupthink, diagnosing fiascos, Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam escalation, through symptoms including illusions of invulnerability, self-censorship, mindguards and pressure on dissenters. Later meta-analyses found the model's predictive power weaker than its fame.
Corporate culture absorbed it as a meeting insult: any unanimous decision someone dislikes is groupthink. The term became a way to end arguments rather than examine rooms.
Icke's inversion from the video: the alternative media, built to escape mainstream groupthink, fractured into cult-like factions each demanding unquestioning belief. The structural point stands independent of the source: anti-groupthink communities lack every institutional antibody against groupthink, and purity tests do the rest.
If the antidote to groupthink is the independent mind, why do the groups formed to escape groupthink reproduce it fastest?