Over a year has passed since the Global Government's Scottish branch imposed the first virus-inspired lockdown. Of course, the authorities rolled out variants of the same policy first across much of Europe and the Americas. We may note a few partial exceptions in Europe, such as Sweden and Belarus, and some US states, such as South Dakota, that never enforced antisocial distancing and mandatory face masks. Just as the UK technically left the EU, we began to hear much more about the four countries’ approach to the pandemic, with Nicola Sturgeon trying to outdo Westminster in her apparent resolve to defeat the virus. All of a sudden power-hungry regional leaders started to read from the same pseudo-scientific script. Behavioural psychologists had probably concluded that people were more likely to listen to leaders who speak the same vernacular. We didn’t see very much of Boris Johnson, especially as he had a bout of flu or, as we call it now, covid. Instead, we were treated to daily press conferences from the UK health secretary Matt Hancock and medical mandarins such as Chris Whitty, Sir Patrick Vallance and Jonathan Van Tam. In Scotland, we regularly heard from former Clinton foundation groupie, Devi Shridnar, who used her skills in neurolinguistic programming to win public support for tougher restrictions, more testing and more surveillance. From the outset, the mainstream media drove the agenda, sensationalising reports of a new deadly coronavirus first in Wuhan, China, and then in Lombardy, Italy, with harrowing scenes of overburdened intensive care units chock-a-block with patients on ventilators. This was the dreaded Spanish flu all over again. The media went into overdrive to promote social isolation and get us to view our neighbours, friends and relatives as potential bio-hazards, unless they adhered strictly to new draconian social regulations. The greater freedom we enjoyed over the last 60 to 70 years went into rapid reverse as a new bio-security state took charge of our private lives.
Cultists
Society is now split into three broad categories of atomised individuals. At one extreme we have the covid cultists on a mission to educate the wider community on the benefits of our Brave New Abnormal. The followers of this new religion like to attribute all illnesses either to sars-cov-2 variants or to the new mysterious catch-all sickness long covid. They see covid everywhere and not uncommonly claim to have had it themselves. These are the kind of people who will loyally install the official track-and-trace app on their mobile devices and voluntarily have a PCR test at the slightest hint of symptoms we would normally associate with the common cold. On social media they love to publicise their adherence to the new medical safety regime by posing with colourful face masks, often championing other causes or institutions that undermine traditional families and personal autonomy. Many proudly sport NHS logos with LGBTQ+ rainbows and EU emblems to signal their support for top-down social engineering. Such people have blind faith in corporate science. They seldom challenge the logic or competence of official experts when they move goalposts or make 180º turns in official guidance. One moment they welcome free movement of all peoples across anachronistic national borders and the next they welcome strict border controls around public buildings to check everyone’s medical records. One moment no human being is illegal and the next any unvaccinated person represents a major biological threat to those you have dutifully participated in mass-marketed medical experimentation. I find it very hard to reason with many covid cultists because they will always dismiss any critiques of the official virus narrative as dangerous conspiracy theories before they dutifully direct your attention to an official fact-checker. Disturbingly, if you try to counter their arguments with links to well-researched online resources, social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, will flag them as misinformation. One recent example is Prof. Denis Rancourt of the Ontario Civil Liberties Association whose peer-reviewed study on the harms of face masks was banned from the academic publishing site ResearchGate after being viewed over 200,000 times. A covid cultist would instinctively assume such censorship serves the greater good as it might discourage people from wearing masks and lower their guard in our collective struggle against the virus.
Heretics
At the other extreme, we have a very heterogeneous set of lockdown sceptics. It would be nice if we could conveniently pigeon-hole these heretics into neat categories such as antivaxxers, religious fundamentalists, white nationalists or far-right libertarians who believe personal freedom always trumps collective responsibility. In short today’s dissidents are anyone who fails to trust the holy alliance of big tech and big governments and suspects the current obsession with preemptive infection control is leading us towards a high-tech dystopia that may wipe out much of humanity. Was the late Tanzanian president John Magufuli a white supremacist? Is Dr Michael Yeadon, former head of research at Pfizer, an antivaxxer? Is Prof. Sunetra Gupta an extreme libertarian who would let the poor die if they cannot afford private healthcare? Obviously not, but if you get your news from the Guardian or, heaven forbid, the BBC, you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. In true Stalinist style, if no other slurs work against a dissident, our new guardians of truth can simply play the insanity card. Both Dr Thomas Binder in Switzerland and Prof. Jean-Bernard Fourtillan in France have been detained in psychiatric hospitals for voicing their dissent from the covid narrative. Unsurprisingly, the former has recently been banned on Twitter. A clear pattern is emerging. Tech giants and governments are working in tandem to neutralise meaningful dissent. The current wave of social media censorship may have first targeted sensationalist outfits such as Alex Jones’ Infowars, but their real goal has always been to close down scientific debate when it threatens vested interests. If you’re unsure whether Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon or have any doubts about the Earth’s shape, Youtube can still offer you plenty of uncensored videos challenging the scientific consensus. I don’t mind if some people think the Earth is flat as astronomical observations can easily disprove such claims. I do not need some higher authority to protect me against bad scientists. I’m much more concerned about evil scientists, who have sold their soul to large corporations with nefarious agendas. Since February 2020 public health advisors have promoted behaviours that most of us would have considered harmful before the covid craze spread around the world.
The Acquiescent Majority
The first two vocal groups do not represent the population at large. The former come mainly from the chattering classes, academia, social services, charities and healthcare. While all major political parties in the UK have supported strict coronavirus containment measures, the woke left has taken the most radical stances cheerleading SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) and even setting up an even more radical Independent SAGE that wants, wait for it, zero covid, something only attainable through the most extreme form of medical martial law, literally transforming the country into a giant clinic. They build on people’s affection for the once much-loved National Health Service at a time when most bricks-and-mortar hospitals are effectively out of bounds to the general public. By contrast, covid dissidents come from an alliance of the thinking working classes and small business owners alongside outcasts from academia and scientific research.
Between these two extremes we have the unsuspecting majority who like to get on with their lives and go with the flow without getting too involved in political and scientific controversies. Such people are more likely to watch talk shows and soap operas on mainstream TV and be more easily swayed by celebrity endorsements. Behavioural psychologists have successfully exploited media pundits and celebrities to spread fear of a nanoscopic virus among people who until the day before yesterday had much less fear of fast cars, motorbikes, cigarettes, booze or junk food. By isolating people in their homes and flooding TV, radio, newspapers and social media with endless covid-themed propaganda, the authorities have inculcated in the masses a new sense of civic responsibility and expected social behaviour, partly by encouraging people to snitch on transgressors. Within a month of the first lockdown last year, the word covidiot was on the tongue of all social conformists. Soon entering a supermarket without a mask felt like being a lone Celtic fan in the Rangers’ home stand back in the days of endemic sectarianism. I often observe a stark contrast between my nearest large supermarket with over 95% mask compliance and the local park where most visitors do not wear a mask and interpret anti-social distancing rules very liberally. People often pay lip service to the covid narrative, speaking of relatives who had covid-19 on their death certificates, but scratch beneath the surface and it becomes clear that lockdown policies have further isolated the lonely, deprived people of a sense of purpose and made people feel guilty for attempting to go about their normal lives. Once the silent majority realise that experimental injections will not help them regain their personal freedoms and see their relatives die within months of booster shots, you can bet many so-called sheeple will wake up. At that stage, we must be prepared for greater state repression.