“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”- George
Santayana.
Climate change wasn’t working fast enough. We weren’t shutting down civilisation quickly enough, there were too many sceptics questioning the official narrative, even the “And a child shall lead them” gag led to questions. Something more effective had to be found.
Coronavirus. This word, practically unknown outside medical circles until January this year, now strikes terror into the heart of every citizen. Anything is justified in the face of this unprecedented cataclysm which has almost overnight, rendered the entire planet inimical to human life. The war against coronavirus is now a war against humanity, its chief carrier. It is a plague in comparison with which all past plagues pale into insignificance, the Black Death was no more than a common cold, the 1918 flu pandemic was a dry run. You couldn’t make it up.
Six months into this “emergency”, only the wilfully blind can fail to have become even mildly suspicious about what is becoming all too evident: that lockdowns may never end, or will be re-packaged and reinvented to keep the masses from waking up and demanding their fundamental rights and freedoms. That air travel and freedom of movement will soon be a thing of the past, that work, money and livelihood are to be sacrificed on a scale never before seen, that the public will accept any measure, however life-limiting and absurd, in the name of protecting each other from this “deadly” contagion that has poisoned the very air we breathe and exposure to which is 100 percent lethal. The state is taking over.
The psychology behind the UK Government’s and the mass media response to this is obvious. The totalitarian states of the early 20th Century learned that by frightening the public with an external threat, they could make them compliant. Stalin and Hitler both made use of this technique, by using, not altogether inaccurately in fairness, the threat of invasion. This is significant because the threat does not have to be false for the way in which it is used to be dishonest and manipulative. The “Big Lie,” an untruth so enormous that everyone would believe it, is another twentieth century phenomenon that we have seen work successfully over and over again. There are so many holes in the anthopogenic global warming narrative that it beggars belief anyone still takes it seriously, yet there it is circulating in our minds, schools and media as unquestionable fact. After all, why would anyone make it up? As evidence piles up that Covid-19 is not in fact, an incurable plague that is going to kill us all, perhaps 95% of the general public seem to believe that leaving their houses or having their faces exposed is an act not only of potential suicide, but murder. All of this without a shred of empiric evidence. The “bread and circuses” of Clap for Carers could only keep us from being sceptical for so long before it became redundant, after which it quietly disappeared to be replaced with something much more insidious: the importation of Far-East facemask culture to the West. There can be little doubt of the efficacy of this measure as a control mechanism: it is instantly visible and marks one out as either “one of us”, or “not one of us.” This is its purpose, and it has been the most successful indoctrination tool used by the state so far in its war on its citizens. Families, anathema to Marxists and leftists, are being torn apart by emotional battles as, inevitably, some people question facemask wearing. Members of the public are actually being encouraged by mass media and even implicitly by police forces, to attack other citizens who are “failing” to wear face masks. With this divide-and-conquer tactic, government is facilitating a culture of snooping and petty authoritarianism, in which resistance to its edicts is even less possible than previously.
Another emerging phenomenon used by twentieth-century despots is of course, mass media. The role of the media in indoctrinating the public during this “crisis” and its counterpart, the “climate crisis”, is virtually undeniable. To learn what we are to expect as the next phase in this developing emergence of the new totalitarianism, look no further than the pages of the Guardian. This odious, global-elite propaganda rag, having spent years lecturing us about “climate change”, “climate crisis” and “climate emergency”, hectoring the public with sermons written by intellectual bigots like George Monbiot and Suzanne Moore, is now clamouring for a second national lockdown. It was the Guardian which began agitating earlier this year for forced facemask wearing in the UK. The fact that its paper sales are relatively small must not make anyone underestimate the Guardian’s influence: its presence online is so all-pervasive that one could be forgiven for thinking it’s all anyone reads. And the Guardian is not alone in this: Sky News, the BBC and other mainstream outlets are peddling the same narrative of fear and questionable “science” to continually manipulate public opinion. Investigative journalism, never needed so urgently, is absent from this narrative.
In this excellent presentation, 16 Basic Principles of Mass Indoctrination,
https://mediapsychology101.com/2016/09/28/16-basic-principles-of-mass-indoctrination/, it is a relatively simple matter to demonstrate how we are being manipulated by the media. For the purpose of this essay, I will show examples pertaining to Covid-19 and its counterpart, the “climate crisis”, given that Covid-19 is relatively new.
1. Start While They’re Young. There can be no doubt that the “climate crisis” is now imprinted on the minds of young people and schoolchildren in particular. It is now an endemic part of education in UK schools, with “climate clubs”, text books with lessons about this in various subjects and school-wide presentations organised by the students themselves talking about “the sixth mass extinction.” In addition, we are faced with the gross obscenity of parents fitting facemasks to children, some less than five years old.: no doubt with the best intentions in the world, but at this tender age that children should have this monstrous thing imposed on them is a horror we should as thinking and feeling humans, regard with disgust.
2. Create the Illusion of Political Freedom. While we may be free to take to the streets to promote a movement like Black Lives Matter, with its agenda of revising history and disenfranchising law enforcement, or climate alarmism, we seemingly are not supposed to protest about mask-wearing or lockdowns. Protests which do not suit the state’s agenda are described in mainstream and social media as “far-right,” in order to discredit them. And in the end as many will know, whether we vote Labour or Conservative, we get more of the same.
3. Use Simplistic Stereotypes to Sway Public Opinion. Deniers, mask-shirkers, anti-vaxxers, the list could possibly be as long as you want to make it. We may as well include the demonisation of benefit claimants during the Cameron government’s “austerity” measures as “feckless workshy scroungers.”
4. Mix facts with lies. Yes, there may be far-right factions protesting about lockdowns, or face-mask fascism. Yes, some people questioning the “climate crisis” may be underinformed. However this is being used to deligitimise what is in fact, a legitimate protest. One may as well describe the Hong Kong “protesters” as “violent” to delegimitise their independence movement. This is partially true, but is largely absent from Western narratives about Hong Kong.
5. A big lie is more convincing than a small lie. “The earth is burning up because of man-made CO2.” “By 2013 the polar ice caps will have disappeared.” “Covid-19 will kill 60 million people worldwide.” “We are on the verge of the sixth mass extinction.” Why would anyone make this up, you may want to ask, despite the fact that there is no empiric evidence for any of these claims and some like these have already been proven false.
6, Give the masses bread and circuses to keep them well-fed and distracted. “Clap for Carers” is the most obvious example of this so far, yet we can easily include “reality” TV shows like Big Brother and Love Island. Leading dystopian future novels all feature this phenomenon which was made use of by the most corrupt regimes of the Roman Empire.: the “feelies” in Brave New World, the “families” in Farhrenheit 451, and the Two Minutes’ Hate in Nineteen-Eighty-Four.
7. Simplify Complex Issues by Portraying them as Dichotomies. Wearing a mask will keep you protected and everyone protected from Covid-19. Not doing so means you are an enemy of humanity. You’re either a “masker,” (a tool of the state) or a “mask-denier,” (an enemy of the people.)
8. Spread propaganda by all means possible. If you’ve read as far as this, one imagines that it would be counterproductive to weary you with the almost ubiquitous examples of this.
9. Ostracise dissident voices through ridicule or defamation. As previously stated, “deniers,” the most ubiquitous example of this, is accompanied by “anti-vaxxers” and “the tin hat brigade.” Articles are beginning to appear in national newspapers showing anyone who is opting out of the face-mask edict in the worst possible light. The mass media also went out of its way during Brexit, to discredit politicians promoting the Leave Vote. One of the most memorable examples of this was propaganda about the Leave Bus with its mention of a £350 million pound figure that could be used to support the NHS and its origins in Boris Johnson’s campaign strategies.
10. Faith in the Correctness of a Religion or Ideology is More Powerful than Force. In the case of the “climate crisis,” this unproven and largely unverifiable narrative is now presented as incontrovertible fact, as is the case with face-mask wearing. There is however, insufficient empiric data to verify either. Both are rapidly assuming the status of religions, with belief cited as evidence.
11. Manipulate History Records to Support your religion or Ideology. The Black Lives Matter movement can be seen to view history in the light of its own values, rather than the values of the time. Saying “Churchill was a Racist” may be to utter a truth. I’m not aware of any historian that seeks to conceal this. Telling us to rewrite history on that account is quite another thing. It is telling that methodological studies of face-mask effectiveness which fail to support public face-mask wearing are being removed or debunked, despite the fact that they were created before the “pandemic” and therefore cannot be regarded as “anti-mask propaganda.” And at this time the government is busy creating scientific “studies” telling us that face-masks work, after instructing us to wear them.
12. Control different sides of the same debate and you control the outcome. If our mass media is all owned by a few plutocrats, we may, even when reading an article challenging established faith, do no more than identify ourselves as either supporting the state’s agenda, or failing to do so.
13. The masses are less swayed by reason than by stirring their emotions. This is why mask-propaganda and dramatic use of language about “deadly droplets” works. Screaming at the public that by “failing” to wear face-masks they are endangering one another requires no proof whatever. Reasoning that face mask wearing is of zero value in public and asking what kind of world we want to live in places one in a hopeless position.
14. Drive the opposition into a corner. When they fight back, act like a victim. By fronting the climate crisis movement with a teenager living with a form of autism, its advocates are able, when someone objects to her views or methods of expression, (“How dare you?”) to accuse that person of “mocking a child.”
15. Label all non-conformistic behaviour as pathological and promote “cures” for them. We are only a few steps along this road with the “anti-vaxxer” narrative, but it is not too difficult to see this escalating. The expression “anti-vaxxer” carries connotations of morbid opposition to medicine, akin to Jehovah’s Witnesses who refuse their children blood transfusions. “Cures” in this context will only mean changes in law.
16. Use rituals and mass events to keep people occupied and strengthen their faith. Again, this brings us back to “Clap for Carers,” which even NHS workers finally begged us to stop as they clamoured for better PPE.
On current evidence, it is hard to believe that the UK Government has any intention of relaxing or reversing its measures invoked in the name of Coronavirus in the foreseeable future. It is expedient to look at these measures with particular attention to their counterparts in Asian nations. They include in no particular order: closing of shops, pubs, restaurants and bars, closing of schools, restriction of foreign travel, near-total ban on free movement, mandatory face-mask wearing, tracking of public movement via mobile phones, localised “lockdowns” and at present edging after a specious “decision” to withhold a planned “relaxation” of these measures, toward a second near-total free movement ban on the basis of a “second wave” of coronavirus expected to be “ much much worse than this one.”, which of course justifies much much harsher measures to be imposed on the British people. As stated above, tracking citizens and mandating face mask use everywhere are known facets of life in China’s surveillance state, which we have had the temerity until now to mock, deride and criticise. We live in a time when we are utterly at the mercy of the State, which is free to pluck figures from thin air and justify measures whose severity can be limited only by our imagination.
Another relevant aspect of the emerging dystopian state is the rise of activism and its role in destroying parliamentary democracy. Again and again, we have seen, particularly in our mass media, activists “calling for” various things including banning tourism to certain places, changes in law to facilitate “voluntary” euthanasia, banning meat, demanding the abandonment of fossil fuels etc. What these demands have in common is an utter disregard for anyone who might disagree with them, and what is revealed by this common denominator is the simple fact that activists are not, by nature, democratic or freedom fighters. They are deeply authoritarian figures with a specific agenda to be imposed on the majority of the people whether they like it or not. And time and again, government has declared itself an ally of these “activists.” Presumably this is when the aims of the activists match those of the state, which is almost certainly true in the case of the “climate crisis.” Tellingly, the aims of the climate change agenda and that of the “coronavirus crisis” are virtually identical: total annihilation of personal freedom. One example of the success of activism is its imposition of an almost total ban on eating peanuts in public because of an intransigent minority with an alleged peanut allergy affecting a miniscule percentage of the global population. The majority, wanting to be seen to do the right thing, complied with this. However well-intentioned, it represents the power successful media activists wield over the rest of us.
How should we, the supposedly free, British people, or the people of other nations, respond? Advocating social disobedience is a dangerous game, and activism is a game of exploiting connections by the well-connected. If activism were democratic we would see activists and campaigns defending the scientific method, defending freedom of speech, defending our right to a decent standard of living, defending the human expectations of poorer nations to be freed from poverty by technological advances. But we see none of these, with activists continuing to be the same intransigent, morally superior, entitled people they were when their demands and agitations gave rise to the Russian Revolution and the Third Reich. Yet it is difficult for the observer to fail to notice that face-mask wearing cannot be effectively enforced. Police forces are depending on the public to comply with this edict or bully others into doing so because they lack the facilities or powers to do so. Private properties (shops and public transport facilities) only have the same power they have had previously: the right to refuse service, which is part of the contract between the provider and the customer. We know that reason is not likely to work because fear, the oldest of all our emotions, has been successfully invoked to control the most basic functions of the human mind. To conjecture is to use our imagination and look for ways to use that which we know works: propaganda.
Let us take one example:
STAY HOME, PROTECT THE NHS, SAVE LIVES.
This pronouncement, simple to read, is more cleverly thought out than one might suppose at first reading. It appeals to our emotions and our essential humanity, and uses Aristotle’s Rule of Three, in which your message is expressed as three components or three repetitions.
Let us in light of this, consider an alternative:
ASK QUESTIONS. PROTECT FREEDOM. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS.
This of course does not refute the first: which is its strength. It merely gives a set of values that may prove to be at odds with the first. Even so, this possibility depends on the first being proved empty, unsuccessful and valueless, which I feel, is only a matter of time.
What is yet to come? The possibilities are limited only by our imaginations. Mass demonstrations will almost certainly lead to martial law. Should we demonstrate anyway and accept this? Would it finally wake the populace to the horror that has been unleashed on them in the name of this “emergency?” Or will they just blame us, the ones standing up for humanity and freedom? Forced vaccination is already being talked about in the media. If lockdown becomes permanent, as implied by the insidious phrase, “the new normal”, billions of people will die. If fear’s your thing, try that for size.
I quote from Architects for Social Housing:
We’ve seen,
too many times in history, what happens when a people signal, loudly and
clearly, that they are willing to do anything and everything their government
tells them to, and what governments do when that signal is given. I will not be
a collaborator in this attempt to implement a surveillance regime based on the
opinions of politicians quoting scientific factoids every bit as false as those
invented by Nazi eugenicists.
The information we are being fed is conflicting and manipulated. The author of the above article writes much better than I do and provides statistics to evidence his arguments.
That the dystopian state is now upon us is our fault. We have, collectively, failed to question lockdowns, demand exit clauses, hold our politicians to account or even to demonstrate effectively. We have continued to support indoctrination by the mass media by continuing to read and listen to, the BBC, the Guardian, Sky News, CNN and host of other media outlets peddling the fearmongering narrative that facilitates endless lockdown. We have signalled our compliance by standing outside our houses hooting and clapping our hands every Thursday in a display of astronomical gullibility. Most unforgivably, we have accepted face-mask wearing. I quote again:
When, on 1 September 1941, by order of a
decree signed by Reinhard Heydrich, all Jews within the Third Reich and its
conquered territories were forced to wear the yellow Star of David with the
word ‘Jew’ written across it, the Jews under its jurisdiction were already
lost. This decree had several purposes.
First, it helped the police to identify
Jews, who were so scared of recriminations that they voluntarily identified
themselves for the treatment they subsequently received. What they thought
would save them led them straight to the gas chambers.
Second, it identified the Jews as
biologically separate from the rest of the population, thereby increasing the
attacks on them by the non-Jewish populace. This is a classic example of the
way in which fascist regimes encourage its population to police themselves,
becoming both informants and community support officers implementing what the
police don’t have (or need) the numbers to impose.
Finally, it was a test to see whether there
was any fight, any resistance left in the Jews. There wasn’t, and wearing the
yellow star was the final sign, made by themselves, of their complete
subjugation to the Aryan race, their total obedience to the Nazi regime. It was
important, therefore, that the decree imposed the most insulting and degrading
measures. Self-abnegation and humiliation was crucial to the function of the
yellow star. From now on, the Nazis could do what they wanted with the Jews.
And they did.
This is from the same article. I cannot find a better way of making it clear that accepting face-mask wearing in public is an act of capitulation so colossal as to render any further resistance to the emergence of a new barbarism absent. Anyone who thinks or says that at some point the public will wake up and realise they’ve been tricked is wrong. We have already passed that point. The anger this foments in me is incredible and if you are either a) a mask-wearer convinced you are right and I’m wrong, or b) a citizen worried about your civil rights, or even if you are c) unsure either way, consider this:
By wearing a face-mask, you are colluding with the state in its project to introduce the new totalitarianism. You are helping to condemn all of us to the hell of a Brave New World. If you had been Jewish in Germany in 1941 you would have walked the streets proudly displaying your yellow star and snitched on your own people.
I cannot think of another way to respond to the self-righteousness of face-mask wearers, and yet, all of us have something in common. We must not allow ourselves to become further weakened by descending into hatred of our fellow human beings because of their position on face-mask wearing. What we have in common is that we are now all frightened people. It’s just that we’re frightened of different things.
We could, if we only had the
courage, stop this madness tomorrow by throwing away our face-masks and proudly
walking the streets as free citizens. There just aren’t enough government
servants to lock up 68 million people. But we won’t. Because we’ve failed the biggest and last test of our resistance.
Because we’re wearing face-masks in this country.
The new totalitarianism is here, now.
And we have only ourselves to blame.
FURTHER READING
The New Normal: What is the UK Biosecurity State? (Part 1.
Programmes and Regulations)
Lockdown: Collateral Damage in the War on COVID-19
Manufacturing Consensus: The Registering of COVID-19 Deaths in the
UK
Giorgio Agamben and the Bio-Politics of COVID-19
Good Morning, Coronazombies! Diary of a Bio-political Crisis Event
Coronazombies! Infection and Denial in the United Kingdom
Language is a Virus: SARs-CoV-2 and the Science of Political
Control
Sociology of a Disease: Age, Class and Mortality in the
Coronavirus Pandemic
