“…the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
The other day a friend and I were excavating the past three years, picking through the rubble of the so-called ‘left’. Like me, he’s a believer in small-s socialism: a balance of regulated free enterprise and social programs in a mixed economy, where free speech is sacrosanct.
Neither he or I have changed in our beliefs, but it appears many if not most people in our demographic have. It must be one of the strangest political inversions in history. How did those who condemned predatory capitalism, the military-industrial complex, corporate media and big pharma end up becoming shills for media-mediated disinformation about Russiagate, the Ukraine proxy war, and pandemic/vaccination mandates? How did those who once worshipped free speech begin to advocate silencing those they disagreed with?
How did they become so damn ideological, in a manner that surreally echoed the McCarthy-era right?
That clarion call of 70’s feminism, “my body, my choice,” was once axiomatic to all good lefties. Yet in the Covid era it might as well have been, ‘my body, the state’s choice,’ with the attached rider: ‘shut the fuck up.’
We’re far enough into this madness to examine the mandate era as a historical event, even if it appears difficult to decode. As Monika Ullman observed, “truth is like a bird; it alights for a while and then flies off. And then more birds appear and pretty soon, we’re fending off a murder of crows…”
(I like to think of those crows as ‘fact checkers’ aligned with legacy media. Murder indeed.)
“Mass formation” offers a framework to examine the madness, though it’s only partial. The believers wouldn’t have become so dogmatic without legacy media falling into narrative lockstep, uncritically circulating public relations releases from Big Pharma and demanding unthinking compliance. An extremely clever and diabolical PR approach leveraged of the core values of the left - compassion and collectivism - against themselves and others. The bribed and bought-off media insisted you had to get masked up and vaccinated not so much for yourself but for grandma and the vulnerable.
A paper from October 2021, Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions, highlighted this method of social manipulation:
“It is even more effective to add language framing vaccine uptake as protecting others and as a cooperative action. Not only does emphasizing that vaccination is a prosocial action increase uptake, but it also increases people’s willingness to pressure others to do so.”
However, there was one problem in this marketing plan, notes Filipe Rafaeli in an article for the Brownstone Institute:
The best advertising messages for the product never represented the product’s qualities. The information that vaccines would help reduce transmission, and therefore, getting vaccinated was a pro-social action, was a lie from the outset. Early on, studies showed that vaccines did not reduce infection waves in countries or reduce household transmission.
Essentially, empathy was weaponized through a medical fairy tale. Believers who participated in a mass ritual of imaginary cleansing might as well have tattooed “Pfizer’ or “Moderna” on their foreheads.
It remains a source of amazement to me that millions of people - progressives especially - literally lined up for injections that were repeatedly described in the press as “experimental.” (The worst fears of the “tinfoil hat” crowd have largely since been confirmed by global stats for post-jab excess mortality rates.)
The believers had a choice, and they were always free to to make it (“vaccine” and “vaccination” were literally redefined for the rollout for what the pharmaceutical industry defined as novel gene therapy). Yet most of those who participated in the mass medical ritual had no patience for anyone who argued for informed consent. In their eyes, those opposing mandates deserved to be physically shunned, with some even insisting this should extend to health care.
The dynamic of shunning, shaming, blaming and bullying was poetically captured by Margaret Anna Alice in her recent post, Eulogy for the COVID Kapos ( I take the kapos to be the disaster capitalists’ enablers in the professional classes: media, government and academia.)
The mandate-mad “progressives” regarded the refuseniks as demonstrably horrible people in the thrall, ideologically if not personally, of Donald Trump and his minions. Before, during and after his White House tenure, the former reality television star and real estate mogul was like a bloated Roshcarch Blot for both sides. Those on the left saw him evil incarnate. Those on the right saw an avenging angel from outside official Washington, who would “drain the swamp” once he got into office.
Alas, the Chief Executive Swamp Drainer turned out to be just a more colourful alligator on the Potomac
Oddly, great numbers of those on the right who saw through the COVID scam believe Trump was and is some avenging angel for American health, in part because as President he pulled funding from the WHO and expressed distaste for NIAID director Anthony Fauci. They continue to ignore the uncomfortable truth that he was the one who signed off on ‘Operation Warp Speed’ to develop the mRNA vaccines, and that he continues to recommend vaccination against the non-plague to this day.
“Trump Derangement Syndrome” cuts both ways.
In any case, the end result of Orange Thing’s tenure, along with that of his bumbling, stumbling, marble-mouthed successor, is that political labels - left/right, blue/red - are now nearly useless as demographic descriptors when it comes to the troubling topic of domestic fascism.
As I argued here, the old-school school left of academia and alternative media - stuck the grip of last-century neoMarxist theorizing and past examples of third world despotism - can easily imagine fascism goose-stepping in with jackboots and truncheons. Yet most of them wouldn’t or couldn’t conceive of it sliding in through shuttered cities, censored social media and syringes. Manipulated through fear - not just for their health but for their jobs and professional respectability - they turned fascism on its head, and became its greatest exponents.
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*not really
I’m obviously not saying anything revelatory here. Controversial, yes. Many on Substack and beyond have said much the same for almost three years. But it’s worth repeating, I believe, when so many progressives continue to believe that 2 plus 2 equals 5.
In any case, here’s something hopeful. The architects of fear have been losing mindshare over more than a year now, with the uptake on boosters in precipitous decline across North America. Even if they haven’t completely awakened, a lot of people are starting to mumble uncomfortably in their sleep. Perhaps they’ll even rise and rub their eyes and recognize the red/blue dynamic as a pitchfork/torch divide to keep themselves and their political opposites perpetually at each others throats, while the king and his nobles continue make out like highway robbers.
Given our sci-fi times, it seems appropriate to sign off here with a century-old quote from a science fiction author. “Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have,” H.G. Wells wrote in 1920.
(CODA: What I wrote almost two years ago still stands, I believe….)
Since when was protesting vaccinations a part of being leftist?
I can't recall anyone at Woodstock protesting the polio or smallpox shots!
That public health policy is now your crie de coeur means *you've* changed.
*tugs tinfoil hat more firmly into place*