05.10.2023 | 23:26
Dobar osvrt škotskog političara Jamesa Melvillea:
The Covid era created the perfect storm of coercive authoritarianism. Goodbye to freedom, liberalism and an open society based on choice, liberty and human rights. Hello to a snitch and cancel culture, coercive gaslighting to enforce compliance and a society based on servitude and fear.
Because of Covid, the old antiquated models of left versus right is rather passé now. The new political division is between authoritarianism and liberalism/libertarianism. And I say this as a left wing liberal/libertarian who hates authoritarianism.
But, I’ve never understood political tribalism where people all have the same opinions on almost every issue. Surely individuals should form their own opinions on an issue by issue basis rather than follow the herd mentality of the tribe. It’s liberating.
As someone from the liberal left of centre, taking a position that is against lockdowns wasn’t easy, and it’s reframed my scepticism in government and corporatist agendas on other issues. But I simply do not believe that lockdowns worked. They caused more problems than solutions. The huge collateral damages of lockdowns will take decades to fix. Almost the entire country unwittingly sleepwalked towards this big state authoritarianism. A sad by-product of the covid crisis is that many governments around the world will now realise just how easy it is to spook servile citizens with endless coercion, scaremongering and propaganda.
We were subjected to a one sided propaganda campaign by our media, who received £millions of taxpayers money – spaffed away by our government in effect – bribing them with public health advertising revenues. And this perhaps explains why our media didn’t bite the hand that feeds them over Covid.
Ultimately, the events of the last 3 years are largely linked to following the money rather than the science. An estimated 500 million people were pushed or pushed further into poverty since the Covid pandemic, while $26 trillion (63 percent) of all new wealth was captured by the richest 1 percent. This is the biggest wealth transfer in the history of the planet. That’s ultimately what this is all about. A gigantic asset and wealth grab by the super-rich, paved with bad intentions by many governments.
The authoritarianism of the Covid response also has a sinister future tense. We appear to be moving towards a digital id landscape across not just healthcare, but also net zero and perhaps most worrying of all - finance - through central bank digital currencies. The Trojan horse towards digital id was vaccine passports. We have to be very careful to avoid a scenario where a digital vaccine passport morphs into something that becomes wider reaching and controlling that is modelled similar to the Chinese social credit system.
As a lifelong liberal, I am absolutely appalled by this creep towards authoritarianism. And as a nation, it’s not who we are or ever should become. Britain should never be a ‘show us your papers’ via a QR code society. A QR code for entry into society is not freedom. It’s the exact opposite of that.
Historically we are a liberal and moderate nation. We must never forget that. The very essence of liberalism is a willingness to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different from one’s own, show an openness to new ideas and freedom of choice. And right now, we appear to be at risk of losing these fair-minded and balanced liberal values.
We have allowed ourselves to be blindsided by government, NGOs and media to know our place, behave, and ‘follow the science’ to ‘stay safe’. All of this has been a framed psychological manipulation to act as a mask for the government to hide behind whilst making appallingly draconian political decisions.
Authoritarianism creates a half life, state controlled, Orwellian ‘big brother’ society. It strips away our freedoms. It snoops on us. History has taught us that authoritarianism never ends well. We forget the lessons of history at our peril.