Increasingly, especially on social media, we read that “most people” or the “vast majority” supported lockdowns and related coronavirus restrictions, especially in 2020 during the first three months of the alleged pandemic.
This view goes hand-in-hand with the expedient theory of “mass formation psychosis” concocted by the previously unknown psychologist Mattias Desmet and popularized by former Big Pharma executive Robert Malone. Desmet’s theory links the excesses and depredations of the coronavirus era to shared popular delusions, a form of mass hysteria that caused people to endorse their own oppression.
We brought it on ourselves, you see. Implicitly, without our sheeplike acquiescence to lies and regulations, corona-era crimes against the people could never have been sustained.
History is being rewritten at a lightning pace, invariably in ways that tend to exonerate the actual ruling class perpetrators of what was (and is) an unprecedented global attack on the people. It’s worth setting the record straight.
In this series, I propose to take a critical look back at the early days of the corona crisis in order to challenge the notion that harsh restrictions were supported, even welcomed, by “most people.”
I’ll begin with a quick review of international reaction to lockdowns during the early months of the corona panic. (These examples should be kept in mind whenever you hear that “we” or the “vast majority” supported corona terror. People who use such language are conflating a relatively tiny number of middle-class North American Anglophones with the whole of the world’s population.)
· Nigeria announced its first lockdown on March 30, 2020. More than 5 million people who depended on the informal economy to put food on the table were thrown instantly out of work. Resistance was immediate and widespread. The state responded with arrests and detention, harassment, extrajudicial killings, destruction of wares, maiming, and torture. By mid-April, Nigerian security agents had killed at least 18 people said to have resisted coronavirus restrictions in various ways. By May, 2,310 violators of lockdown orders had been arrested in Lagos.
· In Brazil, where national lockdowns were resisted by President Jair Bolsonaro, Draconian measures were imposed throughout the country by state and municipal authorities. By mid-March 2020, as poor Brazilians defied lockdown to feed their families, paramilitaries and drug gangs were employed to enforce restrictions in the favelas. At the same time, police killings in the slums exploded.
· In Kenya, where citizens immediately protested and otherwise resisted March 27 lockdown orders, police unleashed a “torrent of violence” that killed at least 15 people during the first nine weeks of curfew alone.
· South Africa announced a 21-day lockdown on March 23, leading to organized protests by health workers, minibus taxi drivers, and citizens in general. Countless poor South Africans broke curfew in order to put food on the table. The state’s response was swift and brutal; at least a dozen people were killed by the police, military and private security guards during lockdown.
https://twitter.com/ANINewsUP/status/1243141336800415744?s=20
· In India, the most stringent lockdown regime in the world caused untold hardships and countless deaths, sparking mass protests by jobless migrant workers in Mumbai and elsewhere throughout the country; among many job actions, thousands of unpaid tea workers and diamond cutters protested the lockdowns. Such demonstrations were typically dispersed by baton charges; alleged lockdown violators were beaten, tortured, and humiliated.
These events, and many more in a similar vein, do not paint a picture of sheeplike acquiescence. On the contrary: In most of the world, lockdowns met with instant, widespread resistance that had to be crushed by violence.
It would be strange if the ruling class devoted so much treasure, time, and energy to crush a resistance that didn’t exist. Those who pretend that there was a broad, docile acquiescence to the COVID “narrative” must explain why the rulers needed to unleash violent repression combined with propaganda, censorship, spying, mandates, and intimidation in order to achieve their goals.
I’ll discuss this further in subsequent articles.