Covid and the Academic Counter-Revolution against Freedom
'The Conversation' takes on the Freedom rallies
I really must stop doing it but, time and again, like a moth to a flame, I keep getting attracted to, and burnt by, The Conversation (the public outreach organ of academia published in eight countries) in the mistaken belief that I will find enlightenment in its pages. Alas, like the moth mistaking a hot bulb, or a flame, for the moon (whose light the nocturnal critter needs for navigation), I wind up getting scorched by the deceptive credentials of the university rag.
My latest bout of singed wings comes courtesy of an article which attempts to belittle the massive demonstrations held in Australia (and around the world) against lockdowns, No-Jab-No-Job vaccine mandates, discriminatory Vaccine Passports, the political obedience training-wheels of the loathsome mask, and certain state Premiers’ power-grabs. Somewhere between half a million and a million Australians (out of a population of 26 million) marched against Covid tyranny in Australia last weekend, rivaling the old protests against the Vietnam War in 1970, and later protests against the Iraq War in 2003, in both size and historical significance.
So, how did The Conversation, a pro-lockdown, pro-jab mouthpiece of our Covid Czars, handle this exhilarating grass roots eruption for freedom. Let us count the ways.
(1) Understate the size of the protests by a factor of at least ten. “Tens of thousands of people gathered in Melbourne”, we are told, when it would be more ballpark accurate to have said hundreds of thousands did so. Estimates from less hostile sources do not come in under a quarter of a million, whilst other estimates are considerably north of that figure. Numbers matter in the political calculus of protest and The Conversation is being deliberately stingy with its figures.
(2) Concede, reluctantly, that “while the latest protests were relatively peaceful” (even ‘relatively’ is mealy-mouthed because the Victorian police did not initiate violence this time and there were precisely zero arrests), they are, nevertheless organically linked to similar past actions whose “language and symbolism were at times violent”.
(3) Assert that the ringleaders of such actions are “far-right and alt-right extremists” and the ordinary protesters are mere dupes of these nefarious actors who are manipulating (and recruiting!) those wide-eyed innocents who are simply “responding to what they see as over-reach by the state on its pandemic bill or its vaccine mandates”. Say that “it's almost like grooming: how anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and the far-right came together over Covid” and this smear by association with sexual deviants should ram the point home.
(4) Bring your acute academic brain to discern that the “ideological roots” of the protests are “extremism and conspiracy theories”, which are, in turn, grounded in a “deep distrust of science, a strong belief in conspiracies, including the notion of ‘big pharma’ driving public policy, and a new world order of evil ‘liberal elites’ who abuse children and rule over global affairs”. Toss in a reference to the shadowy QAnon and garnish with attribution of “spiritual framing”, “patriotism and, most alarmingly, anti-Semitism” to the anti-restriction movement and the denigration dish is ready to serve. But let’s have a look at those ingredients, starting with patriotism:
a. The presence of the Australian flag at the rallies seems to me all about trying to reclaim a country that used to be pretty darn free (to move about, to work, to argue the toss with the authorities) but whose freedoms have been stolen from us by those who have gone gaga over Covid.
b. As for ‘spiritual framing’, remember when no self-respecting ‘progressive’ protest (over nuclear disarmament, refugees, etc.) could go without a bishop or priest headlining the speakers’ platform. Truth is, if you are going to build a genuinely broad movement, on the right or left, a Christian presence is important and unavoidable – religion, though not my personal cup of tea, is part of our culture and I am glad to march shoulder-to-shoulder with Christians (a very doughty and committed lot) for freedom.
c. As for “international liberal elites” screwing us over, the United Nations/WHO, not forgetting Klaus and his WEF, have a lot to answer for in their betrayal of science and in crank-starting the whole lockdown shemozzle. ‘Give me Liberty or Give me Death’ used to be a rousing clarion call for freedom but the above-mentioned global elites have convinced us that such a rallying cry is passé for a virus with a 99.9% recovery rate so go ahead and strip me of my job and place me under house arrest and stick a needle in my arm.
d. Finally, it isn’t all that long ago that Big Pharma was a routine target of the left because the profit-chasing mega-corporations have a decorated past of fraud and data-fudging, of purchasing of government regulatory bodies and of influence-buying at the WHO. Based on company financial statements, it is estimated that Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna will collectively make pre-tax profits of $34 billion this year, or $65,000 a minute thanks to the Covid vaccines. I think we can reasonably say that ‘Big Pharma’ are now a rather large part of the problem.
e. All of the above ‘globalist’ actors may be a happy confluence of mutual interest rather than a ridgy-didge agenda-driving conspiracy but ‘conspiracy theorist’ is too handy a political boo-word not to be utilised by the Covid Hysterics in place of rational argument.
(5) Talking of conspiracy theories, the ace intellectuals at The Conversation have detected all sorts of conspiratorial, secret society activity going on to explain the rallies – “it is a movement reliant on symbolism, hand signals, and single-word slogans such as ‘qui?’ (French for ‘who?’) to get the message across”. They must be very keen of vision – no matter how hard I squint, I have yet to detect any of this quasi-Masonic, Far-Right Symbolist malarkey, unless the secret hand signal is the old-fashioned, matey handshake which apparently now causes such apoplexy to the New Normal ideologues. The secret society stuff is really all in the mind of the academic enemies of freedom at The Conversation.
(6) Bring Donald Trump into it – the ‘far-right takeover’ of Australia’s freedom movement “draws direct inspiration from events in the United States, including the January 6 Capitol insurrection”, says The Conversation, citing, as illustration, the “parading of a noose at the Victorian parliament last week” which is, allegedly, derivative of the sinister “events on January 6, when protesters threatened to hang the US vice-president as a traitor”. Haven’t those who express outrage at such events ever heard of a thing called poetic license, whether through the popular expression of anger at the illegitimate removal of Trump in a fraudulent election, or in the massive, but orderly, outpouring of resentment at being locked up and stood down for the better part of two years by the Evil Gnome of Victoria. Plenty of conservative politicians have been hung in effigy over the years yet this evokes no outrage from the university left. The selective outrage is partisan, the moral one-up-manship transparent – the freedom protesters are Bad People, we, the Covid-compliant, are the Good.
The Conversation ends with hyperbolic skirt-clutching – “Australian democracy is facing one of the greatest threats it has ever known”. Well, that is actually true but not in the way The Conversation means it (i.e. the threat coming from American Trumpists, far-right conspiracy nut-jobs, anti-vaxxers and “fringe politicians with extremist views”) but from those like the Victorian Premier, Dan Andrews, who has abused the economic and democratic rights of his citizens; from all the other latent authoritarian State Premiers who have gone along with damaging lockdown fables, vaxx mandates and vaxx passports; and from our useless Prime Minister who lets it all happen on his watch.
“Those of good faith need to ensure they reaffirm the fundamental values of citizenship, democracy and peace, while allowing open debate on issues of contention and concern”, concludes The Conversation. Indeed so, and such persons of good faith are to be found on the streets with the freedom protesters, not in the (ideologically ‘Covid-safe’) Common Room of any Australian university.