While more and more people are waking up to the wrongdoings inflicted upon us by our globalist-serving governments, the frequency of public spats between individuals widely recognised to be representatives of the sceptical movement has, over the last few months, been on the rise. Constructive argument and debate are – of course – healthy and desirable, but what we have recently witnessed is emotion-laden disagreements between protagonists that often result in one side totally discrediting the views, sincerity and trustworthiness of the other. Although, given the extent to which we have been psychologically manipulated (by both the government and media) this low threshold for identifying someone as a bad actor is understandable, these public character assassinations are unhelpful and impair our ability to resist the march of authoritarianism.
To be clear, there are – undoubtedly – bad actors within our ecosystems with insidious motives and, when there is clear evidence of their wrongdoing, they ought to be called out. However, the evidential bar should be set very high before attaching such a label; worryingly, it often seems that whole-person accusations about enemies within our midst are being formed on the basis of flimsy observations. For instance, the label of ‘controlled opposition’ – defined as an individual or organisation who, while claiming to represent the interests of the sceptical movement, is on the side of the globalist elite – has become an overused and lazy put down; in many ways it can be bracketed in the same category as slurs such as ‘right-wing’ or ‘anti-vaxxer’ that are commonly used by supporters of the dominant narratives around health or climate change to dismiss alternative viewpoints.
The purity test
Indeed, on occasions it appears that some of us on the sceptical side of the debate discount voices making similar arguments on the basis of what might be construed as a failure to meet the censuring person’s ‘purity test’. It is as if the person doing the criticising holds implicit assumptions that influence the way they evaluate others who are openly opposing the dominant narratives. Examples of these idiosyncratic rules might be:
‘My scepticism is better than yours’
‘I hold a more valid understanding of this crazy world than you’
‘If we are not 100% on the same page, you are my enemy’.
My sense is that an increasing number of people on our side of the argument are condemning their peer sceptics because they fail these kinds of purity test, on the assumption that we must agree about everything if we are to collaborate.
I have always believed that each of us should retain a degree of humility by being open to the prospect that our own contemporary perspective on the world might be inaccurate. There is no individual on this planet who is free of cognitive biases; we all view the world in a distorted way. The best we can hope for is to strive to minimise our own subjective errors in interpreting the plethora of events happening around us. It is, therefore, always fallacious to claim (or imply) that one holds the definitive truth about the machinations of our institutions and of those in positions of power.
An overarching goal we can all get behind?
Is there a supra objective all of us on the sceptical side of the argument could support? For me this overarching goal would be to enable more and more people to recognise the march of authoritarianism across the Western world, to grasp that our political leaders and global elite are (whether it be under the banner of public health, climate change, pollution, creaking monetary systems, or war) strategically imposing top-down control upon every aspect of our lives.
As described in a previous blogpost, if the globalist beast is to be thwarted we require greater numbers of ordinary people to express visible dissent to the escalating authoritarianism we are all enduring. To achieve this aim we must win over more hearts and minds to the sceptical cause, and empower more citizens to speak out against the world-government juggernaut. A significant minority of open dissenters (maybe as low as 10-15%) would be sufficient to break the ‘illusion of consensus’, the implicit assumption that the large majority of the world’s inhabitants are in favour of the ongoing infringements of our human rights and freedoms. To realise this critical mass of visible dissidents we must embrace those who previously colluded with the dominant covid narrative and have now changed their minds, as well as collaborating with those who do not concur with all of our own beliefs and perceptions; opposing the accelerating state control of every aspect of our lives should be sufficient to bind us.
Examples of ‘controlled opposition’?
Three examples (there are many more) of where ostensibly sceptical voices have been accused of dancing to the tune of the other side are:
1. Andrew Bridgen: the MP for North West Leicestershire and the only voice in the House of Parliament who is openly questioning the efficacy and safety of the covid vaccines.
2. GB News: a relative newcomer to mainstream broadcasting who claim to offer a forum for all opinions, including those voices that do not chime with the dominant narratives on public health and climate.
3. Reform Party: led by Richard Tice, this current manifestation of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party that is campaigning on a ticket of free speech, immigration controls, anti-wokeness and opposition to net zero.
Undoubtedly, none of these three entities are above legitimate criticism. In the early stages of the covid event, Bridgen voted in favour of emergency legislation making it compulsory for care workers to take the vaccine or be sacked. The half-hourly news bulletins on GB News push the dominant official narratives as much as the other mainstream legacy media, and the failure of the channel to support Mark Steyn in his crusade to publicise the testimonies of jab victims was hugely disappointing. And Tice has only belatedly expressed concern about the harms and limited effectiveness of the covid vaccines. But, for me, a pivotal question we should all ask ourselves is this:
‘Would the sceptical movement be in a stronger position if these three entities had never existed?
I believe the answer to this question is, ‘definitely not’. Bridgen has been relentless in his efforts to trigger a parliamentary debate about vaccine harms and the inflated number of excess deaths witnessed since the start of the jab rollout, and has attracted the attention of the mainstream media in the process (albeit, for the most part, in the form of attempts to smear and cancel him). GB News has brought us Neil Oliver’s legendary monologues, enlightening and inspiring in equal measure, and the cerebral debunking of the woke agenda and attacks on free speech by Andrew Doyle’ s Sunday evening show, ‘Free Speech Nation’. And the Reform Party is at least visibly raising the spectre of another way of doing politics, and is evoking concerns within the Conservative/Labour/LibDem blob. Has the information emanating from these three sources contributed to increasing the awareness of the populace about the march of authoritarianism, and thereby empowering people to openly challenge the dominant state-controlled narratives? Yes. Would the plethora of sceptical voices opposing this globalist agenda now be in a stronger position to resist if these three outlets had never come into existence? No.
Concluding thoughts
Of course, I might be misreading the current situation, I might have got this wrong. As described in a previous blogpost, I was late to wake up to the egregious manoeuvres of our Western institutions, my naivety belatedly being shattered at the start of the covid event. There are many people out there – a lot of whom I would regard as collaborators in the fight against world governments and authoritarian restrictions – who know far more than me about the murky world of the global elite; I respect their views, and continuously learn from them.
But, at present, I believe that – if we are to avoid remaining a fringe echo-chamber – the sceptical movement must unite and strive to win the hearts and minds of the general population, the majority of whom remain silent and disinclined to express dissent about world governments who are systematically stripping away our basic human rights and freedoms. Our success is dependent upon us empowering more ordinary people to openly say – to their family, friends, pub landlord, work colleagues, hairdresser, anybody – ‘I do not consent’ (to lockdowns, masks, psychological manipulation, net-zero strategies, mandated jabs, 15-minute cities, a cashless society, and the rest of the globalist impositions). The achievement of this central objective will be hampered if we reject fellow resisters for not passing our scepticism purity tests.
While differences of opinion are inevitable, character assassination and the dismissal of someone’s views in their entirety just because they do not 100% correspond with our own is both unjustified, counterproductive and results in damage to our cause.
Photo courtesy of Adi Goldstein at Splash