We have just finished writing this post and feel that it is necessary to warn you that we have had our say and no mistake. We have allowed ourselves to be sucked in, willingly we waded into the bog of abstractions and this time were determined to emerge from the other side which we have just about done. Our eyes and brain are tired and so we haven't read it over in full but I imagine that it may well be a little scattered.

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Today we write to you with a fresh likeness of ourselves taken in the barn yesterday afternoon as the daylight waned. Our last post in which we expressed our relief and plan is still fresh in our minds, indeed it has been a while since we have been able to follow one post so closely with another. The way things have turned out this winter we have often had gaps of weeks between our reports to you so it is nice to write with a sense of continuity.

We spoke at the end of the previous post about the need to revisit the anti vax episode, my old friend and the far right politics that seems to have slipped under her radar. We have thought much about it and realized that it was time to look in the mirror and examine our own position and reaction. Never has a self portrait been so appropriate but look here, we are not in some doubt over the politics of the antivax industry, we are not lost in the reality mosh pit we would like to think (despite our temporal pen pal)1 and we have not reached the end of our psychological tether as was the case last year when we were forced to board the train to fuck off land/L'estaque.2 No. We are merely self re-flexing. We are examining our reaction in self critical spirit.

A couple of specific ideas struck us and have led us to this point. Firstly we were very quick to cry 'antivaxxer' and assume the worst and as my friend did say that opinions are so divisive that any opposition or questioning of the narrative, as she put it, leads to strong feeling and even the consideration of options!3  Are we too quick to judge? Secondly, the question of medical expertise and our lack of which was highlighted on finding that both my friend and also the poor woman who has imprisoned herself in Machynlleth, used a lot of medical jargon that I am not familiar with. Are we ignorant of the issues?

In short the answer is probably yes to both although we must qualify our admissions especially in this time where one can so easily fall into tribal thinking, it is prudent to try and not judge too quickly. Now my friend has explained her position clearly, for example in response to my revealing that I knew a couple of people who have died from COVID she says something like 'I know no-one and know of no-one who knows anyone who has died with or from COVID. I do know of many who have had adverse reactions to the experimental gene therapy though.' She went on to ask me "if they were old? ill? had underlying comorbidities? Were they hospitalized? What was the treatment? Did they get ivermectin/hydroxychloroquine? How was the COVID diagnosis made? Was there an autopsy?" So clearly we have not been too quick to judge her skepticism as that is not in doubt but we were perhaps too quick to assume that because she believes what she believes about the pandemic that she is an 'antivaxxer'.

That is what we must concede and examine, that we threw the easy tabloid label at her. Is she that? Is she the alt right, Trumpist, conspiracy sucker, influencer or entrepreneur of the worst kind to which the title of antivaxxer is awarded? No we do not think so at all. Is she a blind follower of the cult of Andrew Wakefield the original and most charismatic figure in the anti vax machine. No I do not think so. Does she have a history of being  against other vaccines such as the MMR jab? I'm not sure about that one but I think it is right to say that her opinions expressed to me have grown and taken shape in response to this particular pandemic situation rather than being a broader interest in the question of medical vaccination and 'experimental gene therapy' in society. Maybe we're wrong but I think we're not, and surely that is fair to say about the public generally. The pandemic and the inherent issues of civil liberties relating to a national lockdown and the enforcing and policing of it is an unprecedented situation that has seen opinions take on such identification, becoming as she says 'an article of faith'. In this context of course one has serious concerns for civil liberties and in the search for information, for reassurance one is made to turn and twist trying to follow the mazy path of the pandemic beaten by the Eton Trump and while this of course was not a straight forward business it was not helped by the latter playing the clown and lying and confusing the situation to keep people guessing in populist fashion. In light of the political games played, the question of 'what is really happening' is wide open and perhaps it always is but in the populist situation the question of what do the authorities think is 'really happening' is open also.

We are wondering whether our friend has drifted over from a position of natural skepticism of the government and onto the conspiratorial turf held by the far alt right. But she is definitely not that and she denied seeing any of that in her experience of the anti lockdown events and that is the worrying thing. It would be far less worrying maybe if she had turned openly far right but as it is she holds the same views which are being promoted and encouraged by the far alt right and she is unaware. This is the game of realities.

So again, the term antivaxxer is itself a very politically loaded term used as short hand in the media for the worst conspiracy idiot, Trumpist far right troll, or opportunistic COVID entrepreneur, it seems and that said we should not use it. We should not use tribal language and we speak for ourselves first, we don't want to think like that either especially when a label that normally circulates in the abstractions of the media and our thoughts about that suddenly pops into relevance in our real life where upon we rather unthinkingly label our old friend.

Thinking on to Borg about this and reflecting on my friends statement that 'any opposition to the government  is immediately presented as extreme' we realised that we had become influenced by this  and furthermore that we have seen a hundred times before either during Occupy or in anti austerity protest, how opposition to the governments was presented as the work of dangerously, violent and radical anarchists or communists when it was anything but. We saw that plain as day then and perhaps we have the same now. Yes and no; yes similar spin, no the far right element makes it different. It would be interesting to research links between anti-capitalist social protest and antilockdown/antivax protest in the UK but we can already say that there is a link that runs along the time honored lines of New World Order conspiracy thinking. We saw and heard elements of that during Occupy but also the indy media back then, on something like Info Wars or David Icke one saw how their conspiracy angles were presented as anti-capitalist. Remember that video of Icke acting the wise old sage at OWS?

So we know how a protest can be a true mixture of all opinions and grievances from objecting to cuts to the arts to the illuminati! All marching together and one might require a palantir to sort that mess out! (We might link here back to our telling of the farcical scenes in which Occupy Plymouth merged with the Anti Austerity Union march that we described in DS 1 I think).4 So we were not necessarily wrong to think that our friend is an anti vaxxer but we were possibly wrong to label her an antivaxxer.

Regards the second issue on the subject of being ignorant of vaccine related medical issues we must say, as we readily told Borg recently, we have no knowledge whatsoever of medicine and not even a notional idea of the medicines, treatments and science relating to the COVID 19 vaccine. How does everyone else know so much? I suppose we are isolated and have not been exposed to the issues and the jargon. It reminds me a little of the Brexit issues where Old Burrows5 mentioned how readers of any tabloid newspaper had a much greater understanding of the arguments and characters involved in Brexit politics than did his students and readers of The Guardian, a fact that showed and telled in the end. I didn't know who Donald Tusk was or what was spent by who, decided by who, leading to what? But I could hear the dog whistle in the air and feel the beat of the far right drums vibrate through the ground and somehow it seemed that to engage would be a concession, and it often is but one can also be shown up. We find the same again with regards to the anti vaccine business. We don't know our ivermectin from our hydroxychloroquine and we wouldn't know a spike protein if one fell on us, but once again we feel we need not know, need not engage in the manipulation as the pong of the far alt right is so great that its vapors permeate everything to our eyes. Is this lazy? Certainly it would not be too wise to be baited into a data rich online exchange but we mean is it lazy thinking for us personally? My friend speaks of this the warden of  Machynlleth6 speaks of that and we read it over and are not moved from our general stance that these folk have been manipulated, and this even if we do not really understand what they are referring to. It seems that our suspicion, awareness and focus on the far alt right and how they benefit from sowing distrust about the pandemic prevents us from listening and engaging. What about that then? Surely we must listen? Yes. Really? To disinformation? How do we know it is, because of the vapors? So you see it soon gets dicey. The answer I suppose is that we should have looked into it but in all honesty we had other things to do than to become embroiled in the world of vaccine science of which we obviously have no knowledge and we would be simply researching the board and choosing to trust certain sources more than others.

The more we examine this type of thinking the more we realise that we don't know anything at all really. We don't know how a light bulb works, how a telephone rings, wireless internet, any of it. We know nothing of paracetamol, of ibuprofen, of naproxin, of my life saving asthma drug ventalin. Obviously. Does that mean we are a sucker to use these things? Should I research the science of asthma before taking another puff? To really understand it would take years of training and part time to boot so perhaps in fourteen years I could make a confident and well informed decision based on the research which I fully understand.

Of course instead of that we just trust the people who are supposed to know. That is a society. We have organised for different people to understand different subjects and we turn to and trust those people when we need help or when they advise us. Its a great idea, but increasingly over the years trust in those people, in professionals, in experts, in public institutions has diminished rapidly. The question is why has this happened? Decades of neoliberal attack on public institutions as part of privatizing them, then added to that is now the Nrx populist drive to of undermining trust in the institutions and procedures of society to far alt right, anti democratic, authoritarian ends - its the post truth era! But perhaps the most unscientific but conclusive reason is just that we know; TAFLA.7 But look here, do we say that we must blindly trust people in power or the words of experts and medical authorities? Certainly not but we cannot rely on ourselves, we must look to someone, something. And if that something or someone is not functioning then maybe we look elsewhere for answers; the alternative media perhaps?

Alternative media. We felt that alt media was refreshing, good and healthy so long as it was anti-capitalist and egalitarian in spirit. We used to enjoy Russia Today for example especially Max Keiser. We were captivated by alt media precisely because during the height of austerity protest the mainstream news was not going to go anywhere near discussing to any great degree, the crisis of capitalism, corruption and farce of our democracy when seen from the anticapitaslist angle through Occupy eyes. Today we have alternative media but when boot is on t'other foot and we see the far alt right alt media wreaking havoc we're not so keen. Are these differing alt media episodes six and two threes?8 No. The financial crisis, austerity, inequality, fairness, corruption, revelation of a super dangerous capitalism which threatens everyone, these things were the context of Occupy and related protest. The other is a far right wing, Nrx agenda that is the foundation of Brexit, Trumpism, and it is a populist response made possible by the former crisis. It is a politics sent down from the very top to create chaos and weaken not only democracy, but in the conceiving and subsequent attack on 'the Cathedral', the entire imaginary of society! Six and two threes it isn't!

We have bitten off a chunk here and no mistake but we have the wind in our sails now so we'll hold the course a little longer and besides it might be now or never; have you decided to grant us an extension?9

To return to the point and our automatic dismissing of medical jargon as anti vax disinformation believing it to stem from some Trumpy alt media outlet, we have acknowledged that we were unwise not to check it out at the time and instead hurl the tribal label. So now let us do a check and see where we get to. To do this properly we needed to be provoked so where better to go than DavidIcke.com. There we found the mix of the sensational and the mundane (the latter often presented as if the former and vice versa). There are news reports alongside Ickes own monologues where he spins out his theories. There is a lot about the fake pandemic, harmful vaccines, 5g terror, pedophile cults, climate change speculation, the Illuminati and silicone valley nutters. We might have a look at that last one but I imagine that the sentiment is steered towards the recently increased Trumpist talk of the 'tyranny of big tech' stemming more from the censoring of Trump and other racists, and disinformation merchants from Twitter and You Tube. We can certainly say, especially in light of Orange Piels bid to create a 'conservative media empire' that the disinformation industry is becoming mainstream. (Tik Tok - Election). Indeed on his site one cannot miss that Icke and family have has entered the fray with the launch of his Ickonic current affairs streaming platform. For what he is doing he deserves the title which my old COLAB colleague, a certain Mr. Mobbs, used to bestow so lyrically in the Coventry parlance: 'He's a bad knob'.10

Anyway the content on the Icke site is authored by a mix of David Icke, Gareth Icke, copy and paste jobs from mainstream outlets, lots of Tucker Carlson, (another one there for Mr. Mobbs) loads of plonkers all over it really and all of it designed to appear as a machine of news. Its framing and content is all geared to the narrative of fighting against the 'elites' and 'the cult', two mystery groups which ten years ago might have suggest anticapitalsit sentiment but now are inescapably far right Trumpist notions linked to the Cathedral concept, and all the more lucrative because of it. Indeed a post entitled 'it may not seem like it but freedom is coming. It is written and the cult knows it', includes a bizarre video showing clips of awe inspiring natural scenery accompanied by Ickes voice talking about Trump supporters and how they don't need to wait for Donald to be reelected, they must act now. Box office stuff! It's a far right business and business is good!

But the contradiction that Icke doesn't appreciate/mention in his talk of liberating humanity from 'the cult' of 'elites' is that in his alt right Trumpism he is participant in the bringing about of the very real high tech cult of the silicone valley elites who he claims to fight against. We see how Thiel appears all over the board; a little left in Facebook, a little right in Rumble, a couple of alt right candidates for senator - he's spinning those palanteers like a Harlem Globetrotter and any alt righter whose aim is to 'fight the tyranny of big tech' by adopting some alternative social network or video platform better be sure that they are still taters deep in big tech, aiding it, increasing it. The alt right critique of "elites" is sent from above, battling the cathedral in Nrx fashion serves precisely the elites of big tech. But is it a battle of elites or the same elite morphing?

Our chosen article/provocation was by Gareth but memes and headline comments are credited to David. The article is about this and that, about facts and figures, deaths of young men...could it be the vaccine...but the point of interest for us is to see if this is disinformation, but it seems that the concerns are those of a group of respectable medical experts. The article has the headline: 'Stream of Doctors and Scientists Send Open Letter to the UK Vaccine ‘Regulator’ Over Child Death Data From Fake Vaccine And Demand Urgent Inquiry'. This stream of doctors and scientists are members of a group called HART (Health Advisory Recovery Team) and a look at their site reveals a very straight forward and reasonable set of concerned professionals. OK so we could leave it there and move on to Ickes next reveal, but how do we know this HART group is not some trick? We asked the Borg and it told us a thing or two. First a BBC article casting doubt on this group quoting some 'leaked' chatroom conversation where members "discussed sharing research from a third vaccine-detracting body, the British Ivermectin Recommendation and Development Group, because "psychologically this then looks like two groups of professionals agreeing with each other (making the content more believable as it looks like two separate groups)". Fishy indeed but for that do we dismiss the content of HART? Look here, it seems these days that we must spend  as much time and energy working out if the source of information is trustworthy as we then spend on thinking about the content and of course if the former is found to be dodgy then it trumps the latter. Its lucky were just trying to stay sane rather than having some important reason to look into it all but part of this difficulty is of our own making in the sense that we are still hanging on to the dream of a balanced non tribal position. If we took a side none of it matters so much because you play to win and who hasn't celebrated a penalty for ones team even if you know it was a dive?

Next we find the The Daily Dot, whatever the very fuck that is,11 which has an article which shows how members of HART are strangely into conspiracy theories of the alt right: "The cabal, China, Bill Gates, and whether COVID-19 is a bio-weapon are extremely popular subjects within HART." Another one from The Dot details how the "prominent anti-COVID vax group routinely fell for reports of vaccine deaths that never happened."

After reading the details of the group and extracts from the leaked members discussion we were left with distinctly Trumpy taste in the brain. Then interestingly we checked where the leaked information came from and discovered a company called Logically which uses AI (yes you Borg) to expose disinformation. It seems the leaked chat from HART members is fed in to this AI mangle and rolled out in nice easy to grasp map of data which is a little creepy to be sure but it revealed that at the very least HART is a bit dodgy. The Logically article is titled: "The HART Files: Inside the Group Trying to Smuggle Anti-Vaccine Myths into Westminster." As we say, at the very least a bit dodgy.

Reading the full account we saw information on what groups HART was connected to and this took us on a little further and ultimately led us into the world of networked disinformation platforms or perhaps more calmly, free speech outlets, where disinformation can be hosted and laundered. Our first dot in this world is a doozy. The publisher Toby Young who we quite by chance remembered seeing on the end of a spectacularly  disparaging sneer of contempt from the Will Self as the two were being interviewed about Corbyn and the Labour party if I remember. Anyway this right wing grimalkin launched a site called lockdown skeptics which is basically a magazine with free speech values coming in hot from the right, although we must remember that lockdown skepticism began with concern across the board but turned further right as the game of realties unfolded. Indeed the lockdown was implemented by the hero of Brexit the Eton Trump.

Lockdown Skeptics then became The Daily Skeptic but is still mainly about the pandemic. The Logically article on HART noted that: "Members of the group reference personal contact with prominent conservative activist Toby Young, and talk about authoring or supplying information to Young and the dailysceptic website." Nothing surprising about that in and of itself but we note that Young offers an indispensable, friendly platform for their anti vax efforts. Similar content might be found on the pages of The Daily Skeptic as one might find on Icke but at this level of laundering the platforms strike a tone which, rather than the sensational alt right conspiracy reveal of Icke, is more the tone of respectable, objective, debate and political policy discussion. The aim is influence rather than subscription. We began to see how info travels these varying degrees, from conspiracy to policy talk and back again, along the lines Wedling describes;12 could there be a similar path being beaten in the UK?  Or do we be paranoids? We can say that HART is the creator of sophisticated anti vax content which can either be sent down to Icke to keep his engine of conspiracy greased or sent up to Young for it to be ironed and pressed ready to influence policy discussion. It would seem from our little checks that far from being impartial professionals, the good doctors at HART are as political as an election! And its all right.

Toby Young has three libertarian free speech platforms to his name: The Daily Skeptic, The Critic and his Free Speech Union. The latter is the inevitable response to Cancel Culture where Young has organised a way to 'fight back' by assembling a group of free speech activists offering to stand up for those people who for whatever reason have lost their jobs for what they have said or not said. We do not grasp the whole picture regards the cancelling. It is I believe something that has grown with the internet largely and particularly on social media. We read Jon Ronsons book about internet shaming years ago and then we hear of hashtags and windbags periodically and to be honest we just don't know about it. If for some reason we personally were summoned to weigh in on some sexual harassment case, or some cricketers racist tweet of years gone by I imagine we would take things on a case by case basis? Do we once again reveal our naive exiled state? I can imagine agreeing with certain cases but not of others, in any event the FSU is relishing the fight and features reams and reams of incidents where free speech has been violated and Toby rides to the rescue with a strongly worded letter and a hard on. Its always about Islam and universities though? In decades gone by would not the free speech case be politically reversed, involving some outrageous language from a hot shot stand up that outraged the moral decency of some religious  conservative?

The more relevant point of interest regards Young's trio of platforms is with regards to The Critic. The Critic is a magazine maybe like The Spectator or something with a little culture wars upgrade but what we found particularly revealing in the launch editorial was the way The Critic frames its advocacy of free speech against an all pervasive invisible enemy: "Who they are is obvious and they are legion. They are in the civil service, the BBC, the courts, the churches, the arts and the quangos. They are found in the great and apparently free-standing institutions, be they museums, galleries, publishing houses, theaters or much of the press." Sound familiar? This is Yarvin's cathedral concept, the foil against which the alt right toil to advance their cause. He may as well go further and list the UN and the human rights act and be done with it. Coincidentally soon after we chanced upon this site and its anti cathedral framing we found on it a very interesting article by Phillips O'Brien who writes that the taking up of the Woke as an enemy is itself a sign of decline of conservatism: "The true death of conservatism can be seen in the attempt of some to find a new enemy to recreate the political coalition of 1980s UK and US — or the war on woke, as it could be termed. This rather pathetic attempt to demonize academics, students and city dwellers"

Toby Young is keen to reassure readers that he is not a believer of the grand conspiracy theories but subscribes to the 'cock up' theory of history but that does not stop his sites being used to launder disinformation, and before the imaginary Toby Young in my mind jumps up and down, no that is not about free speech where views on all sides are to be heard and debated in a fair and impartial way. Disinformation takes advantage of this free speech script and the little bastard knows it! He is far right and does have his chubby digits in plenty of their pies. We came to suspect as much after another little tap tap on the Borg led us to Nafeez Ahmed13 work on COVID 19 disinformation. In his article Alt-Right Pseudoscience - Lockdown Sceptics, he writes that "one epicenter of this new disinformation nexus is British right-wing commentator Toby Young, who has become a top publisher of demonstrably false and scientifically illiterate COVID-19 misinformation". Ahmed details how "how fringe pseudo-science is attempting to influence public discourse through the prism of ‘free speech’" and shows how Young is all over this new world of British alt right discourse! Another piece by Ahmed reveals 'how COVID pseudoscience and anti-lockdown groups have morphed into a sophisticated, well-funded global network'. The clash of the symbols for us came as he concluded that: "the most significant backers of this global COVID-19 disinformation network are not ordinary working people, but a cross-section of wealthy investors, corporate lawyers, shady big business owners and alt-right political movements with ties to Nigel Farage and the hard right of the Conservative Party. The network is using tried and tested techniques of psychological propaganda to manipulate the public and cast pressure on governments."

We are convinced by Ahmed's revealing of the wealthy behind the spread of disinformation that bleeds into the protest of 'ordinary working people'. It is the case in the USA also of course and most likely in countries all around the world. We are convinced also of the aim of these purveyors of anti elite politics and disinformation sent from above is to establish some sense of grassroots activity around their messages. Indeed we recently came across a term that describes this well: astroturfing. A quick Borg look defines 'astroturfing' as: "the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants."

One see's that everywhere; how legitimate our paranoia is becoming! On the back of this we just got through reading '17  Kremlin Disinformation Techniques You Need To Know' by Zarina Zabrisky, and that hasn't helped either. How easy it is to be manipulated and fall victim to disinformation and paranoia the latter also being a goal of the former, as Zabrisky has just told us, but we must also remember that people often recognize or suspect disinformation and peddle it on nonetheless because it comes from their side of the tribal divide.

This Ahmed though seems to be a specialist in tearing new arseholes for anyone involved in the British alt far right disinformation network but my pessimistic take away from his detailed efforts is however that we're fucked. There's no going back so we must hope to come out the other side and in all likelihood must come to terms with a life where nothing is as it seems. The best one could hope for is to perhaps end up like the veteran CIA agent in the movies, able to exist and function in the chaos. Nevertheless I am pleased to have found such a source as Ahmed and you know to read his pieces is, dare we say it, like having a conspiracy revealed. But that is because people really are conspiring! All the time! Do we believe Ahmed or is he just at the service of 'the cult'? We believe Ahmed because he is a peer reviewed academic and that means something but it doesn't mean his analysis is unassailably true, just that his work does not contain lies. But the alt righter will say, "peer reviewed by who? The collaborators of the cathedral cult of course they will support him. They have a whole network of people attacking our freedom".  To this we can say yes you are correct, there are many institutions in society that are set up to make sure far right authoritarian politics does not grow. Obviously! Deal with it! Yes your freedom to smash society up and create ethno nationalism will be fought against. Obviously! Deal with it! And then it is on. Yarvin's little brochat concept of the cathedral has become, as O'Brien  says, the great new enemy of the right. A battle where one side attacks - the determined white supremacists, the strategic Tech libertarian billionaire, and all those stirred into action on the ground, and the other side defends, screams, flails or most disturbingly doesn't realise they are in a fight and are in danger of drifting across the floor.14 Is my old friend in the latter category perhaps? Remember her, remember why we began this go on 4000 words ago? Now you see why we had to find shelter at the DS in the first place, these culture wars can ruin you for life.

Look here, we were wrong to pin the tribal label on my friend even though her use of terms like 'muzzled' and 'stabbed' would seem to suggest an immersement in the culture of antivaxing. We were wrong to assume that her references to certain drugs and treatments was not worth our attention having already labelled her. Indeed we still don't know what she was talking about but it has not been the point here to argue about COVID medicine or really to ascertain my friends precise opinions. For that I could just call her up. (We did have a look at what Machynlleth was saying about spike proteins and it would seem she has been misinformed.) We see also even in our briefest of glimpses at Borg on the subject of anti vax disinformation that there is a tsunami of the stuff but where does it come from? Well an answer to that has been offered in a report by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate which reveals that "just twelve individuals and their organizations are responsible for the bulk of anti-vaxx content shared or posted on Facebook and Twitter. The majority of the 'Disinformation Dozen' remain on major social media platforms, despite repeated violations of their terms of service." Very surprising and reassuring in a sense but also proof of the power of amplification.

Stop. That is now enough. We have just checked on Borg for a word counter and discovered that we have written, from beginning to the word 'enough' in the previous sentence, 5506 words!! Not only that but Borg tells us that we have 31,212 Characters, 204 Sentences, 30 Paragraphs, that the reading level is that of a 'college Student', the reading time is 20 mins 01 seconds and the speaking time 30 mins 35 seconds!

Five thousand five hundred and six words is enough in anyone's book and I dare say that if we were more accomplished in our writing we could have stated it all more elegantly, more succinctly but we cant all write like Charlie Looker15 unfortunately and so we have given you a full plate. Perhaps your assistants could precis it for you, if you even bother to read these anymore that is. Do you read it?16 We no doubt should have written something like this with regards to the alt right and the climate of disinformation long ago, to get it out the way if nothing else. Now we have but it feels a little late and I just wonder what we may have been able to build on had we not had this whole episode brewing around all year. It is just as well we had that exchange with my friend to provoke us and now, having ground this out, having painfully gleaned over the world of culture war, COVID disinformation, and British far alt right free speech platforms, how do we finish this post? How do we put a lid back on it?

We decided to look to Ranciere for something and indeed we found a little nugget in this last ditch. My friend has fallen out with family and friends over the COVID business. The reason given is their blindly 'following the narrative' which she cannot accept. Ranciere helps us by stating the obvious when he says that just because people adhere to restrictions and where a mask or take a vaccine does not mean they agree with the government. The man himself puts it like this: "people who obey the existing power do not do so because they consider it to be legitimate, or scientific, but because there is no reason to risk death simply to contradict official speech. The consensus is therefore largely a consensus without underlying consent."

We glean from this that my friend might do well to think about that in relation to her family rift but equally that we might do well to think on it before we write people off in the other direction. And those who use this situation to manipulate; all the alt right menaces, and mouthpieces from Icke to Young to Farage, to the Eton Trump, who are seeking to advance their racist political vision by sowing confusion and distrust through disinformation and profiting from it all to boot, should be ashamed. But of course they wont be.

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With tired fingers,

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John

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PS Was it not Terry Venables who made such a convincing argument for the astroturf pitch?17

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