They say that immediately after World War II it was very difficult to find an Italian who had voted for Mussolini. I guess the same was true in Germany and Austria—former supporters of Hitler were very slow to own up to it.
I don’t want to trivialise that terrible war by making inept comparisons, but the COVID-19 malaise that plagued our country (and the rest of the world) after 2020 offers some parallels.
By malaise, incidentally, I don’t refer to the disease itself, but to the fracturing of society that arose from our response to it: as a society we have been crippled, perhaps permanently, by a range of disastrous reactions from our politicians and their advisers.
Now that the dust has almost settled, the screams of outrage against vaccine sceptics and other “undesirables” have somewhat abated.
There are far fewer people who are willing to speak up in defence of Victoria’s former premier and his complaisant police force.
Politicians are back-tracking (“I never said lockdowns should be compulsory”), hard-line mask advocates are starting to admit that they might not have been as effective as was once claimed, and—miracle of miracles—the media are allowing us to hear more of the back story.
I call that a miracle because the legacy media were the worst offenders during the COVID panic. I include in that category not just TV and the press, but online champions of free speech such as Wikipedia, Facebook, and Google.
And the pharmaceutical companies should be counted in that company too, because they prepared the bullets for others to fire.
Facts Versus Narratives
Media techniques for frightening us were very simple:- Report numbers of dead, but never COVID fatalities as a proportion of total deaths, because big numbers in the raw are the bread of life to media ghouls.
- Blur the edges between COVID deaths and COVID-related ones.
- Ignore those who died—sometimes alone and in misery—because the lockdown denied them essential services.
- Understate the number of protesters at any demonstration.
- Disregard the plight of people who lost their jobs and businesses, while public servants and contractors in the war against COVID thrived.
The Great Barrington Declaration started life in October 2020. You can easily find out about it online now, but it wasn’t so easy two years ago.
Admittedly, it’s still hard to sort fact from fiction.
I’ve just searched online for the ABC report on an incident on Sept. 22, 2021, when Victorian police fired rubber bullets into a crowd at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. Easily found.
The report by Ben Knight and Norman Hermant lasts nearly five minutes and the footage looks convincing. The focus is on the angry faces of the protesters, though none are actually interviewed, and the courtesy of the police.
Included is a brief comment from the premier (“They’re not there for a protest, they’re there for a fight”), and an interview with an academic who speaks of the growing influence of “extreme right-wing groups.”
An interview with a representative of the RSL speaks of the shameful disrespect of those who would take such a protest to a “sacred place.”
Total numbers involved in the protest are described as small, but that rather begs the question: Why, then, were rubber bullets considered necessary? Why were the police so prescient as to arrive fore-armed with that kind of ammunition?
Most disturbingly, there is no mention at all of any injuries suffered by the protesters.
If, in fact, these weapons had been used, there would certainly have been wounding.
On balance, this report is loaded: too much opinion, too many silences. But that is the public broadcaster for you.
The Truth Hurts
I also searched for mainstream coverage of an event that took place in the same city just over a month later, on Oct. 30. A single violinist played the National Anthem before a huge crowd outside Parliament House.The point is that as the camera scans Bourke Street and Spring Street in both directions the crowd appears to be vast. Inestimable numbers of course, but certainly tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of men and women, young and old, calm and respectful throughout the playing, a few holding national flags.
It is intensely moving, but was it reported widely at the time? I can’t recall it, though perhaps some of my readers can.
If it was reported, however, I would confidently guess that numbers were described as just “several hundred.”
It’s a nasty truth about our country that we are no longer the larrikins we thought we were. Like lemmings, we are easily led.
Nor can we boast a wide range of opinions and allegiances, state to state and town to town, that makes political life in the United States so much more varied, if also less predictable.
Few people now are prepared to admit to having supported the extreme measures taken by the authorities in 2020–22, but much damage has been done to our Constitution and our public life.
Not to mention the damage done to people who suffered not from COVID, but from the consequences of our inept and tyrannical response to it.
