Eugyppius' report from a writer in Austria today is worth your read
History repeating itself in slightly different clothing... many lessons in that report
Let me give you the link up front: “Martin Lichtmesz on the Dystopic Vaccinator Dictatorship of Austria”. I thought about writing you a long post giving my feedback on that piece… but you know, although it’s a little weird to write a post mainly to link another post, that is such a valuable post, and a warning to the rest of the world not to go down this path, it is better for you just to go read it. So I’m just going to offer a few summary thoughts instead. And those summary thoughts are:
One: The people leading the West are of mediocre intelligence and terrible at governing, but they are superbly skilled in psychological manipulation and setting neighbor against neighbor. It feels quite demonic actually. Many of them, especially health officials, have gone from being unknown people with almost no power to suddenly holding nearly infinite power and that has them, in perhaps my favorite phrase from the linked piece,
…foaming at the mouth, dispensing with every inhibition and pretense. Their faces are growing harder and uglier.
If only someone had warned us about the corrupting effects of power on the human heart, yes? Our leaders are superbly skilled also at creating a crisis (in a way that enhances their power), and then offering you a way out of the crisis (in a way that further increases their power). We’ve seen that style of argumentation in the US as well, although to less effect here. “Well you just have to accept vaccine mandates because otherwise we’ll have no choice but to go back to lockdowns.” And thus a policy that, three years ago, would have been seen as an abominable violation of human rights inappropriate in almost any circumstance, is now casually threatened to justify a different abuse of human rights. The proper answer is to keep saying “no, and no, and no, and no, and no, you don’t get any of this”.
Two: Two years of unceasing propaganda from media and officials have successfully done their work on many people. They believe many lies that a couple hours of internet research (or even just some serious thought about the contradictions they’ve been fed) could cure them of… but they aren’t going to do that work, they don’t want to be cured. The lies tell them they are part of the superior crowd and make them feel secure. They know almost nothing themselves, but accuse the people who have made efforts to think a little past the headlines of being “misinformed”, and rest happily in their pride and arrogance. It’s easy to understand now why propaganda has worked so well in other historical regimes.
Three and most importantly: When was the last time in Western history it was this acceptable to constantly, explicitly, and proudly pin all of our problems on one group of fellow citizens? And the logic to, even, extermination of that group is then built. If all of our problems are because of that group… then logically they would go away if that group was just gone. (And then of course, if you actually do manage to get rid of that group, the problems don’t go away because it was always a lie, so what do you do? Come up with a new group to blame.) So you get things like this (edited language).
These people need to apprehended by the authorities and subjected to radical, immediate removal. There is NO MORE "TOGETHERNESS" here. GET OUT, DUMBF***S!
Of course the sin that produces such sentiments has no doubt been sitting in that fellow’s heart for years - but now the state and media have encouraged him to let it out and given it a target. It’s pretty easy to understand, now, how “it happened before” (and before, and before, about a hundred times in slightly different ways), because plenty of people are demanding that it happen all over again. It makes them feel great, it tells them that what is really just their pleasurable mob hatred is actually love and defense of the populace from a terrible enemy. I do wonder if whatever Austrian church that still exists is speaking against this hatred.
Thanks so much for writing about this. You might find these interviews instructive, both of the kinds of opinions driving this insanity, and the sorts of (in fact astoundingly ignorant) people leading the charge.
https://youtu.be/y9io1MZz_7E
The daily covid numbers in New Zealand--lately I've been looking at them each evening (with the time difference, their next-day numbers get posted before midnight in the U.S.), to see whether they refute the wisdom of New Zealand's approach.
It's not so much schadenfreude; it's more that I expect the country to get its dose of covid eventually. It will be better for the world if the dose hits now, not in 2 years, after the policies there and in Australia have already been exported to many other countries. The same goes for Austria. The demonization of outgroups by the authorities in so much of the world needs to be shown as having zero public heath benefit.