Read on Twitter
So this morning someone tweeted - in response to a 'why are Nightingale hospitals empty' tweet - that Covid is a 'media hoax'. Same tweeter also claimed the death toll rises whenever No Deal Brexit comes closer. For the sake of argument, let's look at what this thesis requires
Firstly, that Covid is a hoax in which the entire media is complicit. Presumably operating on instructions from the tyrants who want to strip us of our 'liberty'. This media is so obedient and so efficient that it is consistently on message, in propagating this 'hoax'
Secondly, the British media have cleverly sussed that this 'hoax' can be used to prevent No Deal, because the British media is universally Remain and will even manipulate covid death tolls to prevent Brexiters from bringing back our lost 'sovereignty' and 'freedom.'
Naturally the government must want this too, even though it has been actively pursuing No Deal Brexit. So this government - the most corrupt and inept in British history - is using its vast powers to inflate the Covid death toll in order not to achieve the No Deal that it wants
And it's doing this with the collusion of the NHS, Public Health England, Sage, the WHO, and every single public health agency and local authority - all of whom are secretly working together to boost the death toll, moving it up or down in accordance with the Brexit negotiations
Bearing in mind that these are the institutions that built FAKE HOSPITALS that are STILL EMPTY to scare the public into accepting tyranny. So let no one doubt that they capable of conjuring dead people out of thin air simply to STOP BREXIT, because this is what we're up against
Clearly this is the most barking, frothing, flat-out, coyote-howling drivel that almost deserves some kind of fiction award if its plotlines, characters, and narrative ingredients were not so crassly implausible. But variants on this kind of thinking are now common currency
They can be found coming from people who are far more powerful w/ more soc media & mainstream media presence than one idiot Brexiter. Some are more fringe than others. But they are all part of a movement that is marinated in paranoia, superstition & intellectual dishonesty
A 'populist' movement that is mostly rightwing - often extremely so - that reduces everything - even a pandemic - to an elite conspiracy or a manufactured culture war or a libertarian battleground.
This is a movement whose progenitors and audience no longer require narrative plausibility for the selfish, antisocial, and anti-intellectual ideas that bond them together, that demand - and too often get - the total suspension of disbelief for their crackpot themes & memes
Needless to say, this movement is a clear and present danger to democracy. It undermines our ability to think coherently about the problems we encounter. It divides society around fake battle lines. It offers only parodic explanations for historical and political phenomena
It evades complexity. It replaces analysis and thought with feelings and belief. In propagating even the most arrant nonsense as a legitimate opinion it makes it possible to have any opinion you like, regardless of how implausible or ridiculous
