RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://whiterosemagazine.com/hallmarks-of-tyranny/

Part 1 : Division

IF “Never Again” means “Never Again,” it’s necessary to spot the signs that might indicate democracy is threatened. Totalitarian regimes arise with certain dynamics, and if we do not understand these signals, how do we protect hard won freedoms? And when trigger warnings appear that might be red flags for a direction of travel that is dangerous, we must take a closer look. How else to prevent repeating atrocities of the past?

Throughout the ages, a well-used technique of the tyrant has been that of divide and rule. Here, I am talking about social division that is deliberately sowed by those in power.

An aspect of this division is to create a “superior” group which looks down on the other group as lesser beings who are deemed a threat to the them, the “unworthy”.

Tyrants can divide the population on the basis of many things, including class, gender, or race. As outliers and a minority, Jews have been targeted multiple times by governments looking for a scapegoat. The most well-known example today is the targeting of Jews by Hitler and the Third Reich and its catastrophic consequences.

This is not an examination of antisemitism. This is a look at tyranny and at the authoritarian measures regarding COVID-19 being employed by governments around the world. Are these measures about keeping the public safe or are they a signifier of tyranny?

https://whiterosemagazine.com/hallmarks-of-tyranny-2/

Part 2: Brainwashing

The ultimate goal of totalitarianism, Arendt says, is to dominate people from within. To keep them in a constant state of anxiety, with a moving narrative.

A section of the UK population, and in other liberal democracies, experience other citizens as unreachable when trying to open a discussion about Covid-19 policy. They get blanked, or attacked, for even posing questions. For sharing information on immunity, I have been called an anti-vaxxer, a conspiracy theorist and a Trump supporter!

What has happened to people’s critical thinking? Why is it, since March 2020, in order to belong to society, you now have to hold specific beliefs:

Lockdowns control the behavior of viruses 
Cloth masks stop viral transmission
Immunity only comes via a vaccine. Naturally acquired immunity no longer exists.
The rights of the individual are subordinate to the greater good. 
Anyone not in step with the above is a bad person, a danger to society, an ‘anti-vaxxer’. 

How on earth did so many people accept government Covid policy, when never before in history have healthy people been locked down en masse. Surely, it is legitimate to question this, and examine evidence to support such a radical departure from the normal practice of isolating the sick, whilst protecting the vulnerable.

However, nearly two years down the line, questioning the government narrative is still met with derision, aggression and often name calling from a significant percentage of the population.

Science and democracy traditionally move forward, through civilized debate of opposing views. Not so since March 2020. It is not just members of the public who are pounced on and ostracized for having the audacity to ask questions.

Many eminent scientists have also been ridiculed and censored from the public arena for advocating different measures, such as the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (1). Evidence has just been released to show that, in their case, the smear campaign came from the top, from Fauci, the Director of NIH, and the man in charge of America’s response to Covid-19 (2).

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/16/the-danger-to-democracy-comes-from-the-left/

Voter identification and election integrity laws, according to Democrats like Kamala Harris, pose the gravest danger to American democracy.  Not only are Democrats wrong on this assertion, but they ignore the ways in which they acutely threaten the health of democracy in the United States.

Contemporary Americans face security and identification requirements in practically everything they do.  Nearly every Internet transaction or website entry requires identification measures.  Every hospital demands identification.  Every bank transaction.  Every fitness club.  Every library.  To say that the act of voting, unlike the act of walking on a treadmill, should require no identification or security measures is ludicrous. 

Moreover, if indeed, as Democrats claim, the mandate of producing some evidence of identification is so oppressive and unjust, then all requirements of identification everywhere should be prohibited.  Driving licenses should be eliminated; anyone should be able to drive a vehicle, since self-transportation is essential for many aspects of modern life.

If voting – the most important citizen act in a democracy – cannot be predicated on some form of voter identification, then indeed no other act or transaction involving government should require identification.

https://thehill.com/opinion/opinion/594442-pavlich-it-was-always-spying

On April 10, 2019, former Attorney General Bill Barr testified in front of a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee at the height of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. At the center of Mueller’s probe were accusations, first made by the Clinton campaign, of Russian collusion.

During a back-and-forth with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) Barr used the term “spying” to describe tactics used by the intelligence community and the FBI to surveil Trump campaign officials. He explained why the Department of Justice was taking a closer look at the practice.

“For the same reason we’re worried about foreign influence in elections we want to make sure that during elections, I think spying on a political campaign, is a big deal. It’s a big deal,” Barr testified. “Spying did occur. Yes, I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was predicated, adequately predicated. I’m not suggesting it wasn’t adequately predicated but I need to explore that. I think it’s my obligation. Congress is usually very concerned about intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies staying in their proper lane and I want to make sure that happened. We have a lot of rules about that.”

As senators attempted to process the statement, with many in disbelief, it was as if the air had been sucked out of the room. Barr’s remarks set off a firestorm of controversy among Democrats and their allies in the media. Television network hosts quickly assembled former Obama administration officials and political pundits to condemn Barr’s use of the term.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/videos-appear-to-show-mounted-police-in-ottawa-trampling-protesters/#slide-1

Ottawa – Canadian law enforcement is reaching the final stages of its push to clear out anti-Covid-mandate protesters from Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, advancing toward the main stage — the heart of the trucker convoy — this morning. The full-scale press against the convoy began on Friday morning, with large numbers of militarized police units in full riot gear surrounding the protest and methodically pushing inwards, dismantling encampments and making arrests as they went.

Yesterday’s push was met with minimal violence from protesters inside the convoy. While truckers and their allies lined up and linked arms in an effort to stop the encroachments, law enforcement made relatively easy work of overpowering the physical resistance, and there were no visible attacks on police outside of some shoving during struggles at the front line. (Although today, the Ottawa police reported that “one protester launched a gas canister and was arrested” this morning).

But police in Ottawa were seen at times engaging in aggressive crowd-dispersal tactics, and have drawn criticism from some corners for their use of horses, batons, and pepper spray in yesterday’s sweep of the protest encampments. Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington called the tactics “grotesque,” pointing to a number of instances of police aggression caught on film throughout the day. “Trudeau must be asked to answer why [it was] necessary to make the front of the parliament [look] like a civil war Friday,” Warmington wrote. “It is true the protesters were a nuisance, but it wasn’t them who were violent.”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/the-mask-debacle

Recent days have witnessed the emergence of a new rift in our pandemic debate. Strikingly, this time the dispute is not just partisan, but also splitting the Democratic Party. While Democratic governors appear to see where political winds are blowing, some blue cities are moving in the opposite direction. And many states that are dropping adult mask mandates are retaining them for kids, resulting in the absurd prospect of indefinite masking for a less vulnerable population for whom masks have more significant downsides.

How did partisan warfare over mask mandates become such a central feature of the pandemic? The familiar answer is that the mask wars are just another symptom of national polarization. When Donald Trump casually denigrated cloth masks as president, the stage was set for a Democratic backlash—turning masks into not just a public health measure, but also a talismanic symbol of virtue signaling on one side and a rallying cry about freedom for the other. But polarization is only part of the story. Mask mandates are a microcosm of a key failure of our pandemic response: the poor climate for public discourse fostered by an elite culture whose overconfidence led to a prolonged strategy of undermining open discussion in a vain attempt to prove that complex questions could have only one universal and immutable answer.

From the beginning of the pandemic, technocratic elites have offered us a dubious bill of goods. Aided and abetted by the media and by many academics, politicians proffered—indeed, likely believed—the idea that the pandemic would go away if everyone just did as they were told. “If everyone wore a mask for two weeks …” became a telltale refrain, a claim that was neither true nor possible. Pundits celebrated President Joe Biden’s ill-fated “hundred days of masking,” which promised “just 100 days to mask, not forever.” This habit of exaggeration and blind optimism among elites helps explain gaffes like Biden’s bizarre claim during his campaign that every single pandemic death could have been averted by better leadership.

https://www.nysun.com/national/us-truckers-gear-up-for-cross-country-anti/92089/

Just as the three-week trucker protest in Canada looks to be fizzling, drivers across the border in America are beginning to ramp up their own demonstration against vaccination requirements and other Covid-related restrictions.

Calling themselves the “People’s Convoy,” the group of U.S. truckers now say they plan to depart Adelanto, California, on February 22 and make their way to the nation’s capital before President Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1.

The organizers have set up a web page and various social media accounts in an effort to raise funds on behalf of the effort, including a Facebook page that has 110,000 followers. An earlier version of the page was removed by the platform for what the company said was violations of its terms of service.

A statement posted Friday to Facebook listed some high-profile supporters, including the anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr. and his group Children’s Health Defense, and a former Trump national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

In a video posted on the group’s website, truck driver Mike Landis says the group is hoping to convince the Biden administration to rescind a national state of emergency related to Covid that was extended on February 24, 2021, and is in effect through March 1.