BAD DREAMS — THE CORONAVIRUS ENABLING ACT

FASCISM IN THE UK

“Oh God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space,

were it not that I have bad dreams.” Hamlet, II ii

On the 1st March, 1933, the German people awoke to find themselves living in a ‘new normal’. After someone tried to burn down the parliament building, President von Hindenburg issued the so-called Reichstag Fire Decree on the advice of his Chancellor Adolf Hitler. The decree suspended most of the civil liberties guaranteed under the Weimar Constitution, including habeas corpus, inviolability of residence, secrecy of the post and telephone, freedom of expression and of the press, the right to public assembly, and the right of free association, as well as the protection of property and the home. So while communists were blamed for burning the Reichstag, the response of the National Socialists was immediately to burn the Constitution. Soon, Hitler’s Enabling Act made parliament irrelevant. Fascism always works through conspiracy; but anyone putting two and two together — and sharing their suspicions by phone or letter, never mind in the press — would be dragged from their home and disappeared.

On the 26th of March 2020, the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland awoke to an equally serious situation. The Coronavirus Act had received royal assent the previous day. Like the Reichstag Decree, the Act extended the State’s powers of surveillance, increased its powers of arbitrary detention, and removed the right to assembly and free association. In addition, it reduced the required standard of evidence in the courts, increased powers to section people under mental health legislation, reduced healthcare protections, reduced legal safeguards for accurately determining cause of death, took control of the burial and coronal processes and suspended elections at all levels of the UK’s democratic institutions. (H/t Iain Davis — https://in-this-together.com/coronavirus-giving-your-freedom-away/)

The Act provides for the arbitrary arrest of anyone ‘suspected’ of carrying the virus by any designated officer of the State, presently including not only registered health professionals but police and immigration officials. The only criterion is the official’s suspicion, and the designated ‘suspect’, can be held for up to 28 days under quarantine and subjected to forced medical treatment. The law indemnifies NHS staff against any claims of negligence during the pandemic, and relieves them of the obligation to adhere to the NHS framework. Should the ‘suspect’ die in quarantine, the Act provides for the immediate cremation of the body without the family’s permission. Only the incurably naive could fail to see the potential for abuse in these provisions. 

So I’ve been having bad dreams about fascism in the UK. Perhaps my dreams are influenced by speculative fiction like V for Vendetta and 1984. But when I open my eyes to read the Coronavirus Act, I see my nightmares transcribed in black and white, section and subsection, in the schedules of this law. The situation is even more serious for us than for the Germans in 1933, since there is nowhere to run. The citizens of the defunct Weimar Republic could hope to escape across borders. Bertolt Brecht made it to Sweden, Walter Benjamin to Spain, Hannah Arendt to Czechoslovakia, and thousands of Zionist Jews emigrated, with government assistance under the Transfer Agreement, to the British Protectorate of Palestine. But in 2020, the fascist coup we are facing is global, and possessed of infinitely more sophisticated surveillance and weapons systems.

I should probably say ‘crypto-fascist’, since 99{7afbbc0afb0c7a66aa968a61965a5f55aa54e1a53c5ce8d1dec42cbaeedea50c} of my compatriots apparently lack the historical context to recognise it for what it is. That is why they are so helpless in the face of what is coming, and why they would call me and anyone saying what I am saying a ‘crazy conspiracy theorist’. Obedient like North Koreans, they go out onto their doorsteps every Thursday evening and clap and bang pots in gratitude to their heroes, the doctors and nurses of the UK’s socialised medical system, their minds full of heroic images from hospital soap operas. Meanwhile, those same doctors and nurses sit around scrolling their phones or making song-and-dance videos in deserted hospitals, waiting for the tsunami of sick and dying that never comes. 

People are conditioned to associate fascism with robotically marching troops, torch-light parades and fanatical, charismatic dictators. So indeed was the creator (in 1982) of the V for Vendetta graphic novel, Alan Moore, whose fascist party is ‘Norsefire’, led by the fanatical dictator ‘Adam Sutler’. Those stuck in the Hitlerian loop of the past will always associate fascism with overt displays of power and order, the Jungian ‘Dark Masculine’. Thus the past inoculates the future while the pathogen evolves. Nobody with any sense would expect the nightmare to return dressed by Hugo Boss and giving Roman salutes. Instead, its iteration comes in the form of the Dark Feminine, which uses performative empathy to manipulate and deceive. Think Lady Macbeth, not her husband. 

It was the Wachowski brothers in their cinematic adaptation (scorned and boycotted by Moore) who added the backstory of a pandemic having brought the fascists to power on a wave of fear and chaos. The St Mary’s virus, which was of course developed and released by Norsefire itself, had killed 100,000 and provided the emergency under which the people could be deprived of civil rights for their own ‘protection’. In fiction, the epidemic was real; in reality, it is fiction, a construct of random fragments of DNA, wildly inappropriate diagnostic tests, and a fraudulent approach to cause-of-death reporting — but the globalists’ control of government and media makes it an equally effective tool; real, unreal or hyperreal, the intention, and the result, is the same. Emergency, real or fictional, is the enabler of tyranny; extreme measures are taken only for the protection of the people.

Of course the public accepts that it is all for their own safety — but they should remember that this is always the excuse of tyrants, from the Comité De Salut Public unleashing the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror (1793–1794) to the Reichstag Decree itself — full title the ‘Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State’ (Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat). The full title of Hitler’s Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz) of 1933 was Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich (Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich). So, there’s nothing new under the sun — why need there be, once an ahistorical, amnesiac populace has been achieved?

My grandfathers were both prepared to give their lives, and one of them did, in the fight against National Socialism. Isaac, my father’s father, was a teacher and Christian minister stranded in Tunis throughout the occupation. His status as a man of the cloth allowed him to visit prisoners of war in the camp outside the city. Soon he was carrying messages, sheltering escaped prisoners and downed airmen, and going into hiding himself when informed that he was on a German arrest list. Eventually he obtained and passed on the naval defence plans for Tunisia and Egypt, and after the liberation of Tunis he was honoured for his courage with a secret roadside audience with the King in the back of a Daimler, and, later, an MBE. Bert Evans, my mother’s father, was Harbour Master first at Liverpool and later Southampton, England’s two most important ports, both cities heavily bombed throughout the air war. When Bert contracted tuberculosis, he refused to abandon his post, working himself to death for his country at the age of forty-four. And now my compatriots give up their birthright (and mine) for fear of an influenza. I never met him, but I’ve always been told I’m the spitting image of Bert, and though I can’t hold a candle to either of these men I’m weeping tears of rage and shame as I write this — from the other side of the world, but I will have to return to my country before long, and when I do there will be no law to protect me from arbitrary arrest, detention under quarantine, forced ‘medical’ treatment and immediate cremation if I die. The combination of these measures mean in effect that political dissidents absolutely can be disappeared under cover of the outbreak.

We have seen the brutal measures used in China, and only the impossibly naive would discount the possibility that the outbreak has been used there as cover for round-ups of political dissidents. As reported in The Guardian on 19th February:

“The government of the south-western province of Yunnan announced in early February that 25 people were detained or censured for ‘fabricating and spreading rumours’ over the coronavirus epidemic. Last week three more in the province were detained over the same accusation.

The authorities are also using epidemic control as a pretext to detain government critics. Two citizen journalists, Wuhan native Fang Bin and lawyer Chen Qiushi, who have reported on the situation in Wuhan, have disappeared under the guise of ‘quarantine’.

The law professor Xu Zhangrun, who criticised Xi over the coronavirus crisis in an essay, was also put under house arrest under pretext of quarantine. The activist and legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, who has also lambasted Xi for mishandling the epidemic and other crises, was detained last Saturday.”

One of the immediate effects of the global lockdown has been to quell protest, dissent and populist political movements — the extradition protests in Hong Kong, the gilets jaunes movement in France, the Trump rallies in the US, not to mention protests in Venezuela, South Africa and elsewhere — all have been abruptly quashed by playing the pandemic card.

In addition to new powers of arbitrary arrest, the Act strips away protections under the Mental Health Act. From Schedule 8, Part 2:

3 (1) An application by an approved mental health professional under section 2 or 3 made during a period for which this paragraph has effect may be founded on a recommendation by a single registered medical practitioner (a “single recommendation”), if the professional considers that compliance with the requirement under that section for the recommendations of two practitioners is impractical or would involve undesirable delay.

(8) Section 12(1) and (2) do not otherwise apply to a single recommendation (and accordingly there is no requirement for the practitioner giving the recommendation to have previous acquaintance with the patient).

4 (1) Any registered medical practitioner or approved clinician may furnish a report for the purposes of section 5(2) (detention of patient in hospital pending application for admission) if it appears to the practitioner or clinician that complying with the requirement under that provision for the report to be furnished by the practitioner or clinician in charge of the treatment of the patient is impractical or would involve undesirable delay.

(2) Section 5(2) (period for which patient can be detained following report by practitioner or clinician) has effect in relation to a patient detained after the beginning of any period for which this sub-paragraph has effect as if for “72 hours” there were substituted “120 hours”.

(3) Section 5(4) (period for which patient can be detained pending report by practitioner or clinician) has effect in relation to a patient detained after the beginning of any period for which this sub-paragraph has effect as if for “six hours” there were substituted “12 hours”. Period of remand to hospital.

5 Sections 35(7) (period of remand to hospital for report on mental condition) and 36(6) (period of remand to hospital for treatment) have effect as if the words “or for more than 12 weeks in all” were omitted.

9 Administration of medicine to persons liable to detention in hospital (1) The approved clinician in charge of treatment within section 58(1)(b) (administration of medicine for more than three months) may give a certificate under section 58(3)(b) (appropriateness of treatment without consent) if the clinician considers that complying with the requirement under that provision for the certificate to be given by a registered medical practitioner other than that clinician or the responsible clinician is impractical or would involve undesirable delay.

Et cetera, et cetera. 

For me, this is the smoking gun. What on earth have mental health protections to do with an influenza outbreak? Again, how naive would you have to be not to see the potential for abuse, especially when there is sinister precedent in exactly this context, i.e., challenging the corruption of pharmaceutical companies.  I wrote about this in 2016, in an essay entitled ‘The Madness Gambit‘.

“In 2009, Jane Bürgermeister, an editor at a medical journal based in Vienna, exposed the apparent attempt by the Baxter Corporation (a subsidiary of Bayer) to trigger a deadly flu pandemic in Europe by distributing 72 kilos of vaccine material contaminated with live human and avian flu viruses in circumstances which cannot have been accidental. […] Disaster was only averted due to the vigilance of a Czech lab technician who tested the material on ferrets, all of which died. Burgermeister filed legal charges against Baxter and publicised the issue to great effect, but was soon subjected to a terrifying legal assault by the Austrian government which sought to portray her as ‘a dangerous conspiracy theorist’ and strip her of all civic rights and assets. Ten days before her court appearance, Burgermeister wrote: 

‘This Sachwalterschaftsverfahren or court guardianship is usually used for extremely elderly people who are diagnosed as senile, and means you give all your rights to the court. 

But it seems such a court guardianship can also be used to eliminate any critic of the Austrian government or of vaccines because there is absolutely no control over what judges put in files. The government clearly decided to make the fake charges look like they were filed by my “supporters”. But what these charges really are supposed to do is leave the impression I am an hysterical and potentially dangerous conspiracy theorist who has to be confined to a mental institute.’”

All internet postings by Burgermeister ceased from the point of her court appearance on August 12th 2010, and she has only recently reappeared in public postings. I don’t know what she went through in the intervening decade, but I salute her courage.

In my article I set her experience in the context of the practices of totalitarian governments:

“The abuse of psychiatry is a particularly vile aspect of totalitarian systems. In China today, dissidents may be labeled mentally ill and consigned to psychiatric hospitals. Once swallowed up by the mental health system, they can be subjected to electric shock ‘therapy’ and incapacitating drugs, as well as the psychological assault of being confined with the mentally ill –- indefinitely, since a ‘diagnosis’ is not a sentence and has no term. […]

In the Soviet Union, political dissidents and artists who failed to bow the knee could also be consigned to the psychiatric gulag. A famous example was the poet Joseph Brodsky, who was eventually deported to the West after a widespread campaign to have him released. Less well-known figures had no such life-line and remained consigned to this hellish form of incarceration. 

The diagnosis invented for the purpose of interning dissidents, whistle-blowers, petition-signers and the like was so-called ‘sluggish schizophrenia’. I suppose the implication of ‘sluggish’ was that the symptoms would only manifest themselves gradually, unlike the real disease, where onset would be rapid and dramatic. It could then be claimed that early symptoms included political paranoia, even while the sufferer seemed completely rational in every other way.”

However, most of the article was about the growing number of individuals threatened or victimised under cover of psychiatry in the USA, UK, France and New Zealand. In the course of the Coronavirus ‘pandemic’, we have seen a huge resurgence of mainstream hit-pieces recycling the same tired and twisted stereotypes against those who question the political agenda. As the global fascists put all their weight behind medical martial law, their controlled media ratchet up the social pressure on ‘anti-vaxxers’ and ‘dangerous conspiracy theorists’. Ultimately, as the anomalous mental health provisions in the UK Act make crystal clear, they will use their second gulag, the psychiatric system, to enforce acquiescence in their monstrous fraud. 

I know; another outlandish conspiracy theory, and yet more evidence of my delusional paranoia. This kind of thing could never happen in Britain; only other places, other times. But the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand? Impossible.

An argument from belief is no argument at all. We do not know what is probable, but the law tells us what is possible. The media barrage prepares the public, and primes the practitioners. Of course, if it did happen — if these laws were indeed used to round up British dissidents — the normies would never know, and would continue to bang their pots in the sentimental la-la-land of their ‘new normal’. 

The preservation of freedom requires eternal vigilance, and the courage to look reality in the eye. As for killing granddad, a cowardly submission on my part to the Dark Feminine of Billions Gates and this insidious global fascist takeover would kill Bert Evans all over again — and that is NOT something I am going to do.

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