Thanks Fionn,

'The Gangsters-in-charge are surely rubbing their hands with glee when thinking of the multiple crisis to come and how profitable it will be to herd the population in certain directions favourable to their desired outcomes.'

Indeed, hence the keen interest by western intel agencies in what Israel is doing to Palestinians in Gaza - you never know when it might come in handy to move a terrorised population from place to place based on some barely plausible excuse because you want the land they're on or just want them gone for some reason.

On the other hand, they might have overplayed their hand and the next pandemic that comes around with a high fatality rate could see public control measures widely ignored because of peoples' memories of how the last one was 'managed'. No doubt it will be conspiracy theorists, antisemites and fascists deemed responsible for the resulting deaths, not the institutions that undermined public trust past breaking point.

Btw I have some sympathy for the argument that a state-led response to crises is the best possible outcome given the current circumstances. People make the same point with climate change, eg: Roger Hallam:





If that's the only realistic alternative to market fundamentalism or corporate fascism (to the extent that the two are different during times of crisis) then it makes sense if you're up against it to push for the best possible decision-making from existing leadership, no matter how corrupt and insane they've shown themselves to be. I'd only say that people shouldn't kid themselves that this would represent a positive step towards the kind of world we want to live in, with state societies magically transforming into engines of public good rather than organisations that emerged precisely to serve the interests of centralised power & control which are the cause of nearly all the ills that we face.

I think a lot of liberal-left types saw covid as an opportunity in this way, and were happy to support sweeping measures taken by the government in the name of safety & security, because that is their preferred form of governance. A managerial class, or at least aspiring to be as Allen points out. And if it f*s over the working class and transfers their remaining wealth and assets to a handful of billionaires, too bad. They want the same response to climate change too, and the battle lines have already been drawn with in many cases the same covid skeptics opposing any govt-led restriction in the name of climate change because "it's all a ploy to take away our freedoms", and "it's not real anyway" etc etc. Meanwhile the PMC's will be supportive of anything that says 'net zero' in it no matter how crazy or damaging it proves to be, because "something has to be done", and "it's a bitter pill but we have to swallow it" (ie: we have to force you to swallow it). Both positions have some truth to them, but are also fundamentally flawed. Almost like they're being played against eachother in a game of divide and rule... It's not going to end well.

cheers,
I