For earlier entries “Against the Corona Panic,” see:
Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven,
Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve
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A commenter at Peak Stupidity suggests that the Dissident Right should have been frontline CoronaHysteria-pushers to help destabilize the system, and that those on the Dissident Right who have come out against the Corona Panic are fools.
Nationalists: “If only a big event would come along that would give us a chance to discredit neoliberalism and globalism and get people to support nationalism and **statism**”
Coronavirus: Happens.
Nationalists: Pretend it’s not real, alienate normal people, become libertarians.
This person also linked to a post by Hunter Wallace arguing much the same, slamming the Dissident Right for having too many Corona Skeptics in it. Hunter Wallace wrote a longer, ‘anti-CoronaSkeptic’ post the next day.
It is clear now the term “Dissident Right” is also overly broad and this crisis has just exposed a preexisting fault line. There are people who are “dissidents” in the sense that they believe things like the earth is flat, the moon landing was a hoax, […] viruses are not real, […].
I just shake my head in disbelief. The coronavirus was a once in a lifetime crisis that came along and vindicated pretty much everything we believe: unregulated immigration, the foolishness of outsourcing our manufacturing base to China, the Left’s unhealthy obsession with “racism” and “xenophobia,” the Right’s unhealthy obsession with the stock market, […] Instead of nailing our elites to the wall though on these issues, much of the Dissident Right plunged head first into an abyss of conservative and libertarian conspiracy theories.
How many people have family members who have gotten the virus? […] Some people in the Dissident Right are determined to tell those people it is a HOAX and none of it is real. […] this is a missed opportunity that has discredited many of its critics.
Hunter Wallace doubled down in his next pro-CoronaPanic polemic:
The real death toll is even worse. […] The Right is never going to live this down now.
What you see implied here is a part (a small part) of the answer to the Great Corona Political ‘Cross-Cut’ phenomenon. Hunter Wallace rightly observes that attitudes on CoronaPanic-ism cut clear across pre-existing political divisions (on which, more below). There is a lot left to the Corona Panic puzzle, but a non-negligible part of it seems to be people looking at the political bottom line, fixing bayonets, and charging in.
There are a number of serious problems with this (implied) call to jump on the CoronaBandwagon and promote Corona Hysteria so as to jockey for narrow political advantage on the coattails of Corona Chaos. I see it as follows:
(1) It demeans Truth and standards of evidence, and gives in to an emotionalistic, irrational mob-mentality; (2) It demeans the Dissident Right itself, casting it as some kind of amoral power-seeking faction whose raison d’etre is power and power alone (which is out of some “Hollywood Nazi” script); (3) It tacitly supports the suffering of our own people/nation(s), and the hobbling of our people’s future, which is immoral and also totally against the whole point of the thing; (4) It constitutes a failure of true leadership and is delegitimizing; (5) The “Corona Coup D’Etat” element to this affair. The ‘coup’ was led primarily by enemies of the Dissident Right who have their own agendas and have vastly increased their own power with token opposition, if any at all. A desperate bid to ride on such people’s coattails makes little sense.
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(1) The supreme importance of Truth. First and foremost, ask, “Is it true that the Scary New Coronavirus is a once-in-a-century mass killer, as it was aggressively marketed, a Mass Killer Apocalypse Virus? Or is it not true? What do we know? How do we know it?”
All the evidence we have has been pointing more and more towards “Not True,” and in spades now. With approaching 100% certainty now, this coronavirus is no more dangerous than many other coronaviruses that have been in circulation for years, but of course none others had a huge media campaign behind them. When the smoke clears, it may yet be “Just the Flu” (equal to a peak-flu-season event) after all, or maybe “Just the Flu x2” at worst. This has never looked likelier than it does now. Of course the media will keep waving bodies and us and telling sob stories. No, they are not using ‘crisis actors.’ Yes, there is a flu-death-spike event going on, as sometimes happens, and some of our weakest die.
(I’ve got some bad news for the CoronaAddled out there. It’s not pleasant, but you ought to know it to move forward in life. Get ready. I’m going to say it now: Human beings are mortal; human beings die.)
The question is not “can the media wave bodies at us.” The question is, is it really a once-in-a-century Mass Killer Apocalypse Virus. The answer has long appeared to be ‘No,’ and now looks like a definite ‘No’ based on all the best data. It does appear to be a bad flu strain. This is good news, and it is true, so why not spread the good news, to slay the evil-beast of Corona Panic? Why be complicity in what is effectively a cover-up?
Satirists are hard at work against the pro-CoronaPanic side’s efforts to inflate their body count:
Yes, a lot of what the Corona Panic is about is based on deception, or at least on misunderstanding.
The great relative strength of a group of political dissidents is the ability to tell the Truth. A major enemy of the Truth is the media (speaking in shorthand here). The pro-CoronaPanic people would have dissidents abandon their greatest strength, which is truth-telling, in a long-shot bid for breadcrumbs from its enemies, during a passing mass-hysteria event! That is wrong on a lot of levels, but as for bullet-point-one, it’s wrong because it abandons the sacred principle of commitment to the truth.
Here is Dr. Klaus Püschel, head of forensic medicine in Hamburg, speaking April 3:
“I am convinced that the Corona mortality rate will not even show up as a peak in annual mortality. […] Covid-19 is a fatal disease only in exceptional cases, but in most cases it is a predominantly harmless viral infection.”[…] Corona in itself is a “not particularly dangerous viral disease” […]
(Translated from the German original in the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper by Swiss Propaganda Research.)
Giving in to emotional mob-mentalities is not a game we can win, nor one that Western Man can/should even play in good conscience.
(2) What is the ‘purpose’ of the the Dissident Right? Is it just an amoral ‘faction’, out to aggrandize its own piece of the power pie?
To paraphrase Ben Franklin, “He who would sacrifice principles for power deserves neither.” Throwing principles away to join a transient mob is something that could be, in the medium- and long-run, totally discrediting. Not to mention immoral, if one does not believe it is the mass killer that it was sold to be (by a hostile, ‘bloodthirsty’ media). Cynical manipulation is wrong. It’s what bad guys do. Villains.
There are some who would have the Dissident Right be purely about polemics, about propaganda, and agitation. As I wrote elsewhere recently:
Polemics per se are not bad (they make for good blogging) (on the downside, a dumbed-down version of unconstrained polemical writing is Twitter), but I believe it should be the tip of an iceberg. It’s what we see, but it rests on a much larger foundation of what we don’t see, which ought to be evidence.
In cases of effective, convincing polemics that are consciously anti-evidence — not just misguided, but ignoring evidence for personal gain, some kind of rent-seeking, or out of some kind of malice, or ‘trolling,’ or whatever — can be very bad news. (I believe this is what rubs so many the wrong way about AOC, a kind of puffed-up, shrill political rent-seeker and evidence-optional polemicist, but that’s another topic.)
(3) Protect the nation from harm should be a guiding principle. Do not cheer on as your people are harmed.
The Great Corona Mass Hysteria Pandemic of 2020 and its economic after-effects will hurt our people. If the predictions are accurate, think of the opioid crisis and turn it up a few notches; what would 10%, 15%, 20% unemployment and ongoing ‘lockdown’-type disruptions due to us? Have the pro-CoronaPanic-pushers thought about the likely drop-off in births that will result from a biting, major economic depression? The CoronaFertilityCrash. The evil beast of Corona Panic is like a demon that effectively demands infant sacrifices.
As to how much the Corona Shutdowns hurt, this encompasses a sober discussion on tradeoffs; among the mass delusions associated with the Corona Fiasco is a suspension of any sort of applied understanding of the concept of Tradeoffs in public policy. Someone recently wrote:
This isn’t about best versus worst-case scenarios. This is about the worst public policy in recent memory after mass third-world immigration. Public policy should involve the weighing of costs and benefits. Was that done here? No, this is just flat out hysteria.
We are (should be) advocates for our own people and therefore we should sound the alarm, when it needs sounding. Shirking this responsibility makes us cowards. Protect the nation from harm, especially needless harm. Enoch Powell said it best:
“The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature.” — Enoch Powell, 1968
Powell could just as well have been talking about this ‘Coronavirus’ response. Mass-hysteria events are “deeply rooted in human nature,” and it is the sacred duty of leaders and would-be leaders to guard against such things, which can have negative effects. As Mr. Shamir writes recently:
The seasonal madness overtook mankind. In years to pass, it will be remembered as a new Witch Hunt, but on a global scale
I can tell you what a bad leader would do: Join in the witchcraft accusations; stand at the head of the mob!
(4) What is true leadership? Whence comes moral authority/credibility?. Following on from (3), Every society needs some mechanism to prevent hysterical mobs from disrupting the ship of state and running it aground, which is what has happened with the Corona Panic in most Western countries to some degree.
For whatever reason, our normal defense mechanism(s) failed, and totally irrational thinking quickly won the day. Few were/are willing to stick their necks out against the destructive pro-Panic CoronaConsensus.
Anti-CoronaPanic people are like a group of stunned people emerging into a Twilight Zone episode, unsure what to do, leaderless, subject to emotional blackmail at the least, and suppressed in major discourse.
True leadership and service to the nation would be to stand strong, alone if necessary, against the evil-beast of Corona Panic. It’s good for moral credibility, just as this is all bad for the media’s credibility.
(5) The “Corona Soft Coup d’Etat” was/is led by a collection of interests within the Left- and Media-Complex to advance its own interests.
The almost unbelievable power grab(s), the imposition of softline martial law, these things didn’t fall from the sky fully formed. They were opportunistic power-grabs in a media-panic-fueled setting. These were (very likely) diffuse, not coordinated directly with any kind of malice-aforethought-soaked plan, but malicious actors did take advantage of it, and their interests were served.
As Intelligent Dasein wrote today:
[N]ow the governments of the world have the perfect Foucaultian wet drem to play with: A permanent medical emergency that can be used to justify anything and everything, to arbitrarily seize and execute authority, to silence dissent, to disrupt gatherings, to sway elections, to impoverish and enerve the ordinary citizen. This is a bonafide reign of terror we’re living through, and these things never last long and never end well, not least of all for their former leaders.
Other good material, food for thought, on this has been written in the past few weeks by prime noticer, including this one:
the Democrats see that the Republicans are about to go down permanently, and are already making their early alliance with a major outside force, China, against their internal enemy, Republicans. this happens in most big civil wars, and is one of the telltale steps along the way. the Democrats are not only openly hostile to Trump and Republicans as always, deliberately getting in the way during a ‘crisis’, but are now siding with China in the domestic argument about the virus, an ally they had not previously taken. [….]
And this one:
China will make out on this virus. they will get Joe Biden elected, and all their problems with the US will go away, clearing their path to eventually displacing America as the leading power on this planet. […] the virus will wipe out Republicans permanently. Democrats are poised to take monopoly control of the US starting in January 2021, and the replacement of europeans will begin in earnest. tax paying, law abiding european men will be turned into Mules. the establishment of UBI may occur under the Biden Administration, locking in a certain countdown clock on the US. no western nation can survive UBI for long, and the US is in one of the worst positions to endure UBI. […]
(6) Therefore, for the Dissident Right to join the pro-CoronaPanic rah-rah-ing, demanding for More Shutdowns and so on, would be for it to totally neutralize itself, abandoning the commitment to Truth (see point 1), giving in to crass factionalism (see point 2), failing in the implied the commitment to protect the nation including via rational thinking about tradeoffs (see point 3), forfeiting a claim to true leadership and losing credibility in the long-run (see points 4 and 5).
In short, End the Corona Panic. It’s about time.
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Further thoughts on the new Corona political division, cross-cutting the old
The emergence in CoronaPanic world of a completely new political or quasi-political split, along lines that did not exist before, continues to fascinate me. It is not some subtle difference of viewpoint on something obscure, not a minor adjustment on the margins here and there. This is a major split, or a series of internal splits, the birth of a new axis along which people align; the Corona axis ranges from pro- to neutral to anti-.
The media, which is full-on ‘pro,’ and many of those claiming the moral high ground on the ‘pro’ side, condemn the ‘anti’ side as Flat Earth-style wackos and immoral. Hunter Wallace slams, in similar terms, “conservatives” for being CoronaSkeptics or ‘CoronaDeniers’ (which has certainly not been anywhere near true for the past month, and never quite was true; the in-earnest Corona Political Split developed over a few-week period in March, and establishment conservatives almost to a man and woman dove into the pro-CoronaPanic camp, sadly including Tucker Carlson). In truth, there is a broader cross-cutting split here, a seemingly irreconcilable one, at least as long as the Corona Crisis to lasts (as long as they permit it to last).
I have struggled to define or apply convenient labels to this new division. I have used the terms ‘pro-CoronaPanic‘ and ‘anti-CoronaPanic,’ labels which themselves admittedly reveal my position on the matter. I view the ‘CoronaPanic’ as a public-policy disaster based on bad data, a case of mass hysteria.) A somewhat less-provocative way to say it is: pro-CoronaShutdowns vs. anti-CoronaShutdowns. I had previously proposed “Corona Skeptics” against “The Shut-Everything-Down-Indefinitely mob mentality.” I admit that one is also provocative. How would a pro-CoronaPanic person label those of us on the anti-CoronaPanic side?
The pro-CoronaPanic side believes the virus is a serious threat. But more interesting than their belief is how all kinds of interests have emerged to energize, prop up, and drive forward the pro-CoronaPanic side. It is as happens after political revolutions with unclear results; people of all sorts emerge and begin trying to pull ‘it’ (the revolution) in their direction.
Corona Opportunists are of all sorts, sometimes motivated by petty and/or personal considerations or wishes, sometimes grandiose. Call these people Corona Opportunists. I observed in March that while many were afraid, most of the figures really pushing/indulging in CoronaPanic-ism did so out of some sort of self-interest, a list to which the first half of this post adds another important but overlooked one: “Jockeying for political position.” I will not list the others here, but I named quite a few on March 26, based on cumulative observations over the then-previous two weeks or so (i.e., mid-March, which was the critical period in the US, the period of The Big Mistake, the chain-reaction-of-overreactions, the crossing of the Rubicon into CoronaMadness, the Shutdowns).
The subset of Corona Opportunists whose instinct is to jockey for political position, whatever it may be, reminds of the ironic quip you’ll hear, usually said of a sort of career politician: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” That’s what this is, and that’s where the commenter at PeakStupidity appears to have been coming from, at least in part (I don’t deny he that and others probably really do believe in Corona as Mass Killer with a high death rate, an idea we are blared with constantly by a lockstep, unskeptical media).
The Corona political cross-cut slices across the Left
We see some of this from “the Left.” The occasional voice pops up to bash Trump over it, blames Trump for the entire thing, or the potential thing, the supposedly coming Corona Apocalypse (which never will come, but that’s okay; Bash Trump trumps Find the Truth). Interestingly enough, the level of Trump-bashing associated with the CoronaPanic is actually considerably lower than average, than peak periods of political frenzy. I would attribute this to the Left being divided, also victim to the Corona Political Cross-Cut, and that this saps the energy of the Trump-bashers.
Many people identifying as ‘liberals’ and progressives’ and ‘anti-Trump’ are all solidly on the anti-CoronaPanic side. In the Youtube comment section under the great interview with anti-CoronaPanic hardliner Dr. Knut Wittkowski (recorded April 1 and 2), we see comments like this:
Progressive Libertarian (link)
Share this far and wide !!!
Note: “Progressive Libertarian.” Someone who identifies with the word ‘progressive’ is now in common cause with all sorts of others including nationalists. The anti-CoronaPanic coalition. It’s really a chaotic jumble.
Tthere seems little real or consistent alignment between political-affiliation and attitude on the Corona Panic, which is confirmed by many anecdotally among their families and acquaintances. Quite a few people on the Left are against the shutdowns. The Left is divided; the Right is divided; the Dissident Right is divided; the Center is divided; apolitical people are divided. There are no easy narratives here.
The Corona political cross-cut slices across the Right:
The comment sections at the Unz Review are a notable example, with former allies turned against one another and angry exchanges occurring between the previously-generally-amicable. I would hazard to guess, if we had a cross-section of regulars at the Steve Sailer commentariat (whose collective wisdom I respect and admire, and from whom much is always there to be learned), who, let’s say, were politically on about the same page three months ago, I estimate it’s at 35% firmly anti-CoronaPanic, 45% neutrals or basically on the fence, and 20% pro-CoronaPanic. I don’t base those numbers on real data, just impressions from reading comment sections.
Ron Unz himself, for whom I have great respect, is (as of this writing) no friend of the anti-CoronaPanic position, calling us “Diehard Coronavirus Hoaxers.”
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On March 26, a commenter, Ed, wrote at Steve Sailer’s blog:
[T]his is one of those events when the crazy, irresponsible, tin foil hat view (“its just the flu”) is the view that is backed by actual experts in the field as opposed to TV talking heads.
(To that I responded about as follows — slightly edited/updated:)
Ed makes a good point.
Corona Panic has triggered a political realignment, or so I have observed/heard first hand. As I wrote on March 26,
I’ve heard quite a few anti-Trump people say “Trump is right on this one,” often prefacing with something like “I have never agreed with Trump on anything, but he’s right here.” [i.e., on resisting Corona Shutdowns]
It’s at least a temporary realignment, as long as the Corona Panic lasts, and they’re talking about early May now, with some talking about continuing the Corona Disruptions into fall and some extremists calling for “12 months, or 18 months if necessary.” I don’t see how they keep that up, but maybe it is a lasting realignment. It’s hard to tell if it will be lasting, and if so, what the real nature of the realignment will be. At the least, maybe it’s a realignment that has the energy to last through voting day Nov. 2020. This seems hard to believe. As I wrote elsewhere:
prime noticer wrote:
are we gonna lock down the entire planet every year now?The media cannot keep its Corona Cocaine Binge, and its ongoing CoronaBloodlust, going for months on end. But it may well get a “second wind” at it when the “second wave” of Corona cases comes in the fall. A CoronaPanic Second Wave.
I’ll tell you what would be ironic, is if the Nov. 2020 presidential election ends up being a referendum on Corona Shutdowns:
Yes Corona Shutdowns: BIDEN
No Corona Shutdowns: TRUMP
This scenario seems at once so crazy as to be laughable, and yet also plausible to actually happen. Somehow both at the same time. God help us.
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Ed’s observation of the so-called “tin foil hat” people being in agreement with the experts is another example of the same realignment, viewed from a different angle.
I guess I am one of those “crazy, irresponsible, tin foil hat view” people Ed alluded to, who is very skeptical that this is the doomsday scenario we have been sold by the media and by some alarmists. I have concluded that it is, to simplify a highly complex thing, a media-created panic, one for which people in the media ought to really be ashamed of themselves.
I was following the ‘Corona story’ more-or-less regularly from its emergence in January, through February, when it was still something distant and theoretical in the US itself, of real interest to only a few, to those who regularly follow and analyze the news and world events. With all the data we had by the third week of March, which was still incomplete, I concluded that it was very likely a mistake outright to react as the world has done. Caution, yes; this kind of overreaction, no. Fiasco.
The serious, actual experts (to the extent anyone has asked their opinions) are largely in agreement, it would seem, though others can’t help themselves from piling on and joining the pitchfork mob, and others are so narrowly focused on their field of expertise that they see nothing else, acting as though all life, all reality, is as a disease-suppression video game.
I stopped actively visiting (political websites) when I sensed the panic starting to emerge, figuring it was not a good use of time, sensing the oncoming mass hysteria; I could see the outlines of it forming by the second week of March. I thought to myself it would last a few weeks and assumed a good chance it would come and go by March 31. With the piling-on, and the serious mistake of society-wide closures (the Bubonic Plague or nuclear-war-like reaction), it soon looked impossible that March 31 would be even close to the end; that plus two weeks maybe at the most optimistic (Easter 2020, April 12), was still my hope, but as of this writing on April 9, that date has been pushed back. Some anti-CoronaPanic forces that have found an outlet have proposed May 1 as the National Reopening day. It really should be sooner.
The pro-CoronaPanic camp continues to push for indefinite shutdowns to “Save Lives,” as they would say, which any basic cost-benefit analysis will show is wrong, wrong, wrong. Plunging people into mass unemployment and so on will kill many more people and will reduce fertility, preventing many from being born. The pro-CoronaPanic position still does have some wind in its sails, and it controls the media, and the high-ground in many other ways. The internal contradictions of the pro-Corona position will lead to its eventual collapse, of that I am sure, but what the fate of the Corona Political Realignment is, I am not sure.
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Hail To You 
It’s nothing more than two different groups jockeying for status.
One the one side, “dissidents” get status on fringe blogs by coming up with the most “woke” theory of various current events. Since deception is universal, being the most hard core truth-teller gains you status – and an audience.
On the other side, “dissidents” like Hunter Wallace gain status by pretending to be skeptical of the skeptics. “Dissidents” like Hunter Wallace are constantly called “conspiracy theorists” by the mainstream, the SPLC, etc., so here’s a chance to prove his “normie” bona fides and try to distance himself from the smears of people like the SPLC.
As you point out, neither side cares about the truth or reality, truth is instrumental.
I think this is a good insight, BH.
There is honor in standing for Truth even (or especially) when very few are, and when a massaged-narrative-version-of-reality can be used to advance some short-term agenda. Or for other reasons, like shock value or attention-seeking.
I believe the role of ‘clickbait’ (as we’ve come to know it since ca. mid-2010s), specifically, in the CoronaPanic/CoronaParanoia will be of interest to future scholars.
Clickbait, “influencers”, and social media in general had more to do with the rise of CoronaPanic than other factors, though perhaps not as much as elite panic, in that it took the latter to enact “lockdown”. They all know boomers are the most affected, even though they obfuscate about it, and of course they’re all boomers themselves.
CoronaPanic has also very clearly tapped into the mainline of modern egocentric hysteria, which is in a feedback loop with social media. All the dogmas support that: “every life is precious” and similar nonsense was around long before this virus. The altruistic punishment normally reserved for “racists” and so on was very quickly repurposed for corona-deniers.
All the obnoxious, shrieking, moralistic cat ladies and twitter whores of the Anglosphere, who love a good quick persecution online, have thrown their collective weight behind this; in a very real sense, we are being oppressed by a combination of their neuroticism and boomer politico cowardice / state overreach. It’s already no more than an excuse for the Fed to fabricate money, bankers to siphon off emergency funds, and the “leftist” establishment to achieve, at last, its goal of total domination.
This phenomenon is going to generate a lot of ebooks a year from now. Maybe one of them will tentatively analyze it from the angle of mass psychology, though will pad itself liberally with pathetic bromides about the horrible tragedy, etc.
Great comment.
“Modern egocentric hysteria” and “obnoxious, shrieking, moralistic cat ladies,” “neuroticism and boomer politico cowardice / state overreach” are all good phrasings (though anecdotally I have noticed something less of a strict age-split in reactions; some b.1940s and b.1950s types are anti-CoronaPanic (including many of the leading dissidents like Wodarg and Wittkowski). Meanwhile plenty of b.1980s and b.1990s people I have known have been enthusiastic CoronaPanic-pushers.
The “obnoxious, shrieking, moralistic” people prone to limited-scale quasi-political hysterias (I have shorthanded this type of person, elsewhere, using the rather-unfair term ‘wackos’), they seldom get the chance to see their histrionic attitudes boil over and really disrupt society. Something unusual happened here.
You say “Elite Panic.” A useful conceptual term. That still raises the question of what caused the Elite Panic.
some b.1940s and b.1950s types are anti-CoronaPanic (including many of the leading dissidents like Wodarg and Wittkowski). Meanwhile plenty of b.1980s and b.1990s people I have known have been enthusiastic CoronaPanic-pushers.
Yea, I’ve noticed that as well. My mother and my in-laws are totally against the hysteria, for example (I know you prefer panic, but I think hysteria hits harder and connotes lunacy). Let’s assume for the moment that a portion of people from my mother’s generation and prior haven’t been chloroformed by modern moralism and retain some levelheadedness about all of it. The rest of us grew up in the virtual environment where group polarization is rapid and there are no consequences, social, metabolic or otherwise, for extreme rhetoric and attitudes. Then you have the other portion, white-haired ghouls from the UK or Washington State who spend more time online and have absorbed that way of thinking, or were more given to herd behavior to begin with.
they seldom get the chance to see their histrionic attitudes boil over and really disrupt society
Indeed, that’s the crux of it: finally their moralizing was instituted by the state and forced upon everyone. At this point you get a fast bandwagon effect of others who want that frisson of lining up with authority. I’ve even seen a few 20-something male alt-right types doing the über-edgy “you didn’t have freedom anyway, what’s the problem?” routine, a Letzter Mensch-tier species of nihilism that makes an even a die-hard nihilist like me afraid. All in all, the speed with which everyone has fallen in line, accepted their fate, even made a cutesy “instagrammable” virtue of it to garner “likes”, is shocking and incredibly depressing, though the cynic in one is always asking why one is surprised.
You say “Elite Panic.” A useful conceptual term. That still raises the question of what caused the Elite Panic.
Taki has written a few little pieces about his time at Gstaad, where he witnessed elite panic firsthand. I don’t think it’s far-fetched to speculate that these people travel in the same circles – ski resorts, all resorts actually, conferences, ceremonies, party meetings, fundraisers, junkets, birthday parties, any kind of party, restaurants, exclusive clubs, and so on – and thus were in a good position not only to infect each other with the virus, being predominantly of the most at-risk age groups, but also to spread the hysteria when it became clear that something was really happening. If you mapped who knows whom visually, which is almost impossible unless you devote a lot of time to that one aspect of the power complex, it’d become evident very quickly why the political class succumbed to the hysteria.
I see all roads leading back to the Media. A cynical and bloodthirsty media created, inflated, and drove a crisis, partly unintentionally, partly intentionally. Maybe it is another way to say “Elite Panic.”
By the way. That adjective for the media, ‘bloodthirsty,’ is usually figurative. It has now moved, disturbingly, towards the literal; i.e., the media desperately want more CoronaDeaths and more CoronaChaos, to keep up their endless crisis and their own heroism; this is one of the cult-like characteristic of Corona. The demand for blood-sacrifice as to appease a god…
Yea, the media complex should certainly be included in the expression “the elite”; same circles, again, and they’re how people get “news”. In reality these are some of the most powerful people in America. It’s easy to state that, but it doesn’t give a true impression of the scale of their influence.
I don’t know, it’s probably a chicken and egg game to try and out parse which circle in the overall power complex “started it”, but it’d be fair to speculate that media are most to blame, in that it’s their invincible m.o. to sensationalize everything, and capitalize on it politically.
I can see Europe and other nations returning to normal as much as they can in spite of the baleful influence of America. The latter is now totally lost – it can only get worse, as I think prime noticer is right and Biden will be elected. Russia, where I live, I don’t even want to think about. The Russian government is run by blasé authoritarian pigs whose prime directive is puffing up Russia’s image abroad rather than anything rational and good for the Russian people. They’ll blunder from error to error, lying every step of the way, often blaming the citizenry itself for their own mistakes and excesses, until the system is too exhausted to make another for a while. I hope.
Great comments, both of you guys. Thanks.
Pingback: Corona Panic Doesn’t Exist – Occidental Dissent
“Brad” is now advocating for mass-vaccinations, “over a year away”, because Singapore allegedly didn’t “flatten it’s curve”
This is something the world is going to struggle with until there is a vaccine and that is likely over a year away which means fighting it off through the fall and winter.
http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2020/04/12/singapore-enters-lockdown/
This is paranoia. Hunter Wallace, snap out of it.
@Hail
Or stop pretending Hunter Wallace is somehow”fooled” and accept he is a fully functioning collaborator. A smart guy who knows what he is doing.
I’ve been reading HW for over a decade now. He’s a smart guy. His personal friend, Matt Heimbach … how do I say this? People who are fat narcissists that like going on “reality TV shows” … well, they like going on TV shows.
This is a SERIOUS point. Matt Heimbach – HW’s personal friend – spent an entire decade negotiating with Hollywood producers to get on TV shows. Did make-up, etc. Read a script. Etc.
A couple of friends of mine, back in college, went on “Maury Povitch” and told us how it was great fun, posturing as “white trash” and hoped it was a stepping stone to bigger Hollywood roles.
It’s that simple. But that is really, really hard to accept, isn’t it?
It *is* hard to accept. But I have come closer to this view. It is disappointing to me because I have long respected Wallace.
He is also far from alone. There are a lot of people who have reacted in a lot of ways. Maybe not quite a Corona Rorschach Test. Not sure the most elegant way to phrase it.
Where are the people who care about Truth regardless of cost? That is what Western Man is supposed to be about.
Reblogged this on Muunyayo.
Here you go, Hail (not sure what the exact method to his madness is):
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/models-the-logic-of-failure/#comment-3843735
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Well, I’ve now gone ahead and sharply restricted the comments from a bunch of these nutty Flu Hoaxers. Maybe they’ll get the hint that they’re not wanted here, and take their crack-pottery elsewhere. Offhand, my impression is that almost none of them have ever left substantive, worthwhile comments on any other topic, so their departure would be no great loss.
If they wish to eventually regain their regular commenting privileges, they need to behave themselves and then also leave some substantive and worthwhile comments, demonstrating that they add some value. If they’re just going to rant, they can rant elsewhere.
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Who are the “Nutty Flu Hoaxers” who “rant” and never leave any “substantive…worthwhile comments”?
I don’t recall seeing any such people.
As far as I could tell, there was just one commenter who called him a Jew, or said that his line of thought was “Talmudic”. The rest of us did nothing of the sort. The whole thing was a straw-man. Not one commenter claimed the virus isn’t real and not deadly at all. Really bizarre to watch him have a tantrum over this.
I think of it more as an episode than a tantrum, Marshall.
I very much appreciate the unz site, being hooked on it just as much as Mr. Hail here. I’ve read through a few of Mr. Unz’s long-ass articles. He seeks the truth with almost too-open a mind. He’ll go down some rabbit hole and believe very damn anti-American thing he hears.
As for his occasional commenting that has turned into this episode, it used to be you figured “well, he hasn’t read through comments already refuting a lot of what he deigns to lecture us about, he’s wrong, but he’s the site owner, so I’ll give him a break.” On this latest thing, it’s amazing how much Ron Unz is following the Lyin’ Press with no questioning at all, quite unlike his articles.
If Ron Unz would turn off his idiot plate, leave the smart phone on the kitchen counter, and get the hell outside into the real world and the sunshine, I think this episode of his would go into remission.
I don’t think Unz understands the definition of hoax. If I am a hoaxer, it is in that I think the response to the Kung Flu has been a hoax, not the flu itself. Ron is the stupid-ass who thinks the virus was made in a lab in the US and spread to China. Maybe he backtracked on that one by now, I don’t know. I do know this: Expect no apology.
Ok, an episode not a tantrum. Fair.
“The virus is real, the pandemic is fake.” Easy enough.
Is he actually Jewish, by the way?
The virus is real but so are lot of other viruses.
We still don’t know for sure if its more deadly than others.
Oh I’m absolutely not in the omg people are dying camp, dude. I am very much in the if he dies, he dies camp. Viruses like this can’t be “defeated” anyway; they must be borne as a facet, as a cost of life with 7.8 billion long pigs traipsing about.
Hey Didn’t UNZ publish a guy saying the moon landing was a hoax?
See here.
On this great essay in general, Mr. Hail:
I should have commented on your essay first. Yeah, I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of the one “Lolberg” guy that commented on my site, but the tweet with it’s push for Socialism ticked me off. You are quite right here. You don’t go along with a false narrative just because it MAY help your cause. First of all, as your write, truth is truth. I don’t respect liars.
Secondly, though there already has been a push for more Socialism ($2 to $10,000,000,000,000 worth) as the response, the Nationalists won’t be given the time of day. Do they really think that the expansion of the Police State and the spending of even more of their children’s money with strings attached is going to result in a government that cares more about White People?
I have liked what I’d read on OD in the past. I understand even their hoping that this Infotainment Panic-Fest brings the system down. However, it won’t go in the direction they want. Better to prep up for the hard times to come.
Hunter Wallace has been a strong voice for nationalism for 15 years.
That’s exactly his failing here.
Yes, here: https://www.unz.com/article/the-moon-landing-a-giant-hoax-for-mankind/
and it happens to be under a special heading called, you got it, Moon Landing Hoax Articles! Yes, wacky stuff, but you don’t have to read it, I won’t, and I’m damn sure not gonna read through the 1563 comments to see how many people are on-board (well not to the moon … to the Pluto planet.) I don’t mind some of this stuff.
It’s when Unz chimes in in a comment under Steve Sailer with his bullshit, thinking his math skills (likely not on par with 1/2 the commenters therein) mean he’s the smartest guy and gets pissed when people reply in disagreement that I dub him a Troll. (Yeah, felt good, man.)
oops, had to mess around to get the comment on, and replied to the wrong comment of yours.
Writing yesterday, Hunter Wallace is still at it:
“The coronavirus has discredited the mainstream Right.”
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Hunter Wallace is a prolific blogger/commentator, whose usual rate is multiple posts daily. I’ve read only a portion of what he has put out during his steady pro-CoronaPanic streak these past weeks. He seems convinced enough drumbeating of his own will work. I don’t get it.
Here is Hunter Wallace on CoronaSkeptics and all anti-CoronaPanic individuals:
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I would ask again: Is it true that the coronavirus is especially dangerous? If not, what is all this invective about?
See also below re Hunter Wallace.
Hi Hail,
This is MikeatMikedotMike from Unz Review – just letting you know that after I replied to Ron Unz in the latest James Thompson article (to which you then replied) Unz removed my commenting privileges. He is indeed serious about crushing dissent about covid-19 based upon what has morphed into a superstitious paranoia about invisible pathogens.
Now anyone can scroll through my comment history there and see that while I may not be the most diplomatic or intellectual, my behavior is angelic compared to not only many of the other commenters but the contributors as well. Unz is losing his sanity, I mean that in a literal sense.
Wow. Sorry, and surprised, to hear that.
Is everything just stuck in moderation now? Or did an actual error message come up when you tried to post something new (e.g., “You have been banned from posting at the Unz Review for seven days for spreading hoax information about the Corona Crisis”)?
SlateStarCodex does this, and I believe Steve Sailer himself has been given two lengthy commenting bans there for racism. (In a sign of Steve’s magnanimity, he still likes and occasionally promotes SlateStarCodex despite these bans.)
This is a puzzling move, given that you are a well-established commenter (certainly in the Sailer comment-sections, which are a main driver of site activity) and not some hitherto-never-seen “anti-Corona troll” who popped up out of nowhere and pushes crude-hoax claims.
And what is the standard here? Who is a Hoaxer?
Off-Guardian published a good expose on a new department of the UK police that has been set up to counter hoax and other false information about coronavirus. The (only) examples they gave were:
I have yet to see anyone on Unz make claims like that. Catte Black makes the point that if laughable claims like that is all they have to fight against, why do they need a whole new department?
For about the last 25-30 hours, if I attempt to comment I get the screen that says “You are commenting too much. Take a break.” I think I submitted 3 comments yesterday before the reply to Ron Unz. I was able to submit two posts as Anon 151 this morning but it appears both were deleted. I also received the message that I was out of comment “actions,” even though I had only used one yesterday and none today.
Based on the degree on insane theories that are propagated by commenter and contributor alone at TUR, my banning is pure spite. I have long called into question Ron Unz’s claims that “hispanic” violent crime is only slightly higher than white crime by addressing two points: Misclassification of mestizos and other hispanics as white on police and corrections reports, and the significant under reporting of violent criminality by the hispanic community, out of fear of deportation and or gang retaliation. He refuses to address either point, at least not to me directly, and I’m guessing he’s a bit touchy about the covid-19 topic considering he was sounding the bio-weapon trumpet early on and was quickly given a case of the red ass once that theory was shown to be at best, extremely unlikely.
Mike, I wrote you back under that Peak Stupidity thread on tax withholding (of ll things!)
Thank you for the details. Could you wait a day or two and try another made-up email address with another handle (MM-5 or maybe more obscure – you could divulge it on PS, haha!) from a different location? That should set you up as someone different.
I am very surprised that I have not been banned likewise. I really enjoy commenting. I wish the Troll version of Ron Unz would leave us the hell alone.
This is bad news and I hope Ron Unz reconsiders and/or plans to lift the ban after a brief period of time.
I don’t recall this happening over there (UR) before.
A commenting-ban imposed on someone taking a position on some issue of the day. Especially one that will inevitably be vindicated (It turns out we now know there never was a Corona Apocalypse; it was never real; those predicting it were wrong; in most cases, an honest mistake, and why not try to pick up the pieces now?, in the grand tradition of, “If in a hole, stop digging”).
Yesterday on Unz, a ‘Non-Hoaxer,’ Alexander Turok, proposed that anyone who wants to lift the CoronaLockdown should be allowed to go back and do their old things, on condition that:
(1) they are to receive no special treatment beyond over-the-counter medication if they do get sick (to not “swamp the hospitals,” of course), and
(2) they mandatorily wear, at all times in public, a certain symbol to show they are Lockdown-Breakers. A ‘Scarlet Corona Letter,’ so others can identify them as needed.
His phrasing was:
He followed up to a critical commenter with this:
Two commenters, Testing12 and Blateux, had the following exchange. Blateux’s point is one I’ve heard many say and deserves a response, especially as it is on-topic to a theme of this post.
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Testing12 said in part:
Blateux said in part:
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[I respond:]
I’d say it’s not at all as simple as that.
Two examples: Both Hunter Wallace (b.1980, I think) and Richard Spencer (b.1978), who needless to say are far from being “Boomer Conservative Intellectuals,” are believers in, and pushers of, the Corona Panic, and actively anti-CoronaSkeptic. They believe, it appears, that it is a Mass Killer Apocalypse Virus, that the media is right this time, and the skeptics are dangerous.
Hunter Wallace on CoronaSkeptics:
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Meanwhile, Ramzpaul (b.1963), who by life station is a lot closer to being a ‘Boomer’ than the two aforementioned, is very consistently and strongly against the Corona Panic. He is a standardbearer CoronaSkeptic. (Btw, Ramzpaul was the median-age contestant in the Boomer Cup 2019, which the great Steve Sailer won.)
Something about this has divided people along new lines. [This post at Hail to You has] some thoughts on “the Corona political dividing line,” which cross-cuts the old. Will it last to Nov. 2020?
If you had asked me whom I’d put money on as the more likely to be objective about something like this, Ramzpaul or Spencer, I like to think I’d have put my money on the former. I don’t watch the guy, but he’s always impressed as a mostly humble, thoroughgoing skeptic, and with a much better sense of humor than Spencer.
Should note that the guys at FashTheNation are also pro-hysteria, mocking Anglin for being anti, and relying on the “just the flu bro” straw-man to discredit skepticism. If you listen to their shows about it, they completely ignore the relevant variables like age, density of elderly residents, and co-morbidities. Their logic seems to follow from their volte-face with respect to Trump, so they’re obliged to posture against Trump in everything. Incredibly shortsighted and it’s eliminate my lingering enthusiasm for the show.
[…] Similar to the Iraq war, someone’s response to the coronavirus pandemic should be a litmus test on their objective independent thinking qualifications for decades to come. […]
I’ve been thinking about this. How can you conscionably have any kind of abstract discussion with someone without knowing where they stood on this? One will feel compelled to find out if they were one of the Hysterics.
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic, Pt. III: “Just the Flu” vindicated by the data, or, why to End the Shutdowns Now | Hail To You
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic, Pt. III: “Just the Flu” Vindicated by the Data; Or, Why to End the Shutdowns Now | Hail To You
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic | Hail To You
An anonymous commenter on the need to take advantage of the crisis, to squeeze the lemon that is CoronaPanic for some marginal benefit to one’s own issues; to beg the demonic force of CoronaPanic for table scraps as it feasts on our national soul:
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Needless to say, this post (“Honor the Truth, Be Steadfast, Defend the Nation: Say ‘No’ to Jockeying for Political Advantage on the Coattails of Corona Hysteria“) was an attempt to present the case for why this kind of thinking is flawed.
It’s dishonorable. It’s senselessly damaging. It hurts your own people. As I have described it elsewhere, it creates a huge constituency of people who declare, in unison, “All Power to the Government and to the Holy Media!”
But, for many of us, the very foremost reason to be anti-CoronaPanic is: It’s not true. We now know that the Wuhan coronavirus is not a particularly dangerous flu virus; the Panic is now fairly calculable to be literally hundreds of times more damaging than the virus. And the surprising reality, even measured by “immediate-term body count,” is that there may be more people dying even in the immediate term of the Panic and not of the Virus.
For a comprehensive evidence review, see the next post here at Hail to You: “Just the Flu, Vindicated” (Against the Corona Panic, Part III).
Hunter Wallace has deleted all the links to other sites/blogs on Occidental Dissent … which has now officially become “Occidental Con-sent”
Proposed new name:
“[Occidental] Dissent on Everything Except CoronaPanic, in which Case No Dissent Allowed” …. dot com.
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic Pt. IV: What about New York City? A Case Study in Hysteria Pandemic vs. Virus Pandemic | Hail To You
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic, Pt. V: A Hero of the Hour, Dr. Knut Wittkowski | Hail To You
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic, Pt. VI: Where has the regular flu gone? The CDC reports unprecedented crash in non-COVID flu-positives, raising questions | Hail To You
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic, Pt. VII: Sweden’s vindication is complete; Graphing the actual coronavirus epidemic in Sweden against the pro-Panic side’s wild projections | Hail To You
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic, Pt. VIII: The coronavirus transmission rate (“R0”) fell long before the Lockdown orders; What caused the decline? | Hail To You
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic, Part IX: “Corona-Paranoia” and the case of pro-Panic US Congresswoman Haley Stevens, a character study | Hail To You
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic, Part X: The problem of “deaths with” the virus vs. “deaths from” the virus: Evidence that only one-third of corona-positive deaths are “deaths from” | Hail To You
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic, Part XI: Stay-Open Sweden set to lose 0.02% of total population to Coronavirus, in line with usual peak flu years; 2020 may equal 2018 in total mortality; why did we destroy the economy over this? | Hail To You
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic Part XII: An anthropological study into the “Corona Cult.” Pro-Panic hardliners and the media succeeded in erecting a virus-centered apocalypse cult as state religion and inducing a mass-conversion event to it, in Marc
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic, Part XIV: Total Mortality data in Europe now confirms the Wuhan-Coronavirus was comparable in magnitude to flu waves of the 2010s; the Panic and lockdowns are fully discredited | Hail To You
Pingback: Against the Corona Panic, Part XIV: Total all-cause mortality data in Europe confirms Wuhan-Coronavirus comparable in magnitude to flu waves of the 2010s; Panic and lockdowns fully discredited | Hail To You
Pingback: Against the Corona-Panic, Part XV: The coronavirus death curves in Stay-Open Sweden and the Stay-Locked-Down USA are remarkably similar over four months, discrediting lockdown-pushers | Hail To You
Pingback: Is Corona a religious cult? An anthropological study | Hail to You
Pingback: On elite “Neutralism” during the Corona-Panic and the nature of Power: the case of Noah Rothman | Hail to You