A “wild” Corona-Reckoning may be coming in 2022-2024, Matthew Peterson of the Claremont Institute predicts

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Will the guilty ever have to answer for the damage they did by pushing the Corona-Panic and disastrous policy responses, including the “Big V”?

This week Matthew J. Peterson weighed in with dark visions of a future of CoronaPanic-politics worth some attention and consideration. Peterson is a U.S. right-wing intellectual, writer, editor, and publisher of some influence.

(Matthew Peterson speaking at a neoconservative conference, 2021.)

He hints at a coming backlash, reckoning, or other unsavory follow-on effects amounting to a kind of political insurgency to come at some time in the next two years, against the accumulated and ongoing damage from the Corona-Panic.

Peterson has, I believe, in the same commentary also signaled, indirectly, that he will support Ron DeSantis in 2024 over Trump. Read his own words (in full, below) to see if you agree with that interpretation.

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I quote Matthew Peterson, who posted the following on June 18, 2022 (lightly edited for formatting):

“Virus response is Trump’s biggest weakness and DeSantis’s greatest strength.

If Trump wants to run [in 2024,] he should make clear he wasn’t for mandates, etc., because what all the cool kids know is that when the terrible truth about the vax starts spilling over the dam, the Left will blame Trump. DeSantis knows this. And is best positioned to win as the single greatest reasoned opponent of Fauci in America.

I also think it’s unclear what kind of psychic break this development will cause in the next two years for many who have enthusiastically gone along over the last two years. It’s so difficult that it may be everyone just ignores the data and lives in denial. But if it does out—and the current numbers are bloody bad—the political and cultural consequences will be wild and unpredictable. I’m talking extremely wild, extremely unpredictable in ways I can’t state publicly without attracting federal attention.

I support both Trump and DeSantis. It was a complicated situation for everyone. But Trump will need to get ahead of this issue and address it in the next few months if he wants to position himself in the primary.” [End]

Now, understand that this statement is not one private person spouting off an opinion. Matthew Peterson is the editor of The American Mind, one of the publications associated with the Claremont Institute, and holds a high position within Claremont itself (as “vice president of education”). Claremont is a right-wing think tank, and an important nexus of one kind of intellectual and respectable, more-or-less “in-system” right-wing activity and thought since the 1980s.

As a public personality and leading figure within the Claremont Institute, Peterson himself counts as a political actor in his own right, punching far above his “weight” (if you incline to measure “weight” by a crass social-media-follower-count metric). In terms of possible influence on people like DeSantis and Blumpf, Peterson and other key figures of the Claremont School are a big deal, even if the typical politically active person has not heard of them. They have close ties to both DeSantis and Trump, and there are plenty of pictures and video to prove it. DeSantis gave a keynote speech at their annual gala in late 2021.

The moral courage shown by Ron DeSantis, to openly oppose the might and fury of the Corona-Panic Monster at the height of its social-cultural-political mighty and fury, may itself ensure that Ron DeSantis is the next U.S. president—as well it should.

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UPDATE: The following is from a June 15, 2022, discussion with Matt Peterson, published by The American Mind and the Claremont Institute:

Spencer Klavan: It’s incredibly offensive to me…that the things we are being told constantly to get emotionally invested in and assert our virtue over, that they are distorted parodies of things that are actually “life and death,” that actually do matter. When you step back and think about the fact that all of these ideas–like “our democracy”–that they’re constantly evoking are actually real things, it becomes even more infuriating that they’re being paraded like “shadows on the cave wall” by these midwits.

Matt Peterson: Yes, and in the meantime the government intercepts all information, and Democratic law firms sift through it to exploit it for political gain. While we’re supposed to be amused by the “shadows.”

In the meantime, the gun law stuff is is real. The arrests are real. Even the mainstream media is reporting on Gascon in Los Angeles, and about how regular Democrats are just dumbfounded. This really is a guy who wants to disarm the good guys and let the bad guys run rampant over a city and commit crime.

They’ve taken real sacred things, important things, and…they’ve denigrated them. They’ve reduced it to rubble, rhetorically, and make these things meaningless. They’re in this kind of cycle of rhetorical destruction. And given as all the real things happening, it’s dangerous. We’re burning out cultural capital for any kind of normalcy. We expect, now, to see nothing but “fake news,” all the way down, all the time. That lack of trust is a real thing.

I do think there’ll be a reckoning. You don’t get away with this, for long, without real division. Civil disobedience and violence. I don’t really see an ability to pacify everyone.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot with the with the virus. To say something ‘spicy’: It really looks like there’s a real problem with the Vaccine. It’s not a joke. It doesn’t look like they’re going to be able to keep that under wraps. When they do [talk about it], they’ll probably blame Trump for it.

What kind of psychic break is going to happen if it does turn out–and I think it already has happened–that we’re causing a lot of of death through something that everyone was already so religious about [i.e., vaccines]. Forget about partisan politics. I think that’s going to look really nasty…

[end quote from Matt Peterson]

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On the Claremont School and its opposition to the Corona-Panic

Peterson’s visions of a backlash or “reckoning” are not quite typical of Claremont Institute’s normal discourse. Many people reading this I am sure are asking, “What is Claremont.” It is a late-20th-century right-wing intellectual tradition not easily describable especially because it is so academic.

Any discussion of the “Claremont School” of intellectual conservatism, or neoconservatism, and what it is now or was ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago, can get complicated quickly. But important is this: the new generation of leading men are not repackaged old-line Neoconservatives. They are something more like intellectual nationalist-leaning populists. Granted, the Neocons’ tentacles are always probing for openings and the interpersonal ties and non-Christian ethno-cultural-political affiliations of some of them will have their impact, but it’s probably not worth making too much of that.

Suffice it to say, for present purposes, the Claremont School people became Trump backers, and remained so in 2020. They also became vocal and consistent and radical critics of the Corona-Panic in essentially all its forms, or in the terms I have used, they joined the Anti-Panic side.

In late 2021, I published a commentary on a political cartoon out of Claremont purporting to depict America’s Ruling Class as of the early 2020s, one feature of which was a mad-scientist shoving enormous needles at people, raining them down on faceless and disorganized people down below.

(From “America’s ruling class, early 2020s” political cartoon, Claremont Review of Books.)

(Those interested in what the Claremont School looks like in practice in recent years, should consult writings by Michael Anton, one of the leading commentators of the Claremont School in recent years, who was a diehard Trump partisan until the end after many of the rest of us wavered or gave up on the man. Anton is criticized by paleoconservatives and right-wing libertarians for the usual reasons the Claremont School is criticized, its vision of what America is, or originally was. // Another Claremont name of note is the right-wing legal scholar John Eastman. This man is lately in the news due to his memo, in capacity as special advisor to the White House, in December 2020, that the vice president could and should legally delay the counting of electoral votes because several state legislatures were petitioning for time, to allow states to investigate the hundreds of thousands or more of tainted ballots and mystery ballots in the key states, and other irregularities and questionable practices involving top-down rule changes, which had illegally nullified the power to regulate elections which always belongs the state legislatures—all in the name of a Flu Virus Emergency, of course.)

My reading of Matthew Peterson’s statement, in light of his position as a Claremont figure, is this:

(1) “Corona-Politics” is not over, as a Reckoning is yet coming. That is to say, just because the masks are gone and it’s out of the news, it doesn’t mean the damage is gone, or forgotten, or even over;

(2) Peterson’s statement is tantamount to an outright endorsement of Ron DeSantis for president;

(3) Peterson’s statement is a guarded criticism of Dernald J. Blompf, specifically hiss failure to forcefully enough resist the Corona-Panic in 2020, his failure to emerge as a consistent opponent of the ongoing Corona-Panic Monster in 2021, his continuing silence even now and his never admitting error or failure, all of which disqualifies Trump from any political future. Peterson inserts a tactful denial, at the end, that this anti-Trump line is what he means.

When Peterson says he supports Trump, I interpret that to mean he supports the symbol of Trump. As I say, he has to be more circumspect in his position than a more polemic writer. We are entitled to interpret his meanings in this light.

Another reason Peterson is not openly critical of Trump is that Peterson knows his voice could influence Trump and may want to influence Trump to reform and use his (Trump’s) demagogic talents and bully-pulpit to oppose the remnants and the evils of the Corona-Panic and its ugly and unsavory legacy. So far, Trump has failed to do this, and it seemed to me Trump was “over” when he began getting booed by his own supporters who had specifically come out to see him, when he started bragging about the miracle vaccines. I detect some of the framing Peterson gives as an appeal to Trump’s vanity and addiction to drama (the prediction that the Left will concertedly blame Trump for the vaccines when it is revealed how many died of side-effects).

But the more interesting contribution to the discussion from Matthew Peterson is that a backlash could be coming. How bad will the Democrats lose in the legislative election in November 2022? If the Republicans take some huge number, like 260+ seats in the House of Representatives and 56 Senate seats, which would mean winning virtually every competitive race, the opponents of the Corona-Panic would probably be empowered enough to push the matter. But it sounds like the dark visions Matthew Peterson has will manifest not from “above” as from in a Congressional hearing but from “below.”

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Former Corona-Panicker economist-blogger Tyler Cowen calls for “Covid laissez-faire” policy

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The influential economist, professor, prolific blogger, and commentator Tyler Cowen now says this:

“[U]nder current circumstances I favor complete ‘Covid laissez-faire’…” (“The new Covid equilibrium,” Marginal Revolution blog, May 18, 2022).

This is of interest in part because Tyler Cowen was long a mainstay of intellectual Corona-Panickers, those in favor of the Panic itself, those favoring and pushing Panic-driven policies like lockdowns and all the rest.

Many of us have long respected Tyler Cowen as either thinker or commentator or general-purpose intellectual, even if he gets some big things wrong (and “Covid” is not his first consistent wrong-call). The man is of interest because he qualifies, if anyone does, as a legitimate “public intellectual” in the United States today. He has a degree of global reach, and he has some degree of agenda-setting power. His direct and indirect influence is considerable. We should pay attention to what he says, for that reason, but in 2020-21 I suspected his respected-public-intellectual position broke down with his failure to recognize the dark and anti-civilizational forces of the Corona-Panic in 2020.

Professor Cowen became one of the many who failed us, so terribly failed us, in that annus horribilis of lockdowns, restrictions and disruptions of all kinds, a bizarre state-backed cult centered around a flu virus, and attendant retreat of the business of civilization. Now, the good professor has begun consistently signaling that he opposes the Corona-Panic, or at least key parts of it. He does NOT, though, claim he was “against it all along.” He lacks the kind of demagogic instinct to claim that….

Book review: “Covid-19: The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic” (2021): insights into the Corona-Panic in Canada and an intellectual framework for the Panic

(Part of an intended ongoing series of reviews-and-responses to books on the Corona-Panic of the early 2020s.)

I liked this book, though it may not suit all audiences. COVID-19: The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic packs rather a lot of value in its 134 pages.

In this “review-and-response” essay I’ll try to touch on all the points of interest. There are many good ones. The added relevance to this is what a surprise major role Canada had in the early-2022 defeat of the Panic. The book was written long before the “Freedom Convoy” movement. The Canadian perspective is useful in that sense at the least, and worth your attention.

The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic was published in late 2020 or early 2021 by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, Canada and got some reach in Anti-CoronaPanic circles but because it wasn’t one of the Anti-Panic ‘celebrities’ its reach was rather less. That and the academic tone. I hope this effort, appearing here in spring 2022, helps let this mid-CoronaPanic work not be forgotten or lost.

(10,000 words)

The first thing to know about The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic is that it’s really two shorter books in one.

Part I: One part deals with the Corona-Panic in Canada, and the politics of the Panic in Canada, Canada’s “regime” reaction, profiling and dealing with some of the main actors on the Canadian stage and what they did with the Panic forces, and more Canada-related material. It covers up to September/October 2020. The manuscript’s finalization and its publication process began in about late September 2020. The actual thinking here reflects mid-2020, which is of course early in the long Corona-Panic cycle of despair (early 2020 to early 2022).

Part II: an intellectual or theoretical approach into how the Panic happened, focused on the concept of moral panic and philosophical traditions that led to this outbreak of mega-scale, catastrophic moral panic. This is the big question and we should not be arrogant enough to think we have the answer. We ought to still today treat it like the big mystery, of great importance. Things like the witchcraft-panic-like Corona/Covid episode are not supposed to happen in rationally led societies. The thing we want to know, or should want to know, or need to know, to prevent future “Corona-Panic-like events,” and as usual it starts at the Big Idea-level.

By now, we do have lots of good ideas on what the Corona-Panic was, on how it happened, and on why it happened, what made it continue so long (and so destructively), what made it so curiously averse to counter-attack in a way I believe those too young to remember it or yet unborn possibly won’t quite believe, and many who did live through it might conveniently forget. Useful additions indeed are new ideas, or connections, or syntheses of existing or older ideas. The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic accomplishes that. It’s not the “final word,” but it does give us useful new perspectives. The usefulness is how much of their writing is rooted in philosophy.

I would praise Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic in that it leaves the reader more satisfied in the search for answers (why the Panic happened) than other books of this kind. Certainly there is more of value in Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic than in comparable material published from the Pro-Panic side. The Pro-Panic material, to the extent there are serious intellectual approaches and not just prolefeed-propaganda that kept the Panic going, Pro-Panic material published during the Panic seems of limited value to our ongoing studies, or is of the losing-the-forest-for-the-trees variety. But this also applies to most books that position themselves as Anti-Panic, including the Alex Berenson Pandemia book. (The Berenson book shined bright but turned out, for me, to be “fool’s gold.”)

The two authors, Canadian academics, take the Anti-Panic position. They are not ashamed to characterize the whole thing as something like a delusion, a bizarre overreaction. Even title-skimmers who read not even one word of one page of the main contents will pick this up: “Corona”/”Covid” as social phenomenon, as a “moral panic.” This “moral panic” talk is the kind sometimes tossed out, off-hand, by people, and by many on the Anti-Panic side during the Corona-controversy, but an idea all too rarely given a full and serious treatment, which we do get here.

In search of a “Ukraine-War-Panic”–“Corona-Panic” Venn diagram

An easy observation, it was, in late February and March 2022, to (ironically) say “the Ukraine-Russia war miraculously ended Covid!”

On further consideration, it may not be so simple.

I am interested in prying into this and finding a Venn diagram between the Corona-Panic we have known for two years and the new Ukraine-War-Panic, the similarities and differences of the two phenomena and how they happened, how they are enforced, and who stands behind them, who pushes them, who joined. In what way are the two phenomena related? Is there a common cause of both?

A brief investigation.

(2000 words)

First, in the grand old tradition of a picture being “worth a thousand words” (near the length of this essay), let me offer this:

The masks! Everyone!

This is an anti-war and/or pro-Ukraine and/or anti-Russia protest in Berlin, the Brandenburg Gate in the rear. Everyone has masks on, outdoors, conspicuous, perhaps proud of it given that none have even slipped below the nose. (I don’t know the exact date of this photo; it was either on the first day of the war or just before the war by a few days.) Other footage of protests shows the same, lots of masking. Immediately it suggests the two phenomena may exist in symbiosis…Or what?

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The Ukraine-Russia war began on February 24 when Russia invaded.

By early March 2022, the observation that “Covid” had been miraculously (apparently) cured, or some variant to that effect, had become almost trite, if certainly correct.

To be more specific about it, we suddenly saw a “Ukraine-War-Panic” displace the remnants of the “Corona-Panic,” at least temporarily. On the other hand, this Ukraine-Panic displaced an already declining Corona-Panic, which is the first twist in the story.

Scenes from the “Defeat the Mandates” rally (Washington D.C., Jan. 23, 2022) and thoughts on its place in Corona-Panic history

A place there surely will be, in the annals of the early-2020s Corona-Panic, for the “Defeat the Mandates” rally, held Washington, D.C., on Sunday, January 23, 2022. To my knowledge, “Defeat the Mandates” was the largest single show-of-force protest- or rally-type event by opponents of the Corona-Panic in the USA.

The below is my attempt to provide some primary-source observations for the “Defeat the Mandates” event, as I was there. There are many thoughts, as well, on the bigger meaning of the event.

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Although the largest part of this effort is the compilation of “scenes” (in text) from the Defeat the Mandates event, I can’t resist framing it with some of the usual running Corona-commentary and thoughts on the meaning of the Panic for our world. It still causes me a level of distress that something like the Corona-Panic could happen at all.

There are thoughts on the (many) positives and the (few) negatives of the rally. The place of the whole thing within the context of the Corona controversy (Pro-Panic vs. Anti-Panic). The meaning of the event within the history of the Corona-Panic. Also on its influence on the much more dramatic Freedom Convoy in Canada which followed soon afterwards. Finally, some thoughts on how “Defeat the Mandates” might be remembered in the future, in retrospectives on the Corona-Panic era.

You might be able to guess already at the outlines of my main points. The “Defeat the Mandates” event stands as an important signpost in the Corona era. It signals the major strength and vigor, momentum, energy, and broad base of the Anti-Panic coalition, finally getting organized and on the march, so to speak.

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Sections:

(1.) What was good about the “Defeat the Mandates” rally.

(2.) What was bad about the “Defeat the Mandates” rally.

(3.) A series of rolling scenes from “Defeat the Mandates,” that is, direct observations from various parts of the event, from morning to near dusk. This is the longest section.

Review of PANDEMIA by Alex Berenson

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Why did the Corona-Panic happen?

As of this writing, there are some signs that the corner has been turned (really this time), that the Pro-Panic coalition of 2020-21 is softening and may soon break and not recover. That’s the optimist’s reading of the situation. Even if that does happen, the Panic itself still demands answers, as civilizational disaster. The Corona-Panic itself remains, in important ways, a mystery; yet it is the most important question of our time.

Pandemia, published in late November 2021, is Alex Berenson‘s book. The full title is Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives. Berenson’s name has long been associated with the Anti-Panic side.

This is a review of Pandemia, and it covers a lot of ground.

One might think or hope that Berenson’s book holds or proposes answers to the big question of why the Corona-Panic happened. The book’s subtitle basically boasts as much.

Certainly desire for a good, clean look at the big question was my motivation for reading the book and for writing this review. I was interested in hearing what Berenson proposes, where he goes with it.

The book was not quite what I expected. Berenson treats it in part as kind of a CoronaPanic-era memoir, which is a mixed-blessing. He goes in some other directions I think are unhelpful or counter-productive. As the memoir part, the book ends up becoming a primary source in its own right, to be used by future authors.

Berenson probably justified his turning the book into a memoir or open-journal in part by thinking that he had become something of an Anti-Panic celebrity by the time of writing in 2021. This is a double-edged sword because he also shows some clear signs of neutralizing his own message to perhaps extend a hand in friendship to his many former friends who came down on the Pro-Panic side of the divide. Anyway, all this is of some interest and was not what I or you might have expected in a book like this, so read on for much more commentary.

The real goal, though, is and must remain, the big question: “Why did the Corona-Panic happen?” and the multiple sub-questions that flow from that big question.

America’s ruling class, early 2020s

(via Claremont Review of Books.)

This political cartoon (“America’s Ruling Class”) is in the best tradition of the genre. I think it is worth some consideration and so here goes. It can also be appreciated simply with a few seconds’ glance, a kind of thinking man’s version of the “meme” concept so influential in our era, but for me ideas only get firmly pinned down when they are put to the written word.

The artist: The cartoon is signed “BANFIELD,” for Elliot Banfield. I know nothing of Mr. Banfield except that his work is often published by the Claremont Review of Books accompanying essays or book reviews.

What follows here is commentary an analysis on what we see here, some interpretations of symbolism and more. There will be three sections: One on the hot-air balloon imagery, the people inside the balloon looked at individually, and a final “assessment” section.

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The hot-air balloon

Our attention turns at once to the figures in the center, but with a moment we realize they are housed in a basket held aloft by a hot-air balloon. It floats high above the ground, disconnected and uprooted from the surface of the Earth. The people in the balloon (have to) literally look down on the mass of nobodies down below.

“The Ballad of Kyle Rittenhouse” (2021)

Released November 19, 2021, to much acclaim:

The Ballad of Kyle Rittenhouse

“What a great song for these times!”

A song about events of one summer night in 2020. By their publicity, by the trial in 2021 which was filled with villains on one side, and by their symbolism, they qualify as well for folk-tale status as any of the classics.

(lyrics below)

Here is a re-upload to Bitchute, in case Youtube blocks the original (which is now nearing 100,000 views, after three days, and many more views in other formats):

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Youtube commenter TurtleMarcus says:

“Fantastic! I study folklore and folk music at an academic level. This is literally a folk song in the making. This process of telling a contemporary story in the form of a song, is how we got many of the Medieval ballads from Europe.”

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lyrics:

On Daniel Uhlfelder, major Corona-activist and Panic-pusher; an exploration on why some embraced the Corona-Panic

(9500 words)

Who is Daniel Uhlfelder?

You’ll see him described as a Florida lawyer. Really he’s a central figure in the drama of our time, the Great Corona-Panic social phenomenon of the early 2020s.

As a major figure of the Pro-Panic side, it’s worth a look at who this man is, what might motivate him, and try to come up with reasons why he decided to so aggressively push the Panic. This is a bottom-up approach in our ongoing search for answers for why the Corona-Panic happened.

After Daniel Uhlfelder emerged as a major political figure, a Corona-Panic activist-agitator on the Pro-Panic side, he ended up with regional (Florida) influence, but soon national influence, and really even indirect global influence (even if few know his name), mostly because Florida was a key flashpoint throughout the Panic.

It all comes back to the Anti-Panic stand taken by the governor, Ron DeSantis, who some time in spring 2020 concluded that Sweden was right in refusing lockdowns, and sensing the Pro-Panic side had ridden into power on a kind of coup d’etat and would not let go of its power.

The two men — Uhlfelder and DeSantis — share certain biographical similarities, both being born in Florida in the 1970s, but everything changes when we dig beyond such superficialities and into their family-histories, and that will by my purpose here.

(Note: The following is therefore in part a follow-up to the major research piece “The ancestry of Ron DeSantis,” published here last week. DeSantis is a portrait of a leading Anti-Panic figure. The subject here, Daniel Uhlfelder, gets a similar treatment except that in Uhlfelder’s a leading Pro-Panic figure.)

It was a novel political split, the Pro-Panic side versus the Anti-Panic side over a flu virus. There were plenty of Neutrals in the middle but most of the time they were intimidated into silence or acquiescence by the strength of the Pro-Panic side.

But Daniel Uhlfelder was never a Corona Neutral. Nor was he even an ordinary Pro-Panicker. He was rather a highly successful core Pro-Panic activist, even a hardline and extremist Pro-Panic agitator, to use less delicate language. The role he played was as one to “Keep up the Panic; Don’t let the Science-Denier Covidiots win; contain the influence of the dangerous cattle-people who don’t know what’s good for them; ‘Lockdowns today, lockdowns tomorrow, lockdowns forever!!‘…”

The ancestry of Ron DeSantis: son of Florida, grandson of industrial Ohio, great-grandson of Italy

(10,500 words)

(Jump to summary of points or table of contents.)

(Jump directly to main “Ancestry of Ron DeSantis” section.)

(Jump to comments.)

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What follows here is a long-form approach to Ron DeSantis, via a close look at his ancestry, family, and upbringing, and how those things (may have) shaped the political life, ideas, and attitudes.

The main thrust and purpose is to shine a light on, and get good insights into, the rising political star that is DeSantis, via a comprehensive, original-genealogy-research-based, all-branch review of Ron DeSantis’ ancestry back to 19th- and early-20th-century Italy, and then industrial Ohio.

The article has a sandwich-like format, with the meat in the middle. Recent happenings in DeSantis’ own life come first and last. (A final, conclusion section reflects on the meaning of some of the findings and considers what a President Ron DeSantis would mean.)

First, a snapshot of DeSantis arriving on the scene (2018) and recent years’ developments (2018-2021), including the high profile he attained during the Corona-Panic.

Then comes the original-research section on Ron DeSantis’ ancestry and family, mainly dealing with his immigrant ancestors arriving from Italy in the 1900s-1910s and what they did in America.

Last, a third part dealing with DeSantis’ own early-life developments before the decisive governor’s race (1980s-2017), all of which I believe offer valuable insights into the DeSantis phenomenon, who he is, how he got here (as it were).

I believe this effort is unique among the millions of words written on DeSantis up to now, in focusing on his ancestry and looking for stories of interest informative of who he is and how he thinks, in an in-depth way rather than dismissal with a word or two (“Italian”).

The purpose is to help us understand Ron DeSantis. One conclusion can be stated out front: the critical ‘moment’ of his life, and adult identity and politics, was his arrival at Yale in 1997 at age eighteen. Early in his time at Yale, he says, he came to see elite US culture as something foreign, something which had drifted into being alien and alienating. He had not been acculturated into that kind of thinking. If not, then what kind of culture and worldview did he arrive with? Where do any of our worldviews come from? A major source is one’s family, family tree, actual genetic inheritance and self-perceived ancestry. The ancestral portrait, with an eye on the current-day political, strikes the root and not the branches (to garble up the tree metaphor). And so here it is.

Tucker Carlson on the “Corona Cult”

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(Jump to comments.)

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“The Cult of Coronavirus. Like all religions, it has its own sacraments, its own sacred texts…” These are some of the words influential US right-wing figure Tucker Carlson used in his opening segment of Sept. 27, 2021.

With these words he steps firmly into calling the Corona phenomenon a religion, or “cult,” in essentially literal terms.

Video (8m 30s) and transcript below.

Tucker is now catching up with this website (Hail to You)’s position of sixteen months ago. We argued, back then, that “Covid” was a literal religious cult (investigative-essay published May 18, 2020).

Following this is some further introductory commentary by me (900 words) and then the Tucker transcript (1100 words). (Or, jump to Tucker Carlson transcript and video.)

In my May 2020 essay, I approached the question — of whether “Corona” was classifiable as a religion — academically and not polemically. I found that the social-phenomenon that was “Corona,” involving fear of the flu-virus and the major disruptions to life associated with it and major social mobilization and intense emotions and more, it all qualified under anthropology as a religion.