Showing posts with label Brendan O'Neill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brendan O'Neill. Show all posts

May 04, 2024

Brendan O'Neill on Lockdowns

It's not time to move on, it's too soon to forgive and forget. What happened back in 2020 was a crime.

However, my quibble with this presentation is when he talks about memory holes. O'Neill himself heads down this same memory hole by talking about Oct., 7th 2023, but he then ignores the obvious horrors occurring in Gaza. So, he's biased and applying a selective memory. In short, he appears to want the memory hole to be his version, not someone else's.

However, when talking about the oppressive role of the state, he's on point. How much of this oppression was incompetence and overreach, or planned? O'Neill appears to favour the former, while I think the evidence clearly points to the latter. 

In my opinion 2020 served two purposes; it enabled the state to study human nature and conduct behavioural experiments. A lot will have been learnt through this process. Then, lockdowns have the effect of softening people up for what is to come. Expect more extreme social controls, and the measures implemented to be based on what the state learnt from lockdowns.

October 04, 2022

Jacinda Ardern and the woke war on free speech

Spiked chief political writer, Brendan O'Neill eviscerates New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern. Ardern is the modern face of authoritarianism. She sells her message under the cloak of kindness, but it is anything but kind. 

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/09/29/jacinda-ardern-and-the-woke-war-on-free-speech/

Tyranny has had a makeover. It’s no longer a boot stamping on a human face forever. It isn’t a gruff cop dragging you into a cell for thinking or expressing a ‘dangerous’ idea. It isn’t a priest strapping you to a breaking wheel. No, authoritarianism is well-dressed now. It’s polite. It has a broad smile and speaks in a soft voice. It is delivered not via a soldier’s boot to the cranium but with a caring liberal head-tilt. And its name is Jacinda Ardern.