We are witnessing the mass memory-holing of the lockdown era
Nobody wants to look in the mirror.
I would prefer to refrain from using World War II analogies to discuss the Covid hysteria era, but it serves as the greatest modern parallel to the topic of accountability for all of the crimes, sabotage, and negligence committed by the people in charge in the name of combatting a virus.
Say it’s 1946 in Berlin, and you were one of the few outspoken Germans who managed to make your dissident opinions heard while escaping the wrath of the Nazi regime. You were one of the few who made your way through the Holocaust and World War II with a clean moral slate, fighting The System every step of the way.
But you were a cup of courage in a sea of cowardice, and much worse. You just witnessed the vast majority of your countrymen either moving in lockstep with the bad guys or remaining silent in the face of the Third Reich’s systematic extermination campaign.
Covid, Courage, and Cowardice
“Moral courage can be lonely indeed. People don’t mind being trapped, as long as no one else is free. But stage a break, and everybody else begins to panic.” - William Deresiewicz When I look back at the times of Covid hysteria, I think most about outliers and rule followers, and what separates courageous people from cowards.
Now that this horrific era has passed, you and your allies want accountability, and you want it now. In the aftermath of the bad times, German society seems to be realigning away from the immoral horrors, and the masses have openly embraced your worldview.
But unlike what actually happened after World War II, you’re still living in a German society without a denazification program, because the war didn’t end in the defeat of your ruling class. In fact, there has been no change in government whatsoever. The structure of the Bundeskabinett is virtually identical. The same people who were in charge during the times of evil and horror remain in place today, but they’re not nazis anymore. In fact, they now oppose nazism, they say. It’s clear that they don’t want to talk about those times.
How exactly would you intend on holding these people accountable?
Structurally speaking, that’s exactly where we find ourselves in America today. The very same ruling class that panicked the masses and instituted authoritarian dictates over the rebranded flu — which also proceeded to parasitically debase the wealth and prosperity of society — remain in charge today.
Very few, if any of the people in government today continue to defend the policies they put in place from 2020 to 2022. Some of them are indeed hooting and hollering about issues we’re all passionate about, but in a way that seeks to redirect attention away from their actions during this time.
They were complicit, or worse, actively undermining our rights when it mattered, and a true inquiry would drag those Covid skeletons out of the closet for the world to see. An accountability process wouldn’t just implicate the likes of Fauci and Pharma, but the entire system itself.
And it’s not just the ruling class that doesn’t want Covid accountability.
The ugly truth is that a vast majority of our fellow Americans embraced the hysteria, and many took to aligning with the people in charge to target and demonize the small minority who spoke out against the collective overreaction to the “pandemic.” This is an era that most would simply rather not relitigate. For both the people in the halls of power and most of the population, they benefit by both recalibrating their politics to the current majority view, but also by sweeping this multi-year disgrace under the rug.
We are witnessing the mass memory-holing of the lockdown era, which will allow for the bad guys to get away with it, because nobody seems to want to look in the mirror.
Substack is the anti-memory hole. We will never forget and keep making more noise as we grow. Unfortunately the average person has the memory of a goldfish swimming in a turd bowl of propaganda...
We ought not be intimidated from referencing WWII, because it's both the best parallel, many of the same actors and ideas of governance and sophisticated psychological propaganda campaigns are the direct descendants of. And because it is the lessons of WWII atrocities that we were told, insisted upon to "never forget" what was done, how it happened, and how good people averted their eyes. We must draw the parallels where they exist. Not where the perpetrators themselves say they exist, in the populist masses trying to avert even greater atrocities than have already been committed under our current global regimes. You share uncomfortable truths. We share uncomfortable truths. With a humanity that instinctively prefers comfortable lies. Our appeals to them require their willingness to rise above instinct.
I'm reminded by your post of my visit to Iceland pre-2020. I took in the many museums there, art, history, in the larger cities and the smaller villages. I had been curious about Iceland's role in WWII before I went, read about it having been under Danish rule, and soon after Denmark fell to Germany the German military established an outpost and commander who oversaw the conduct of the island, shipping in the North Atlantic, depriving a mid-ocean port for the resupply chains sending equipment from the US to the UK and opponents of Germany in Europe. Eventually, when the US entered WWII they partnered with the UK to retake Iceland from German control, and did so after some skirmishes with the Germans there. That was when an agreement was made with Icelandic leadership that at some time soon after the war they would grant Iceland autonomy, independent nation status from Denmark's control. Sovereignty that Icelanders had sought for many years. Which came to pass, as promised.
That was the history I was hoping to see in the museums when I visited, but with more details, more of an Icelandic perspective than I was able to read about in research online. But when I got there I found nothing. Absolutely nothing in any of the museums about Iceland during WWII. It turns out Icelanders wanted to forget about it. They erased the memory. This I learned by asking locals why the museums had nothing, nada, nil, zip about WWII in them. It was too embarrassing for their national identity, that they allowed themselves to be occupied. Without a fight, without protest, they just allowed themselves to be ruled by a succession of foreign interests. To look themselves in the mirror would reveal too much cowardice, a shame they couldn't face. So they pretend those years never happened.
Will we, our nation, allow the same cowardice and shame that comes with looking ourselves in the mirror to erase that history? If we do without a change in the system that allowed it and a change in the rulers who did it then we are ensuring we will do it again, and again, and again. With increasing levels of barbarity. Until the greatest atrocities ever committed against mankind are done unto us. And Nazi Germany looks like the minor leagues in crimes against humanity compared to what's ahead.