Frederick Forsyth has written a stinging letter – published in Tuesday’s Telegraph – linking the scare tactics employed to frighten East Berliners into supporting the Berlin Wall to those employed by the British Government to ensure compliance with Covid regulations. His letter is written in response to an article published by the Telegraph last week on the “covert tactics” used by the Government to scare the public into staying at home.
Congratulations to the Telegraph and Gordon Rayner for revealing that the campaign of mass fear that reduced a once brave nation to trembling terror was deliberately organised to secure obedience to the policy of lockdown.
I have only once before seen anything like it. This was when I was posted to East Germany in 1962. Such a brainwashing tactic was employed to frighten East Berliners into believing that the Berlin Wall was a defensive measure to protect them from tiny West Berlin, and that the Stasi was their guardian. The wall was of course an instrument of enslavement.
I never thought that the government of a country whose uniform I once wore with such pride would sink so low. Those responsible should be identified without delay and ousted from all office over us.
Frederick Forsyth
Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire
In the Telegraph article published last week, a retired NHS consultant clinical psychologist is quoted as saying that “there is growing concern within my field about using fear and shame as a driver of behaviour change”.
Gary Sidley… said: “It’s as if there is a little industry around pandemic management and it excludes alternative voices.” …
Mr Sidley was so concerned that he and 46 colleagues wrote to the British Psychological Society (BPS) raising “concerns about the activities of Government-employed psychologists … in their mission to gain the public’s mass compliance with the ongoing coronavirus restrictions”.
The letter added: “Our view is that the use of covert psychological strategies – that operate below the level of people’s awareness – to ‘nudge’ citizens to conform to a contentious and unprecedented public health policy raises profound ethical questions.”
The Telegraph has learnt that the BPS’s ethics committee will discuss the matter at its next meeting on June 21st – coincidentally the same day all lockdown restrictions are due to end.
Worth reading in full.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.