Something extraordinary happened in China over the weekend. Not long ago I wrote at length, if in a rather different context, about the vital importance of courage in the defense of the true and the human against the cold, mechanistic evil that is nihilistic technocracy, the machine whose Conditioners forever lust after total control – not only over men, but ultimately over reality itself. Well, now we have just seen a stunning example of such courage in the streets of China, where people rose up to reassert their human dignity in the face of the most dehumanizing machine of control in the world today: the Chinese Communist Party’s “zero-Covid” terror-state.
For three years now, the Chinese government has maintained its policy of draconian city-wide lockdowns, endless daily mass testing and biomedical surveillance, digital Covid-passes that arbitrarily govern every aspect of daily life, vast camps to house those dragged into quarantine for weeks (or longer) at a time, and, more recently, such innovations as “closed-loop” factories, where workers are forced to work, sleep, and “live” completely isolated from the outside world so that they can continue to produce your iPhones.
But now over the past several days protests have erupted in at least a dozen cities and 79 universities across the country, with spontaneous demonstrations – often begun by only a handful of people, or even a single individual – quickly drawing crowds of hundreds, even thousands, of people willing to fearlessly demand an end to the zero-Covid nightmare.
In Wuhan, where it all began, swarming crowds smashed down containment barriers and “liberated” locked-down neighbourhood:
BREAKING : In Wuhan the anti-lockdown protesters are tearing down barricades shouting “It started in Wuhan and it ends in Wuhan!” #Wuhan #ChinaProtests #ChinaUprising #chinaprotest #china
— ▓ MIИИΞДPФLIS 2074⠐
pic.twitter.com/Sh16Ehf2rm(@Minneapolis420) November 27, 2022
In Lanzhou, they overturned Covid-testing booths:
In Shanghai, they railed against digital health codes:
In Chengdu, they chanted: “Give me freedom or give me death!”
And in the capital Beijing, a day filling the streets…
Led into a night calling for freedom…
And asking, “Are we not people?”
All across the country, many thousands of these protesters spontaneously echoed many of the same lines:
We don’t want PCR tests. We want to eat.
We don’t want Cultural Revolution. We want reform.
We don’t want lockdowns. We want freedom.
We don’t want a Great Leader. We want the vote.
We don’t want lies. We want dignity.
We aren’t slaves. We are citizens.
These are conspicuously the same lines as those of a banner hung from a Beijing bridge by a lone (since disappeared) protester, Peng Lifa, on the 13th of October, just ahead of the CCP’s 20th Party Congress and Xi Jinping’s re-coronation as Chinese leader for life.
Now, as recordings of the anti-lockdown protests are swiftly censored online, Chinese netizens have often simply been replying with “We saw it” – a phrase referring not just to the protests, but to Peng Lifa’s message.
His final and most striking line, on a second banner, happens to have been:
“Refuse to go to class. Go on strike. Remove the traitor Xi Jinping.”
And indeed in many protests over the last few days the people’s frustration with zero-Covid tyranny translated into something more: an outpouring of raw anger against the CCP and Xi.
It’s hard to understate how unprecedented this scale and openness of revolt is in today’s China. This is without doubt the largest wave of protest seen in the country since 1989, and will viewed by the government as an existential challenge.
But the majority of the protesters probably weren’t taking to the streets to make a statement specifically about their (previously fairly popular) political system. The overwhelming message of most – shouted from Beijing to Xinjiang – has been far more basic: “stop the lockdowns, we are human beings.”
It is the zero-Covid regime’s sheer crude lack of even basic respect for humanity that has really sparked these protests. On Thursday the 24th a fire at an apartment complex in Urumqi, Xinjiang, killed as many as 44 people, including children. Social media posts alleged they could not escape because the doors and windows of their building were literally wired shut (you know, for safety), and because responding firetrucks were not allowed past a checkpoint into the “quarantined” zone, preventing them from reaching the building (you know, for safety). While authorities have denied this (and instead casually blamed residents for lacking “the knowledge or capability to rescue themselves”), videos purporting to show the incident spread widely online anyway, and citizens are convinced otherwise.
In other words they can see the residents were killed by the sheer banal stupidity of the senseless, inhuman bureaucracy of China’s zero-Covid machine, which grinds on and on with seemingly no input from any human intelligence whatsoever. China’s citizens recognize full well that they could just as easily have been the ones consumed by its mindless gears, and could easily be next. It is their anger and frustration with this inhuman stupidity that prompted them to finally come out en masse.
Like every Kafkaesque technocratic nightmare, the zero-Covid machine is seemingly constructed entirely of purely arbitrary rules and pointless nonsense. This is a regime of such relentless stupidity that it deploys armies of flying robots to pointlessly spray vast quantities of (probably toxic) disinfectant into the air over entire cities:
Meanwhile, in China, “CCP drones spray unidentified chemicals onto cities” as the country’s ““Zero COVID” policy runs full steam ahead,” according to @PJMedia_com.https://t.co/ec4PmwcxsI
— Julia(@Jules31415) November 26, 2022
And complicated machines installed in libraries to painstakingly sterilize every book, even though the world has had overwhelming scientific evidence for at least two years now that the coronavirus doesn’t transmit through surface infection:
And quarantine zones as completely arbitrary as this one that is literally a square of open air in a park:
Most visibly, this is a regime well embodied by the Dabai (the “Big Whites”), the omnipresent “public health” thugs who have flawlessly succeeded in dehumanizing themselves into ideal regime robot-zombies by donning their iconic (and totally pointless) full-body white hazmat suits 100% of the time, no matter what their job is or what miseries they’re inflicting on the people today while just following orders.
China
— James Melville
Zero Covid rules.pic.twitter.com/BGRexGFPM2(@JamesMelville) November 1, 2022
Now at least some of the Chinese people, like these workers at a Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, seem to have had quite enough of them:
As have others:
Sorry Beijing, but this seems to me to be a classic case of that old expression of yours: 官逼民反 – “repressive behavior by officials [is what] incites popular rebellion”. You probably should have known better.
But again, the most surreal and tragic part of all of this – the lockdowns, the brutal quarantine controls, the hazmat suits, the obsessive disinfecting, the mass testing, the health pass and QR codes everywhere, the social atomization and isolation, the disastrous shuttering of the economy, the premature destruction of the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation and becoming the world’s largest economy… all of it – is that there is absolutely no practical or scientific reason for any of it.
As the protests raged, China’s Marxist authorities and state media reasserted again and again that, as with every policy, they will continue with zero-Covid because it is “scientific and effective.” But of course it is neither. Lockdowns don’t work (which was clear from very early in the pandemic). In fact the net effects of lockdowns are measurably a human catastrophe. Even masks don’t show any real evidence of providing any significant effect on transmission. Meanwhile the “Swedish Model” and similarly light-touch strategies for “living with Covid” have by now essentially been fully vindicated.
Pretty much the rest of the world has by now come (kicking and screaming) to accept this reality and allow people to move on with their lives. Which is why when Chinese citizens were in recent days perhaps unwisely exposed to insufficiently censored footage of the packed, maskless crowds of the World Cup, they were in for a level of shock that may have helped push the country over the edge.
I find one aspect of international media coverage of the protests and China’s zero-Covid policy rather strikingly odd, however. Read any Western news coverage or analysis – the BBC, the NYT, Axios, the FT, whatever, take your pick – and you will almost certainly run across roughly the same story: praise for the “freedom fighters” seeking free expression, democracy, and human rights etc., but also an almost wholesale echoing of the Official Line somberly asserting that China’s leaders are “in a bind” and can’t actually just open up like the people naively want. If they do the hospitals will immediately be overwhelmed, untold millions will die, the economic impact will huge. Zero-Covid might be a bit excessive – what with people starving in their apartments and throwing themselves off buildings and whatnot – and the government should probably shift course to loosen up somewhat, especially to get commerce flowing again. But ultimately top-down control will have to be maintained for the people’s own good. It’s an understandably difficult situation for Beijing.
But since I’m not a Serious Journalist I can go ahead and call total bullshit on this. To do otherwise would require pretending we don’t now have three years’ worth of collective experience from around the world, during which time every “expert” model predicting mass death in the dangerous event of freedom was consistently proved wrong, often by orders of magnitude. With only rare exceptions, health care systems in most countries ended up being able to handle the impact of the pandemic without any kind of collapse. Every big Covid wave quickly reversed itself and diminished. Because herd immunity works.
Ultimately SARS-CoV-2 is a virus with a greater than 99.9% overall pre-vaccine infection survival rate for those under age 69, and above 99.5% if even the most elderly are included (it’s pretty unclear how many in China know this information). And its one for which vaccines have now long been available for all those who want them. People are in fact able to assess their own risks while living as a human being, and to make their own choices, and nothing world-ending happens when they are allowed to do so. None of the civilization- and humanity-crushing germophobic paranoia and tyranny is necessary or ethically justifiable in the slightest, and never has been.
No, there is only one real reason for China’s insistence on the zero-Covid policy, and it’s one we also have some recent experience with in the West: pure ideological psychosis, rooted in the CCP system’s pathologically fearful psychological desperation to maintain total control of everything at all times (plus to protect Xi’s fragile ego), no matter how self-destructive the results.
An uncontrollable pandemic seems to have been the perfect bug to truly break the minds of the CCP’s Marxist-Leninist leadership. The propaganda narrative they quickly built up around Covid – the web of lies intended to inculcate a “healthy” fear of the virus and thereby enhance social cohesion and control – took on a life of its own and became self-perpetuating. Now, in a closed information environment, the tail is clearly wagging the dog and the Narrative is setting the policies of government instead of the other way around. Much as during other massively self-destructive episodes of CCP history (the Great Leap Forward comes to mind), they are trapped not by a difficult reality but by a collective unreality – one from which at least some of the Chinese people have now woken up.
Broadly speaking, the main thing China’s zero-Covid cataclysm has really managed to accomplish is to begin to shatter the image of modern China being some bastion of pragmatic and effective technocratic governance – as being a country run by sensible engineering PhDs, and possessing the sort of enviable authoritarian “state capacity” to quickly build marvelous, village-smashing mega-projects that has long made New York Times columnists and Canadian prime ministers alike daydream about all that could be accomplished if only their countries could be “China for a day.” But for many, first outside of China and now inside it, it has now become impossible to ignore the truth that technocratic central planners can in fact be possessed by horrifyingly blind ideological madness too. Who could have known?
So it seems pretty clear why mainstream international media finds itself largely unable to talk plainly about China’s zero-Covid mistake. To do so honestly would be to strike directly at the same animating myth that drove “emergency” Covid measures in their own countries. The lockdowns, and vaccine passports, and QR codes, and mass censorship, and unprecedented termination of basic civil liberties, and brutal treatment of dissenters that we saw gleefully implemented by governments all over the world during the pandemic – and which were based directly on the China model – were always worse than irrational and illiberal. To point out that such measures are a continuing crime against humanity in China would be to point out that they were a crime against humanity everywhere.
That could prompt some unwanted reflections about how things went down the last few times people protesting against lockdowns and calling for human dignity, human rights, free expression, and democratic accountability (aka packs of “dangerous far-right extremists” and “conspiracy theorists”) took to the streets in the West.
In places like Australia:
Never forget when Melbourne, Australia was a Covid Police State. Excessive violence & brutality, all in the name of safety!
— MilkBarTV (@TheMilkBarTV) October 7, 2022pic.twitter.com/L4ssBMgZkj
And Canada:
And France:
And Germany:
And the Netherlands:
And just about everywhere else.
That would be pretty awkward. So the mumbled criticism of what’s happening in China is no surprise.
(Though some of the brightest lights of the media’s more extreme pro-authoritarianism zealots are actually champing at the bit, eager to leap to the defense of the CCP’s policies more directly, including with the most audacious anti-scientific disinformation they can whip up to spew):
Besides, we’re not supposed to be done yet folks: new plans for sweeping, “technology-enabled ‘always-on’ global health infrastructure,” including a global digital health pass that will determine whether or not anyone anywhere “can move around,” was just agreed to by the G20 only like two weeks ago! The last thing our governments need is for something so grand and important to be derailed by the kind of pro-human independent spirit on display by a few Chinese profiles in courage.
People like Flower Man, who told a crowd that, living in “a country that has slaughtered so many people… Chinese people, we have to be braver!”
And Van Man:
And the students of Tsinghua University:
Or the amazing pudgy, maskless Patrick Henry of Chongqing (now known online as “Super Brother”) who declared that, “There is only one disease in the world: that is, being unfree and poor, and now we have both… [so] Give me liberty or give me death!”
Or the protestors in Xinjiang who casually chanted “let’s die together!”
Fortunately for all involved (except the people), police have since successfully flooded the streets of China, and the protests seem to have died down for the time being. Stability will likely be restored and “stability maintenance” stepped up. Revolution doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Regimes and their journalists everywhere will breathe a sigh of relief.
After all, what would the future be like if everyone was inspired to just stop obeying disembodied robot-megaphones demanding that we show our health pass?
That’s a grim future they’d probably rather avoid having to think about.
N.S. Lyons is a pseudonym. This article was originally published on The Upheaval , N.S. Lyons‘s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here. (Highly recommended.)
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Read the article. No mention of the Cochrane Review by Heneghan and Jefferson,just poorly conducted surveys mentioned at best.
They are still hiding their errors.
Greta will be getting VERY cross.
“How DARE she?!”
“, and as lawmakers are signalling an openness to reinstating mask bans amid a rise in clashes at protests”
Assuming these are protests because of the mandates or unrelated?
As for celebs preaching….Oh do f**k off!
TCW — Michael Mosley pushing the Jab
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/all-hail-michael-mosley-covid-scaremonger-and-vax-pusher/
I posted this under the Roundup section early this morning.
Backtracking can be useful.
I’m out and about and tried to uptick you and it says I’ve got to be logged in to vote. Is this a new feature??
So I just logged in to say that.
Also, does that mean the Scroteless Wonders won’t be trolling us because they’ll need an account, so they can’t hate til their heart’s content?
Mogs, I think there is a glitch on the Log In system. Some days I have to log in three, four times. Sometimes a log in lasts a week. Rather tiresome to be honest.
No I can log in ok but usually you can vote when logged out. Try logging out and see for yourself. Could be a glitch, I suppose. We’ll see, I guess. But I tried to uptick you whinged out and couldn’t.
It was always the Shadow Lurkers that took the bait.
I should really try another experiment and slag off the Misogynist Society’s hero and see the response I get!
And my uptick.
Yes, we’ve changed it so that one has to be a donor in order to vote on comments. The previous system was so permissive that it was open to abuse by anonymous trolls and bots, which I’m sure we’ve all noticed.
Of course some people will be upset that they don’t get to vote on comments any more, but this is the only way to deal with it.
Thanks for the update Ian. I fully support the decision.
Well I think that’s for the best, tbh. I certainly get the rationale behind your decision. The 77th Hamster Penis Brigade will be apoplectic! LOL No more little red thumb army.
How will they cope….?
I am sure their pleasure is in their own hands, so to speak.
Thanks Ian. I had noticed a marked drop in the phantom downvote count. Definitely a good move.
The key question is how many clot-shots has she had.
A supplementary question is about her education.
She attended private school in Los Angeles. Her enrollment in such an institution suggests that she has access to high-quality teaching, resources, and a supportive learning environment.
Her hobbies are spending time with her family and playing with her siblings
So a know-nothing spoiled brat with no real world experience. She should go far in showbiz, but perhaps not in virology.
Dr ToF’s diagnosis – she’s mentally ill, or in technical terms mad as a box of frogs.
I was about to suggest she should be in the bottom block.
No, the key question is why we’re forced to listen to an 18-year-old lecturing us about the world.
A shoe-in for playing Dumbo with those ears.
We must be firm with the infirm; no more mask mandates, no matter how much the bedwetters squeak.
Off-T
John O’Looney is on the rampage regarding the clots. Lovely open letter to the “boss of the embalmers” (couldn’t be bothered to find her job title)
https://lionessofjudah.substack.com/p/the-merit-of-truth?publication_id=581065&post_id=146445685
Sometimes with a lady in a mask one was keen to see what she really looked like, but not in this case
Violet’s performance reminds me of Greta’s predecessor, Severn.
does anyone remember the character called Violet Bott from just William who would scream and scream until she was sick, if she didn’t get her own way? I think Mr Afleck gave his daughter the right moniker.
Violet Elizabeth – William’s nemesis! Those stories were hilarious – and still are, even after 90-odd years. Pure comic genius.
The world is full of loonies. That’s inevitable.
The problem is when they are listened to and influence state bureaucrats that have the power to impose their madness on us.
In the meantime, my goodness what a terrible job those two parents have done with their daughter. They,ve brought up a neurotic girl with an inflated sense of self importance. What 18 year old feels so certain about how everyone else should live their lives to call on the state to impose it on them? What a little monster.
‘I blame the parents.’
A very northern saying.
Yes I think we’ll be seeing less little green and red numbers under the posts if only those with accounts can vote. I’m now going to log out again to test my theory and try upticking your comment…
I have just upticked this comment.
There is something inherently wrong about allowing reader participation while not paying a sub. On TCW you can read the comments but that’s it. Off-guardian.org is the same.
Ukcolumn.org only offers participation to members although use of the site is free.
If all non-subscribers were denied ticking rights what difference would it make to site viability?
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
See my above comment. And yes, it’s hardly outrageous to require a subscription to get to vote on comments.
Thanks again Ian.
Dear Ian Rons and Toby Young,
Please don’t let two bossy cows take over your website, trying to turn you into a sub-branch of The Conservative Maryolater Woman, by endless nagging until you do whatever they want, allowing them to use your website as their own personal social media account, taking over all the comments sections.
Please put your foot down, and explain to them that this website belongs to you, and you will do whatever you want, and that you will no longer tolerate their endless nagging and complaints.
And tell them to pay for their own websites, so that they can control everything.
Thank you.
Do you think just because you pay to comment that gives you the right to troll everybody you’ve taken an obvious personal dislike to, with your non-stop bitchy little remarks?
Well I suppose somebody needs to put the ‘septic’ in The Daily Sceptic, and it may as well be you.
Good job, hater!
I assume I join you as one of the bossy cows Mogs. I am not aware of my or anybody else’s “endless nagging” and certainly no attempts at “taking over all the comments sections.” I have always looked forward to reading opinions other than my own. It’s how we learn isn’t it? Well some of us. The not so gobby ones.
Perhaps it’s lost on some (very few) subscribers that without a) subscribers and b) commenters The Daily Sceptic would not exist. I appreciate this logic might be lost on some.
Gotta laugh
This hater is always one of the ones who trolls us with their faithful little red thumb!
Pathetic.
I think JohnK’s comment below: “See a psychiatrist” applies here.
What i find hilarious as ever on here, is that it’s all about the “free speech” this, “freedom of speech” that, but when those same individuals read somebody else exercising their right to free speech they lose their shit!
Yet another interesting case of ‘double standards’ or “rules for thee but not for me” type of hypocrisy I’m used to seeing displayed by some on this site.
Yes indeedy.
If you and Mogwai are the ‘bossy cows’ please carry on. You usually say in print what I am thinking saving me the job of typing a less eloquent and maybe less forceful comment.
Yes but I would not pay to have my comments sanitised by some woke publication
T’north is always right, chuck.
See a psychiatrist.
No.! Now piss off…
Succinct.
Sequester in a lunatic asylum for treatment.
Long CoVid = mRNA experimental ‘vaccine’ damage.
Well if she’s suffering ‘vaccine’ damage she could be on the way to a Darwin Award.
I also want something: I want you entitled brat to remain silent until you can reasonably claim to have a life of your own, in the case this should ever happen. You’re not wiser than all the people who didn’t use your magic health talisman after the practice proved useless against the plague. It’s the opposite, actually, you’re a lot dumber.
Note to door: You’ll get two additional days off if you can hit her on the way out.
Tragically the wearing of a mask has had a detrimental impact on her (probably already subterranean) intelligence. Cosseted and entitled. Mummy and Daddy are famous and that means I can ‘demand’ things. Mummy and Daddy are just a couple of thespians with little in the way of any great intelligence or experience. Famous vegetables who have done little or nothing else.
She needs to take it off before her ears overtake her head.
Classy.
https://unherd.com/2024/07/starmer-faces-a-farmers-revolt/
For those who realise that our futures, our safety as a nation reside within the farming industry this is an interesting article. Sadly, the rather childish Christmas wish list is fundamentally undermined when the author dips his toes into ‘carbon capture.’
More research dear boy.
I thought that’s what livestock does when when it eats grass and turns it into fertiliser which makes the grass grow better; have you ever noticed the lush green grass around cow-pats?
But surely you have realised that Labour’s new green deal for farmers is to compulsority purchase their land for house-building, solar farms and windmills.
“surely you have realised that Labour’s new green deal for farmers is to compulsority purchase their land for house-building, solar farms and windmills.”
roubles, I am more than well aware of what is happening to the farming industry. I work with farmers regularly.
I know a few farmers here in Wales too. I have helped a farmer sheer but not this summer. We fell out because I’m happy to help and don’t want paying just my fuel and if they can’t do that well I said see you later!
That is a solution in search of a problem regarding CC.
Surely if her mask works then others don’t need to wear one.
That’s what I’ve always maintained. I’ve never heard any refutation of this from the masktards – have you?
spoilt child of a movie star once again in the spotlight that everyone should give up their freedom to protect her. Perhaps we should all just go live in splendid isolation with food pushed under the door by robots, so that in the words of, was it Gates or Schwab, no one is safe until everyone is safe, when you analyse that completely dumb, trite sentence, it effectively means for everyone to be safe, everyone, that includes Schwab, Gates etc must live in a sealed cell in isolation, because everything, carries a danger from accidentally cutting yourself on a knife, falling over, swimming, exercising, eating all involve a risk. People who are suffering cancer, well they aren’t going to be safe if they have to come into contact with other people, so not everyone is safe are they?, likewise people have allergies to different things, for example nuts, shellfish etc, so should we completely ban across the world the coming into contact of those things for everyone? because not everyone is safe from them?
This girl if she is so scared of life and its consequences, needs to remove herself from her perceived risks, she needs to isolate herself, thats the only way she is ever going to feel safe. so off you go love, the rest of the world is, and this might come as a bit of a shock, does not revolve around you.
Oh and as we are on the celebs giving us their opinions on the world stage, I understand that Mr George Clooney has now called for President Biden to step down, and wheras I don’t disagree with the sentiments of Mr Clooney I am once again amazed that someone who has spent their life playing pretend in front of a camera is by default a person who because of luck and a pretty face has an opinion which carries more weight than the man or woman who cleans his house, or serves him a cup of coffee, or empties his bin.
Maybe msm darlings who have hurty feelings like this is where the revolt begins….
A know-nothing hysteric, no doubt scared stupid by the last few years. Her opinion is meaningless.
You won’t be worrying about this crap in a few weeks time bird flu or not. Major escalation planned for August on a completely different level. It is interesting to look at how people behave when they have been given warning of catastrophe. If it is imminent they usually have an instinctive urge to be as close to their family as possible and all other concerns go out of the window. People talk like this is 2020. All around the world they are making preparations for serious war and just look at us. And in terms of civil defence you might believe that the government has underground shelters for every man woman and child. In some countries they do but they don’t in this one. You can always try ducking under the kitchen table and see if that helps.
The Greta of masks. When will our world ignore the whining of 18 year olds?
While I never took Gretna v. Turnschuh¹ particularly seriously, she at least had some cause she was agitating for, worthless as it might have been. This here is just pure egotism of the pampered prat.
¹ A play on her surname using the German way to refer to minor nobles. In English, this could be Lady Gretna of Her Very Own Trainers, just the word play doesn’t work anymore.
She wants everyone to wear masks —–but not her mum and dad though
Just strange people who are forced to meet her in the only place she ever goes to if she’s going out: The hospital.
So two Hollywood luvvies have raised a screwed-up, neurotic teenager.
Not the first and definitely won’t be the last.
Make that two screwed-up daughters;
”These are the daughters of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner.
Violet Affleck, wears a mask whenever outside and demands Mask Mandates are returned to LA.
Seraphina came out as a non-binary boy named ‘Fin’ – announcing it at her Grandfathers funeral.
Is this down to parenting?”
https://x.com/OliLondonTV/status/1811039066097406306
What a silly, ignorant, look-at-me child. All I have to say to her is “how dare you”!
Sounds like rather than a mask one of those coats with the very long sleeves that tie at the back would be an asset.
The poor thing is obviously mentally ill.