Why does the world keep being sucked into collective crazes like transgenderism, MeToo, lockdowns and BLM in recent years? Lionel Shriver takes the question head on in an excellent article in UnHerd. Here’s an excerpt.
Within the astonishingly short time frame of 10 years, I count four real-life collective crazes: transgenderism, #MeToo, Covid lockdowns (which spawned sub-crazes over masks and vaccines), and Black Lives Matter. I also worry we’re already in the grip of social mania number five.
Take trans. Gender-identity disorder was not that long ago an extraordinarily rare psychiatric diagnosis largely constrained to men. Abruptly circa 2012 — on the heels of such a successful crusade for gay rights and even gay marriage that homosexuality became passé — a profusion of television documentaries hit our screens about little boys who wore dresses and played with dolls. Fast-forward to the present, and the renamed diagnosis has exploded by thousands of percent across the West and now pertains abundantly to girls. Teachers tell toddlers that they have to decide whether they’re a girl or a boy or something in-between. We’re subjecting children to powerful, life-altering experimental drugs and surgically removing healthy breasts and genitals, even at the cost of permanent sexual dysfunction and infertility. “Some people are born in the wrong body” has become a truism, which sounds to me as medically credible as phrenology or bloodletting.
The social mania displays a few consistent characteristics. First and foremost, it never seems like a social mania at the time. In the thick of a widespread preoccupation, its precepts simply seem like the truth. Trans women are women; get over it. Or: masculinity is toxic; virtually all women have been subject to sexual torment and male abuse of power; regarding any accusations they make, no matter how far-fetched or petty, women must be believed. Or: COVID-19 is so lethal, and such a threat to our endurance as a species, that we’ve no choice but to shut down our whole economies and abdicate our every civil liberty to contain the disease. Or: all Western countries are “systemically racist”; all white people are genetically racist; the police are all racist (even if they’re black) and should be defunded or abolished; the only remedy for “structural racism” is anti-meritocratic, over-compensatory racial quotas in hiring and education.
While the seeds of a mania have often been planted earlier, for most ordinary people it comes out of nowhere. Transgenderism rocketed to a cultural fetish over a matter of months. After one fully fledged creep was exposed as a serial sex abuser, #MeToo spread on Twitter like potato blight. Literally overnight, citizenries in March 2020 took it for granted that their “liberal democracies” could justifiably deny them freedom of movement, assembly, association, press and even speech, while many became eager enforcers of the chaotic, despotic, and sometimes positively silly new regime. It took only a few days for George Floyd’s death to trigger huge protest marches all over the world. This hyperbolic response to a single undeserved killing in a one mid-sized American city was partially fed by the pent-up frustrations of whole populations under house arrest during Covid. But for Koreans to troop down the streets of Seoul chanting, “Black lives matter!” when the country has hardly any black people was insensible. Likewise, Britons chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot!” when their constabulary is unarmed. Moreover, all these recent examples illustrate how moral panics have become more international in scope than ever before.
Manias are fuelled by emotion. The cult of trans has capitalised on our yearning to seem enlightened and compassionate. It has been presented as the logical next step after gay rights, the movement plays on our craving to feel ultra-contemporary. #MeToo both fed off and promulgated resentment, self-pity, and vengeance; in standing up to abuse of power, it tempted some women to abuse their own power to ruin men’s lives. Covid lockdowns stirred primitive terror of death and contagion, until we came to view other people as mere vectors of disease. BLM stimulated the nascent Christian proclivities for guilt, repentance, and penitence even in the secular, while offering black people opportunity to vent frustration, self-righteous fury, and even hatred. All manias thrive on our desire to be included by our own herd and on our anxiety about being exiled — or, if you will, about being UnHerded.
Because a proper mania brooks no dissent. In its grip, everyone believes the same thing, says the same thing, and even uses the same language. A quasi-religious fervour makes anyone outside the bubble of shared obsession seem heretical, dangerous, insane or outright evil. Opponents of lockdowns were granny killers; the unvaccinated were pariahs who shouldn’t be allowed to fly, eat out or obtain healthcare, while some argued “anti-vaxxers” should be imprisoned or put to death. Their rhetoric and affect often violent, transactivists tar critics as murderers; not long ago, writing a single discouraging word about the mutilation of children would end your career. (Self-protectively, I kept my own journalistic mouth shut for a good four years; most journalists are still prudently bumping along on the trans bandwagon.) Women who expressed reservations about the indiscriminate sweep of #MeToo were traitors to their sex. In 2020, even tweeting “All lives matter” got you sacked.
The fifth mania, of course, is the “climate emergency”:
It isn’t a mania; it’s just the truth: check. It’s suddenly all anyone in the media seems to talk about, and they use all the same language: check. It’s powered by emotion: check. It brooks no dissent, refuses to acknowledge there’s even a debate to be had, and doghouses all sceptics as evil ‘deniers’ who will bring about the end of world: check.
Definitely worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Toby Young will be interviewing Lionel Shriver on stage at the Hippodrome at the Free Speech Union’s launch party for her new novel MANIA on April 15th. You can purchase tickets here – and it’s cheap as chips! £10 for FSU Members and £15 for non-members.
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Of course there will be no mention if he had the jab or not, which I find disgraceful in professional athletes actually because I feel they have a moral obligation to warn others by highlighting their jab status. And let’s be honest, if he or other athletes didn’t have the jab then I think they’d be pretty quick at mentioning that. Their silence and evasiveness gives the game away.
This chap is a scientist who has written a very useful article where he describes the differences between how our bodies handle the RNA from the Covid virus vs the modified RNA from the jabs;
”Spike protein is well known to represent a poison for our body.
In the case of natural infection, our immune system will prevent the virus from infecting our body cells by neutralizing it via specific antibodies, with the possibility of cross-immunity being effective also against virus variants.
With the modRNA injection, our immune system does not have a chance to prevent the lipid nanoparticles from transferring modRNA into our cells—all cells, not just some cells with the appropriate receptor for binding of the virus (as would be the case in natural infection).
Injected modRNA can result in thrombosis followed by stroke, myocardial infarction, or pulmonary embolism and can promote the formation of blood clots inside blood vessels.
Studying the open-access databases—including those in the United States, Europe, and the UK—on COVID-19 vaccine adverse effects, one can see that these risks have become real-life side effects for people who received the COVID-19 injections.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/covid-19-vaccines-and-boosters-were-never-made-with-mrna-5416427?src_src=healthnoe
mRNA – messenger ribonucleic acid
Don’t think you read the article did you?
”The two—mRNA and modRNA—are completely different.
mRNA occurs naturally, lives in our cells for only a short time, and is relatively fragile. It is a specific type of RNA that carries instructions or “messages” from our genes to help make proteins, the building blocks of our cells. It is constantly produced as part of normal cellular processes. Once mRNA delivers the messages, its work is done, and it is broken down in the body.
When RNA from another source enters our cells—virus RNA, for example—these cells can generate virus proteins.
We have been told that COVID-19 injections are made with mRNA. However, a vaccine using “natural” mRNA would not last long enough to initiate an immune response before being destroyed by our immune system.
To make mRNA useful for routine medicine, scientists had to artificially modify mRNA to increase both its efficiency and lifetime. The result: modRNA.
modRNA has been optimized for long life and maximal translation. While mRNA exhibits a cell-specific expression pattern, modRNA can invade nearly every cell type.”
I wonder whether teams were ‘vaccinated’ at the same time? If so, we should see more examples of multiple injuries within single teams, given what we know about the variability of toxicity between batches and brands. I’m guessing this poor chap is a Moderna victim.
But don’t worry. UK parents can earn £1500 quid by putting their kids into new jab trials. Myocarditis isn’t even mentioned. Roll up, roll up.
See it as Darwinism in Action.
It was almost comical at the start of the 2020/21 football season, so many protracted stoppages for heart problems either on the pitch or in the stands. Eriksen & Robert Fleck some to mind in addition to many others. Was it Trevor Sinclair who got into trouble for mentioning it?
It was John, not Robert, Fleck of Sheffield United. Collapsed on the pitch against Millwall if my memory serves.
He’s still in the squad but far from the player he was.
Micro clots, undeniably jab caused, are the less serious ie no death problem, which make all athletes who had the jabs more injury prone. Just look at the Prem. and EFL injury lists for the last two seasons compared to normal.
May well account for Liverpool’s bad season last year.
Klopp, the manager thereof, announced he would never sign an unjabbed player – and that the unjabbed were on a par with drunk drivers. What a lovely man.
Maybe that was why Sadio Mane left…
Add Sergio Aguero to the list.
To self.
No high profile football player will ever be mRNA jabbed again, despite the efforts of Sir Patrick Vallance.The clubs know, but Omerta rules.
It was against Reading. In addition, there’s been at least one stoppage during a game at Reading while a fan received treatment for a medical incident. Further an ex player, Shaka Hislop, collapsed recently while being interviewed pitch side.
Thanks. I knew it was somewhere down south.
Smelling the coffee yet, Toby?
He wouldn’t smell it if he was buried up to his neck in it.
About a week ago an 18 year old member of Columbia’s women’s world cup team collapsed with heart problems during training. Fortunately she seems to be OK after being rushed to hospital. Is anyone compiling a list of super fit professional sportspeople suddenly collapsing or otherwise suffering from heart related problems?
She collapsed again during a match. I’m not a doctor, but I would say she is not OK and should not be playing.
Matt le Tissier was discussing and trying to get a proper investigation into this months ago and after quite a bit of effort on his part drawing attention to athletes and footballers who experienced heart problems after covid vaccination, he was shut down and none of the mainstream media would report on what he was saying and actively tried to censor the information he tried to make us aware of. It seems to me our politicians and journalists are being controlled by big pharmaceutical companies. In addition to the vaccine problems, how pharmaceutical companies are exerting their evil influence needs to be investigated.