Christians are being persecuted. But, in our late Christian culture, this is taking an unusual form. There were persecutions under Nero, which led to the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul; and there were persecutions under Diocletian so severe that many of the bishops who attended the Nicene Council at Constantine’s request — held in the Anatolian city of Nicaea (it was originally going to be held in Ankara, where I write this) — were maimed and disfigured from the tortures which they had suffered only 20 years before. Modern persecution takes a different form: incomprehension, ridicule and dismissal. The Overton Window is incompatible with the Stained Glass Window.
Two weeks ago Eric Weinstein offered us just the latest of the memorable ‘two out of three’ formulations. Norman Stone wrote in his book Turkey that we can only have two out of the three of Islam, politics and economics; and Dani Rodrik wrote in his book The Globalisation Paradox that we can only have two out of the three of democracy, a globalised economy and the nation state. Eric Weinstein has thought of another two out of three. He says it is impossible for any intellectual to have all three of the following: a large audience, an independent mind and a sterling reputation. By ‘independent mind’ Weinstein means a willingness to tell the truth.
The argument is that it is impossible to have a large audience and a good reputation and tell the truth. If one tells the truth one can have a large audience, but one forfeits one’s reputation; or one can tell the truth and have a good reputation but must rest content with a small audience — one’s dining table, for instance. Most of the famous faces of our time bend their voices to the wind.
Weinstein is continually coming up with good ideas, so I hesitate to call this Weinstein’s First Law, so let’s call it Weinstein’s Law of Public Pontification. He has identified a modern problem. It was also an ancient and a medieval problem, and perhaps it has always been true, but most of us would ruefully have to admit that we have supposed that for a century or two it has seemed to be an invalid law. Charles Darwin had a large audience, good reputation and told the truth as he saw it. So did Cardinal Manning. So did John Stuart Mill. But they lived in the 19th century. The 20th century was, by and large, a century in which we could innocently believe that, in the West at least, our civilisation was committed to the truth. In retrospect, however, we have discovered that we were gently guided to this view by institutions like the BBC. The 21st century has witnessed not only the rise of less controlled forums — courtesy of the internet — which have enabled us to become conscious of this, but also the rise of a more explicit censorship than has been seen in a liberal country since the 17th century.
Marina Hyde has just written a bold piece for the Guardian in which she mocks Russell Brand for his recent baptism in the Thames. It is easy to mock, though one looks on with admiration to see the skill with which she does it. She contrasts Brand the Christian and Brand the “creep” who “denies criminal allegations”. She throws in a few vulgar jokes: “Thames Water is no longer responsible for the biggest piece of shit in the river.” She seems to know about Christianity; at least, she explains what ‘theodicy’ is — impressive: it’s a Leibniz word. But then she wonders about whether Bear Grylls as scout master is happy continuing to befriend someone accused of rape. She accuses Grylls of “twee twattery” and “whining”, and Brand of being a “wingnut” who goes on about “the deep state/Bill Gates/the plandemic”. It is all very invigorating.
I wonder what Marina Hyde thinks when she looks in the mirror, or when she looks at her painting in the attic. For she has a large audience — she writes for the Guardian — and she has good reputation — she writes for the Guardian — so I wonder if she ever wonders about the truth. (I see from Wikipedia that she originally began by using her double-barrelled name in journalism until she was advised that it would not wash with Sun readers, so she renamed herself ‘Hyde’. Was this a joke, or a happy coincidence? Wikipedia does not say.) Dorian Gray and Jekyll and Hyde: perhaps Robert Louis Stevenson and Oscar Wilde saw the writing on the wall. (That’s a biblical reference. Brand, if he wants to reply to Hyde, should send a small card to her with Mene mene tekel upharsin written on it.)
The problem is that the mirror is not working, or Jekyll is still in the attic, antiquated with truth. For Marina Hyde, though good at scorn, seems not to care about truth. She is, in fact, though she seems not to know it, or be willing to admit it, the enemy of the enemies of the deep state. She is, in fact, a cog in the mechanism of the deep state. What is the deep state? Well, one answer is that it is fronted by all the people who have a large audience, a good reputation and no concern with truth.
Christianity is concerned with truth. And this seems to have been its undoing. You may disagree with Christianity; you may dispute that it has the truth. But it is emphatic in using the language of truth, and of being extremely vigilant about not only lies, but also hypocrisy. (In fact, it is possible to say that Christianity, in insisting not only on our observing the law, but also changing our inward condition, invented hypocrisy, since it condemned as hypocritical the religion of those who simply observe the law outwardly.) So that won’t wash, will it? If Brand is Christian in the sense that he is willing to use the language of truth, then he is clearly no longer a member of the modern atheistic deep state. This is one reason — there may be others, of course — why he is now persona non grata.
Eric Weinstein is grappling with the difficulty of how to hold onto a concern with truth in contemporary conditions. It is a good question. Do we really think it is possible to ‘push back’, as we now say, against the forces of the deep state that care not a jot for truth: not for religious truth, not for historical truth, not for scientific truth? Or do we have to form sects of a few members, and defend the truth in private, in small communities? Is the Daily Sceptic one small gateway to a minor community of Jekylls concerned with truth? Or can it help overturn the Overton Window? Can it help clear out the Augean stables of our deep state by sweeping away all the Hydes? (That is my version of a vulgar joke. Tit for tat.)
Is it possible that politics was always Hydian, and that in the last century we were suffering from an extremely well-constructed secular illusion whereby we thought we lived in an Open Society? The only consoling thought is that if this is true — that it was an illusion — then at least we have come to our senses and begun to notice it.
Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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Another “conspiracy theory” comes true!
Is that about 22-0 now? Since AGW, Brexit, Trump and now COVID.
When I pointed out the success of Sweden’s approach more than a year ago to my MP he loftily declared, as if he was citing incontrovertible fact that Sweden had not done well as evidenced by the apologies offered by their King and Prime Minister.
I knew then that he, like the rest, was an utter ****. I wasn’t totally sure up to that point.
The fact he was a MP should have been your first clue
It was always likely that lockdowns killed more people than they “saved”.
Sweden was misrepresented, lied about, vilified, and we were vilified for using them as an example.
However it should be remembered that Sweden did have some restrictions, vaxxed lots of people, and for a long time barred entry to the unvaxxed. Way better than here, but far from perfect.
Finally, while it’s nice that Sweden “did well”, covid was obviously never a societal threat so any measures beyond giving people accurate information and looking into effective treatments (HCQ, ivermectin, whatever) there was no need to do anything out of the ordinary or treat it differently to a bad flu season. We knew that from the start.
So true. Lockdowns inherently kill more people than they save. And it was self-evident and thus entirely foreseeable from the get-go by anyone with a modicum of intellectual honesty and more than two brain cells to rub together.
How much better again would it have been if safe and effective early treatments had not been not outlawed at the behest of Big Pharma? There must be a reckoning.
“not been outlawed”!
Indeed, very true.
Has the UK really had 24.5% excess deaths over 2020-2022? That is more than twice what I have from ONS data.
I have about 10.5% from January 2020 to today’s figures. That is excess above the average 2010-2019, corrected for population.
Have I got something wrong here?
is it because you’re using a 10 year (2010-2019) previous average as comparison?
This is its most simple form, uncorrected for population. Deaths registered in England and Wales Sheet 1a here gives
2021 586,334
2020 607,922
2019 530,841
2018 541,589
2017 533,253
2016 525,048
2015 529,655
2014 501,424
2013 506,790
2012 499,331
2011 484,367
2010 493,242
Ave 2010-2019 = 514,554
Ave 2015-2019 = 532,077
Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales Sheet 1 here gives
2022 471,064 (sum to week 43)
Total deaths 2020-2022 = 607,922 + 586,334 + 471,064 = 1,665,320
(2+43/52)*average 10 year = 1,454,605, excess = 14.5% approx
(2+43/52)*average 5 year = 1,454,605, excess = 10.7% approx
(These will be a few percent smaller when corrected for population and does not adjust for seasons. My chart does include this.)
Either way, it is nowhere near 24.5%
What have I done wtong?
Note: I think I see what Joel Smalley has done!
He has not taken the real % excess – i.e. above normal.
He has taken about 2.5 years excess deaths as a percentage over 1 year!
It’s accumulative excess deaths over the 2020 – 2022 period, not an annualised average.
Yes, as I later suggested.
I have been working with excess weekly deaths. These are currently 17.7% above the 2010-2019 average (population adjusted) when taken over the last three weeks. That’s for England and Wales. So 24.5% was a surprise until I sussed what it meant!
Amen to that! “Stockholm Syndrome” should really be renamed “Melbourne Syndrome”, because #SwedenGotItRight.
Additionally, Belarus, Nicaragua, Tanzania, and the Faeroe Islands didn’t do any worse than their stricter neighbors either in terms of all cause excess deaths. Ditto for the 12 states in the USA that eschewed lockdowns as well, compared to the rest of the country.
And it appears that the Governor of one of the sane states has done quite well in the current election (Ron De Santis). I wonder if that had anything to do with the election results?
Indeed. Ditto for Kristi Noem of South Dakota as well. A fortiori, in fact.
Well at least they got something right, but how is that multiculturalism working out for them? Or is it still against the law there to criticise the sex crime statistics?
I taught in schools for years. In the good old days the winter lurgy (whatever it was) would sweep through the school system and we’d hear that half the staff of school A were off and it was chaos as teachers tried to cope. A week later we’d hear that the lurgy had moved to school B and it was chaos there. This pattern continued through the local schools over a period of a few weeks and then everything settled down to whatever was considered normal. The point being that viruses moving through the population is what they do. People get ill or don’t depending on their own biology and susceptibilty. People are affected differently but for most it is a few days of ill health followed by a return to life. There is no need for lockdowns, masks, social distancing or whatever.
It is to be hoped that lessons will have been learned in the last 3 years but then again…
They didn’t bother with the lessons learned in the last 100 years, so clearly these buffoons will learn nothing from the last 3.
Sweden would have done even better if it had refused to roll-out the gene therapy jabs.
Indeed. Ditto if they had used HCQ and IVM as well (unfortunately it looks like they did not). But their food is fortified with Vitamin D at least, like the other Nordic countries and Canada, but unlike the USA, UK, and most of Europe.
Surely its obvious to anybody, but Americans, that Fauci was the supporter and promoter of the research originally in America, but later farmed out to the Wuhan lab in China. On that basis he has a big part of the responsibility for Covid existing, because it escaped from that lab, yet he continued in post imposing his restrictions not based on real science. Now he is being allowed to retire with probably a big payout and pension – he should be strung up, although as that doesn’t happen these days people should at least be aware of the number of deaths he has caused. Surely he should be forced to accept his responsibility and make a public appology.
And then be convicted and sent to jail.
“Those responsible for implementing them should be held accountable for the deaths they have caused”
While this is true, the economic and social effects of lockdowns will persist for generations. The people responsible for lockdowns should be held to account for this too
Can someone explain the sourcing on this? I can’t seem to spot any even on the full article.