Thread by @uMarhobane

Official "scientific consensus" on COVID has been in error for a year now, flipping between several unproven positions on dozens of different issues, but if you differ from any one of these while it is official, you are guilty of "disinformation" and are an enemy of the state.

It's all so predictable too - crisis management inevitably results in immense confusion in institutions. And in a global pandemic, getting overwhelmed by information and being uncertain of what measures are appropriate is normal. Filtering out criticism is dumb.

It should be expected that governments had no idea what to do. But they reached for policies that had no precedent, and had no evidence in favour of them. So evidence had to be created. It's the greatest boon for research grants in history, provided you give the right answers.

Somehow the powers that be have consistently pursued, regardless of evidence, those measures which most drastically increase the authority of the state, regardless of evidence or outcome, and used mass, micro-targeted propaganda and social intimidation to reward maximalists.

Meanwhile, all the fact checkers have really been doing, is cobbling together a monolithic image of those who do not side with the authorities' policies, and taken the disparity and incoherence of the beliefs of ordinary people as evidence of malice or stupidity, or both.

Oh, your model underestimated the number of deaths? Pseudoscience! Disinformation!

Oh, the official models overestimated deaths by orders of magnitude? Well, never mind that, look there - there's David Icke! Critics are anti-vaxxers and Trumpists! Danger!

This ignores disparities and inconsistencies, and constantly shifting mirage of "facts", which although changing week to week, are still somehow unquestionable consensus, such that one scientist's quote is enough to represent the entire field.

Dissenters are "rogue" scientists.

Fact-checkers are not independent. They form a vast network coordinated by US and UK state security, encompassing the major tech corps and NATO public relations (propaganda) orgs like the Atlantic Council.

Their interests are political, and their reach is very deep.

They have openly abused their power to suppress political opposition to established long-term policy goals, none of which have been open to scrutiny or dispute for decades.

Previously, TV, radio and print were pliable gatekeepers. The rise of the net was at first a crisis.

But now complete control is justified to defend establishment policy online.

Regardless of facticity, if a claim is contrary to interests, undermine it, if it is consonant, defend it.

Ban dissident users. If they form another platform, cut their servers, shut their bank accts.

This is more totalitarian than the USSR.

In knowledge-producing orgs, consensus requires very little conspiracy, only selection for loyalty, trust and a shared vision.

You will not be hired for these organisations if you have any heterodox ideas that affect core policies.

Vast global scale corruption? Not important.

Deep, decades-old systemic rot in scientific institutions? Irrelevant.

Central coordination of all Western media? Insignificant.

Central banks printing trillions into the hands of state-partnered corporate monopolies? Meh.

Don't trust the people who have been committing warcrimes, dealing drugs, assassinating, rigging elections, torturing and performing live medical experiments to run such a vast operation?

Well then you are crazy and an enemy, and probably a terrorist.

In serious crisis management, it is unreasonable to demand total consensus and control of opinion. This creates an immense distortion of perceptions, and a systemic cognitive bias of such epic proportions it can barely be described.

This leads to doubling down on foolishness.

This intervention has required an enormous permanent destruction of civil liberties, and through printing money, the theft of $ Trns in savings via inflationary wealth transfer; the destruction of the middle class.

No state can afford to lose legitimacy in these circumstances.

With the support of the state, any scientific consensus can be established. This is what we learn from empires. Skull calipers delivered a racial hierarchy, wheat yields testified to Lysenkoism.

Quintessence of dust. These paradigms pass when political support dies.

I cannot fight on the object-level facticity of public claims with the vastness of the Anglo-American establishment and allied global institutions.

But I refuse to trust them, because I am South African. And that means I know, that you can never trust the friends of government.