Stopping ‘The New Normal’: Anti-Lockdown Protestors Rise Against The Establishment
Editorial: Anti-Lockdown Protestors Rise Up Across Europe
- Italian Government orders a curfew on bars and restaurants.
- Spanish Government simultaneously declare a state of emergency.
- Protestors in Italy & Spain take to the streets performing both peaceful and violent protests.
- The UK has its 4th Anti-Lockdown protest, in which thousands take to the streets of London.
- Growing fears over ‘trace and track’ and ‘health passport’ data compromising individual freedoms and privacy.
Over the last few days, we have seen protests erupt across Europe, in which thousands of demonstrators have called upon their governments to put an end to the lockdown restrictions within their respective regions.
On October 25th, the Italian government ordered that bars and restaurants will have to close their doors by 6pm and that public gyms, cinemas and swimming pools must fully close until further notice, in an attempt to halt a potential rapid resurgence in coronavirus infections.
This decree would simultaneously encourage people to not go out and to limit contact with anyone outside their immediate family within their homes.
Following this announcement thousands of demonstrators would pour out onto the streets of Treviso, Trieste, Rome, Naples, Salerno and Palermo, chanting ‘freedom, freedom, freedom’, as they stood opposite police in their respective city centres.
While protests would remain peaceful in 30 different locations, violence at demonstrations would occur in the northern cities of Milan and Turin.
The Spanish government would concurrently declare a state of emergency and impose a nationwide curfew, which has been set to remain in force until 9th May 2021.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, would state in a televised address, that:
However, this message would not be enough to calm many of the civilians within Spain, as demonstrators came out onto the streets of Barcelona to call out for a greater investment in public services in order to endure the second full-lockdown of the pandemic.
We have to protect our economic and work activity and preserve, as far as we can, the rhythms of our lives […] Sacrifices will be indispensable. No one, not the government of Spain nor its regional governments, want to impose a single restriction that isn’t necessary to flatten the curve and protect public health.
Pedro Sánchez
Only a few days earlier, the UK would see its fourth major anti-lockdown protest, in which thousands could be seen marching through central London.
Many citizens of Britain have become disenchanted with the restrictions posed by the Conservative government within recent months and have begun to question the effectiveness of pandemic related policies.
Louise Creffield, the founder of Save Our Rights UK and one of the organisers behind the most recent demonstrations, would comment to The Guardian that:
We believe that the coronavirus regulations that are in place are not proportionate and appropriate, and are causing more harm than good […] We are very concerned with protecting people’s human rights: right to privacy, family life, bodily autonomy, medical freedoms, and so on. We are not just concerned with lockdowns per se, we are concerned with the infringements with our privacy by having this track and trace everywhere.
Louise Creffield
These protests would come only days after it was announced that people in England who have been told to self-isolate through the NHS ‘Test and Trace’ could have their details shared with the police on a ‘case-by-case basis’.
While further worry has been caused over recent news that digital ‘health passports’ are being piloted by a small number of passengers flying from the UK to the US, which may eventually become a necessity for all travellers as time goes on.
While the CommonPass system has argued that this will ‘enable people to securely document and present their COVID-19 status (either as test results or an eventual vaccination status) to facilitate international travel and border crossing’, critics of this scheme have pointed to concerns over the sensitivity and specificity of the tests and information required for this system, amid fears over greater monitoring over peoples movements.
Paul Meyer, the CEO of the commons project, would tell The Guardian that,
It requires being able to assess the health of incoming travellers…Hopefully, we’ll soon start to see some vaccines come on to the market, but there is not going to be just one vaccine […] Some countries are going to probably say, ‘Ok I want to see documentation you’ve gotten one of these vaccines, but not one of those vaccines’.
Paul Meyer
While civil unrest over lockdown restrictions will almost indefinatly continue within the months to come, what remains to be seen is whether these movements will take hold and become the dominant force within this global political debate. How many freedoms will the general public be willing to revoke in exchange for the promise of saftey against this invisible foe? As our economies and social interaction steadily decline how long will people last before they have had enough of this new norm?
Social distancing, masks, trace and track systems, digital health passports, closed businesses and working from home may have been tolerable in the short-term, but as the prospect of that these will become the new norm draws nearer, we must ask ourselves how many people will seek an alternative to this new reality?
Trying to Expose the Truth: Are Anti-Lockdown Protests a One Issue Movment?
- While the primary purpose of these demonstrations is undoubtedly to speak up against lockdown restrictions, this ‘movement’ should not be reduced to a single set of covid-related issues.
- Instead, a variety of beliefs are demonstrated that go beyond a simple qualm with pandemic policies within the UK.
- Key figures within this debate, including David Icke, Piers Corbyn, Judy Mikovits and Dr Rashid, have all demonstrated a wide array of concerns, ranging from the protection of paedophiles, the assertion that climate change is man-made, to the accountability of the media and government at large.
- While views on these issues are indeed diverse, what remains consistent is a lack of trust for those in positions of power and the level of control they might hold over both national and global populouses.
‘We Do Not Consent’: A Timeline Of The UK’s Anti-Lockdown Protests
After Lockdown began on the 16th March, it wouldn’t be long before protests would begin to appear within the UK. On April 25th and May 1st, anti-lockdown protests would begin to appear in Glastonbury. While the crowds were small, with only 30-40 people attending, the event would start to recieve some media attention after Piers Corbyn was spotted in the town centre.
While smaller protests would follow throughout the early part of May, it would not be until the 16th that the rapid growth of this movement would become apparent. Protests began popping up across multiple cities, including Manchester, Leicester and Southampton, in which flyers and posters produced by ‘The Freedom Movement’ (unreleated to the UK Freedom Movement) could be seen across the country – these would state: “no to the new normal and no to the unlawful lockdown”.
In London, over fifty people would defy social distancing guidelines by gathering at Speakers’ Corner. Police officers, including some on horseback, patrolled the protest, would hand out 10 fines and make 19 arrests, including Piers Corybn.
On the 29th of August, thousands of protesters from across the UK would gather in London’s Trafalgar Square to to protest against coronavirus restrictions, mass vaccinations, The World Health Organisation (WHO), alongside other related issues.
In terms of whether you believe that the virus is a hoax or not, whatever is happening now is less than or equal to a normal flu, so the lockdowns and all that goes with them is unjustifiable in any terms […] We are calling for MPs to refuse renewal of the Covid Act [Coronavirus Act], and if they do not, we will campaign to have them removed from office
Piers Corbyn to The Guardian
The protest would gain a great deal of media attention when Piers Corbyn was arrested for ‘not social distancing and wearing a mask’ and would consequently be fined £10,000.
The decision to fine Corbyn £10,000 would come under fire by political pundits such as Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, who would argue that the lack of fines for groups (including those within Black Lives Matter & Extinction Rebellion) who had demonstrated only shortly before, displayed an unbalanced approach to policing.
This argument has been made by Ben Cooper QC, Corbyn’s lawyer, who has stated that:
This demonstrates there is a politicisation in the enforcement of the regulations by choosing to permit one set of demonstrators to protest while at the same time discriminating against different groups on the same day
Ben Cooper QC
However, Piers Corbyn and a number of other anti-lockdown protesters who were arrested in this march would soon be back to rally their cause once again. On the 26th September, 15,000 people gathered for ‘We Do Not Consent’, which was organised by ‘The Freedom Movement’, in London, Southampton and Cardiff.
The Key Players: Who is Beating The Anti-Lockdown Drum?
So, who are the individuals leading this movement? Are their views all the same or do they each encapsulate a set of varying beliefs?
David Icke, a journalist and conspiracy researcher, has been vocal opponent of the recent lockdown restrictions. He has argued that covid is probably ‘no more than flu‘, that the death rates are ‘unsustainable and unsupportable‘, and has even suggested that there is ‘no evidence that coronavirus exists‘. Instead, Icke has purported that we are heading towards a ‘Hunger Games Society‘, in which the pandemic has been manufactured by global elites to morph society into a technocracy.
The Hunger Games society is designed, if you think of a pyramid, to have a tiny few at the top, we could call them the 1% today, and at the bottom the rest of humanity bassically, in dependency in deprivation, in poverty, and crucially again the word ‘dependent’ upon the 1% for the means of survival. And inbetween the 1% and the rest of the population in this Hunger Games Society, is a police-millitary state, which imposes the will of the 1% upon the rest of the population and stops the rest of the population challenging the 1%. […] This Hunger Games Society would be controlled by technology. So were talking about a Fascist, Communist global society, with an addition, that it is controlled by technology.
London Real Interview with David Icke
Piers Corbyn has similar beliefs about the validity of the virus, arguing that the pandemic was ‘simulated‘ by ‘mega-rich control freaks‘ like Bill Gates and George Soros.
Event 201, run by Centre3 and helped by organisations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, would stage ‘a global pandemic exercise‘ on the on October 18, 2019, in New York.
The event has gained the attention of many ‘conspiracy theorists’, as the virus used within the excercise, conducted only months before the pandemic, would be a coronavirus strain.
When asked by Ian Collins of Talk Radio, ‘why would they [the government] want to promote a lockdown, why would they want to destroy the economy and allow people to die in their millions, what would be their reason for that? Corbyn would respond by stating:
The reason is they want to have a vaccine and they’ve said that, Bill Gates himself has said that we should be lockdwon until a vaccine is ready. But the vaccines themselves are suspect, especially modern vaccines, because they have things added in them, such as formaldehyde and mercury, which are poisonous. Bill Gates’ own testing of vaccines in Africa has a totally appalling record, in which ten-times more people died after they had a vaccine compared to those who had a vaccine.
Piers Corbyn talking to Ian Collins on Talk Radio: 18th May 2020
Judy Mikovits who starred in the now banned video ‘Plandemic’, is another major proponent of the anti-lockdown movement. Previously a virologist and research scientist, she has written several books on science matters and pharmacutical corruption, including: ‘Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science’, ‘The Case Against Masks: Ten Reasons Why Mask Use Should be Limited’ and ‘Ending Plague: A Scholar’s Obligation in an Age of Corruption’, which is due to be released in 2021.
PEDOGATE: The Monarchy & Prince Andrew
Merely 5 days before an anti-coronavirus protest on the 29th of August a demonstration occured outside of Buckingham Palace, in which people demanded that Prince Andrew face the allegations that have been made in relation to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
The organisation ‘Freedom For the Children UK’ who initiated the anti-Prince Andrew march are linked to the ‘Stand Up X’ one of the main anti-lockdown groups.
This link has extended to the form of signage that protesters have been displaying and even the physical direction that anti-lockdown protests have taken, in which protestors at the the Trafalgar Square protest on the 26th of September would march towards the BBC and cry out ‘the BBC paedo‘.
Prince Andrew has still failed to cooperate with the FBI’s investigation of the sex-trafficking scandal of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. He now plans to return to public duties and ‘serve his country’, despite fierce allegations that he sexually assaulted Virginia Roberts on three seperate occasions when she was just 17-years-old.
60 Minutes Australia would interview Virginia and Johanna Sjoberg on their experiences with Epstein and their interactions with Prince Andrew.
Climate Change: Man Made or Naturally Occuring?
Climate change is a contentious issue at these rallies. Both Piers Corbyn and David Icke have argued that man-made climate change is fake and that it is instead a natural process.
Piers Corbyn, as an astrophysicist has his own website called ‘Weather Action’, which discusses that, ‘CO2 is not a pollutant but the Gas-Of-Life (plant food)‘ and campaigns to ‘Exit from the UN Climate Change‘ due to science based on ‘data fraud and a conspiracy theory of nature‘.
On LBC Corbyn would explain that he believed ‘CO2 has no effect on the temperatures. The levels of CO2 are driven by temperatures” and that he wanted to counter the ‘scientific nonsense… Man does not and cannot control the climate‘.
David Icke prefers to look at the global implications (YouTube video on Geocast) of manmade climate change as an “illusion” with the ‘Club of Rome’ (group of high-level ex-government officials, scientists and more) are using ‘the environment to transform society‘ into the so-called ‘Hunger games society’, this links to his beliefs with COVID-19 and a global conspiracy.
Both Corbyn and Icke believe that Agenda 21, the United Nations’ ‘comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System‘ has been devised to create one world government.
Tom DeWeese, the president of the ‘American Policy Center’, has described this resolution as ‘a new kind of tyranny that, if not stopped, will surely lead us to a new Dark Ages of pain and misery yet unknown to mankind‘, while the 2012 Republican Party platform have stated that they, ‘strongly reject the UN Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty‘.
Further distrust was sown by the ClimateGate scandal of 2009 when a series of leaked emails between scientists which described a “trick” to hide the “decline” in world temperature. If this indeed is true then it would provide support to the belief that ‘both Climate Change propaganda and CV19 contagion propaganda rely on falsification of data and negation of evidence-based science‘.
However, many scientists have said this is ‘misinterpreting the information‘ within these emails. In response to this scandal, Senator James Inhofe has consistently called for an investigation into climate change since the scandal and even has a book called ‘The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Theory Threatens Your Future‘. These beliefs have become increasingly more widespread and are common with the key COVID-19 protest leaders.
The Media & Government: Issues of Accountability
The lack of in-depth coverage of the anti-lockdown protests has in of itself become an issue for this movment.
While protest groups such as Extinction Rebellion were heavily covered, with news articles demonstrating events in Edinburgh, Germany and a variety of other locations, the same cannot be said for many of the anti-lockdown protests.
The media is clearly choosing which stories to give its readers rather than providing a ‘mass communication‘ of stories. Accountability is crucial in democracy. One of the keyways to do this is protest. Whether the ideas are those most people agree or disagree with shouldn’t come into play. Even if the majority of media outlets do not support the views of those demonstrating at anti-lockdown protests, they should still uphold transparency and publish the views of these protestors to allow their readers to make informed decisions?
