Ignorance and disregard of historical events will lead us to miss history again when it repeats itself. Life experiences and intuitions are man’s best friends. They teach and guide us through life, sharpen our survival instincts along the way, and empower us with needed adaptive skills. As a race, these are undoubtedly our greatest assets; we see this repeatedly throughout life.
During WWII, the coordinated persecution and extermination of nearly 6 million Jews in Europe, spanning 12 years, will be remembered as one of the most tragic times in world history. Driven by twisted and evil ideologies, in what was the biggest ethnic cleansing operation ever known, millions of Jews lost their lives and were displaced. These and many other tragic events that occurred in history have striking parallels, as well as with world events occurring since the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic was declared in March 2020. We have not learnt anything new except for what we knew all along – Human ignorance (and apathy) crushes lives, causing a lethal death blow that happens each time history repeats itself.
It is now well understood that while some sects of the German population were unaware of the hate crimes perpetrated against the Jews, the majority of the ordinary Germans knew. They knew because Hitler’s ascension to power in 1933 was followed by the creation of the Reich Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda led by Joseph Goebbels as minister. Under his leadership, a coordinated attempt was made to unify national media, the press, and the many sizable independent news outlets like the Vossische Zeitung (The Berlin Daily). Under the instructions of the propaganda ministry, the public was drip-fed controlled information about the camps, the detentions and the imprisonment of the Jews. Labelling the Jews as “vile and unclean”, a “deep-rooted menace to society”, and being the cause of Germany’s political and economic woes was a cunning strategy to acquire crowd support. For a population, many of whom were burning with anti-semitic views, this was the perfect fuel for the fire. Mass propaganda made it easy to seduce and entice a large proportion of the passive and obedient public, while only a few resisted and were unwilling to cooperate.
Fast forward to the 21st century, the global “anti-vax” community has similarly gained significant disrepute over the decades. Inheriting the stigma of being “the lowly, uneducated mad hatters” who are supposedly responsible for a broad range of societal issues, including the spreading of illness and diseases that are believed to be amenable to vaccinations. With society already splintered over these issues, the pandemic of 2020 only gave authorities (and their media allies) and the disgruntled public more ammunition to drive a wedge to distance and alienate these groups further. During this period, those who chose to exercise their individual freedoms and skip the shots were treated as outcasts and were vilified, shamed and blamed for their personal decisions.
Propaganda is defined as disseminating ideological views and doctrines that reflect the views and interests of those holding the views. For any ideology to be spread, it needs a voice. And for an impact, it should have no other.
Quite like Joseph Goebbels Propaganda Ministry, the BBC in the UK formed TNI (The Trusted News Initiative) surreptitiously in September 2019. At the time, it was a small off-shoot entity comprising a global collaboration of hi-tech companies, media outlets and news corporations. Though sounding quite insignificant, its impressive line-up of members included tech giants Google, Microsoft, Facebook/Meta, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube, while the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, Indian Express, Hindu, Reuters, and ABC were among its press associates. TNI’s original agenda was to filter and combat fake, misleading news centred around politics, election misinformation and similar world events. However, in March 2020, TNI was assigned another role. It became the voice of world governments, weaponised to censor and de-platform any alternate views that the public and the broader medical community had on matters relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. With its censorship arm, the propaganda machine had an unprecedented reach using its member’s press and social media platforms. It was then catapulted by tech platforms, voicing world news in unison, in one voice, much like a church choir. No one was out of tune, not once and not to this day.
In an eerily similar vein, during the events starting in 2020 and ongoing, a good proportion of the public and the medical community knew what was being done in the name of science was not right in many ways but chose to remain quiet and relegated to authority. They had the knowledge and a choice but remained silent.
The global shutting of public discourse with mass censorship across social media platforms (e.g. Twitter files) and the shaming and vilifying that ensued had an uncanny commonality with the actions of the Third Reich. The strong fist of global governments aided by the media and law enforcement agencies and an unsympathetic judicial system that leaned in with governments only empowered them to crush dissent in ways no different to that of the Nazi regime.
The muzzling of medical practitioners and scientists during the height of the COVID pandemic was a feat of epic proportions that, unfortunately, achieved its desired purpose. In Australia, a position statement (see here) issued by the Australian Health Practitioners Regulatory Authority (AHPRA) on March 9, 2021, strictly cautioned doctors and practitioners from questioning public health messaging regarding the experimental vaccines, threatening them with prosecution. What was a position statement was taken up hook, line and sinker by the profession as an edict, shutting any discourse on the matter for fear of repercussions. What ensued was the breach of informed consent, blatant human rights violations, abandonment of medical ethics, breach of the doctor-patient relationship and, not unsurprisingly, the predicted outcomes of untold human suffering, disabilities and loss of lives.
While in both the above scenarios, there could be people who wilfully participated in appeasing their conscience of doing the right thing versus the psychology of mass formation vs scepticism of conspiracy theories and anti-vax misinformation, a large proportion of the population succumbed to fear. From the fear of the virus to the fear of the unknown, of loss of career aspirations and livelihoods to the fear of isolation, of being called an outcast (e.g. anti-vaxxer) for questioning the narrative. For all the above reasons, it was easier to submit and comply. American author, poet and novelist Richelle Goodrich stated a quote that rightly portrays this behaviour: “Fear is the devil’s most powerful tool because he can’t always convince a good man to do wrong. But, he can paralyse his will with fright, keeping a good man from doing what is right. It eventually results in the same end.”
In the context of the year 2021 and the rollout of the experimental COVID jabs, many health practitioners deny accepting any responsibility for breaching their codes of conduct and the medical ethics of Informed Consent, the cornerstone of medical practice worldwide. This situation is akin to the Superior Orders Defense, aka Nuremberg Defense, during the Nuremberg trials, where responsibility for individual action is not owned but deferred to the authority that gave them the orders. In medical practice, when a practitioner provides any treatment, it is vital that the practitioner provide the patient with fully known information about the treatment and product. Withholding this from the patient wilfully or under duress or undue influence of authority such as medical boards is negligent, a breach of the medical ethical code and should incur liability for criminal charges.
To state the Nuremberg Principle IV, “The fact that a person acted pursuant to the order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under International law, provided a moral choice was, in fact, possible to him”. The keyword here is a moral choice. Everyone has that choice at all times. According to this principle, “I was merely following my superior’s orders” is not a justifiable excuse.
To compound matters, doctors across the country were being instigated to report their colleagues to AHPRA, the medical regulatory authority, if they held any anti-vaccination views. Various medical defence organisations have since held mandatory reporting training sessions (eg see below).
Such programs are disguised as public protection strategies against unethical and dangerous practitioners but, unfortunately, come with the inconspicuous message of dob if you doubt. If you doubt anything. Doctors who already have a low threshold for reporting their colleagues or other doctors are only made more trigger-happy by this.
How would this practice contribute to a healthy, thriving, patient-centric healthcare system where physicians share ideas and practise good medicine for optimal patient outcomes without fear of saying or thinking against a hypothesis? Is this the end of the road for scientific debates and discussions? The tactic is evident and is an ancient colonisation strategy that imperial regimes deployed successfully against colonies. The tactic of Divide et Impera, known commonly as Divide and Conquer.
During the Nazi regime, for reasons stated earlier, the German public was mostly passive, with many being indifferent to the evolving national events. The passivity could be attributed to states of shock, fear, confusion, selfish indifference or apathy, as it did not directly involve them or their families. Either way, these people did nothing and were preoccupied, engrossed in living through day-to-day challenges. The apathy was not generalised as there was a minority of ‘rescuers’ among the people who had empathy and took significant risks to help the Jews in many ways, even saving many from death and torture (such examples are portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Oscar-winning Schindlers List and James Hawes 2023 drama One Life).
On a similar note, there were thousands of such ‘rescuer’ doctors across the world during the COVID pandemic years who worked tirelessly to save lives, holding on to their honours, not violating medical integrity and principles that taught them to help if possible or at least to do no harm. Sadly, many hundreds, perhaps thousands, have lost their careers and livelihoods due to authoritarian medical regulators and their overreach and remain unaccounted for to this day.
Demonising the ‘Unclean’
Anti-semitism was the basic tenet of the Nazi ideology, and this has ‘skin close’ proximity to the “Anti-vax” ideology across the world today with regards to the psychology of branding. A good example is the NGO Children’s Health Defense, a US-based activist organisation questioning governmental policies on mass vaccinating children against various childhood diseases. Being known globally as an “anti-vax and anti-science group”, it doesn’t attract much likes on the www. For the most part, the discussion just ends there. CHD is run by families of vaccine-harmed children who are merely seeking justice as well as questioning the ever-increasing immunisation schedule and its links to modern-day childhood diseases. Society would be greatly enlightened if they would pause for a moment and question the purpose behind the constant and unrelenting demonisation of such groups. After all, it is worth pondering what these groups gain by raising these issues. Mudslinging has always been an ingenious weapon that ensures vilification ostracisation with the heavy price of irretrievably losing freedoms of expression individual respect, and painting a tainted integrity. It’s the same for everyone who dissents, as it was for the Jews and the unobliging non-Jews.
To add on, the Antisemitic legislation of 1938 saw the creation of laws that prohibited Jews from entering cinemas, public venues, sports facilities and areas that were designated as ‘Aryan’ meant for the Germans. In addition, Jews were not able to enrol in public schools and universities. Eventually, this led to the creation of a class system of the elite against the ‘pitiable and the unclean’.
The pandemic management measures in Australia (and the world over) led to the denigration and shaming of the ‘unvaccinated’ with a view to reducing vaccine hesitancy and improving its uptake. The deplorable acts were then broadcast across all news and media channels that were then slingshotted by online media platforms. Those who chose to exert their rights to bodily autonomy became second-class citizens who were prevented from entering restaurants, cinemas and various other public facilities, including hospitals and medical clinics.
Hospitals refused to treat people in need of life-saving surgeries if they had not received the recommended doses of the experimental injections. In the first two years, special makeshift facilities were created in the car parks of many medical centres nationwide where doctors and nurses in hazmat suits ‘treated’ the unvaccinated. Many doctors point blank refused to care for the unvaccinated, while some would only consult them through telehealth while nursing homes denied unvaccinated relatives entry to see their loved ones, many of whom died alone. The pressures and the coercion to have the COVID injections were done in many ways, starting from cartoon TV and online ads, tik tok hospital staff dance performances, doughnut and other food incentives for the poor, no jab, no job policies as well as outright psychological manipulation. While this knee-jerk response may or may not be intentional, the point is that it broke societal foundations of cohesiveness and love, dividing families and stretching lifelong friendships and relationships that remain broken and unmended to this day.
In love, hope and patience, in earnest, justice is awaited by the afflicted and the wounded as the truth trickles in one drop at a time. The recent admission by the pharma giant AstraZeneca that their vaccine may have and could cause serious adverse effects assures us that the showers are fast approaching. It is also not the time to bicker over our ideological and political differences or to be the pious bystander who neither saw, heard or said anything supposedly wrong. We must keep marching through the menacing dark storms coming at us and when fighting for truth and liberty, let our war cry be – ‘Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent about the things that matter’ (paraphrased from Martin Luther King’s speech of 1965).
