By Rachel Marsden, columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France. Her website can be found at rachelmarsden.com
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, so-called democracies are suppressing basic freedoms and targeting dissenters and opponents. Is there any nation out there that will offer a haven from this totalitarianism?
Last week, I was kicked out of my own country under threat of imprisonment when I tried to fly home to Canada for a visit. All because my proof of immunity to Covid came in the form of naturally acquired antibodies rather than from an injection. So I flew back to France, where I’m now subjected to several Covid nose swab tests every week just to access various aspects of daily life, including fitness facilities, libraries, restaurants, movie theaters, some public transport, and shopping malls. France’s ‘health pass’ – much like Italy’s ‘green pass’ – requires proof of a recent negative test or vaccination in order to live ‘normally’.
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Now that much of the so-called democratic world has lost its mind and seems intent on pushing through restrictive tools that curtail basic freedoms, are there any countries that will seize the opportunity to promote themselves as a welcoming alternative to these authoritarian regimes?
It’s the perfect opportunity for countries that still value freedom, and that have managed to handle the pandemic without using it as a means of ushering in new tools of control that risk persisting far beyond any sanitary crisis, to sweep up not only those persecuted like me for their acquired natural immunity to Covid, but also freedom loving, independent minded, critically thinking individuals from all over the world.
What were previously considered banal freedoms in various so-called democracies are now increasingly being clawed back and doled out as rewards to those who hop aboard these government injection programs of however many Covid jabs they see fit to dole out at any given time – a figure that is already increasing over time.
In France, the ‘reward’ for compliance is that you no longer have to wear a mask in ‘health pass’ venues – thereby allowing any jabbed Covid carriers to freely transmit the virus to the proven Covid negative unjabbed in these venues. But as the premier of the Canadian province of Quebec, Francois Legault, said when introducing that province’s own health passport for access to daily life: “We want people who made the effort to get vaccinated to be able to live normally, with restaurants and other services.”
This has nothing to do with public health and everything to do with control. How else to explain that Israel – the country that brought health passes and government-issued QR codes to the forefront amid its own drive to pressure its citizens to get the jab – is now facing a spike of infections despite a third jab being doled out to those over 60. Similarly, Iceland, with about 90% of the country double-jabbed, is facing the most infections ever.
And despite infinitesimally low Covid death rates in all of these countries, they’re insisting on staying the course with their newfound tools of control. At what point will people wake up and realize that the sanitary reality on the ground increasingly bears very little resemblance to the fear and doom being peddled day and night by a handful of establishment elites who have managed to push through laws that impose ever-increasing control on the masses?
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If you were an alien and you crash-landed in any of these health pass countries, would you really have any idea that there was a supposedly catastrophic pandemic if it wasn’t for all the visible trappings that governments are imposing on us? If you witnessed police officers embarking on outdoor restaurant patios to demand that people show their government QR code on their smartphones, or authorities at the train station slapping blue bracelets on passengers with valid health passes – as is now the case in France – wouldn’t you just figure that you had landed in an authoritarian country that valued control over freedom?
Nations that routinely lecture those they view as less free are now engaging in the same practices as those they have historically criticized. Despite the lack of evidence (if not the total uselessness) of their liberticidal measures on public health, they peddle proven lies to the public to sell their agenda. They use their servile mass media platforms to promote their agenda with limited pushback. They minimize, vilify, and distort the nature of growing protest movements that oppose their tactics and agenda.
It really should come as no surprise that French lawmakers, for example, were studying China’s social credit system and the use of digital tracking tools long before they were implemented en masse under the pretext of the pandemic.
While discussing the Chinese social credit system during a French senate committee meeting earlier this year, Senator Jean-Raymond Hugonet of the center-right Republican Party referenced the system used by the Chinese government to track its population and restrict the daily lives of non-abiders.
“It is very interesting to see the way in which China, which has a population infinitely larger than that of European countries, is tackling the treatment of a virus much more important than the Covid, which will overwhelm us – namely the anomie, that is to say the absence of recognition, by a human being or by a society, of the rules and laws,” Hugonet said. “We have seen the yellow vests and are witnessing manifestations of anomie in France every day.”
‘Anomie’ means “the lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group,” according to the Oxford dictionary definition. In other words, those who govern us are openly admitting that nonconforming free thinkers are no longer tolerated, and that China has the right idea in using digital tools to ‘tackle’ the problem.
If this is the beginning of the end of freedom in so-called democracies, which countries out there are willing to break away from this global contagion and provide refuge from these regimes for the persecuted? Please step forward soon and, amid the rush, I’ll be among the first to sign up.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
