>From Ian Jenkins (on Facebook): "No single group of people have called out more vociferously for intensified lockdowns than the organisations, academics and media figures of the mainstream left. Regardless of any evidence of the total ineffectiveness of lockdowns or of the clear evidence of the huge collateral damage being caused to the most vulnerable in our societies they have pressed on, abusing anyone who contradicts them as "granny killers", right-wingers or lunatics.
They have failed to see that the economic damage has not been done to huge corporations and billionaires, who have made out like bandits and advanced their cause no end, but rather to small businesses and the self employed. They have failed to differentiate between these two, reducing it all to a moronic and false opposition between lives and economy. We'll see what happens to health in a depression with elevated unemployment over the next few years. They have failed to acknowledge the human cost of isolation - especially to children and the elderly - and perhaps worst of all they have shown themselves to be utterly unconcerned with individual rights or even the opinions and wishes of those they purport to want to protect. There was no consideration that the elderly or vulnerable with mental capacity might want to make their own decision based on full information - as the medical rules on informed consent require. They have also energetically defended the agendas of excessively influential oligarchic figures like Bill Gates or those at the World Economic Forum, dismissing anyone who examines or criticises their insane technocratic authoritarianism as a 'conspiracy theorist'. They can't even look at the insanely disproportionate and oppressive restrictions and police state activity imposed by the governments of New Zealand and Victoria in Australia and voice any coherent criticism. In fact they often express admiration for Jacinda Ardern and Daniel Andrews. In short some have shown themselves to be dogmatic, irrational, self-contradictory, intolerant, callous and authoritarian - all wrapped up in a package of self-righteous, sentimental rhetoric. I'm done with them. I don't have the energy to respond to them any more. I do NOT think that is true of all people on the left, some have opposed this lunacy and some are acting on good intentions and think they are doing the right thing. They tend to be victims of groupthink and need to step away from the organisations they may be part of, stop repeating slogans, read more widely and look at the facts. Does that mean I 'support the right', or the Tories or Trump? Hell no. I'm also done with those ludicrous fallacies of composition - together with the ad hominems, false dichotomies, straw man arguments and other nonsensical insults and labels that they throw out without either justification or, often, without any real understanding of the terms they are employing. I'm still a socialist, but I'm a libertarian socialist. I'm done with empty slogans and groupthink. I'm done with political parties and oligarch-funded fake protest movements. I'll work with anyone who voluntarily and collectively wants to make things better for ordinary people - particularly at a local level - but I fail to see how any of the behaviours and attitudes I have witnessed from the left, and described briefly and only in part here, will do that. Believe me, it give me no pleasure to state any of that, but there it is. If you want to block or 'unfriend' me, good - we probably have little left to say to each other until you can regain your capacity for reason and start to examine actual evidence. Enough!" https://www.facebook.com/1416185081/posts/102246703345718 --- Support News from Underground: http://bit.ly/NFUSupport You received this email because you are subscribed to News from Underground. To unsubscribe from this email list, please go to: http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=pIdjNUgiG2h8yxbhC54SSy4SEskAoEMs For archives, please go to: http://archives.simplelists.com/nfu
