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These protests aren’t just a symptom of public frustration. They represent a deliberate break with our shared reality
On Saturday in London, more than 10,000 people gathered – bare-faced and packed perilously close – in Trafalgar Square to protest against what event posters branded the “new normal” under coronavirus: masks, lockdown restrictions, and the spectre of mandatory vaccination and privacy-obliterating health passports.
The messaging leaned towards US-style libertarianism, asking marchers to “Unite for Freedom” from state control, but the mood was decidedly conspiratorial. Headline speakers included doctors and nurses suspended by their governing bodies for claiming coronavirus was a globalist hoax, Piers Corbyn, a long-time anti-vaxxer and climate-change denier, and the last-minute addition of David Icke, a fabulist famous for his books rejigging classic antisemitic conspiracy theories to include reptile people originating from the fourth dimension. Continue reading...