A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, Laura Dodsworth [the two towers ebook .txt] 📗

to get hold of a good deal of a person’s time, especially their thinking time, so they don’t dwell on what’s happening and don’t think too critically about it – so they are split off from their friends and dependency is encouraged. The media and government press briefings took care of that. We have never been so socially atomised.

Cults also use dependency and dread, creating a sense of powerlessness, anxiety and fear. Natural events are reframed to encourage obedience in members. Cult leaders almost always say that if you follow their rules it will help change the world and make it perfect. If followers leave the cult, they are told terrible disasters will befall them, they will die, or they won’t have good karma, or some such flannel. The outside world, and the people in it, are presented as very dangerous. Does any of this sound familiar? In the case of the ‘Covid Cult’, the ultimate consequence is death, because if you don’t comply the virus will get you, or you’ll be fined or shamed if you go out without a reasonable excuse.

The novitiate’s conscience is dimmed to accommodate new cult behaviour and attitudes. Desensitisation is important in cults, through seeing things done to other people. We became desensitised to things that would have been unacceptable to our conscience before. During the epidemic we were encouraged to snitch on neighbours, we grew nonchalant about the idea of life-destroying fines for breaches of rules (remember that two students were fined £10,000 each for arranging a snowball fight!) and we tolerated the transfer of infected elderly patients in hospital to care homes where they were like a spark to dry tinder, to give just a few examples of a relaxation of conscience.

The leaders maintain a closed system of logic and restricting criticism. Management is always right, you are always wrong. Failed prophecies are reframed to maintain the authority of the cult leader, no matter what. If the prophecy did not come true, it’s because the followers didn’t follow the rules. Then the prophecy date gets moved forward. The UK’s lockdowns couldn’t offer a more apt example. We were told we must obey the rules for them to work. ‘Covidiots’ were derided and blamed for failures in the media and social media. The finger was never pointed at hospital-acquired infections, for example, or the seasonality of the virus: it was our fault and we were easy scapegoats. And so, the lockdowns were extended and repeated. The ‘prophecy date’ for ending lockdown ever-shifting.

The book When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World, is the true story of a cult which believed in the coming apocalypse and that the cult followers would be rescued by aliens in a flying saucer. Several rescue dates were announced, but each passed without disaster or spacecraft. Through the medium of ‘automatic writing’ one of the members was told that earth’s apocalypse had been cancelled because the cult had waited patiently all night. The disappointments didn’t shake their faith. Cult followers can double-down on their beliefs to resolve the intense discomfort cognitive dissonance creates. Sometimes it just feels easier to stay wedded to false beliefs than to face the truth.

The book’s authors concluded that if someone was to remain a fervent believer in the face of such disappointment then they must truly commit themselves firstly by taking difficult actions, and also by being part of a social group who are all committed. It is easy to draw a comparison with supporters of tough Covid restrictions, despite the lack of convincing evidence that they work. The commitment to the lockdown, our ‘new normal’, has been life-changing and immense for the country.

People have held strong convictions during the epidemic. They have over-estimated danger, placed enormous faith in un-evidenced measures, and accepted vast social and personal changes. In a time of huge uncertainty it has felt more comforting to cling to conviction. I expect I am guilty too. We will need more distance to understand the social experiment we have endured and where convictions were misplaced. How will people de-programme from ‘cult’ thinking? This might be especially difficult for those who stand to lose professionally, such as scientists, journalists and politicians who expressed convictions and enacted policies publicly. By March 2021, Boris Johnson said ‘lockdown came too late’,2 furthering the narrative that lockdown should have been earlier, harder, longer, sounding more like his ‘opposition’ in the House of Commons, rather than acknowledging the empirical evidence against lockdowns. The ‘confession’ served to endorse the role of lockdowns, therefore diverting attention from the collateral damage they caused and their ineffectiveness.

I felt discombobulated by the early strong convictions held by others about Covid and lockdown. It was as though everyone had gone on a Large Group Awareness Training Course for Covid and I’d missed the invite. I perceived a gap between rationality and reality. There were people who solely relied on the BBC and Number 10 press briefings, and then others who had ferreted around for alternative perspectives, such as the interview with Dr Knut Wittkowski which was removed from YouTube, or read one of Dr John Ioannidis’s articles. A broad range of media offered balance, allowed room for doubt and nuance and, in so doing, calmed the fear.

Regardless, there was a certain amount of fear in the air and it was catching. With messages designed to elevate your sense of threat, if you weren’t frightened of the virus, did your fear switch direction? I was frightened of authoritarianism and the consequences of lockdown for our country. I observed the fear around me, I felt my own, and it led me to research and write this book.

What do people do when they perceive a gap between reality and rationality? When their fear roams away from the path laid out by the state? If your rational mind looks at the evidence and says, well, this might be really bad, but it isn’t going to be the