In Europe there’s a new phenomenon of groups protesting these issues, often violently. We sort of all know they are coming out of America’s far-right groups in an election year, but many people don’t really understand where they come from, what they mean or what to do about them. Most people think the only thing to do is ignore them, but by understanding them better there’s much more we can do to confront them.
Here in The Netherlands, there are groups who have appeared out of nowhere, and members who have been identified as cocaine users and people previously involved in violence related to football (soccer) matches. They don’t really have any spokespeople or figureheads, not a lot of organization or public debates on their issues and in general not a lot of sense in what they’re doing. They are well enough organized to apply for demonstration permits and pay fees, and estimate the number of people attending, but otherwise don’t seem to have the backing of any known organization. In general, they just seem like they’re out for a fight with the police. In a small country like The Netherlands, this really stands out. It’s not like they can just be strangers from ‘out of state’. They have to be locals, and someone should know who they are and where they came from.
The mainstream press, especially English language, is also playing a role here. The BBC for example had a sort of spooky infomercial article on this, with very little real news, but rather a video with strange people saying weird things, and completely lacking any point. This kind of article just gives legitimacy where there was none before. A local news website that mostly has translated news from Dutch outlets, had an article highlighting the difference in childhood MMR vaccination rates between 2019 and 2020. The suggestion was this was an indication of the anti-vaccination trends in the country, but what the article didn’t say is there was no MMR vaccination program in the country before 2019, as is the case in a lot of places outside of the US. There is also simply no need for an anti-vaccination movement here, because there are no mandatory vaccinations. The article also said the parts of the country where the vaccination rates were the lowest were the most religious, as if the people choosing not to get vaccinated were the least educated or most abnormal. It was a completely misleading cooked-up article, either a paid placement or someone completely unfamiliar with the topic just blindly translating a misleading press release.
The Difference Between Organic and Artificial Movements
The Black Lives Matter is a good example of an organic movement. It’s clear what the issues are, and there are sympathies worldwide. It comes from unarmed black people being killed by police, and the demands are clear. There are large numbers of people speaking very clearly about it on social media as well as the mainstream news. Disagreements that may exist in the movement are minimal and unimportant. There are also clearly no overriding business interests behind this movement.
Vaccinations, 5G mobile services and covid-19 lockdowns all have business interests behind them. I think most people would agree that none of these are really interesting enough to go out and demonstrate over, and hardly interesting enough to even have a discussion about them. In fact, if we have any position or opinion about these issues at all, it probably comes out of statements made by other people, and we probably take issue with some of these statements.
The fact of the matter is it costs huge amounts of money to ‘create’ movements like this, something only a billionaire could afford. It costs money to pay for misleading press releases, to create and run organizations that appear out of nowhere. You have to pay for lobbyists to cause politicians to react to the issues, for people to give misleading information on social and mainstream media, pay for trolls to disrupt constructive exchanges on social media, and so on. This is really a major amount of money, especially when you consider this is not just limited to a single country but movements being created worldwide.
Consider Vegetarianism as an Example
I think most people now know every vegetarian is different, with different reasons for not eating meat. Some are vegan, some eat fish on Fridays, some eat meat once a month or only at restaurants when they eat out. As long as someone considers themselves a vegetarian, they are. Furthermore there are no health risks, and as long as you are eating a fairly normal and varied diet, there is no risk of deficiencies.
As a vegetarian now for about 40 years, I’ve really seen the issue evolve quite a lot. If you’re young and reading this, you probably missed a lot of this. At the beginning it was more about needing to remind people, because the concept was a little bit new and there was some confusion. When someone gave you food, it was always necessary to look at it carefully to be sure. There was also the discussion of chicken broth in otherwise vegetarian soup and so on. For a long time it was always necessary to pay attention to quantity, because if a nicely prepared vegetarian dish is present in an otherwise all meat buffet, there often won’t be enough left for the vegetarian if others go first. It also isn’t possible for example to have a nice meal only eating a salad made from iceburg lettuce, and there needs to be a little variety and some starch or vegetable protein. Some people took this to mean all vegetarians were hostile, picky, greedy and wanted non-vegetarians to be forced to eat vegetarian food.
At some point there were enough vegetarians the meat industry started to notice. There’s big money in meat, and a drop in consumption of even a few percent gets noticed quickly. The food industry started investing in everything I mentioned above, like lobbyists to influence food policy, food pyramids in school to teach school children that meat and diary were some of the most important things to eat. There were ads on TV, and later on the Internet. Organizations popped up out of nowhere supposedly promoting vegetarian food, but actually just furthering the divisions and misinformation that already existed. It became necessary to establish exactly what kind of vegetarian each was, and it became impolite for example to not provide fish to a vegetarian who expected it, or eggs and dairy to a lacto-ovo vegetarian.
Now, thankfully, we are at a more normal situation with vegetarians. Vegetarians are free to choose what they do and don’t eat, and to be vegan if they want Most people understand it’s acceptable to serve vegan food to someone who says they’re vegetarian, or an all vegan meal to a large group of people when many dietary preferences have to be taken into account. Meat eaters are allowed to enjoy an occasional vegetarian meal, if they want. Living in The Netherlands where a great deal of the world’s meat is produced, I can also say people eating less meat has had a major impact on the environment. The long term damage of past meat consumption is also very visible here.
Anti-vaxxers, anti-lockdown, anti-5G mobile services
So back to the main point of this post. Why are these things an issue, and why are billionaires spending money trying to bring these things forward? The reason is there are financial and political issues behind them, and they are trying to create confusion and make anyone who may have legitimate arguments against them to seem like crackpots.
What can we do about them? There is a very simple answer to this. We can work backwards from the confusion they are trying to create, then understand what the underlying issues are and start a dialog over the real issues. Instead of the 40 years it took the world to do this over vegetarians, we can work together to do this in a far shorter time for vaccinations, the covid-19 lockdown and 5G services. If as a society we can be more effective at settling these issues based on truth, we will eliminate the reason for billionaires to cause this sort of disruption with fake news in our democracies. Indeed, if we learn how to work backwards from the issues billionaires try to create in this way, we can make it counter productive for the billionaires to try in the first place.
Working Backwards
Here are some of my ideas for working backwards from these issues. If you think I’m wrong, or extreme or whatever, rather than marching off in a huff I challenge you to do your own research and come up with your own ideas. Here are some of my thoughts.
Covid-19 Lockdown: Ending the lockdown benefits large companies depending on cheap labor the most. It’s also the billionaires who’s money is invested in these companies, who are both benefiting the most from the current government bailouts as well as have the most to lose from a prolonged downturn of the economy.
5G Services: Mobile services have become too cheap to be profitable. In order to be profitable a mobile subscription has to cost at least about $12/month. Companies that offer cheaper subscriptions are often doing so at a loss, hoping to keep you as a customer for future more expensive services. For example, I have a 4G subscription costing about $5/month with a reasonable package of calling and data. When 5G becomes available in my area, they are going to have to offer a lot more than a faster data connection and a larger package to up-sell me.
5G antennas are very large and ugly, and must be placed closer together than 4G. Setting up the system is very expensive, and requires a lot of energy and finite mined resources. I don’t think it’s very sensible that governments are allowing such a system to be built and clutter the landscape, as long as 4G continues to work well. At least at the moment, I’m not able to see any added value of 5G.
Vaccinations: Just like everything else in the world, all vaccines are different. There can be different reasons to be concerned about safety. There are many different ways of creating vaccines, including GMO and synthetic biology techniques, and there are different reasons for being concerned about the safety of these techniques. There is the much discussed issue of herd immunity, and many vaccines won’t work on their own but require some existing herd immunity. Does this mean the vaccine is faulty? Is it really the responsibility of the rest of us to provide this herd immunity for the vaccine manufacturers?
Many vaccine programs started in the 1960s. What have we learned? Are the vaccines given then still necessary today?
What about the survival rate for diseases like German measles? We know the basic method for treating a Covid-19 patient. Can these methods be used for measles patients, and will this bring the fatality rate down near zero? Clearly the measles vaccine isn’t working properly, because we still have outbreaks, and people who are vaccinated still contract the disease. Would we be better off if everyone was allowed to contract the disease as a child, and stop with the vaccinations? Why or why not — in detail please?
The issues surrounding vaccines are so varied and complex, there’s much more than I can go into here. The subject deserves open discussion, and those who want to discuss it deserve more than just to be shouted at and called an anti-vaxxer. It’s not just an issue for scientists, and the rest of us just have to trust what they say. This is a topic that needs to be explained in a way everyone can understand it, and from an independent perspective. Everyone needs to make their own decisions.
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