Book Review: They Thought They Were Free

DJM, Going Postal — *A well-reviewed tour de force.*
They Thought They Were Free Gif,
Daniel Felsted – Public Domain

Sorry, this isn’t a book review……………As such. It is, however, an attempt to highlight the similarities between life in Germany during the early 1930s & life in the UK in 2021.

In 1955, Milton Mayer published They Thought They Were Free. Drawn from years of post-war interviews, the book sought to understand & explain how ten ordinary, law-abiding Germans had become Nazis. “Decent, hard-working, ordinarily intelligent and honest men,” Mayer wrote of the Nazis, to whom he refers as “friends” throughout, “did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now.” One of the more telling quotes from the book.

“Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered on those great maxims of Ovid “Principiis obsta” and “Finem respice” — ’Resist the beginnings’ and “Consider the end.” But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings.”……..

And so.

Back to la situation actuelle in 2021 Britain, where the New Normals are discussing the Unvaccinated Question.

What is to be done with us? No, not those who haven’t been “vaccinated” yet………….Us.

The “Covidiots.”

The “Covid Deniers.”

The “Science Deniers.”

The “Reality Deniers.”

Those who refuse to get “vaccinated,” ever. There is no place for us in New Normal society. The New Normals know this and so do we. To them, we are a suspicious, alien tribe of people. We do not share their ideological beliefs. We do not perform their loyalty rituals, or we do so only grudgingly, because they force us to do so. We traffic in arcane “conspiracy theories,” like “pre-March-2020 science,” “natural herd immunity,” “population-adjusted death rates,” “Sweden,” “Florida,” “Texas” and other beyond the pale heresies. They do not trust us. We are strangers among them. They suspect we feel superior to them. They believe we are conspiring against them, that we want to deceive them, confuse them, cheat them, pervert their culture, abuse their children, contaminate their precious bodily fluids, and perpetrate God knows what other horrors. So they are discussing the need to segregate us, how to segregate us, when to segregate us, in order to protect society from us. In their eyes, we are to be considered criminals, or, worse, an infestation. In the words of someone (I can’t quite recall who, but I’m pretty sure she’s 25), “getting rid of the Unvaccinated is not a question of ideology. It is a question of cleanliness,” or something like that. (Note to SB: I’ll have to hunt down and fact-check that quote. I might have taken it out of context). In Israel, Estonia, Denmark, Germany, the US and other New Normal countries, they have already begun the segregation process. In the UK it’s just a matter of time. The WEF, WHO, EU, and other transnational entities are helping to streamline the new segregation system, which, according to the WEF, “will need to be harmonised by a supranational body, such as the WHO, to ensure that the process is ethical”.

In Germany, the government is considering banning us from working away from home. At the Berliner Ensemble (the theatre founded by Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel, lifelong opponents of totalitarianism and fascism), we are banned from attending New Normal performances. In the USA, we are banned from universities & our children are banned from attending school. In New York, the new “Excelsior Pass” will allow New Normals to attend cultural and sports events (and patronize bars and restaurants, eventually) secure in the knowledge that the Unvaccinated have been prevented from entering or segregated in an “Unvaccinated Only” section. Whoever said history doesn’t repeat itself (but it does rhyme) will note that the pass system, was designed by IBM, (OK, technically, it was Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft, IBM’s Nazi-Germany subsidiary that was responsible for the first nationwide attempt to trace minorities & dissidents using automated search tools to enable rapid & efficient searches of databases) and launched this past weekend to considerable fanfare. And this is only the very beginning. The Green Pass in Israel is the model for the future which makes sense, in a sick, fascistic-apartheid kind of way. OK… OK, I know what the New Normals are thinking. They’re thinking I’m “misleading” people again. That I’m exaggerating. That this isn’t really segregation, and certainly nothing like “medical apartheid.”

After all (as the New Normals will sternly remind me), no one is forcing us to get “vaccinated.” If we choose not to, or can’t for medical reasons, all we have to do is submit to a “test” — you know, the one where they ram that 9-inch swab up into your sinus cavities — within 24 hours before we want to go out to dinner, or attend the theatre or a sports event, or visit a museum, or attend a university, or take our children to school or a playground, and our test results will serve as our “vaccine passports!” We just present them to the appropriate Covid Compliance Officer, and (assuming the results are negative, of course) we will be allowed to take part in New Normal society just as if we’d been “vaccinated.” Either way, “vaccine” or “test,” the New Normal officials will be satisfied, because the tests and passes are really just stage props. The point is the display of mindless obedience. Even if you take the New Normals at their word, if you are under 65 and in relatively good health, getting “vaccinated” is more or less pointless, except as a public display of compliance and belief in the official Covid-19 narrative (the foundation stone of the New Normal ideology). Even the high priests of their “Science” confess that it doesn’t prevent you from spreading “the plague”, and the PCR Tests are virtually meaningless, as even the WHO has admitted. In contrast to the “vaccine” and the “test” themselves, the forced choice between them is not at all meaningless. It is no accident that both alternatives involve the violation of our bodies, literally the penetration of our bodies. It doesn’t really matter what is in the “vaccines” or what “results” the “tests” produce. The ritual is a demonstration of power, the power of the New Normals to control our bodies, to dominate them, to violate them, psychologically and physically.

Now, don’t get all excited, my “conspiracy theorist” frens. I haven’t gone full-on-howlin’-at-the-moon-QAnon just yet. Besties Gates and Schwab are not sitting around together on Georgie Soros’ yacht, being served adrenochrome cocktails & dreaming up ways to abuse people’s noses. This stuff is built into the structure of the system, a standard feature of totalitarian societies, cults, churches, self-help groups, and … well, human society, generally. Being forced to repeat a physical action which only makes sense within a specific ideology reinforces that ideology within us. There is nothing inherently diabolical about this. It is a basic socialization technology. It is how we socialize our children. It is why we conduct weddings, baptisms, and bar mitzvahs. It is how we turn young men and women into soldiers. It is how actors learn where to stand & how to present their lines. It is why the Nazis held all those rallies. It is why our “democracies” hold elections. It is also basic ceremonial magic … but that’s a topic for a different time.

The issue, at the moment, is the Unvaccinated Question, and the public rituals that are being performed to make the New Normal ideology “reality,” and what to do about those of us who refuse to participate in those rituals, who refuse to forswear “old normal” reality and convert to New Normalism so that we can function in society without being segregated, criminalized, or “diagnosed” as “sociopathic” or otherwise psychiatrically disordered. For we “conspiracy-theorizing reality deniers,” there is no getting around this dilemma. This isn’t Central Europe in the early 1930s. There isn’t anywhere to emigrate to … OK, there is, temporarily, in some of the US states that have been staging rebellions, and other such “old normal” oases, but how long do you think that will last? They’re already rolling out the “mutant variants” and God only knows what will happen when the long-term effects of the “vaccines” kick in. No, for most of we denizens of the global capitalist empire, it looks like the New Normal is here to stay – for now. So, unless we are prepared to become New Normals, we are going to have to stand and fight. It is going to get rather ugly, and personal, but there isn’t any way to avoid that. Given that many New Normals are our friends and colleagues, or even members of our families, it is tempting to believe that they will “come to their senses,” that “this is all just a hysterical overreaction,” and that “everything will go back to normal soon.” This would be a monumental error on our parts … very possibly a fatal error.

Totalitarian movements, when they reach this stage, do not simply stop on their own. They continue to advance toward their full expressions, ultimately transforming entire societies into distorted mirror-images of themselves, unless they are opposed by serious resistance. There is a window at the beginning when such resistance has a chance. That window is still open, but it is closing, & closing fast. I can’t tell you how best to resist, but I can tell you it starts with seeing things clearly, and calling things, and people, exactly what they are. So let’s not make the same mistake that other minorities have made throughout history when confronted with a new totalitarian ideology. See the New Normals for what they are, & what they have collectively become a part of, because it is the movement that is in control now, not the rational individuals they used to be. Above all, recognize where this is headed, where totalitarian movements are always headed.

No, the Unvaccinated are not the Jews and the New Normals are not (all) wearing the latest Hugo Boss, nor are they waving big Swastika flags, but totalitarianism is totalitarianism, regardless of what Goebbelslite-Hancockian Big Lies, Ideology, and Official Enemies it is selling. The historical context and costumes change, but its ruthless trajectory remains the same. It’s now just over a year since our initial descent into this morass, we’ve moved from “3-week sombrero squashing”, and “Protecting the NHS”………..now the New Normals are presenting us with a “choice” of two bitter pills ………..