Coronavirus and Crackpottery

Well, it didn't take long for the cabin fever to set in, did it?  A couple of weeks of this lock down and the crack pottery is already erupting, with some lunatics attempting to burn down 5G mobile masts because, apparently, Covid-19 is spread via 5G. Well, it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?  Covid-19 originated in China and Chinese companies are involved in building the UK's 5G network.  The final proof is that we didn't have Covid-19 in the UK before they started offering 5G.  Besides, David Icke has endorsed the 'theory', so it must be true, mustn't it?  It is quite disturbing how various (mainly right wing) nut jobs have latched on to the coronavirus crisis as a vehicle for promoting their knee-jerk prejudices.  Just look at the way that many of them are trying to use the situation to advance their Islamaphobic views, with accusations of Muslims refusing to stop worshipping en masse at mosques, thereby helping to spread the virus.  Which might, or might not, be true, but fails to note that many Christian churches, from the US to Russia, have been doing exactly the same thing. But including those facts wouldn't help to stoke up the hate they thrive on.

Then we have those self styled 'libertarians' attempting to undermine the lock down via social media, with their comparisons of it to the Soviet Union or Communist China.  Apparently we should all have the freedom to be infected and potentially die, not to mention see the NHS completely overwhelmed (which would result in thousands more collateral deaths as non-coronavirus patients wouldn't be treated).  But hey, these right wing oafs right to be able to go to McDonalds outweighs public safety.  But the right generally are trying to use this crisis as a rallying call.  Take today's 'clap for Boris' nonsense on Twitter - a rather pathetic attempt to subvert a celebration of the tireless efforts of public sector health workers in this pandemic ('clap for the NHS'), into some kind of mass adulation for a morally degenerate and largely incompetent politician whose dithering delayed the UK's response to coronavirus.  Thankfully, most people ignored it.  Which hasn't stopped the usual crypto-fascists on Twitter lying about how 'where they live' there was a huge response.  (One of these culprits is a budding Josef Goebbels, fond of producing pie charts with the largest section claiming vast numbers of people support the government, with the minority portion labelled 'traitors'). 

But perhaps the worst example I've come across so far of the crisis being used as an excuse to advance extremist views occurred in the pages of my local newspaper, the Crapchester Chronicle.  I say 'pages', but it was actually in the comments section of the paper's website.  The response to a story about a group of men being warned by the police for gathering 'without good reason' on some park land, was quite chilling.  While not stated as such in the story, commenters implied that the men in question were part of the traveller community and proceeded to advocate their 'extermination', seeing the pandemic as a good excuse for genocide.  Now, I know that the kind of reactionary jerks who comment on websites are usually idiots, but this lot astounded me with their stupidity - did they realise that this was a public forum where they were slipping on their swastika armbands for all to see?  Pity we haven't actually turned into some kind of Soviet-era totalitarian state as the 'libertarians' claim - if so, then these bozos who are so stupid as to express Nazi sympathies in public, would be getting the 'knock on the door in the night', subsequently finding themselves in the gulag or being put against a wall and shot.  What's that, you think I'm being too extreme - well, I'm just following the lead of the extreme right, whose airing of their repugnant views seems acceptable to some sections of the press these days.