Whatever It Is, They're Against It

I can't help but feel that these continued anti-lockdown (or whatever they are) protests represent an analogy for modern Britain.  Mobs of ill-informed idiots swarm onto the streets to try and storm buildings and wave placards apparently in protest at something that ended weeks ago.  Or is it lockdown that they are protesting?  Or are they anti-maskers, even though mask wearing in shops and other indoor public spaces is no longer compulsory?  Or are they anti-vaccination, even though vaccines aren't compulsory?  They don't really seem to be sure exactly what it is that they are protesting - they just know that they want to protest about something.  ('Whatever you've got, we're against it!')  Which is rather like the wider population, if election results are anything to go by - they want to protest about something, but can't seem to put their finger on exactly what it is that troubles them, so end up voting for the leader and party making the vaguest, most nebulous promises.  Part of the problem, I'm sure, is that they were told that voting to leave the EU would be a massive protest against - well, whatever it was they wanted to protest about - but the reality of Brexit turns out to have solved nothing, instead, (as predicted by anyone with two brain cells to rub together), it has just created a whole new set of problems.  So, just as the general electorate seem aimless in their allegiences, we have this microcosm in the form of these protesters, who just go around randomly attacking buildings which represent 'authority' and denouncing anyone who supports the 'official' line (ie, the truth), particularly with regard to the pandemic.

The pandemic, of course, is key to these protesters.  It has provided a focus for all manner of crackpots and deluded conspiracy theorists.  Indeed, rather like their QAnon cousins in the States, they are best seen as militant conspiracy theorists who, instead of lurking in internet chat rooms, go out on the streets to spread their word - violently, more often than not.  Just today, we had a mob of them storming what they originally described as 'BBC HQ', actually the old BBC Television Centre which, although it still houses some TV studios, was sold by the BBC several years ago.  Their rationale for attempting to physically attack the BBC was that it has the audacity to report on the pandemic without offering 'alternative' view points, (in other words, unqualified crackpots who think it is all a conspiracy).  While these attempts to try and disrupt objective reporting of the facts wasn't disturbing enough, let's not forget that recent Trafalgar Square rally, where we had some of the chief crackpots being cheered on by a mob as they compared health professionals to Nazi war criminals and called for Nuremberg style trials, (culminating, presumably, in executions for those 'convicted') - all because they simply did their jobs and followed the scientific and medical facts with regard to Covid.  Scary stuff - you can't help but feel that, if not decisively checked, we could end up with lynch mobs of these loons actually trying to assault anyone who disagrees with them.

Checking them, though, would require government action, which seems unlikely as these protesters seem to be intimately entwined with various factions of the far right - the sort of people whose support Johnson has deliberately courted in order to maintain power,  They are the scumbags that all the anti-immigration rhetoric from Priti Patel is meant to appeal to, of course, not to mention the whole Brexit debacle which was designed to draw in UKIP, EDL and other extremist factions.  But to go back to the question of exactly what these idiots are protesting about, the latest trigger point for them seems to be the idea of 'vaccine passports' for entertainment venues and indications that some employers might demand proof of vaccination as a condition of employment for certain jobs.  Which, argue the people who try to silence media outlets that won't spread their lunacy and want to harass those who don't buy their brand of lunacy, is an infringement of their 'freedom'.  Presumably, they also feel that the requirement to hold a valid driving licence in order to drive on public roads, or even to to be employed in certain jobs is also an infringement of their 'freedom'.  (' I can't have a job driving an articulated lorry without an HGV licence - it's a bloody outrage!').  You know, the only crumb of solace I get from all this is the fact that, when vaccines were first introduced in the nineteenth century, an anti-vaxxer movement, using all the same arguments as the current loons, sprang up.  But, thankfully, they faded away.  We can but hope...