Mark Ashby is an independent researcher interested in upland and farmland ecology, and evidence synthesis.
A couple of weeks ago, you may have noticed the stream of headlines suggesting that the refusal to wear a face mask is linked to sociopathy or sociopathic tendencies1-8. These headlines were written in response to the findings of a study published in Personality and Individual Differences suggesting that non-compliance with COVID-19 containment measures is associated with sociopathic traits, such as lower levels of empathy and higher levels of callousness, deceitfulness and risk-taking9. If correct, such a finding would be extremely convenient for the pro-lockdown zealots. Indeed, it is much easier to punish those who are non-compliant if you think they are in some way less human. But are the findings of this study correct? Are those of us who shun the muzzle really more likely to be bare-faced sociopaths? The short answer is no. However, rather than take my word for it, let’s cast a critical eye over the study in question.
A brief description of the study methods
In the preamble, the authors hypothesise that “people with higher levels of antisocial traits and lower levels of empathy would tend to show more difficulty in adhering to the containment measures”. Low levels of empathy and antisocial traits, such as callousness, deceitfulness, and risk-taking, are associated with antisocial personality disorder – sociopathy in common parlance. Empathy levels were evaluated using the Affective and Cognitive Measure of Empathy (ACME) self-report scale10, whereas antisocial traits were assessed using the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) self-report test11. Adherence to COVID-19 containment measures was determined using yet another self-report questionnaire:
- Do you think it is necessary to avoid approaching people as much as possible until the coronavirus situation is controlled? (Social distancing).
- Do you think it is necessary to wash your hands and/or use alcohol gel as many times a day until the coronavirus situation is controlled? (Hygiene).
- Do you think it is necessary to use a facemask (that protects nose and mouth) in Brazil? (Facemask).
Non-adherence to each COVID-19 containment measure was assumed if a respondent answered “no”. I presume that all three self-report questionnaires are anonymous as this is standard practice, but this is never stated by the study authors.
Participants were recruited using a Facebook invitation, and data collection took place on weekends between March 21st to June 29th, 2020. Overall, 1,578 Brazilians between 18 and 73 years of age took part in the study (mean age of 30.97), with just under 70% of the participants being from southern Brazil. During data analysis, the authors organised participants into four groups based on their opinions about COVID-19 containment measures: All = participants who believe that all three containment measures are important (1202 participants); Two = people who believe that two of the containment measures are important (266 participants); One = people who believe that one of the containment measures is important (81 participants); None = people who believe that containment measures are not important (29 participants).
The study isn’t set up to explore the relationship between mask-wearing and sociopathy
The most obvious problem with this study is that it does not actually assess if the participants wear a face mask. Instead, it examines whether participants agree or disagree that face masks, social distancing or increased hygiene are necessary for preventing the spread of COVID-19. It is one thing to agree that such measures are necessary on a questionnaire, but another thing entirely to actually adhere to the measures in your everyday life. There are probably many people who disagree that face masks are necessary but wear one due to social pressure.
Another obvious problem with this study is that, during data analysis, the authors grouped respondents based on how many of the COVID-19 measures they agree with: All, Two, One or None. But, apart from the ‘None’ group, we don’t know which specific COVID-19 measures the respondents agreed or disagreed with. So, at no point do the authors test the relationship between a participant’s personality traits and whether or not they think face masks are necessary.
In short, this study is not set up to explore whether the refusal to wear a facemask is linked to sociopathy or sociopathic tendencies. It’s a pity that none of the journalists reporting on this study noticed these glaringly obvious failings before putting pen to paper.
Methodological bias as far as the eye can see
The keener-eyed among you will have also noticed that this study is plagued with methodological bias (again, missed by the journalists). Firstly, there are the self-report questionnaires, which are known to have multiple flaws. For example, rather than give an honest answer, respondents may provide the answer that they deem to be the most socially acceptable, which is known as social desirability bias12. Thus, many of the respondents in the present study may not agree with social distancing, face masks or increased hygiene, but state that they do because to do so is more socially acceptable (and in everyday life, they do not adhere to these measures). Unfortunately for the study authors, anonymity reduces but does not remove social desirability bias13.
Self-report respondents may also be unable to accurately assess their own personality or interpret the questions being asked. Then there is the issue of subjectivity: questions may have different meanings to different people. The authors provide evidence to suggest that most respondents understood the ACME and PID-5 questionnaires (indicated by relatively high Cronbach’s Alpha internal consistency scores14, 15), but the extent to which the other self-report biases impacted upon the results remains unknown.
Secondly, the use of volunteers recruited by Facebook invitation has resulted in a study sample that “is systematically different from the target population” (a problem known as ascertainment bias16). So, rather than being a representative sample of Brazilian adults, the study sample represents Brazilian adults predominantly from the southern regions of Brazil, who are on Facebook, and are interested in taking part in online surveys. As such, the results of this study cannot be generalised to the Brazilian population or to populations in other countries, and certainly not to people in general.
Thirdly and finally, I question whether the ACME and PID-5 self-report tests are accurate measures of what they purport to measure. The authors state that both tests are valid psychometric tools for measuring empathy and antisocial traits, and provide supportive citations to bolster this claim10, 11. However, when one examines the supporting citations, it becomes clear that the psychometric validity of both tools was tested using a small and biased sample. Moreover, the authors of the study investigating the validity of the PID-5 self-report test openly state that: “additional validity research would be needed before these scales could be deemed appropriate for application in clinical settings”11. Even more damning is the fact that a recent meta-analysis has found that the results of self-report empathy tests are not even close to being comparable to performance-based tests17.
I can personally see an additional problem with these tests in that my responses are likely to vary depending on my mood. If I was in a bad mood, my capacity for empathy would be at its lowest ebb, and, I would probably be more callous than usual. I don’t think I’m unique in this respect, which means that to remove this ‘mood’ effect, the study authors should’ve asked the respondents to complete the ACME and PID-5 self-report tests on two separate occasions: once when they were in a good mood and again when they are in a bad mood. Then, you would average the scores of the two tests for each respondent. But, given that these tests aren’t even valid psychometric tools, this would be a massive waste of time.
Concluding remarks
I’ve known for some time that the majority of journalists, even so-called ‘science correspondents’, are utterly incapable of distinguishing between good and bad science. The Brazilian sociopath study is yet another depressing example of this. Perhaps they do this on purpose because sensationalism sells but cold and critical examination doesn’t. Or maybe the journalists reporting on this study are all lockdown zealots who cannot tolerate non-compliance. Who knows? What I do know is that the Brazilian sociopath study is bunkum and cannot be used to prove a link between the refusal to wear a facemask and sociopathy or sociopathic traits.
References
- https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/refusal-to-wear-a-facemask-linked-to-sociopathy-69zr7hcqh
- https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/refusing-to-wear-face-mask-could-be-sign-of-sociopath-study-a4538456.html
- https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/02/study-refusal-to-wear-face-mask-associated-with-psychopathy-traits.html
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8681001/People-wont-wear-face-masks-likely-sociopaths-study-claims.html
- https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/people-refusing-wear-face-masks-22610789
- https://www.psypost.org/2020/08/sociopathic-traits-linked-to-non-compliance-with-mask-guidelines-and-other-covid-19-containment-measures-57773
- https://metro.co.uk/2020/08/31/researchers-find-people-who-wont-wear-masks-have-anti-social-traits-13203681/
- https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200823/study-finds-sociopaths-less-likely-to-wear-masks
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886920305377?casa_token=QVQMl9-PRIgAAAAA:m6Ze7Ko5_Z0rf1I63c52Nz5K_rjyja6YinhRMf3NO06KGQDhYwLeGWUWLImgiT5x4UeUYmMYfw
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1073191114567941
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3413381/
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781444316568.wiem02057#:~:text=Social%20desirability%20bias%20refers%20to,their%20true%20thoughts%20or%20feelings.
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0759106317710858?casa_token=jFVTBwu8lx4AAAAA%3A0nJAFCXC1W-uxrmlp2iqyRmk_pnHMkSf-hOuU3quJ-SkWsWj6WXl6mc-BxzPaOSCr5PaocJzRKPz
- https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-94-007-0753-5_1494
- https://www.statisticshowto.com/cronbachs-alpha-spss/
- https://catalogofbias.org/biases/ascertainment-bias/
- https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-28377-001
24 thoughts on “Mark Ashby: Are the news headlines true? Is the refusal to wear a facemask linked to sociopathy?”
**I’ve known for some time that the majority of journalists, even so-called ‘science correspondents’, are utterly incapable of distinguishing between good and bad science.**
Good one. So-called journalists are incapable of unvarnished truth as a condition of employment. And that goes for the more thoughtful ones such as Peter Hitchens or Charles Moore as much as windbags like Liddle or Young or Delingpole.
Roger Scruton used to say that the parameters of permissible opinion were wider in socialist era Eastern Europe than in England today. And that’s because the media, ownership of which is concentrated among a tiny number of globalist interests are political agents in their own right.
What counts as ‘right wing’ commentary consists for the most part of flailing at the various Aunt Sallys already set-up by the media. Or in the case of CV-19 the public themselves – “bedwetters” – who are only responding to mass marketing techniques the “right wing” defend in the realm of consumer advertising on “free market” grounds.
Not saying we shouldn’t call out the mask-wearing morons. But it’s a bit rich for likes of James Delingpole to be calling others “cucks” etc when he’s just as cowed in relation to speaking the truth himself.
‘Free speech’ for media sitting ducks like feminists V trans.. Meanwhile men are *imprisoned* for “racism”, e.g. calling a public figure “race traitor”, or merely using the term “immigrants” in a speech denouncing police inertia in a Sunderland rape case where the assailants *were* immigrants. Not a batsqueak from ‘free speech’ lobby.
Lockdown Sceptics, like Breitbart or any other site whose journalists have a media profile can only be understood as ‘controlled opposition’. Call it absence of opposition it amounts to the same thing.
The idea that CV-19 is some kind of ‘mistake’ or miscalculation by officialdom and not part of a global operation presaging something like the CCP Social Credit system of mass surveillance, of which there’s no shortage of evidence from other sources, doesn’t bear scrutiny.
Two weeks ago, interviewed by Bloomberg Larry Fink CEO of BlackRock and Agenda Contributor of World Economic Forum was talking about the ‘Intersect between, COVID, Climate and Racial Justice”.
What can that possibly mean other than that what we call “the left” has been captured by global capital? Which you might already be aware of if you’ve seen the BLM sponsor list. Or George Soros’ interests. Or Tim Cook of Apple donating to SPLC. I won’t even mention Bill Gates…
Even those who haven’t read George Orwell’s 1984 will be familiar with the concept of owning the opposition which he characterised for some reason as “Emmanuel Goldstein”. I posted a comment to that effect alluding to Larry Fink on Lockdown Scepitics but it didn’t get past their ‘free speech’ censorship.
Leftist causes have been co-opted by ‘elites’ as a counter-revolutionary force against ‘populism’, i.e. controlled opposition: Larry Fink could hardly have put it plainer. A demoralised populace with no loyalties greater than to their Netflix or football teams being as congenial to mandarin classes or ‘deep state’ as the purveyors of bread and circuses global capital.
In a presentation on money creation by the excellent Professor Richard Werner recorded two years ago available on YouTube, exposing the centrally planned City of London racket typically known as “capitalism” or even “free markets” by “libertarians” though anything but in reality, he concludes by mentioning that the Bank of England have already designed a microchip to be implanted under the skin.
The ‘bribe’ for compliance will be Universal Basic Income. Some retailers are already using virus as a pretext for insisting on cashless payments. A digital currency guarantees control of money remains with the Banksters.
In UK five banks are responsible for 90% of money. According to Prof. Werner China has a more decentralised and better banking system than ours – ‘better’ meaning more productive investment for small businesses. Why only five? As soon as a “challenger bank” emerges they acquire it: the big fish eat the little ones.
The mighty Gk Chesterton writing a century ago was on the money, anticipating Orwell in many ways:
“Bolshev1sm and Big Business are very much alike; they are both built on the truth that everything is easy and simple if once you eliminate liberty. And the real irreconcilable enemy of both is what may be called Small Business.”
Excellent talk here on UN Agenda 2030. Either she’s lying or we’re being lied to 24/7. Because if she’s telling the truth how could it not be the thread connecting practically every major political issue from CV-19 to Diversity to housing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PrY7nFbwAY&t=1068s
Prof Werner explaining money to FCA bloke: banks do *not* lend money; they are *not* financial intermediaries. City of London in great part is an almighty racket which journalist either don’t understand or are bound to lie about even if they did as a condition of retaining a media profile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC0G7pY4wRE&t=2s
There is a general problem when the media report on studies as they’re not qualified to decide on how seriously the study should be taken. It’s worse at the moment because emotions run high with something like a pandemic which inevitably increases the chance of cognitive bias. Besides, it really doesn’t matter if non-mask wearers are more likely to have sociopathic traits, the important question is whether masks are effective, ineffective or may actually increase virus transmission.
It would be interesting to have a study which investigates whether people who happily acquiesce to mask wearing are more suggestible, gullible and easier to manipulate.
Dene Bebbington – Yes, you are quite right that the most important question is “whether masks are effective, ineffective or may actually increase virus transmission”. It shouldn’t matter a jot if non-compliant people are sociopaths. However, I just used this article to highlight how bad some peer-reviewed science can be and how journalists blindly report study methods and findings without questioning the robustness of the evidence. I could also see the lockdown zealots rubbing their hands with glee about this study, so I felt duty-bound to rebut it (even though I knew it would be shoddy before I read it). I should add that I’m not a social scientist, so it is only a very rudimentary critique of the study.
Mark, it’s a good article and your criticisms of the study’s methodology seem fair, and probably apply to many (most?) social science studies! Unfortunately the media love stuff like this, especially if it suits a particular narrative.
I have come to the conclusion that society, in general and as a whole, is directed by a compliance motive. However, in any group a small percentage are genetically predisposed towards non-compliance. These are the people who are ‘contrarians’, who always question motive and evidence, who Yanis Varoufakis in his wonderful book ‘Adults in the Room’ calls Outsiders, as opposed to Insiders, It is my guess that this minority is usually around 10% of any population.
John Church – I think I may be an ‘outsider’. Do we have a role? Or are we just annoying argumentative gits that the ‘insiders’ see as a problem?
Mark – I think Peter Hitchens said it best : “Always right, never believed.”
Posted a lengthy comment on here yesterday but today it’s vanished.
Funny that in 10 years or however many it is, and thousands of comments I’ve never once been censored by the Spectator. Whereas in a few months out of a dozen or so two comments have already been zapped by free speech champion Hectator who turns out to be more PC than the Telegraph group whom he likes to have a pop at on Twitter.
This is pretty much the same comment posted on Spectator, if anyone wants to see what triggers Hectator but not Spectator. It even garnered a couple of positive replies: ‘Absolutely bang on.’; ‘Great post!’
Surely if it warranted censure at least one reader should have reported it? Some ‘free speech’ venues more easily triggered than others lol:
http://disq.us/p/2bwbauu
Sean, your comment was in the spam bin. I’ve restored it. I’ve never deleted any of your posts. (If anything else went missing it was due to the spam filter.)
Ok thanks Hector. It’s confusing because the comments appear immediately. So if one subsequently disappears, one assumes some intervention. The other vanishing comment was on the thread on aid to Africa. I just attributed its banishment to the gods of Diversity and made no appeal.
I look through the spam bin sometimes (when I remember) for stray real comments, it does sometimes trap genuine comments, but it’s not something I do every day.
Sean Lydon – I have no idea who is and who isn’t controlled opposition or if any one is at all. Indeed, it is an unprovable accusation (or at least, very difficult to prove). What I will say is that my experiences of listening to and reading James Delingpole and Peter Hitchens suggests to me that they say what they think and do not ignore issues or modify what they say to please anyone else. And, until we have strong evidence to the contrary, we have to assume this is the case.
@Sean Lydon (Newmoania?)
What you’re saying is Capitalists/Right are controlling Left
imo Bollocks. Capitalists are paying blackmail to Left. Have you never heard of ‘March Through Institutions”
@Dene +1
@John C
+1 the 10, 80, 10 rule applies to many aspects of group behaviour
Pretty much ‘clear headed’, ‘acquiesce’, ‘freeze/panic’
Example: Bomb exploded at Stormont Hotel ~2am and GPs house 250 yds behind it.
Once I’d calmed mum, grand parents and cousin down they were all “We’d better phone xxx and tell we’re OK”
Me: “No, don’t wake them. If they know, they’d have phoned us”
Once they were back in bed I was out in hotel car park taking photos (police not bothered) I sold to Belfast Telegraph
@Mark A +1s
Mark, thank you. Highlights again the bias and ineptitude in academia & msm – a marketing expert would shred this
My bold
1. Empathy only for those who deserve it – eg excludes illegal immigrants, grief whores, virtue signallers, Gov foreign aid…
2. Yes, but calculated risk/reward and situational aware risk – I’m a biker and adrenaline junkie
Sociopath – No
Peer pressure and fear of being fined/arrested. : my mother, brother, most friends – except bikers
Yet another Fake News/Paper then
Masks: Wear a mask if you want to, but I’m not wearing one
Send to all bed wetters
@Mark Ashby.
Consider the facts: ethnic minority status for those whose forebears have dwelt here for centuries but now have no more right of abode in their ancestral homeland than new arrivals from Laos or Lagos, is mathematically guaranteed.
2060 is Oxford demographer David Coleman’s deadline prediction. Gavin Boby, using demographic data from Department of Education reckons it will come a lot sooner and gives 2035 as the critical date, since that’s when indigenous schoolchildren will be in the minority.
The fact is you won’t find a word in any media publication, broadcast, online or print contradicting the multiculturalist orthodoxy, marketed to the masses as Diversity / ‘anti-racism’: that, uniquely, ethnic Europeans should not only embrace their impending minority status but be condemned as “racist” for daring even to notice it.
No deviation from the orthodoxy on any media journalist’s personal social media account either. In a recent purge of patriots on social media, Katie Hopkins was the best known of the casualties, who’d already been banished from the mainstream.
Media journalists can’t speak the truth as a condition of employment. It’s no different with MPs. To oppose the orthodoxy is to be denounced on front page of Daily Mail etc as “racist” and excluded from public life.
I quoted billionaire Larry Fink above speaking of “The intersect between Covid, Climate, and Racial Justice”. Feel free to interpret his words other than those causes, i.e. “the left” being co-opted by ‘elites’ or global capital against ‘populism’.
The BLM sponsor list is a roll call of big business. Check out website of WEF or of any major financial or transnational institution. They’re all the same.
What you won’t find is any critical interpretation of why Larry’s words could just as easily have come from the lips of Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer in any mainstream publication.
I quoted GKC on identity between Bolshevism and Capitalism, the State and Big Business: that economic power begets political power.
Here he is again:
“Thirty or forty years ago a great newspaper might be owned by about twenty tolerably rich men. But today it is not a question of twenty men owning one newspaper, but of one man owning twenty newspapers.”
He’s on the same ground here as Orwell on controlling or owning the opposition. Ditto Roger Scruton on there being greater divergence of permissible opinion in Soviet era Eastern Europe than in England. That ownership of capital or the ‘mode of production’ is not in and of itself politically decisive is also a theme of Scruton’s in his The Meaning of Conservatism.
The propaganda reaches its height in the Daily Mail, possibly the trashiest, most Cultural Marxist publication, leavened with just enough ‘populist’ red meat to antagonise ‘”the left”‘. The underlying themes are identical with Orwell’s. Even if they assume different forms.
And that’s the basic template for *all* the media. Story selection calibrated for its target market but never deviating too far from the orthodoxy. ‘Right wing’ media consisting of attacking Aunt Sallys, themselves media creations, like Covid, e.g. Ash / Afua / Yasmin / Kehinde etc who are accused of being “cretins” by Rod Liddle or “racist” by Toby Young in lieu of any political analysis.
No corresponding defence of national or European ethnic identity is permitted. Indeed anti-Islamic civic nationalist parties advocating racial equality, that the law should be enforced equally are demonised as “far-right”.
The patented method is ‘balance’: the middle-ground fallacy where the mid-point between two opposing views must be the truth. What’s the middle-ground between Ash / Afua / Yasmin / Kehinde and Toby / James / Rod / Brendan ? Answer: the guaranteed ethnic minority status of the latters’ children in their ancestral homeland.
The basic premise that native Europeans should have no more right of abode in Europe than Africans or Asians, that European nations alone should in principle be available for settlement to all peoples, passes without question.
The criminal justice system has long been co-opted as agents of political enforcement. Hence operational anomalies: LGBT: Hugs; XR: Dancing; BLM: Obeisance; Patriots: Truncheons. Journalists, de facto collaborators in the globalist project of dissolving nationhood as form of political loyalty for Europeans, are the propaganda counterpart of law enforcement.
Gavin Boby reckons Muslims are set for majority status by 2050. One wonders how this will play out for their progeny?
Demographic facts here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Le1iroWaf8
BLM / Antifa sponsors:
https://conservativeus.com/the-full-list-here-are-the-269-companies-who-are-supporting-blm-antifa-riots/
@PCR
Not sure what your point is. It’s plain to see that Capital is far left / Cultural Marxist – choose your own term. Call billionaires ‘socialist’ – who cares about the label?
The plutocratic system today whereby a tiny number of billionaires have a stranglehold over public discourse via ownership of the media, and finance via The City, defies these categories.
Arguing against economic reductionism, Roger Scruton suggested that economics stands to politics as neurology to personal affection. No economic model in and of itself could account for political identity, anymore than a brain scan for friendship.
Even if the models capture the economic facts, they can’t comprehend their *meaning* for the person concerned. Scruton defines such loyalties as “transcendent bonds of allegiance”, i.e. ties of membership whose significance can’t be reduced to any economic arrangement.
What’s defended as “capitalism” or more absurdly “free markets” today in England would be better called an almighty racket, structurally identical to “socialism” in the sense of a tiny elite parasitic on the masses. Listen to Professor Werner explain money creation (link above) and tell me otherwise.
No ‘model’ whether ‘capitalist’ or ‘socialist’ or ‘public’ or ‘private’ could in itself be ‘correct’. But people are political, i.e. bound to polarise and these terms serve as symbols for ‘ideological’ rivalries regardless of the reality.
In the 60s and 70s prices and incomes were determined by bureaucrats and any number of enterprises were state owned or “nationalised” which today are in “private” hands. To that extent “the economy” was “socialist”.
Notwithstanding that concentration of economic power under bureaucratic control if you went down the high street far more businesses were likely to be owned by the man behind the counter than today. And that’s because capital naturally accumulates: the big fish eat the little ones.
I knew no one as a child at school or at home who didn’t own their own home on a single income. So how can people have been worse off “under socialism”, when those of higher status today can’t afford a home on *two* incomes?
According to Prof. Werner China has a more decentrlaised and better banking system than ours where five banks control 90% of money. By ‘better’ he means for smaller businesses and the economy generally, market responsive with more money invested productively in SME sector rather than tied up in assets. Why are there no smaller banks? Because as soon as a “challenger bank” succeeds it’s acquired by the big boys.
Why do businesses sponsor BLM and any number of revolutionary movements dedicated to “dismantling capitalism”? BLM sponsorship list is a roll call of global capital. Why do men like Tim Cook of Apple or billionaire financier George Soros fund likes of SPLC and Marxist causes?
Globalist / ‘elite’ v nationalist / ‘populist’ defines a political rivalry around which the same interests coalesce. That they’re often mutually antagonistic doesn’t alter that. Trotskyite ‘Refugees Welcome’ ‘socialists’ are on same side as global capital who they otherwise imagine themselves opposed. Similarly sexual deviants / feminists etc side with Islamic puritans.
People can desire the same outcome or share the same foe for different motives or agendas. Russia and US fought on same side then turned their fire on each other. Splintering rivalries is the norm throughout human existence at every level. European teenagers siding with black power activists is no different in principle.
Globalism is de facto coalition of interests whose unifying principle is the dissolution of the nation state as principle of political identity for Europeans peoples, such that Europeans should have no more right of abode in their own homelands than new arrivals from across the globe.
Left wing causes have been captured by global capital. Owning the opposition is a form of insurance. BLM/Antifa can be understood as counter-revolutionary, i.e. to resist ‘populism’ which threatens ‘elites’.
BLM is racial resentment mobilised in the service of ‘globalist’ interests. Which isn’t to say the resentment isn’t real, only that it’s being exploited for ends which bear no relation to the motives of the rioters and looters themselves or their more earnest ‘intellectual’ soulmates.
Transforming the West / Christendom into an amorphous mass of consumers with no shared loyalties greater than to their Netflix or football teams is as amenable to public sector professional classes as the purveyors of bread and circuses. Thus global capital and ‘deep state’ in political lockstep.
No one’s put the point more pithily than GK Chesterton writing a century ago, whose words have never been more prescient:
“Bolshev1sm and Big Business are very much alike; they are both built on the truth that everything is easy and simple if once you eliminate liberty. And the real irreconcilable enemy of both is what may be called Small Business.”
Sean Lydon – I know of several journalists who have highlighted the issue of demographics in the UK. Two notable examples are Douglas Murray and Peter Hitchens. Douglas talks about it at length within “The Strange Death of Europe” and Peter Hitchens discusses the issue of demographics here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2248707/Peter-Hitchens-The-new-census-reveals-Britain-unrecognisable-grandparents.html. And has also written hundreds of articles about mass and illegal immigration (just search his indexed blog).
Also, platforms like Hector’s magazine give people with unorthodox views the perfect opportunity to put forward their views by submitting an article.
Finally, the unbalanced treatment by the police of different political movements is a disgrace and is one of the most worrying developments over recent years.
@Sean
One can if one looks:
Beitbart, DM, Express, Spectator, Spiked, Telegraph; Fox News, Rebel Media, Sky News Aus to name some
Regarding DM – there’s an ocean separating the opinion writers and the copy n paste sensationalist “news” media studies children
Businesses have been hijacked by Left staff – it’s the age old problem of managers working for their interest, not the owners (eg RNLI). Red Bull is a stand out exception.
That’s all.
If you want a philosophy debate, ask Hector to publish your article
@Mark A
Spot on
Feel free to link a single article contradicting the orthodoxy that Europeans should have no more right of abode in Europe than Africans or Asians. The only one I know of remotely broaching the issue was from Raheem Kassam, author of ‘Enoch Was Right’, on Breitbart in 2018.
Otherwise, for Breitbart, Daily Mail etc Britain might as well be 51st state of US. Below the line Breitbart and Spectator are nationalist. Not above. They might be ‘right wing’ but racial equality is “far-right” in media speak.
The very types who tacitly condone their own ethnic displacement are usually first in line to defend ethnic nationalism for non-Europeans as “self-determination”. But no one defends it for Europeans. Not in the media. Civic nationalists who stand for racial equality are denounced as “racist” / “far-right” / “Islamophobic”.
One man Jake Hepple was not only sacked from his job for flying a White Lives Matter banner as players ‘took the knee’ for Black Lives Matter but the Sun and Daily Mail then went for his girlfriend and got *her* fired, too. Kin punishment is a characteristic of communist regimes, e.g. North Korea, China and Russia in recent years. Here in Britain public shaming of Diversity transgressors is routine procedure for our ‘free press’.
Needless to say not a batsqueak from ‘free speech’ nomenklatura like James Delingpole or Toby Young who are remarkably selective in their causes, as anyone with a media profile must be. How could they go for their own employers? A journalist being for ‘free speech’ is like a brothel-keeper being for chastity.
Doubtless Toby Young et al are doing the best they can in the circumstances given their media careers. But that shouldn’t stop us calling them on their half-truths and duplicity. It’s only free speech where nothing’s at stake: free speech for “trans” etc; nationalists can shut-up for the sake of Diversity.
Indeed Charles Moore attacked Hepple in his Spectator column. The same Charles Moore who contributed to the Salisbury Review in the early 80s when about a third of its content would be unprintable in today’s climate, author of ‘The Old People of Lambeth’ (1982) whose publication now would find its author ‘cancelled’ if not imprisoned. Wish I’d kept hold of my old Salisbury Reviews from the 80s lol.
The media frame Young / Delingpole / Liddle etc whose politics would have been communist to my parents as ‘right wing’. Of course they *are* ‘right wing’ compared to Ash / Afua / Kehinde. Hitchens and Moore have some claim to being conservative but not the others who are liberal / libertarian.
The Covid Aunt Sally equivalent of Ash / Afua for ‘free speech’ nomenklatura is calling people ‘bedwetters’ or attacking the government. The bigger globalist agenda can’t be mentioned, i.e. Larry Fink’s “Intersect between Covid, Climate and Racial Justice.”
Similarly why Ash / Afua are afforded such prominence in the first place passes without question. Never mind that their political constituency, what Enoch Powell called “the alien wedge” will soon outnumber natives.
@Pcar “Businesses have been hijacked by Left staff”
This calls to mind journalists like Rod Liddle asking why universities are “caving in to the mob”. As if university administrators were crusty old conservatives… As if their students’ politics had dropped from the sky…
A conference for university admin staff: opening speech by Professor Dame Janet Beer was the usual Cultural Marxist fare. Another talk, by the People Director of Virgin Money, demonstrating their commitment to Diversity, LGBT etc was no different in substance. The event was sponsored by Banks, Law firms, Tech companies. They’re all the same.
Commerce generally is left wing. Just before the ‘lockdown’ I attended a presentation at the Institute of Directors on LinkedIn for Small Businesses. As an example of an unappealing image the lady presenter put a headshot of Trump on the screen. She knew her audience. There were even a few boos.
That’s the norm at the IoD where it’s very right-on politically. if you’re Brexit / nationalist etc you leave your political views at the door. And that’s the norm for business in London, not just IoD. I used to pay subs to FSB (Federation of Small Businesses), based in Blackpool, but got weary of incessant Diversity / LGBT propaganda.
Why shouldn’t businesses, anymore than governments be Cultural Marxist? An atomised mass of individuals makes as much sense for commerce as for government. The corporate leftist stance of capital couldn’t be more evident than in the BLM sponsor list (link above).
And there’s no shortage of Uk businesses not on that list who’ve expressed support for BLM, LGBT wimmin etc. Smaller businesses follow the ‘corporate’ fashion.
‘Win the argument, lose the sale’ is an iron law in sales. In other words, people will sooner forfeit a commercial advantage than lose face. That’s to say, on a greater scale, people first and foremost desire political dominion. After all, once basic needs are answered for money or material gain is in the service of status.
Economic liberals imagine businesses should somehow be on their side ideologically. At the same time ‘free market’ theory is premised on siding with the consumer interest over the producer…
@Sean
Toby Young defended and had reinstated the charity director in Manchester who was sacked for anti-BLM views. He had another win last week too.
You are correct about msm, gov etc being too immigrant equality, anti-white etc – I’m in the “when in Rome, do as” camp. IoD & CBI were hijacked decades ago. However, imo you go beyond reason into fantasy
Please stop this diversion (trolling) from what we’re discussing: The Covid-19 Farce. Plus the impending Martial Law over an infection partly responsible for ~1% of ~1,689 daily deaths
@Pcar
“Far-right”, i.e. indigenous men daring to resist mathematically guaranteed minority status in their own land are routinely persecuted and imprisoned for “racist” speech. An outfit calling itself ‘Free speech Union’ remain silent.
That they’ve defended people in other cases doesn’t alter that. By definition free speech must be for all. The one and only group being imprisoned for incorrect speech are ignored by the Free Speech Union. It’s a sham but what do you expect?
The media are an exercise in systematic lying and deceit. CV-19 hysteria relies on media duplicity and distortion. None of them tell the truth.
Every media channel’s Covid coverage follows a comparable pattern. They all give a platform to so-called ‘sceptics’. The entire debate centres round whether ‘lockdown’ is warranted or not.
The middle-ground fallacy model is identical to “immigration” or “anti-racism”. In place of Afua / Ash / Kehinde (critical race theory) v James / Toby / Rod (guaranteed minority status for indigenous), it’s Larry / Patrick / Boris (Lockdown) v Carl / John / Toby (effects of virus don’t warrant such measures).
The broader globalist agenda passes without mention. The parameters of the debate are fixed around the disputed medical facts. What Larry Fink, Agenda Contributor to WEF and CEO of BlackRock Inc has spoken of as the “Intersect between Covid, Climate and Racial Justice” is exempt from scrutiny.
Thus anyone anyone invoking the globalist agenda can be framed as “cranks” or “conspiracy theorists”. ‘Lockdown Sceptics’ / “conspiracy theory” stands to Covid as ‘Free Speech Union’ / “racism” to Diversity.
‘Right wing’ journalists are complicit in what they ostensibly oppose. They can’t tell the truth as a condition of employment because, as with the demographic catastrophe, their plutocrat employers are its principal agants.
I tend to pick out Toby / James / Rod because I’m a Spectator subscriber, a publication which has gone from moderate conservative to globalist / communist over recent years.
But all media journalists are bound to be fakes. As a condition of employment they must play both sides.
Delingpole and Young were cheerleaders for Boris a while ago. Even though he’d scarcely disguised his globalist / communist credentials as Mayor of London, openly siding with the Banksters, even calling for an amnesty for people here illegally when even going by official figures native births will be a minority before the end of the decade; British schoolchildren an ethnic minority in British schools by 2035.
Now he’s “not the Boris we knew” and is “betraying his libertarian ideals” or somesuch.
Delingpole calls the most centralised financial system in the world, the City of London, “free market”. But Banksters seek to abolish cash. What could be more communist that that?
A digital currency is the abolition of free trade. Without cash we can’t buy and sell from each other freely at all. The virus is about decimating small business. But this isn’t reported on because its prime movers, as with our demographic displacement, are the media corporations themselves.
@Sean Lyndon.
If you are on Twitter, please post your ‘handle’.
Regards.
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