One need only look at the Extinction Rebellion phenomenon to see how bizarrely and hysterically disconnected from reality and reason the elite really are. Extinction Rebellion, and its Climate Jugend led by the odious Greta Thunberg, is an elite obsession par excellence: wealthy, privileged, private-school toffs shouting and shaking their clammy fists at working class people trying to make their daily commute in order to pay their rising electricity bills (courtesy of the same climate-obsessed elites).
Extinction Rebellion is also classically elitist in that its proponents are absolutely convinced that they’re not just better off than the hoi polloi, but actually better. After all, they’re better educated, richer and oh-so-much-more-cosmopolitan than the herds of knuckle-dragging plebs.
Except… the real sheeple are the panic-stricken lemmings of the elite.
Last week, the world stock markets suffered their worst week since the financial crisis in 2008, with $6 trillion wiped from shares and, in some markets, a sell-off at a rate not seen since the Great Depression almost a century ago. Why? Because global investors are in a panic about the potential economic fallout from the coronavirus epidemic.
Many commentators are making the point that this is mad. Ross Clark argues convincingly in the Spectator that the ‘most dangerous thing about coronavirus is the hysteria’. Philip Aldrick, economics editor of The Times, agrees. He says it is the ‘panic we should fear more than the virus itself’.
In their excellent books, Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear and Panicology, Dan Gardner and Simon Briscoe/Hugh Aldersly-Williams respectively show that much of modern political and social movement is driven by fear and unreason. Michael Crichton argued explicitly, in State of Fear, that the global warming panic is deliberately driven to keep people fearfully obedient.
But rather than ‘stupid’ ordinary people running around like headless chooks, it’s the supposedly ‘superior’, ‘educated’ elite who are doing the most panic-stricken damage.
This madness is not being driven by the ‘low-information’, knuckle-dragging, gullible ignorant masses, but by the information-rich, university-educated and refined global business and government elites.
The contrast between the responses to coronavirus from the elites and ordinary people has been stark. Even as the level of panic in the mainstream reporting around coronavirus has risen, ordinary people have just gotten on with their lives. The supposedly well-informed elites, who often accuse the ‘dumb’ masses of being vulnerable to hysteria and ‘fake news’, have themselves been prodded into panic. Meanwhile, where they are not in lockdowns, ordinary people are still going to work, commuting, going to bars… They’re simply getting on with their lives, while taking note of the potential risks.
The elites are in free-falling panic; like a herd of wildebeest, panicked by the sight of a predator and rushing blindly across crocodile-infested waters, they have sparked a potential global economic meltdown. Meanwhile, we see stoic common sense, simple but profound wisdom, on the part of the ‘great unwashed’.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/03/02/coronavirus-and-the-madness-of-elites/
Just as much as climate change, coronavirus is a genuine problem; but it’s a manageable one and far, far from the biggest threat human beings face. Coronavirus is almost certainly not going to lead to mass deaths, especially in the West, let alone anything resembling a mediaeval plague. In the meantime, work on treatments and vaccines is well advanced.
As has happened repeatedly in recent years, such as in the case of the Fukushima nuclear accident, the panic is far, far deadlier than the supposed “threat”.
It’s the panic of the elites which is doing the damage, not the “complacency” of the masses. You can lead a fool by the nose through a Marketing or Social Science degree, but you can’t make them think.
To paraphrase Orwell, one has to belong to the intelligentsia to panic over something like this. No common person could be such a fool.
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