The following article is extracted from John Carpay's new book, 'Corrupted by Fear,' to be published January 21st. For further details, to order and to read more, please click here. John Carpay is the President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
Superficially, the appeals to “public health” and “saving lives” that were heard in Canada from 2020 onwards sounded much different from the nationalist appeals made by fascist movements in various European countries in the 1920s and 1930s. While external justifications for suppressing civil liberties differ greatly, the substance of Canada’s authoritarian, ideological and fanatical response to Covid features numerous characteristics of fascism.
Starting in March 2020, politicians, government officials, and media created a sense of overwhelming crisis. They presented Covid as beyond the reach of traditional solutions by falsely portraying Covid as a far graver danger than what it was. A permanent state of emergency that lasted for years prevented debate and shut down democratic deliberation. Every individual was expected — and legally required — to subordinate her or his own interests to the “public interest” as defined by government. In the name of the state-orchestrated public health crusade to “save lives,” our federal and provincial governments violated our individual freedoms of association, expression, conscience, religion, travel, mobility, bodily autonomy, and peaceful assembly. In the Justice Centre’s constitutional challenges to lockdowns, governments across Canada admitted in court that lockdowns and vaccine passports did violate Charter rights and freedoms. Governments argued that these violations were justified.
Demonizing the bad minority group
The victim group consisted of the majority of Canadians who complied with health orders that did not stop (and could not have stopped) Covid from spreading everywhere, and to everyone.
Society’s “internal enemies” consisted of a minority of Canadians who refused to submit to the violation of their Charter freedoms. The most despicable offenders, worthy of hatred and exclusion, were Canadians who exercised their Charter right to bodily autonomy by declining to get injected with a substance for which no long-term safety data existed. Members of the victim (majority) group felt entitled to heap verbal abuse on them, spy on them, report them to the police, and declare publicly that their neighbours were not worthy of receiving medical treatment.
Hatred or contempt for the minority resulted in students being kicked out of universities, and bread-winners being forced into unemployment, solely for exercising their Charter right to bodily autonomy. Embracing ideology with fervent enthusiasm, some Canadians excluded their own family members from Christmas dinners, birthdays, graduation ceremonies, weddings, funerals, and other family gatherings. Individual rights and freedoms were denounced as a corrosive threat to purity.
Forced participation in a grand societal project
From March 2020 onwards, governments required Canadians to live their lives according to the following beliefs:
• Covid is an unprecedented, unusually deadly killer that threatens all Canadians;
• Debate, dissent and democracy stand in the way of addressing this threat;
• Our Charter rights and freedoms stand in the way of addressing this threat;
• Lockdowns and vaccines are the only solution to deal with this threat;
• The most important thing in life (or the only important thing) is to fight against Covid;
• We know that lockdowns save lives, so we need no evidence to support this;
• We know that the vaccine is safe and effective, so we need no evidence to support this;
• Human rights and constitutional freedoms must be repudiated for the sake of public health, the common good, and saving lives;
• We must submit to authoritarian leadership;
• Everyone must join this global crusade; and
• We are all in this together.
The ideology of Covidism
An ideology is a belief system that exalts — fervently — one single aim over everything else. An ideology sees only one evil, puts forward one explanation for injustice, and identifies one villain.
The ideology calls for the use of coercive state power to crush that singular evil, injustice or villain, and tolerates no dissent from people who think differently. Ideologues are simplistic, failing to consider the complexity of reality. Impervious to contradicting facts and arguments, ideologues are firmly convinced that they have attained a higher plain of knowledge.
For example, the ideology of communism explained reality as a class struggle between good, oppressed workers and evil, oppressive capitalists. Nothing was allowed to stand in the way of eliminating the capitalists and building a workers' paradise. In pursuit of this singular goal, communists across the globe destroyed religious freedom, private property, freedom of expression, the right to vote in free elections, the right of parents to raise and educate their own children, and other individual rights and freedoms.
Communists like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot murdered tens of millions of innocent people. Millions of Ukrainian kulaks (successful peasant farmers) were starved to death by Stalin in the early 1930s, in what became known as the Holodomor. In like manner, in Germany in the 1930s, National Socialism explained reality as a racial struggle between Aryans and non-Aryans (Jews especially) and promised a glorious future for Germany under a new thousand-year Reich.
Under the ideology of Covidism, everything had to give way to stopping the spread of a virus. Nothing else mattered any longer: not our mental and emotional health (which depends on connecting in person with friends, family members, colleagues, co-religionists, etc.); not the strength of our immune system (which depends on good mental and physical health, which in turn depends on going to the gym, watching and playing team sports, and living in a state of joy and peace rather than a state of fear and anxiety); not our economic prosperity, which is necessary to providing for widows, orphans, and other vulnerable members of society); not our essential need for hugs and other wholesome human touch; not a functional medical system that responds equitably to the needs of all patients; not our Charter rights and freedoms, or the amazing benefits of living in a free society; and not the rule of law, which serves to protect citizens from government overreach
The above article is extracted from John Carpay's new book, 'Corrupted by Fear,' to be published January 21st. For further details, to order and to read more, please click here. John Carpay is the President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms..