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The Rise of Dissident Nation |
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By Jeffrey Tucker |
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Commentary
Sitting in a Phoenix, Arizona, hotel ballroom, looking out over the 600 people gathered for a dissident medical convention, I wondered briefly if it was all real or I was just dreaming. Each of these people came long distances to learn about all the ways in which the medical community betrayed them with vaccine mandates, shots they didn’t need that ended up hurting and killing so many. But there was more than that on the table. It was about betrayal in general, how the elites from all walks of life got swept up in a wild campaign against liberty and rights over four years. The episode has left a desert of demoralization and destruction. And here was everyone gathered to recover and rebuild, each person representing hundreds and many thousands more besides. In response to the crisis, everyone has made huge changes in their lives. They have moved to new states and homes, put kids in different schools, and started attending different houses of worship. They are shopping in new places, reading alternative news outlets, and seeing only doctors they trust. They have built up new networks around themselves and gotten together with others to do the same. And it’s not just this one convention for the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). It’s Brownstone Institute events, and the Children’s Health Defense, and many other orgs, hundreds of them too, mostly new and replacing the old institutions that failed so badly in the past several years. It’s the tremendous growth of The Epoch Times, which rose from the ashes of cancellation and demonetization to become a serious mover/shaker in mass media. It’s all a tremendous tribute to the human impulse to survive and thrive despite everything. And all these gatherings and writings are making a gigantic difference. They have replaced demoralization with hope, sadness with solidarity, and despair with the determination to overcome and win. The experience of the last four years—from lockdowns and closure to vaccine mandates and mass surveillance—blew open a once-hidden machinery of control at all levels of society, nationally and globally. This goliath has invaded medicine, tech, media, large corporations, and, above all else, government at all levels. The devastation for liberty and rights, even the future of civilization, has been nothing short of traumatic for the whole of humanity. And yet the difference is that now we know about it. We are no longer naive. We no longer simply trust that all will work out in the end, that everything is essentially fine. We have discovered otherwise. There are two possible responses: give up or fight back. Many have chosen the path of fighting, and they are doing it with intelligence, discipline, and moral courage. Yes, the vaccine was for many the turning point. There was a media campaign without precedent to make everyone get it. All the movie stars, recording stars, ex-presidents, and every trusted news anchor, doctor and scientist, and essentially everyone who was anyone, endorsed this experimental product about which they knew absolutely nothing. When the shot failed, everything else failed too. The effect cascaded to discredit official voices and institutions everywhere. It wasn’t just about the product, which harmed so many. It was about all the institutions that tried to force everyone to get it. The credibility of all the commanding heights was shot. Suddenly everyone has begun to ask core questions about government, academia, the think tank world, media, medicine, law, and the entire system under which we live. I’m pretty sure that no one in charge planned on it to turn out this way. The shot was probably supposed to work, or so they believed. But it did not. Once trust was gone, other questions came up such as: climate change. The same authorities who told you that the injection would stop the pandemic have been screaming about how they are going to fix the climate by ruining your standard of living. People who never imagined they would question that are doing just that now. I got to know many people at the FLCCC convention this weekend and I kept seeing common themes in people’s lives. There seems to be this growing desire to detach from digital technology, find food that is closer to nature, simplify one’s lifestyles, get away from mainstream news, find alternatives to college, and set oneself up with a life with more independence. |
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As part of this, we are seeing great efforts to free ourselves from Big Pharma, including all the consumerism associated with that. I met people who are reading up on home remedies and alternative medicines, only sleep on linen sheets, have started raising their own chickens, use baking soda instead of commercial toothpaste, only buy beef from trusted sources, and have rediscovered classic books and music. It’s all tremendously interesting, a movement that is devoted to clawing itself back to fundamental truths instead of relying so much on all the authorities and institutions that have failed them. I truly hesitate to use the word “movement” and I wish there were a better term. To be a movement implies unity of purpose and messaging, certain knowledge, plus a leadership cadre that knows all. Such movements are subject to all the problems we associate with all groups: they frazzle, factionalize, and break up. That is not what is going on here. This is more of a spontaneous trend of people who have found others who are like-minded, find healing and collegiality in community, and learn from each other’s wisdom and experience. The result is a group that brings together some of the nicest and most sincere people I’ve ever met, not only doctors but also professionals from all walks of life. We also have in common the knowledge that Big Media strongly disapproves of the way we think. They will not generally report on what we are doing and how big we are growing. If they do, they smear the truth and the good in ways that are entirely predictable. Have you noticed how many major names in our gang have been trashed by the corporate media and yet they survived and have grown bigger as a result? What has happened to Donald Trump, facing attacks from all sides and yet somehow gaining in strength despite everything, has happened to a whole slew of dissidents. And it’s not just in the United States. The lockdowns and shot mandates hit the entire world and everyone is vexed by the globalists’ ambitions. Now you see farmers leading dramatic protests the world over. Every country in Europe is facing them, and despite blackouts from the media, they have gained attention anyway. It’s the same with protests against EVs and 15-minute cities and more. There is a hardened group of skeptics alive in every nation on the planet. What an enormous contrast to those dark days from March 2020 when the whole world suddenly fell apart. Speaking personally, I felt so tremendously alone, confused why this was happening and why more people were not objecting. The summer improved nothing. Fall was the same. The winter became worse and then the shot rollout began. By then the propaganda had become overwhelming. And yet by the start of 2021, the dissident army started to form. As it turns out, much of it had been there all along. But we could not find each other due to censorship and closures, which made it nearly impossible to find others who felt the same way. But in the course of just three short years, something remarkable has happened. Three features of this movement are striking. First, it’s real and not astroturf. There are no billionaires behind any of it. It’s regular people coming together with curiosity, courage, and determination to live a better life. Second, even though COVID is long over, the number of dissidents against everything that happened is growing by the day and much bigger now than a year ago. Third, the new institutions and events that are growing up around this movement are in for the long haul. It’s because the infrastructure being built here is comprehensive. It involves media, law, medicine, research, education, therapeutics and health, and every area of life. There is a long-term commitment here to rebuild the civilization that the bad guys are trying to destroy. I’m convinced that we have a fighting chance to win this war, even if we still have a long way to go. |
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