Dr David Bell was Director of the Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in the USA, Programme Head for Malaria and Acute Febrile Disease at FIND in Geneva, and coordinating malaria diagnostics strategy with the World Health Organisation. So, he was connected. But, as he details in a personal piece below, for general interest, while he once belonged to the centre-Left tribe, he found that taking an objective, scientific approach to things that the liberal Left championed, such as Covid lockdowns, now isolated him from his former "tribe." The same thing occurred with other critics that came from the Left, such as Dr Naomi Wolf, who found her Covid criticisms getting her expelled from the New York chattering class scene.
But truth has a price. As Dr Bell says: "The dominant tribe in much of America, and much of the Western world, is a band of supplicants to their cause. They wish to censor, restrict, control and mandate because they have chosen a path of compliance and resent those who did not. There is nothing new in this, in historic terms, and the response is similarly established. Choosing humanity over rhetoric is the best way to prepare for whatever comes next."
We all need to choose our "sides," for the final globalist battle.
"Human societies naturally divide into groups or tribes. Human tribes rely on a shared pride of belonging and a sense of otherness toward non-members. This provides their members with a cause or meaning, such as jointly building a better life, and a feeling of superiority or victimhood based on comparison with, denigration of and exclusion of outsiders. A sense of shared superiority or victimhood builds comradeship, which most humans naturally seek.
Superiority, victimhood, and the denigration of others seem intertwined in modern society, and probably always were. They rely on prejudice. Prejudice that 'our' side is morally superior to those others, who in turn are best described as stupid and prejudiced themselves against what we hold to be right. Their position in the hierarchy of power does not matter so much as their otherness – they can be our servants or our enslavers, but they are morally inferior.
We express their moral inferiority in terms like racist, something-phobic, something-denier, anti-something, far-something, or 'extremist'. The extremist is someone who disagrees with a rational, correct position held by our tribe. It is, of course, hard to see the splinter in your own eye when the logs in those of others seem so blindingly obvious.
Early in the Covid outbreak, it became increasingly apparent that my tribe, a moderate, compassionate grouping somewhat 'Left-of-centre' and always ready to proclaim support for human rights and equality, had a problem with fascism. It was not that it disliked fascism, though its members proclaimed loudly that they did; rather they seemed disconcertingly comfortable in encompassing it.
Being wealthy, college-educated and more progressive than others, they were very clear that marching up and down in jackboots was a bad look. This for them was fascism, and they had seen the black and white newsreels and the raised fists that proved it. But beyond that, it rapidly became clear that they could not actually distinguish fascism from a vase of roses. They saw something commendable in keeping in check those unable to embrace their superior point of view, considering the exclusion of dissenting views a virtue. Best that I explain.
When People Face a Trial
A bunch of wealthy corporate authoritarians and the politicians who had dinners with them decreed that emergency rule was the preferred form of governance. All my progressive friends fell in line. The 'greater good' was a cause worth fighting for, and progressivism meant siding with the corporate masters who were, obviously, working for the same. Freedom was a luxury in a 'global pandemic' and only deplorables and the 'far-Right' believed in 'freedumb' now. There was, after all, a global emergency to deal with, and wiser people could see this.
Becoming an outcast of a tribe is not fun, especially when you are then considered to be allied with an enemy, an enemy inferior in morality and intelligence. It was at first depressing watching fellow admirers of Nelson Mandela now admiring home detention on a governor's orders.
But refuge can be found among fellow refuseniks; a strange collection of those who, mistakenly or not, put truth over compliance – unwilling to comply with stupidity for appearance's sake. People who would not put on a mask to walk 10 feet from restaurant door to a table, because signalling conformity with authority as a virtue in itself (fascism) was not an acceptable life choice. People who asked questions when those sponsored by a drugmaker told them to be injected. These were people who simply believed that each person had a right to make his own decisions concerning his body and health; bodily autonomy that went beyond correcting a misfortune to include suffering for the principle. …
COVID-19 brought two and a half years of emergency powers, with rule by decree, whether legal or not, forcing the closure of small businesses and their replacement by a delivery system benefiting their larger corporate rivals. A move from in-person offices (supporting janitors and food stalls) to work online did the same. Online schooling compounded the advantage of kids with their own screens in their own bedrooms, further reinforcing this advantageous post-slavery inequality.
We have entered a time when the values we once thought fundamental to our societies are widely derided, as are those who hold them. We see this in the media mouthpieces of those who seek power for its own sake.
The dominant tribe in much of America, and much of the Western world, is a band of supplicants to their cause. They wish to censor, restrict, control and mandate because they have chosen a path of compliance and resent those who did not. There is nothing new in this, in historic terms, and the response is similarly established. Choosing humanity over rhetoric is the best way to prepare for whatever comes next."