By Niall McCrae:
‘It is only a matter of time before we turn on the unvaccinated’. So declared the lead column in the Observer yesterday. Nick Cohen has been an enthusiast for lockdown and for censorship of sceptics. But his latest invective may be seen as inciting the lynch mob.
Like other Covid-19 zealots, Cohen must realise that opposition to the experimental vaccines and the proposed health passport is growing. Perhaps in desperation, last week the Queen’s influence was brought to bear by the establishment (although describing the hesitant as ‘selfish’ did not sound like her choice of words). The new strategy is to portray those who decline the jab as stubbornly and stupidly holding the country back.
According to Cohen, ‘rational people will ask why they should continue to accept restrictions on their freedoms because of ignorant delusions’. This turns the argument about lockdown upside-down. People who always wanted to carry on as normal, and who regard masks and vaccines as an incredible over-reaction, are now blamed for the loss of liberties! Cohen continued in his manipulative manner: –
‘To make it personal, how would you feel if someone you love contracted cancer and the NHS delayed treatment because it had to look after needlessly ill Covid patients’. Here is a dedicated man of the Left suggesting that the NHS should deny life-saving care, rather than serving all. Could you imagine, before the Covid-19 tyranny, Cohen arguing that smokers with lung cancer should be allowed to deprive care from other patients?
The term ‘vaccine apartheid’ was used not as a dire warning but as a desirable way of outcasting those who refuse to accept vaccination for a disease of no more risk to healthy adults than influenza.
The article was replete with condescending narrative about black and minority ethnic communities, which have low uptake of the vaccine. While passing comment on ‘extreme religious elites’ who allegedly control Blacks and Muslims, Cohen castigated the ‘upper-middle-class white men’ who are responsible for dangerous disinformation.
‘Laying into the likes of Piers Corbyn and Toby Young is a pleasure as much as a journalistic duty’. This was published on the day when Corbyn was arrested for the umpteenth time, on this occasion for speaking to a small crowd on his candidacy for Mayor of London. After years of complaining about lack of democracy in Russia and other supposedly rogue nations, Cohen had nothing to say about this criminalising of normal electioneering activity.
I alerted Toby Young soon after this missive went online. Cohen had already blamed the Lockdown Sceptics editor for the death of a man in Shropshire, who had followed various sceptical websites before dying from the disease. Young found the article extraordinary, as he had previously thought of Cohen as a reasonable and moderate writer.
While I admire Toby’s tolerance, it is not reciprocated by Cohen, and never will be. I was less surprised, having recently researched Cohen’s contribution to the Integrity Initiative, a government-funded organisation that sets out to vilify populist or radical figures. Cohen was a persistent critic of Jeremy Corbyn, Julian Assange and Arron Banks, going beyond journalism to portray these men as enemies of society.
This hideously divisive Observer column takes Cohen to a sociopathic level of pro-establishment dirty work. He anticipates a purge, and probably dreams of show trials for the double-faulting Brexiteers and vaccine sceptics. Oh, how we would enjoy that.
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