Where is Great Britain's stoicism?

How a once-fearless nation became petrified through politics

On the eve of World War II, Sunday 3 September, 1939, when the formation of a peace treaty between a naively hopeful Great Britain and tyrannical Germany failed at the hands of then-British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and war was declared on Nazi Germany by Britain and France in direct defiance of Hitler’s invasion of Poland just two days, previously, Winston Churchill, soon-to-be leader of Britain himself, stood up in the House of Commons to deliver one of his many, great orations, closing with these remarks,

“We are fighting to save the whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny and in defense of all that is most sacred to man. This is no war of domination or imperial aggrandizement or material gain; no war to shut any country out of its sunlight and means of progress. It is a war, viewed in its inherent quality, to establish, on impregnable rocks, the rights of the individual, and it is a war to establish and revive the stature of man.

Perhaps it might seem a paradox that a war undertaken in the name of liberty and right should require, as a necessary part of its processes, the surrender for the time being of so many of the dearly valued liberties and rights. In these last few days the House of Commons has been voting dozens of Bills which hand over to the executive our most dearly valued traditional liberties.

We are sure that these liberties will be in hands which will not abuse them, which will use them for no class or party interests, which will cherish and guard them, and we look forward to the day, surely and confidently we look forward to the day, when our liberties and rights will be restored to us, and when we shall be able to share them with the peoples to whom such blessings are unknown.”

Fast-forward to today, and I ask you: How many of you now, or still believe, as Churchill once did, that, following nearly a year of “lockdown” measures and other restrictive limitations upon people’s everyday rights, which have destroyed many lives and livelihoods in the process, shamefully laying waste to an entire war-baby generation as they rot and suffer in silence away from their loved ones because of government diktat, that such “liberties” are in the hands of those who will not abuse them, having, clearly, already done so?

How many of you remain confident that the politicians who now wield the power to govern your personal lives: who you may meet; where you may meet; who you can sleep with; where you can sleep; when and where you can travel; what food or other supplies you can buy at the shops; what you must wear; when and where you can eat and drink; who can receive medical treatment; when and how your sons and daughters can receive an education; if, even, you’ve been allowed a Christmas this year, or not, will simply hand you back the ‘normalcy’ we should all crave, desire and deserve?

One, of course, must be careful these days to revive any reflections or wisdom of the past – particularly of Winston Churchill, no less, whose penchant for “white supremacy” knew no bounds as he stood alone against, and defeated, the most renowned white supremacist of all time – but frankly, who could give a scintilla of concern, anymore, for any such woke-dripped Guardianista criticism when so much of the gravitas and seriousness of language, itself, has been lost because of its juvenile overuse by similarly reactive and unhinged middle-to-upper-class readerships and activists in their lame, and often, anti-social justice pursuit of so-called “social justice”? No, nowadays, these are people to simply ignore outright.

That being said, history matters, not because of the sins one can draw from it to weaponise for political, societal, and more so, financial gain, as we find in our western culture(s) of self-deprecation, today, but because of the perspective it can give us on life as we know it today. Suffice to say, I am not here to compare my supremely comfortable present to that of my grandparents age, of whom both my grandfathers fought in WWII – on land, and at sea – nor am I here to compare the impossibly wicked crimes of Nazi Germany to that of the threat of or the response to the Coronavirus, regardless of however many “mutations” or “variants” it may take on, or however many we’re told it’s taken on, at least.

What I am here to do, is ask, and query, the comparison of how a nation of people that once saw off the greatest evil of recent human history – perhaps of all time – now find themselves cowering behind their own living room furniture for fear of a disease that politicians like Matt Hancock, of all people – a frontbench ‘yes-man’ lapdog quisling of the previous three Conservative Party administrations – has told them to be afraid of.

No, no, this man, along with his very own boss, the Prime Minister, Alexander “Boris” de Pfeffel Johnson, have destroyed Britain’s morale – and moral compass. No longer can the masses turn to a figure like Churchill, ironically Johnson’s hero (something else we’re told), for encouragement or a sense of vastly underestimated stoic reassurance and resilience, as our ancestors were once able to find in Churchill’s iconic tones on the radiowaves in the face of mass enslavement; now they turn to figures like Johnson and Hancock, plastered as they have been on every news channel in almost every home as they take their lead from a behind-the-shadows and seemingly-never-culpable cartel of “scientific experts” (despite how wrong they can and have been) via the massively politicised and overegged, Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), so that they can, instead, through an admitted tactic of fear and emotional blackmail gleefully become the subjects of mass enslavement.

As found on Page 1 of SAGE’s March 22, 2020, paper, titled, ‘Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures’, which was published as the virus became more prevalent amongst the population, can the sub-headings ‘Options’, then the Orwellian, ‘Persuasion’, be found, which read,

“A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened… The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.”

Essentially, people weren’t fearful enough. It was time for our own government to scare us all into submission. The plan, ever since, is working like clockwork.

Make no mistake, by the way, that enslavement, of a kind, physically or mentally, is precisely the direction and position we now find ourselves. Whilst internment camps may seem a residual flicker of what was – crimes of humanity which must surely never be repeated – and, though I realise the mere suggestion of them during a debate about Covid-19 may well be a sure-fire insult to those of a previous era who endured so much depravity, I would be remiss not to mention them, and I urge anyone reading this not to be so dismissive, also.

Lest we forget, it was only nine months ago that we were merrily living freely and look where we now find ourselves: psychologically bombarded with so much government propaganda every single day since the outbreak – no thanks to their vast friendships and roots within the mainstream media (Boris was a journalist, too, don’t forget) and ‘Big Tech’ whose reporting and censorship has been just as criminal – that it is now becoming the “norm” to treat those who refuse to wear masks (which don’t work) or who dare to think critically where vaccinations are concerned, as second-class citizens, impure, or “part of the problem”, as if they were a walking embodiment of a disease, regardless of how healthy they may actually be, than remaining the embodiment of a human being.

Of course, I have no need to ask you what period of history this might remind you of because you already know, and I’m sure you also know how it ended; that the discussion, too, has turned, practically overnight (as was forewarned by all those terribly-nutty-yet-apparently-always-correct “conspiracy theorists”) to that of “health”, “immunity” or “freedom passports”, by which those who have received the government-mandated vaccination will be the only people allowed to visit X, Y and Z and actually enjoy life having been injected with an entirely new form of narcotic cocktail compared to traditional methods, which took years, if not decades, to produce – not a measly 10 months.

I should add at this juncture, that if internment camps seem so far fetched as to border on the absurd and conspiratorial, might I suggest one research the prolonging plight and plundering of the Uyghur Muslim population of China, who wouldn’t find the idea so disproportionate to their 21st-century reality. Worryingly, too, it should be said, that the ideological and political stance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who are the enforcers of such cruelty, seem to be, currently, the legislative benchmark to aspire towards in the aftermath of this pandemic for many western politicians and supranational political organisations, too, including Britain’s.

As a brief aside, for instance, China, despite their total disregard for human rights on an unprecedented scale, were recently given a seat at the table of the United Nations Human Rights Council, giving further credence to the opinion that the UN itself is no longer fit for purpose, either.

But what of Britain’s path? What is, after all, a “freedom passport”, if not a direct copy of the Chinese state’s “social credit score” system, whereby citizens are quite literally graded and surveilled through a host of online databases, ultimately linked to their finances, as a means to “rank” their “trustworthiness” and “past behaviours” aka ‘compliance’ with the state? Those who are fortunate enough to find themselves with a “high rating” may benefit through certain rewards and permissions [to live freely], but, as the Premier of the State Council of China, Li Keqiang, said in 2018, “Those who lose credibility will find it hard to make a tiny step in society.”

Will those who refuse – as is their human and humane right – a vaccine become outcasts of society, too? Only time will tell. But this is no ordinary situation, and time to reverse our course is most surely running out before our very recent memories of freedom, family, joy, love and liberty become very distant ones, instead.

A teacher of Stoicism, Lucias Annaeus Seneca, in correspondence to his dear friend, and student, Lucilius, once wrote,

“‘He is a slave.’ … Show me who isn’t! One person is a slave to lust, another to greed, a third to ambition — and all are slaves to hope; all are slaves to fear. … No servitude is more shameful than the kind we take on willingly.”

Just consider, bearing in mind the voluntary surrender by friends and family, colleagues and companions, alike, that we’ve all been witness to last year, those last few words for a minute:

“No servitude is more shameful than the kind we take on willingly.”

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s about damn time we stopped this sloppy acceptance of quivering slavedom off the backs of those whose only inhibitions are those that orbit greed, power, control and ambition, all while they wilfully petrify and rescind you from your own rights to live, before, if it isn’t already, too late.

Our hardy and stoic forebears who fought for our fundamental freedoms would, I have no doubt, wish it so. And so should you.