Why We Need Libertatio
Dear Readers,
When Steven Woolfe asked me to join Libertatio, I was delighted. Steven and I know each other from our days as activists and representatives in UKIP. Those years were an exciting time in my life, as pushed for and won British freedom from the yoke of Brussels, so I am delighted to be working with Steven once again, as I know and share his commitment to liberty for all. This is why we need Libertatio.
But I was also delighted because today, more than ever, the cry for freedom needs to ring out loud and clear. As we look around the communities we live in, whether in the UK, Israel, where I am based, Argentina, home to fellow columnist Jorge Jraissati, or further afield to the news reports coming out of China, Ukraine, across the Middle East and down into Africa, we see freedom under an existential threat the likes of which has not been seen for nearly a century.
The threat comes primarily from two quarters. Governments are once again over-reaching their powers, emboldened by the ease with which the public submitted to restrictions necessitated by the pandemic.
But for those of us on the political right, an uncomfortable truth must be faced: many of the most pressing threats to liberty come from the world of commerce and industry. Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Social and others are busy stripping us of our rights to free speech, freedom of choice, and even freedom of association.
The coercion comes in many forms, whether through algorithms that direct our attention and behaviour; alliance with governments who are all too willing to impose mandates or pass policies which kill off competition in the marketplace; or in hoc with activists who demand wrong-thinkers be cancelled in the name of ‘tolerance’.
Other key players in the drive toward totalitarianism – the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, The World Bank, the Clinton Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Open Societies Foundation and countless others – are in reality an unholy alliance between private and public interests, merging the worst of government instincts for conformity with the worst of capitalism’s relentless drive toward market dominance.
However, perhaps the most alarming threat to freedom in 2022 does not come from any institution at all. If the last two years have taught us anything, it’s that given the choice between freedom and safety, the majority of our citizens opt for safety every time. Not only that, but given the right circumstances they will rapidly turn on those who do value freedom.
Two weeks ago in Israel, a young lady known only as ‘M’ went to the opera in Tel Aviv. As she posted on social media later that evening “I just wanted to enjoy Tzchaikovsky”. Sadly, what should have been an enjoyable, cultured evening rapidly turned into anything but.
The young lady has a medical mask exemption and so arrived unmasked at the venue. Soon thereafter, she was turned upon by her fellow opera-goers.
“There were about 400 attendees, about 100 of them were shouting at me (people physically blocking my way to my seats and not letting me through) people telling me not to stand near them and shooing me away,” she wrote on Telegram. “A woman hit me on the head.”
“I didn’t speak a single word to all these people, I was literally cowering in place and at no point did I speak or reply or gesture to any of them, after the initial blow up I just went straight to security.”
Thankfully, the security staff at the venue were supportive of the girl, moving the more aggressive among the crowd away and threatening to evict them before escorting the girl to her seat in the auditorium and remaining in place throughout the performance to guarantee her safety.
While the thought of a crowd turning on a single individual this way is horrifying in itself, what is perhaps more disturbing is that – as in historical episodes of the past – it is the ‘enlightened’ citizens among us who seem most prone to acting this way. No mobs that I am aware of have formed in pubs, or sporting events, or at the cinema. No, this brutal, barbaric behaviour was exhibited precisely by those considered most civilised, who had gathered to enjoy one of the highest art forms western civilisation has to offer.
As ‘M’ herself put it: “I’m a very young-looking girl, there were 60-yr-old men approaching me with threatening gestures … tickets cost 500 NIS [New Israeli Shekels, about £125], these are our doctors, lawyers, landlords, business owners…”
It seems the more civilised we become, the more we lose touch with our humanity.
In his book The Gulag Archipelago, written to record his and his fellow Soviet citizens’ experiences in the gulag prison system of Soviet Russia, author Alexander Solzhenitsyn recalls how the prisoners berated themselves in the camps, wondering what might have happened had they not complied with the Soviet authorities.
He concludes: “We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
With the walls of totalitarianism closing in on all sides, our mission is to love freedom enough – and to wake up that love of freedom in our fellow citizens wherever and however we can.
For my part, I will be writing a weekly column here at Libertatio, keeping you up to date on the challenges we face here in the Middle East – and stories of those brave souls daring to speak out. Now, more than ever in our life times, we freedom lovers need to make our voices heard.
