LOCKDOWN'S DISCONTENTS
Summer protests reveal a loose coalition of conspiracists and dissenters
By the time you read this, the UK and several other European countries will likely be hit by Covid-19’s second wave. At the time of writing, the UK’s rapidly rising infection rate looked set to match April and May’s peak figures of 6,000+ per day. It seems doubtful that the UK Government will seek to reimpose the same national lockdown as in Spring, for fear of causing further harm to the economy. Instead, the current strategy appears to be focused on local curfews and lesser restrictions. Five months on, though, some are querying the wisdom of lockdown strategies. Sweden was the only European nation not to go into lockdown. Some UK health experts predicted a Swedish death rate of 85,000; in fact, the figure has been under 6,000, certainly much higher than Sweden’s Nordic neighbours, but nothing like as catastrophic as was feared. This inaccurate forecasting by some of the same health experts guiding UK Government strategy has doubtless encouraged ‘Covidscepticism’, as perhaps have the Government’s various U-turns.
Numerous anti-lockdown protests have been taking place up and down the country; the largest so far, in London on Saturday 29 August, was organised by Piers Corbyn (Jeremy Corbyn’s climate change sceptic brother). A reported 10,000 people gathered in Trafalgar Square to hear Corbyn, David Icke and other speakers denounce the lockdown as an infringement of civil liberties with a hidden agenda of compulsory vaccination,
orchestrated, some claimed, by Bill Gates or George Soros. Although several placards with QAnon slogans were spotted, it doesn’t seem to be the case that this or other demos were organised by a single group or organisation. Rather, they appear to be a loose coalition of anti-vaxxers, anti-5Gers and Covid-sceptics.
Hundreds gathered again at Trafalgar Square three weeks later for 19 September’s ‘Resist And Act For Freedom Rally’. Outnumbered police were forced back by protesters carrying placards reading “THIS IS NOW TYRANNY” and “PLANDEMIC”, and after scuffles and missiles being thrown, 32 people were arrested.
One possible reason for the protesters’ ire was Piers Corbyn having been arrested and fined £10,000 for organising the 30 August demo, in contravention of a new law forbidding outdoor
gatherings of over 30 persons, and potentially spreading the virus (this has now been reduced to a maximum of six people). However, the environmental group Extinction Rebellion were also gathering in numbers of over 30 in London that same week, and none of their organisers have yet been fined £10,000.
Perhaps the most extraordinary action recently was that outside Buckingham Palace on 22 August, when protesters chanted “paedophile” while holding signs reading: “END CHILD TRAFFICKING”, “THE FACT THAT COVID-19 HAS MORE OF YOUR ATTENTION THAN A GLOBAL ELITE PAEDOPHILE RING BLOWS MY MIND”, and “PRINCE ANDREW WE JUST WANNA TALK”.
The demo was apparently organised by Freedom For The Children UK (FFTCUK), the British branch of a new US group which held numerous gatherings across the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand on the same day, as well as in 11 British cities. Their branding is (deliberately?) vague, and attracts those concerned by genuine child trafficking. However, several of the group’s central UK organisers have expressed QAnon beliefs. FFTCUK has also been linked to Stand
Up X, associated with antilockdown protests – further indication of disparate groups with apparently different aims coming together. These UK events are also significant in that what may previously have been thought of as US-specific conspiracy concerns (Pizzagate, QAnon) are now making their way across the pond (see p.20).
Whatever one’s views about the reality of global elite paedophile rings (who may or may not be harvesting innocents’ adrenal glands for their own depraved ends), there are still unanswered questions regarding Prince Andrew’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and his failure to cooperate with the FBI regarding Virginia Giuffre’s allegations. And as a substantial minority become increasingly sceptical about the UK Government’s handling of the pandemic, and increasingly resentful of restrictions to their daily lives, we may expect further dissent.
As we go to press, it has been announced that all UK pubs must shut at 10pm, as if the coronavirus, vampire-like, only emerges at night. A dangerous tactic: any politician interfering with Brits’ time-honoured right to drink themselves into oblivion until closing time does so at their peril. Sun, 25 Aug; hopenothate.org.uk, 28 Aug; thejc.com, 30 Aug; Spectator, 4 Sept; D.Mail, 19 Sept 2020.
Notwithstanding their reputation for bravery on the battlefield and macho behaviour off it, some Vikings, historians are now arguing, may have been transgender men. Three years ago, a burial site assumed to belong to a high-status male warrior from the mid-900s was found to contain a female skeleton instead (FT361:18).
Neil Price, professor of archaeology at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, writes in his new book that the female-bodied Viking may “have been transgender… or non-binary, or gender fluid.” The grave, in which swords, spears and two slaughtered horses were found alongside an expensively dressed skeleton, was first excavated in Birka, Sweden, in 1878. An osteological study in 2011 suggested the skeleton was female, but it was confirmed to carry XX chromosomes only six years later after DNA analysis. The extravagance of the grave suggests that the woman was of high status, or indicates that Norse women fought in battle alongside men. A third possibility, that it belonged to a warrior with a different gender identity, is given prominence by Prof Price in his book, The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings.
“We think the most likely explanation is that this was a female warrior, but there are other ways of reading this,” he says. “It may have been someone who, in our terms, was a trans man, someone living as a man.” Prof Price argues that there are some other indications that Vikings thought in less binary terms about gender than was once believed. These include laws preventing men and women from breaking gender norms in terms of dress and behaviour, which, he said showed that a few people did subvert these traditions. In some mediaeval texts retelling Viking sagas, women who became warriors would be given male pronouns.
Price dismissed the idea that this is simply historians projecting contemporary values onto the past, and Amy Jefford Franks, an academic researching gender and pre-Christian Scandinavian religion and who presents the Vikings are Gay! podcast, said: “It is debated, but my view is that there were transgender Vikings and there were queer Vikings and that, while it was not widespread, it was on the fringes of acceptable culture.”
However, Viking society did not embrace all forms of diversity. A false accusation that a man was gay was equivalent to murder, says Price, “because you were effectively murdering someone’s honour.” Times, 17 Aug 2020.