A reminder that it's not about Left-Right

"My old opponents are my new opponents and it feels really good that way ammirite?"

One of my most popular Moment videos is this one below on why the Covid debate is not at all about Left versus Right, and that if you believe it’s about Left versus Right, then you likely have your beliefs concerning Covid because of your prior political polarization. If your profile has Biden or MAGA all over it, then I’m pretty suspicious about whether you came to your current position on Covid independently.

After all, many of the strongest leaders on the anti-lockdown side have in fact been folks on the Left. Naomi Wolf and RFK Jr. are great examples, as are the three co-signers of the Great Barrington Declaration. Here’s one of them on that topic…

"I am aligned with the Left when I defend the COVID-19 strategy in my native Sweden. But here in the United States, when I defend very similar strategies implemented by the Republican governors of South Dakota and Florida, I am perceived as being aligned with the Right. It is a little weird. Among my infectious disease colleagues that favor an age-targeted strategy rather than lockdowns, most are left-wing progressives"

-- Martin Kulldorff, Harvard epidemiologist, co-signer of the Great Barrington Declaration opposing the draconian and ineffective interventions. In Jacobin Magazine.

In fact, some of the first anti-lockdowners I befriended on Twitter in March of 2020 were Communists — they grasp that you can’t “freeze an economy.”

I myself have always been a libertarian (with a little “L”). And I spent a dozen years on social media, writing articles, and doing appearances with nary a word on politics.

My Science Moment series actually provides a nice example. The first 51 Moments are pre-Covid, and I challenge you to find anything political within those videos.

It wasn’t until Covid hit — ahem, until Covid hysteria hit — that I began becoming an agitator (most prominently on Twitter). And it took me more than six months before I even felt comfortable re-initiating my Moment series. I couldn’t just talk about topics related to my research discoveries. Those folks creep me out, still tweeting or doing videos with their same old pre-Covid modus operandi. It would be like some artist whose work underwent no noticeable change when WWII started.

I finally restarted the series with the idea of concentrating on the more subtle science issues in and around Covid, and especially mass hysteria (the topic of research at the Free Expression Group, FreeX). The entire Covid Season, consisting at this point of 75 videos, may be clearly on the anti-lockdown side, but they are just as apolitical as the first 51 in the traditional Left-Right sense.

Defending civil liberties, free expression and informed consent doesn’t make someone politically on the Right. And I recommend constantly reminding those on the Left that it is in no way a violation of their Leftist principles to be opposed to the exaggerated worldwide reaction to the virus.