ÔThere may come a time in the future when we look back at the present as the last chance we had to stop what is happening, to rise up now Ñ not in hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands, but in millions Ñ to stop what is being done before it cannot be undone. If we donÕt, the totalitarianisms of the Twentieth Century offer only a glimpse of the degree and breadth of control exerted by the UK biosecurity state under which we will live for the foreseeable future. Never in recent history has there been a threat to our freedom that more justifies, more demands, our civil disobedience and militant resistance to the disaster into which we are being led.Õ
This collection of articles by Simon Elmer, written over the first six months of the coronavirus crisis in the UK, looks at the implementation of the regulations, programmes and technologies of the emerging biosecurity state.
Individual articles examine the manufacturing of consensus to the removal of our rights and freedoms; the exaggeration of the threat to public health through changes to the criteria for attributing a death to COVID-19; the implementation and enforcement of coronavirus-justified legislation under a state of emergency that has become the new paradigm of government in formerly liberal democracies; the economic, social, political and human costs of the lockdown; the medical evidence against wearing masks and the law of refusing to comply with their enforcement; how the biosecurity state has changed our status as citizens under UK law; the normalising of fear as a political tool for promoting compliance with totalitarian systems of surveillance, monitoring and control; and legal guidance and advice on non-compliance with the UK biosecurity state.
Originally published as individual articles on the website of Architects for Social Housing, this collection is for those looking for the data to support their own views or arguments to help convince those beginning to doubt the lies we are being told by those in power. Ultimately, we need to change the minds and actions of the millions of Britons who believe we are faced with a serious threat to public health that justifies the transformation of the UK from a parliamentary democracy into a constitutional dictatorship ruled by decree. But however it is used, we hope this collection will support readersÕ resolve to resist and oppose the biosecurity state being constructed in this country behind the fa�ade of this crisis.