Have the West’s elites declared war on the people?
By Ramesh Thakur, Mercator.
(Ramesh Thakur is a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, and emeritus professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy)
An important takeaway from the last four years for many governments is the surprising ease of winning public compliance with demands for intrusive behavioural changes that completely reset the balance of rights and responsibilities between citizens, society, markets, and the government. Instead of implementing policies to give effect to voter priorities, the emboldened dominant metropolitan elites are entirely dedicated to the proposition that citizens should be forced to live by their rules on what to say, think, read, watch, do.
A telling indicator is the abandonment in practice of the long-standing principle of informed consent that was codified by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last December and came into effect in January. The net result of this is likely to be a redoubling of efforts to institutionalise and normalise governmental control over additional sectors of public life. If successful, this will embed minority elite worldviews at the cost of majority preferences.
The Australian Election Commission released details this week of the funding received by the two sides campaigning for and against the referendum last October to entrench the Voice for Aboriginal Australians in the constitution. The Yes side received AUD 60 million in total and the No side got between 15 to 30million. It truly was a David and Goliath battle both in funds and outcome. Yet such inconvenient outcomes of elections and referenda, even when delivered with a 60-40 majority, can simply be disregarded as if they never happened.
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The elites are also intent on telling the people which cars and heating appliances to buy. What news to consume and from which “trusted” source. Thus Ofcom, the UK’s broadcast regulator, has knuckle-rapped the upstart broadcaster GB News whose success with viewers, one suspects, is threatening the cosy dominance of the legacy media with their unwatchable woke-t(a)inted broadcasts. In addition to the by now familiar censorship industrial complex that has gained a suffocating hold in the US, think of the proposed new censorship laws currently being enacted in Australia, Canada, Ireland, and Scotland.
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