Jab and jabber

Sat an hour with Mrs Rawson. She mentioned the great alarm now prevailing at Leeds & other places about vaccination, several children having, not withtanding, been seized with the smallpox. Many were having their children inoculated & in many instances the infants had been taken in spite of previous vaccinations which had been pronounced perfectly good at the time.

It seems, however, to be observed that those who have been vaccinated have the smallpox more favourably & much more mildly.

- from the diary of Anne Lister, 2 May 1816

200 years later we’re still having the same debate, with a difference: the authorities are so determined on mass immunisation that they do their best to suppress any expressions of concern.

This illiberal response succeeds in the short term, but gradually and inevitably results in a weakening of the public’s trust in the political establishment, scientific expertise and the organisations that mediate what people say to each other.

Another drawback is that censorship and propaganda cannot plug all the leaks in the multivarious channels of modern communications. Those messages that get through will sometimes come from oppositional types that will mix up facts with suspicion and fantasy and work it all up into some greater conspiracy theory.

In short, discussion becomes severely distorted, divisive and over-emotional.

It’s bad news for believers in liberal democracy and is beginning to call into question whether the people are fit to take part in how they are governed; how long before we are persuaded that ‘we need a strong leader’?

We have become atomised. The places where we used to swap information and ideas are vanishing - the market-place, the tavern. Even there, there were spies and influencers - the Bible says that the crowd called for Barabbas to be released instead of Jesus, because the priests circulated among them to stir them to it.

Currently, the government is legitimated by periodic general elections, so what matters is to get votes; and what really matters is to influence the voters. Some outfit - say one of the intelligence services - briefs a friendly journalist, who writes the article to implant the message in the minds of the readers, who then repeat it to their friends, who then go to the polls. So simple! In this way we learn that Ukraine is ‘brave little Belgium’ and Putin a mad, fire-breathing demon and how dare anyone say otherwise.

You might say that we have a variety of sources, but mass media ownership has concentrated into fewer and fewer hands over the last decades. Besides, on some matters the Daily Mail and the Guardian take a similar line - see this G article on the recent Ukrainian counter-offensive: ‘a stunning breakthrough.’ This is the paper that made great play of Julian Assange’s revelations on US war crimes, then dropped him in the goo when two of their reporters published the secret key to Vault Seven; yet it’s Julian, not the G’s David Leigh, who now languishes in Belmarsh prison.

When you grind us up into tiny particles like flour, and add a spark, you get an explosion.