Have I caught Sloth Fever?

Be afraid. Be very afraid. If you can summon the energy, that is. Sloth fever is now in Europe. As the Independent headline blared, ‘What is it and how worried should we be?’

And then there is Monkey Pox, which is a ‘rare disease’ and ‘usually mild’ (according to His Majesty’s Government, for now) but is now declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (according to the World Health Organisation).

I hope you’ll forgive me, but I find it hard to summon up much worry about viruses these days. I’m more worried about the public health neurotics, nanny state technocrats, privacy-stealing politicians and greedy Big Pharma executives who want us to be worried.

The concept of a ‘Proustian moment’ captures the sudden rush of memories triggered by sensory experiences, but it can also be applied metaphorically to recognising unsettling political trends. Just as Marcel Proust was transported back in time by the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea, individuals may suddenly become aware of authoritarian shifts in politics through seemingly innocuous events or statements. These moments can jolt us into recognising patterns of control and oppression that have been quietly developing.

My own rush of memories in recent weeks has been very disconcerting. A bit of tea and cake in comparison would have been just lovely compared to the sinister echoes which  emanate from the levers of the well-oiled machine of the state…

Identikit newspaper front covers featured the same anti-racism protest last week. Of course, sometimes a photograph enthrals picture editors and is plastered across all the front pages. That would normally be reserved for a really a good piece of photography, rather than a protest which appeared unexceptional apart from the obviously coordinated placards. This recent clutch of covers looked weirdly similar and manufactured.

The UK is not the controlled media landscape of Eastern Bloc countries during the Cold War, and yet… doesn’t it feel eerie when the newsstand creates a semblance of choice, offering different angles on the same core message, but appears nonetheless to be a curated set of options that guide perceptions in a predetermined direction. For me, the memory rush is Covid — don’t be a Covidiot, clap for the NHS, get vaccinated, punish the unvaccinated, etcetera etcetera, with barely a deviation in sight.

Recently, we have also seen two tier policing and a punitive judicial approach towards rioters. Breaking the law is breaking the law, but seeing people go to prison for a single social media post, or not doing much more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, feels reminiscent of Covid, when teenagers were given life-destroying fines for snowball fights, or pensioners for cups of tea over garden fences. It all seems a bit disproportionate (even if strictly within sentencing guidelines) and an excessively brutish way to stamp down on behaviour.

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Also, we now learn that social media censorship and surveillance never went anywhere. Well, course it didn’t. There was some celebration when politicians publicly scrutinised the shady work of the Counter Disinformation Unit (which I wrote about in A State of Fear) but it was naïve to think it would quietly disappear. It’s simply too useful  — surveillance, censorship and nudging are the cogs and gears of the same state machinery. The Counter Disinformation Unit has now been ‘rebranded’ as the National Security Online Information Team and has been tasked with monitoring online activity (watching what we say and do online) following the public disorder which broke out after the tragic killing of three young girls in Southport.

And that provided another memory rush. Straight after the deaths, the state swung straight into another ‘Controlled Spontaneity’ programme with another #<insert town name>together. I’m not saying that such horrible incidences should not be marked, but it’s always with the same hashtags, town hall banners, hearts, multi-faith vigils and the utterly cynical recruitment of the family and local community to ask for peace (when they have every right to rage and grief in private). Some of the responses to #Southporttogether, #Nottinghamtogether, #Londontogether and #Manchestertogether were authentic and some were engineered.

Having written two books about mind control — both how it is done and how to avoid it — I feel I having nothing left to say, except here we are again. It’s all so familiar that I can’t find the energy to investigate it, write about it, or care about it.

Which brings me back to sloths, because sloth is also one of the deadly sins. If you are sloth-like, you are failing in your moral duty to others (and God), lazy and unambitious. Might I have caught sloth-fever?

As Sloth Fever is making headlines as a new viral threat in Europe, one might draw a parallel to the pervasive political indifference we see in our election turnouts. Much like the virus, political apathy spreads quietly, infecting individuals with a sense of detachment and disengagement. This is encouraged by the burgeoning authoritarianism of the state which wants nothing more than our defeated, timid apathy.

This apathy can be as dangerous as any virus, eroding the foundations of democratic systems and allowing unchecked power to flourish. Just as health experts warn of the need for vigilance against this virus or another, there is a pressing need for citizens to awaken from their political slumber, to participate actively in shaping the future. Without this engagement, the consequences could be as severe as any outbreak, leading to a weakened society vulnerable to exploitation and decay.

So, yes, you should be afraid of Sloth Fever.