At the beginning of the Covid crises all contesting voices were silenced. This was accomplished by censorship and public shaming. Most of the people who felt something was wrong with the official narrative were equated with flat-earthers, told to “trust the science.” Any contesting posts on Facebook were met with an avalanche of criticism by those who knew better. The idea that a global con game was underway was inconceivable for, if one believed the media, the bulk of humanity.
Most public figures, opportunistically sensing the sea change, chimed in with the narrative. Those who didn’t received the full force of the media machine. There was one person, however, who was among the first to express doubts about what was underway. This came from a towering intellectual figure, universally held in high esteem. How could such a person not give his voice to a worldwide pandemic?
His name was Giorgio Agamben and for many people, he represented the apex of intellectual rigor and philosophical inquiry. Yet he was criticizing the lockdowns in Italy, questioning narrative at the very start. Apparently, he was a danger to public health. The media mocked him, said he was obviously getting older, maybe senile, speaking about matters outside of his specialized domains, and tried to marginalize him. But he wouldn’t shut up.
Agamben’s a figure every free-thinking person should know. He established his reputation over a long period of time in a wide variety of intellectual disciplines, at once political, social and artistic. He’s a Humanist in the classic and best sense of the term. One of his key concepts is “the state of exception.” This is a political tool where normal jurisprudence is suspended in the name of a public emergency. This concept allowed him to see the ruse that was being put in place. Law was suspended; the question was whom did it benefit?
Now we know—though the facts are coming out slowly, and voices are still silenced—that he was correct. The recent Senate investigation, though very careful to protect themselves, shows that Agamben’s intuitions about the lockdowns and other measures taken were on target. The last-minute pardon awarded to Fauci by Biden before any trial indicates a desire to squelch possible discrepancies to the official narrative.
Agamben saw all this from the very start. The record of his debacle can be found on his site Quodlibet (in Italian, but automatically translated). Here is the first post he made which caused the frenzied media attack which he patiently endured. It has the not-so-subtle title The Invention of an Epidemic. All his ensuing texts are there. It’s incredible reading. Agamben deals with the fatuous response of Pope Francis, who bent his knee to secular worldly power, agreeing not to give extreme unction to the dying and suspend public mass and communion. This, for a believer, is inconceivable, yet it was done.
Agamben also introduces the reader to figures such as Ivan Ilych, a Jesuit priest and philosopher who wrote about the subject of iatrogenesis, where the cures provided by the medical establishment are often deadlier than the disease. Ilych’s book Medical Nemesis, published in 1975, is a clear statement, supported by endless scientific facts, of the nefarious role of organized medicine in the Occident.
Agamben wasn’t alone in his dissention, his case was particular because of his towering position among the top intellectuals alive today. Other figures too, such as the rap singer Ice Cube, openly voiced their questions about the state of emergency and the measures put in place, but they were easier to silence using the one-size-fits-all condemnation of conspiracy nuts. We have a debt to those who placed their conscience over panicked hysteria, a media machine of intense propaganda and personal gain.