Western media have covered the recent anti-lockdown protests in China extensively, unanimous in their condemnation of the government’s extreme measures and their praise of the protesters’ “collective bravery” and “remarkable expression of defiance”; many Western leaders have reacted similarly. This is a jaw-dropping reversal. Those same outlets, along with the entire Western scientific and political establishment, spent 2020 and 2021 praising China’s Covid response, promoting lockdown measures in their own nations, and ignoring, disparaging, and harshly retaliating against those who protested lockdowns and vaccine passports in the West. As the very people who imposed or enabled these policies try to make us forget all of that, it’s crucial to revisit their complicity—and their contempt for those who objected at the time.
You can read the rest of my article on the Great Reversal in Compact.
Thomas Fazi 