Republicans in Congress are questioning former Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci about the public health dictatorship he tricked Donald Trump into enabling during the COVID-19 panic, which led to mail-in balloting and the 2020 election debacle. But many of those Republicans seem to be playing to lose, handling this secret funder of bioweapons development and vaccine profiteer with deferential kid gloves. They seem to lack the convictions, principles, and courage to challenge outrageous lies — even after all those things have been massively debunked by the evidence.

Fauci doubled down on all the bankrupt COVID panic policies which have since been discredited, from massive lockdowns and school closings to forced vaccinations, useless social distancing, and masking, during his testimony earlier this week.

🚨 NEW: Dr. Fauci DEFENDS every single bad COVID policy he pushed.

“Vaccines save lives.”

Dr. Fauci still defends:

• Business closures
• Church closures
• School closures
• Stay-at-home orders
• Mask mandates for adults
• Mask mandates for children
• Mask mandates for… pic.twitter.com/JwvwzEcB3Z

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) June 3, 2024

He dissembled, lied, and obfuscated. And of course, he scapegoated dissenters, falsely blaming them for hundreds of thousands of deaths:

🚨 NEW: Dr. Fauci blames the unvaccinated for being “responsible” for an “additional 200,000 to 300,000 deaths in this country [USA].”

He cited the work of Peter Hotez, the vaccinologist who declined a $2.6 million offer to debate RFK Jr., to make this claim.

“Some have done… pic.twitter.com/DNOsy3hKjc

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) June 3, 2024

We Have Abandoned Both Faith and Reason

Yet countless Americans still hold Fauci in high regard and continue to believe his false claims that have both wrecked and ended millions of lives. Why?

Because the belief mechanism of so many modern people has been fundamentally corrupted.

Traditionally, we’re taught to carefully weigh data on every side of a question and compare what different credentialed experts and trusted authorities say, especially when they disagree. In a free society scientists and policymakers offer different points of view. That’s called “debate,” and it was once protected by an old-timey law called “the First Amendment.”

But no more. Not at all.

Snipers in Their Ivory Towers

Now our elites have decided to fetishize and weaponize their status, using their perch atop the information and power pyramid to act like snipers — shooting down and destroying anyone who challenges their narratives. Instead of debating experts like Stanford Professor Jay Bhattacharya or Dr. Robert Malone on the evidence for or against lockdowns or mass vaccination, men like Fauci schemed to defame them in the press, get them suspended (or axed) from their jobs, and silenced in all media. Why else would Youtube be enforcing the opinions of the World Health Organization as if it were the Ministry of Truth taking orders from the Ministry of Love?

Such elites gain power by pretending to have a monopoly of expertise, but in fact what they’re best at isn’t research or rational argument: it’s networking, groupthink, scapegoating, and office politics. That’s how mediocrities like Anthony Fauci (who fumbled the AIDS epidemic, too) claw their way into positions where they can bully and crush their betters. (The Stream’s John Zmirak explained the “fail upward” strategy of our rulers in his September 31, 2022 TED Talk, “There Is No ‘U’ in ‘Winner.’”)

But once such grasping characters have gained power, they use it to enhance their pretense of expertise, even infallibility, by aggressively punishing anyone who challenges them. Since most people aren’t born warriors or volunteer prophets, they see the suffering and destruction unleashed against Harvard professors who get fired, famous doctors who lose their practices and certifications, presidential aides who get falsely imprisoned, and pro-lifers whose homes get raided by FBI SWAT teams, and they stop asking questions.

In fact, to reassure themselves that we’re all still safe and free in an open society, most people subconsciously conclude that the scapegoats must be guilty. They must be getting what they deserve. And thus the power/prestige cycle gets ever more vicious.  

Online “Karens” Acting Like the Gestapo

On a much more primitive level — that of social media companies exercising routine censorship — we can see this mechanism at work in granular detail. Check out the following series of social media posts by a Trump supporter, and the response it received from self-appointed censors using “Community Notes.”

First someone (okay, it was me) posts an observation about the dual system of justice (anarcho-tyranny) applied to Trump and to Biden:

Then some helpful busybody, the kind of person who doubtless turned in his neighbors for having prayer meetings during the COVID panic, chimes in to “fact-check” the first person’s claims:

For most people that will be sufficient. They will see that this “misinformation” has been debunked by the “authorities” and move on with their day. (And those who’ve been thoroughly red-pilled will see it, assume that it must be true because it’s been “debunked” by a fact-checker, and then move on with their day.)  But it takes an intrepid dissenter, a constitutional skeptic, to take the next step and fact-check the “fact-checker.” Then what he sees is this:

In other words, there was absolutely nothing behind this “misinformation” claim, no facts or even arguments. Just a naked grab for power, an effort to silence a fellow citizen.

On a vast, global scale, that’s how our elites have been treating us since we voted “wrong” in 2016 by electing Donald Trump. And the gaslighting and bullying have only gotten fiercer as we approach the next election — where the opposition candidate may very well be campaigning from a prison cell, like Lech Walesa in Communist Poland.

In my new book The Great Campaign Against the Great Reset, I diagnose this mode of enforcing false beliefs among the masses as Gnosticism. Like the ancient heresy which devastated large swathes of the early Church, modern Gnostics pretend to possess secret knowledge, infallible expertise, and moral legitimacy. Gnosticism claims to be “the Science,” and tars any dissenters as primitives, cranks, or vicious extremists who really do deserve to be doxed, fired, audited, and maybe imprisoned. Since nobody wants to experience those things, millions of people respond like mice getting shocked in a maze: They learn to mindlessly follow the path their masters want.

Or else they curl up in despair, collapsing into learned helplessness. (Online, people refer to this as “getting blackpilled.”)

Or, in another toxic response, they start to distrust every source of authority on principle, and attribute every public statement or political decision to conspiratorial motives. Maybe they seek out some ethnic or religious group to blame for the vast perversion of our culture and our institutions.  

The sane alternative demanded of us by both our God-given reason and by the Gospel is different. It calls on us to “test everything,” to soberly weigh alternatives as objectively as possible, and to reflexively consider whether scapegoats are actually innocent. After all, our Savior was such a scapegoat, and we don’t want to be part of the mob that called for Him to be crucified. And we don’t want some Barabbas like Anthony Fauci taking His place.

 

Jason Jones is a film producer, author, activist, popular podcast host, and human rights worker. He is president of the Human-Rights Education and Relief Organization (H.E.R.O.), known for its two main programs, the Vulnerable People Project and Movie to Movement. He was the first recipient of the East Turkistan Order of Friend- ship Medal for his advocacy of the Uyghur people. Jones was an executive producer of Bella and an associate producer of The Stoning of Soraya M. His humanitarian efforts have aided millions in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and the Ukraine, as well as pregnancy centers and women’s shelters throughout North America. Jones is a senior contributor to The Stream and the host of The Jason Jones Show. He is also the author of three books, The Race to Save Our Century, The World Is on Fire, and his latest book The Great Campaign Against the Great Reset. His latest film, Divided Hearts of America, is available on Amazon Prime.