{"id":13250,"date":"2022-02-16T15:41:04","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T15:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=13250"},"modified":"2022-02-16T15:41:04","modified_gmt":"2022-02-16T15:41:04","slug":"george-monbiots-hall-of-mirrors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2022\/02\/16\/george-monbiots-hall-of-mirrors\/","title":{"rendered":"George Monbiot’s Hall of Mirrors"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2010<\/a>,<\/span> having advocated for veganism in 2002, George Monbiot wrote: \u2018I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat \u2013 but farm it properly.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Having just read Simon Faerlie\u2019s book Meat: A Benign Extravagance<\/em>, Monbiot acknowledged serious environmental problems with the prevailing model of cattle production, but complained that pigs \u2018have been forbidden in many parts of the rich world from doing what they do best: converting waste into meat.\u2019<\/p>\n

Surprisingly perhaps, while rhapsodising on the efficiency of giving \u2018sterilised scraps to pigs,\u2019 he expressed no concern for animal welfare in feedlot production.<\/p>\n

\u2018It’s time we got stuck in,\u2019 he concluded, no doubt to the anger of genuine vegans who refrain from consuming animal products for ethical reasons, not simply because laboratory grown meat is more efficient to produce.<\/p>\n

By 2016<\/a><\/span>, however, Monbiot had \u2018[re-?]converted to veganism to reduce\u2019 his \u2018impact on the living world;\u2019 while in 2017<\/a> <\/span>he asked: \u2018What madness of our times will revolt our descendants?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018There are plenty to choose from,\u2019 he opined, but one he believed \u2018will be the mass incarceration of animals, to enable us to eat their flesh or eggs or drink their milk.\u2019<\/p>\n

Whatever one\u2019s views \u2013 vegan or meat-enthusiast \u2013 on this issue, it is fair to say that Monbiot has been ethically vacant and that his knowledge of \u201cthe science\u201d isn\u2019t always up to speed, even by his own admission.<\/p>\n

Corbynista?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Monbiot displayed a similar inconsistency and lack of staying power in his attitude to Jeremy Corbyn. In 2015 he hailed the Islington MP Labour leadership candidate as \u2018the curator of the future<\/span><\/a>. His rivals are chasing an impossible dream.\u2019<\/p>\n

By the beginning of 2017, however, he was tweeting<\/a><\/span>: \u2018I was thrilled when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, but it has been one fiasco after another. I have now lost all faith.\u2019<\/p>\n

That was just months before Corbyn\u2019s high water mark: the 2017 General Election when the Conservatives under Theresa May were reduced to a minority administration reliant on the support of the DUP.<\/p>\n

At least the surprising result gave Monbiot pause for reflection. He mused later that year on a crushing defeat<\/span><\/a> for the liberal media which had \u2018created a hall of mirrors, in which like-minded people reflect and reproduce each other\u2019s opinions.\u2019<\/p>\n

He noted that \u2018broadcasters echo what the papers say, the papers pick up what the broadcasters say.\u2019 and how a \u2018narrow group of favoured pundits appear on the news programmes again and again.\u2019<\/p>\n

Covidiocy<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Having acknowledged \u201ca hall of mirrors\u201d in the media\u2019s treatment of Jeremy Corbyn it seems surprising he wouldn\u2019t consider that this phenomenon may have operated during the pandemic. Instead, we found full-blooded commitment to lockdowns and all that followed. The nadir arrived with an argument for what amounts to scientific censorship.<\/p>\n

On first glance, his proposal for a time delimited \u2018outright ban on lies that endanger people\u2019s lives<\/a><\/span>\u2019 might seem proportionate in an emergency period, but this proceeds a passage in which he refers to \u2018people such as Allison Pearson, Peter Hitchens and Sunetra Gupta, who have made such public headway with their misleading claims about the pandemic.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cand Sunetra Gupta\u201d!!!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

For anyone who has not heard of her, apart from being a published novelist, Sunetra Gupta<\/a><\/span> is an infectious disease epidemiologist and a professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford.<\/p>\n

In March 2020, Gupta and her colleagues posted a paper<\/span><\/a> challenging the modelling of Imperial College\u2019s Neil Ferguson which persuaded many Western governments to adopt lockdowns. Gupta\u2019s paper argued that prior coronavirus infections would diminish the spread and posited a far lower infection fatality rate. Its predictions proved optimistic, but Ferguson projected a minimum U.S. death toll of a \u2018best case scenario<\/a><\/span>\u2019 of 1.1 million, rising to 2.2 million in a worst case scenario that also proved inaccurate. It is fair to say that epidemiology is not an exact science.<\/p>\n

Monbiot\u2019s disturbing article conflated Gupta\u2019s more optimistic assessment \u2013 which brought vilification<\/span><\/a> \u2013 with denial of human responsibility for climate change and the role of smoking in lung cancer.<\/p>\n

He also slipped in an attack on the Great Barrington Declaration that Gupta co-authored, misrepresenting proposals for targeted protection as championing \u2018herd immunity through mass infection with the help of discredited claims.\u2019 Presumably Monbiot would have consigned that document to the bonfire too.<\/p>\n

Covid Expertise<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

A new paper in the British Medical Journal by John Ionnidas<\/a><\/span> reflects on the echo chamber \u2013 generated by social media in particular \u2013 in which Monbiot operates. Ionnidas compared the social media following of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration to its rival John Snow Memorandum that advocated for the opposing view of continuing with lockdowns.<\/p>\n

He concluded that both included \u2018many stellar scientists\u2019, but that \u2018JSM has far more powerful social media presence and this may have shaped the impression that it is the dominant narrative.\u2019<\/p>\n

This paper is unlikely to inform Monbiot\u2019s understanding of \u201cthe science\u201d of COVID-19, which has been reduced to a political ideology. Thus, anyone questioning the wisdom of lockdowns and universal vaccination \u2013 with recourse to draconian laws if necessary \u2013 is essentially adopting \u201cconspiratorial<\/span>\u201d \u201cright-wing\u201d ideas.<\/p>\n

Rather than dispassionately assess the merits of lockdowns or medications via cost benefit analyses \u2013 as a critical journalist or scientist ought to \u2013 Monbiot blithely argues that the \u2018anti-vaccine movement is a highly effective channel for the penetration of far-right ideas into leftwing countercultures.\u2019<\/p>\n

Notably absent is an acknowledgement that he, George Monbiot, could possibly err in his evaluation of scientific or political questions.<\/p>\n

Monbiot\u2019s views on COVID-19 are consistent with opinions expressed across most of a liberal media (including the Guardian)<\/em> which has received hundreds of millions of dollars<\/a> <\/span>in financial support from the Gates Foundation, arguably manufacturing consent for the status quo.<\/p>\n

Monbiot is hardly a gun for hire, but operating within the hall of mirrors he previously acknowledged has brought an intellectual meltdown.<\/p>\n

His diminished credibility as a commentator, and tendency towards divisive political tribalism, should be of concern to environmentalists; who also ought to be wary of the steady encroachment of philanthrocapitalism.<\/p>\n

Feature Image: Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2010, having advocated for veganism in 2002, George Monbiot wrote: \u2018I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat \u2013 but farm it properly.\u2019 Having just read Simon Faerlie\u2019s book Meat: A Benign Extravagance, Monbiot acknowledged serious environmental problems with the prevailing model of cattle production, but complained that pigs \u2018have been forbidden in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1526,1819,3530,3664,3669,3831,3886,3962,3963,4840,4956,4989,6206,6249,6951,7188,8176,8740,9807],"class_list":["post-13250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comment","tag-censorship","tag-comment","tag-funding-of-media","tag-george","tag-george-monbiot","tag-great-barrington-declaration","tag-guardian","tag-hall","tag-hall-of-mirrors","tag-jeremy-corbyn","tag-john-ionnidas","tag-john-snow-memorandum","tag-mirrors","tag-monbiots","tag-palace-of-versailles","tag-philanthrocapitalism","tag-scientific-censorship","tag-sunetra-gupta","tag-veganism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}