Is this how propaganda works?

‘The government has their new man; one who uncritically abides by any new restrictions with the assurance that it has been astutely devised by experts, one who washes his hands, distances himself from others, and wears a mask.’

Recent government activity will have the historians of the future rightly calling into question Britain’s status as a free society.

Indeed, Britons are getting a dosage of unaccountable totalitarian propaganda in the wake of a second wave of the coronavirus. A recent government model, put together by Professor Chris Whitty and Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance, has suggested that Britain should be very fearful of the near future. It shows a surge in coronavirus infections, doubling every week until mid-October, in which daily reported cases will be hitting 50,000. Of course, this is only if cases are to double every week, and there is no evidence to suggest that this hypothetical will come true.

What makes a seemingly banal, worst-case scenario figure so worrying is that it has been tacitly pedalled by the government, and broadly by the media, as an
authoritative roadmap. The BBC even regurgitated these statistics uncritically, failing to mention that the proposed scenario is unlikely to even happen. The absence of this crucial fact renders it appropriate that these models are viewed as blatant propaganda, designed to scare the public into submission. And yet, aside from sparse shrieks on Twitter, people have scarcely reacted against it.

We are told that this worst-case scenario (if only it was widely acknowledged as such) is to amount to over 200 deaths per day as a result, but what is the
situation like now? According to official figures, the UK is currently registering around ten to fifteen thousand cases a day – quite far away from the hypothetical model. Then there is the fact that this “second wave” is not nearly as scary as initially suggested. The numbers we’re currently seeing are far removed from the peak of the pandemic, and even further away from the government hypothetical. Hospitalisations are only at 6% of the numbers we saw during the peak of the pandemic – but this isn’t the positive news that the government or the media want to focus on.

Similarly, we’re seeing the fatality rate drop too, with 1% of those infected dying during the first wave, just half of that figure are dying in the second. These facts have been aptly focussed on by experts who have called for an end to current restrictions. Pad onto this the fact that ONS data shows that the flu and pneumonia have caused far more deaths than COVID since June, and the government has no case for its irresponsible scare-mongering.

The general public is largely unaware of these issues too, with a majority of citizens supporting new measures or wanting more restrictions. Perhaps this is because we do not see the aforementioned facts amplified in the media; they’re certainly not even looked at by the government. This in itself is a technique of propaganda. The Soviet Union’s propaganda relied on techniques which would later permeate throughout other totalitarian movements. Most notable was the idea of the “new man”, or the model man. The new man would be depicted by the authorities as a sort of archetype for all citizens, a man who possesses all the qualities that the government deems vital.

We are seeing this exact same model, consciously or unconsciously, being adopted in Britain. The government has their new man; one who uncritically abides by any new restrictions with the assurance that it has been astutely devised by experts, one who washes his hands, distances himself from others, and wears a mask. Such a man is the perfect citizen, the hero who has selflessly protected public utilities like the NHS. To force the canon of the new man onto the British people, the government’s advice is diluted into cheap slogans, such as: “Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives”.

As crass as the comparison to the USSR may be, the echoes of propaganda show that the government wants to control its population and thus can’t pay credence to dissent. Propaganda creates an alternate reality; here, we have the government reality, where the coronavirus is akin to the bubonic plague. On the other end of the spectrum, we have an evidential reality, where the second wave of the virus, while posing a mild threat, isn’t justified cause for panic. This is indeed how propaganda works, and it will be costly.