Mandating Silence

I was going through old documents on my laptop and stumble upon an article that I wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic. I had sent it to a publisher, hoping to shed light on the perspective of someone unvaccinated. Needless to say, they never got back to me.

Now that a few years have gone by, I thought to myself, why share it with you?

December 23rd, 2021

Growing up, my dad always told me to question everything. 

I would like to begin this article with a short story in order to properly demonstrate my perspective and current state of mind. Although I will be commenting on the Covid-19 pandemic, it is not the primary focus of this article. I hope that the reader is open minded enough to see beyond their own biases. What is being portrayed in this article affects everyone and ideological views need to be withheld in order to see the expressed reality of this issue.

Earlier this October, I attended a nursing lecture at my local university. Before class started, the professor engaged us in conversation regarding the Covid-19 pandemic.

Although the topic of vaccination probably should not have been discussed openly in the classroom, most of us shared similar views as many of us had already been vaccinated. We believed we had superior knowledge about vaccines compared to the general public because of our status as nursing students. However, I would argue that we knew just as little.

Within the context of our classroom dynamic, my professor decided to share an inspirational quote with the class. The quote was “When all think alike, then no one is thinking” by Walter Lippman. She proceeded to explain how wonderful it would be if the unvaccinated people thought the same way we did. “If we all think alike, there would be no conflict” she said.

I watched as many of my peers wrote the quote down in their notebooks with admiration. In that moment, nothing seemed to make sense to me. Living in a world where everyone thinks alike would be frightful, wouldn’t it? I

f everyone thought the same, society would never progress forward. Individuality allows us to debate and explore topics from a different perspective.

The idea of democracy is founded on individuality and without individual thought there would be no such thing as creativity.

When I got home from school, I researched the quote and came to the realization that my professor had misinterpreted Walter Lippman’s intentional meaning. I believe the quote was a paradox. “When all think alike, then no one is thinking”. He was being sarcastic. Walter Lippman also said that “ours is a problem in which deception has become organized and strong; where truth is poisoned at its source; one in which the skill of the shrewdest brains is devoted to misleading a bewildered people”.

I could not understand how my professor could have so inaccurately misinterpreted Walter Lippman’s work. I believe one of the reasons she thought everyone should think alike is because the media only seems to demonstrate one way of thinking.

Later that evening, as I watched a panel of four people discussing vaccinations on television, not one person had an opposing view. It became quite clear that the information in the media is truly one sided.

In a democratic society, it is fundamentally important to debate opposing ideas and information. Individuals must challenge their own way of thinking to arrive at a sound conclusion.  

Throughout this pandemic, people with opposing perspectives have been banned and censored from all media. Reputations have been destroyed and the unvaccinated have been labelled as uneducated and selfish conspiracy theorists. However, upon closer evaluation, I’ve realized that this is not true and it makes me wonder, why these people are being censored?

Removing debate from the equation feeds into conspiracy ideologies because people become suspicious of the media. If the unvaccinated are so wrong, wouldn’t debate be an easy way to discredit them? And if you are speaking the truth, why would you be so opposed to debate?

I would like to illustrate my point with an analogy. Imagine we have two groups; one group states that 2+2 equals 4 and the others say that 2+2 is 7. Let’s pretend that this matter must be voted on by the public. As a democratic society the media would allow both parties to debate and rationalize the equation. There would be no need for the media to remove or censor information because the public could discern the truth for themselves.

I find it deeply unsettling that the media portrays only one point of view; if someone dictates what we should think and believe, is it still a democracy? By silencing the unvaccinated we are removing their freedom of speech, and if people can no longer say things because the media disagrees, what does that mean for us?

Noam Chomsky, an American theoretical linguistic and political activist once said that “democratic societies can’t force people. Therefore they have to control what they think”. He has also said that “The point of public relations slogans like “Support our troops” is that they don’t mean anything. That’s the whole point of good propaganda.

You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy?”.

I find this statement particularly interesting because throughout the pandemic slogans such as “help stop the spread” and “we’re all in this together” have been mainstream within the media. But are these slogans subconsciously promoting collectivism by implying that a person who does not share the same views imposed by the media are endangering society?

I believe that the media should contribute to democracy, not be a hindrance to it. Throughout history, the censoring of information has often led to totalitarianism. Currently, our social media platforms use “fact checkers” to filter information, but who has the right to say what is truth? 

Discrediting and flagging information as misleading will inevitably lead to a collectivist dogma that is easily manipulated by those who control the information. Many will argue that filtering information should be done for the “greater good”. However, one of the founding principles of democracy is freedom of speech and every time individual freedoms have been removed, tyranny has prevailed. Democracy is a fragile concept and it must be continuously upheld and maintained especially during times of crisis and uncertainty.

 It doesn’t matter what side of the spectrum you’re on. Whether you are vaccinated or not, right wing or left wing, Christian or Muslim. We the people should be deciding what is true. Through debate and questioning, not through censorship and manipulation.