Masculinity Bad

Via Off-Guardian

Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.

1.”contagious vaccines”

Scientists are apparently working on the next generation of vaccine tech: contagious vaccines.

That’s right stage two in the war on the unvaccinated is here.

Sorry, not the war the on the unvaccinated, the war on pandemics.

Because this is absolutely about protecting public health, and not at all a way to get around people refusing to take experimental vaccines.

Even the name is misleading, because in reality a “contagious vaccine” is essentially a disease. Perhaps a genetically modified disease, perhaps a “weakened strain” of a disease, but a disease nonetheless.

In essence, they are openly planning to deliberately infect people with a lab-modified disease and hope it spreads immunity.

Even supposing this is their honest intention (and no one in authority has earned even half that level of trust) it is insane, with massive potential for “accidentally” making things a lot worse, not to mention the human rights implications.

According to this article in the National Geographic, they are already working on “contagious vaccines” for the Ebola virus, Lassa fever and Rabies – some of the most deadly diseases on the planet.

Personally, I can’t think how this could possibly go wrong, can you?

2. Masculinity bad

A double-sided attack on the idea of masculinity this week.

On the one side we’re warned that the “far-right” is “weaponizing” physical fitness and “hyper-masculinity”.

According to this article on MSNBC:

White supremacists’ latest scheme to valorize violence and hypermasculinity has gone digital.

It concludes:

The realm of online fitness now provides a new and ever-expanding market for reaching and radicalizing young men; and it requires our targeted focus and resources to try and stop the cycle.

But there’s more to this than overtly associating fitness and masculinity with fascism, there’s also covertly attacking masculinity by promoting diets which reduce testosterone, like as article does.

It claims that:

High-protein diets may lead to reduced testosterone levels in men

…which was considered the complete opposite of the truth until very recently.

For years research has said that vegetarian and vegan diets contribute to a lowering of testosterone.

Then in 2020 a new study changed the received wisdom, claiming there was no difference between vegan and non-vegan testosterone levels.

And then just this week another new study reversed the old consensus, claiming high protein diets actually lower your testosterone.

However, there are several issues with the study. For example its a small sample size, its short duration, and the fact it did not account for any other lifestyle choices which may impact hormone levels.

Further, although all articles discussing the study illustrate it with pictures of red meat, the study itself says the high protein diets included “meat, fish, dairy and protein shakes“.

Many protein shakes are made with soy protein. Soy is known to contain phytoestrogens, which reduce male hormones. We could go deeper, but that’s not TWitNN is about.

So, new review study emerges that totally reverses accepted wisdom on high-protein and meat-based diets at exactly the same time that the meat industry is being blamed for climate change AND the media is trying to undercut physical fitness and masculinity.

All in all it all just seems a bit convenient, doesn’t it?

Why TPTB would want to undermine and attack masculinity is an interesting question, but one for a longer article.

3. The unpersoning continues

One of the worst, most destructive aspects of the Covid “pandemic” was the way the media attempted to turn swathes of humanity against each other. The maskless vs the masked, the vaccinated vs the “anti-vaxxers”.

This was accompanied by a wave-upon-wave of “othering”. Covid skeptics were routinely talked about as if they were not human, people were encouraged to simply ignore any friends/colleagues/family members who had become “conspiracy theorists”.

This pattern of behaviour is one of many that has transferred seamlessly from the Covid narrative to the Ukraine narrative.

In the Guardian this week we can read one woman’s fraught tale, relating how she simply stopped talking to a Russian friend of over 30 years because she supported Vladimir Putin.

Elsewhere in MI6’s paper of choice we have the always-reliable Nick Cohen, labelling everyone who ever worked for RT or Sputnik as “collaborators”.

This is deeply unpleasant rhetoric, designed to normalise prejudice and further divide society.

BONUS: Disingenuous political theatre of the week

In case you were in any doubt as to just how corrupt and intertwined the military, corporate and entertainment worlds are…President Zelensky may be addressing the audience at the Academy Awards tonight:

Because nothing fixes spiraling ratings like a piece of orchestrated pro-war propaganda.

Sean Penn has threatened to smelt his Oscars if Zelensky is not allowed to speak.

But I guess its only fair the President of Ukraine gets some air time. After all, the Oscars have previously given a platform to the leaders of Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Palestine…

…Oh, wait.

It’s not all bad…

Earlier this week veteran Russian prank-callers Lexus and Vovan called the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel pretending to be the Prime Minister of Ukraine:

…it’s so embarrassing that you almost feel sorry for her.

Almost.

The video has already been purged from YouTube (I don’t know what their “justification” is for that), but can be found all over Odysee.

*

All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention calls for Supreme Court justices to be removed for dissenting on the 2020 election or Chris Whitty admitting lockdowns made people sick.