Download "Paul Kingsnorth: Why I changed sides in the vaccine wars"

Freddie Sayers speaks to Paul Kingsnorth. Read the article here: https://unherd.com/thepost/paul-kingsnorth-why-i-changed-sides-in-the-vaccine-wars/ Listen to the podcast version: https://shows.acast.com/lockdowntv-with-freddie-sayers/paul-kingsnorth-vaccine-segregation-crosses-the-rubicon Paul Kingsnorth sees the vaccine wars as symptomatic of a bigger division between two fundamentally different world views: he calls them “thesis” and “antithesis.” When it comes to Covid, “thesis” is the establishment viewpoint: that lockdowns are needed to contain the virus, masks work, vaccines are safe, and people who question them are wrongheaded or worse. When Covid-19 first struck, Kingsnorth took the “thesis” viewpoint. But over the last few months, his perspective changed. As he writes in today’s UnHerd, the crystallising moment arrived when he woke up to the news that the Austrian government had ‘interned an entire third of the population’. This move, he writes, sent a ‘chill down my spine’. In a conversation with Freddie Sayers on this week’s UnHerdTV, he explains this division and the bigger epistemological divides it reveals. “People are arguing about vaccines,” he says, “but they’re really under the surface arguing about what kind of person you are if you have taken these things, whether you’re a good or a bad person, or clean or unclean one”. Follow UnHerd on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/unherd Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unherd/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unherd/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@unherdtv // TIMECODES // 00:00 - 01:30 - Introduction 01:30 - 05:33 - Paul Kingsnorth explains the vaccine wars and their meaning 05:33 - 08:35 - The thesis and antithesis positions of the COVID debate 08:35 - 13:45 - Is the COVID debate a threat to the elite, like Brexit and Trump? 13:45 - 15:32 - Fear as a controlling device 15:32 - 18:51 - What does 'freedom' really mean? 18:51 - 20:23 - Where are we headed? 20:23 - 22:26 - Kingsnorth on what he’s learned in the last two years 22:26 - 25:05 - Where about ‘liberal democracy’? 25:05 - 30:45 - Are the antithesis group yearning for religious meaning? 30:45 - 34:09 - What are the values we should be talking about? 34:09 - 34:37 - Concluding thoughts #Covid19 #VaccinePassports #UnHerd