Everything we've been told about the coronavirus 'pandemic' over the last three years has been a lie. Nothing we have been told is true. Whether we did or do choose to believe it is not a question of opinion, or what we call 'our' politics, or even of our trust in authority. Those in authority in our society, as in every other across the world and throughout history, didn't get there by telling the truth: they got there by lying. If we chose to believe them - and as a 'people' the British did so in overwhelming numbers - it was because we were scared, and our fear made us stupid, it made us compliant, it made us weak, it made us turn to the liars in authority and ask them to tell us what to do - worse, to demand that they tell us what to do, and not only us but everybody else too. No-one who wanted to could not have failed to realise, very early on, that we were being lied to. There were and are no grey areas between what was and wasn't true. The truth was and still is there for anyone who wants to find it. The lies were and are easier to listen to, for they are everywhere, in every mouth, across every screen, loud and stupid and unbelievable except by an act of will - not to truth but to believe easy lies. But the difficult truth is that only cowards believed them, that only cowards can possibly choose to continue to believe them after three years of unrelenting and universal lying. It is on this collective cowardice, and on the acceptance and repetition of lies to the point that they are now enforced by the authorities as truth, even when secretly scarcely anyone still believes them, that the 'New Normal' has been constructed. And the unpleasant truth is that this tells us something about where we are, in the UK, as a society and perhaps, in the West, as a civilisation, as well as about the terrible place we are heading. Collected in two volumes, Virtue and Terror and The New Normal, these articles are for the unafraid, for those trying to find their courage, for those looking for the truth, for those who want to expose the lies to others, and for those looking for a way to fight back.
Elmer, Simon: - Simon Elmer was born and lives in London. In 2002 he received his PhD in the History and Theory of Art from University College London, and he has taught at the universities of London, Manchester, Reading and Michigan. In 2015 he co-founded Architects for Social Housing, for which he is Head of Research. His books include The Colour of the Sacred: Georges Bataille and the Image of Sacrifice (2007); The Road to Fascism: For a Critique of the Global Biosecurity State (2022); Virtue and Terror: Selected Articles on the UK Biosecurity State, Vol. 1 (2023); and with Geraldine Dening, The Truth about Grenfell Tower (2017); Central Hill: A Case Study in Estate Regeneration (2018); For a Socialist Architecture: Under Capitalism (2021); and Saving St. Raphael's Estate: The Alternative to Demolition (2022). Website: www.architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk Twitter: @SimonElmer2022
