But these strange bedfellows have been in cahoots for some time now, on matters such as “climate emergency” and “clean” energy. Wokery is now just as much a core concern of modern corporations as it is of the green-Left.

On the Left, however, there have been the lockdown sceptics, an excellent group that publishes good stuff, but they find themselves in a tiny, Leftist minority.

DISSEDENTS

Other noted pandemic dissidents have come from a Left-liberal background, like CJ Hopkins and Mark Crispin Miller.

Another is the outstanding and passionate freedom-fighter Robin Monotti, who has teamed up with Mike Yeadon and Cory Morningstar to provide an indispensable resource for COVID dissenters of all stripes.

For at least some Leftists, it is the sheer totalitarianism and cancel culture of the lockdown-vaccinator class to which they (correctly) object.

It is a timely reminder that once the Left was concerned about personal freedom, and certainly the freedom to dissent.

The 1960’s Leftist protesters marched in the streets over freedom of speech. Now, not so much.

They would, these days, prefer to hop into bed with Big Pharma and Big Tech. Leftist organs like The Guardian and the BBC readily accept the money of Bill Gates, then become mere puppets for the vaccine class.

Then there are the early, consistent and vociferous lockdown sceptics who, unfortunately, went quiet on the vaccine mandates. Here we think of Lord Sumption and Peter Hitchens.

For whatever reasons, the initial positions of these stalwarts for freedom in relation to lockdowns swung 180 degrees when vaccine mandates were enforced. A strange conclusion to have reached, I would think.

Two outstanding dissident leaders of the anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine mandate movement, Tom Woods and Jeffrey Tucker, exemplary classical liberals both, have been pondering why so-called libertarians have been chanting for the COVID State, while critical of those who beg to differ.

CRITICS

Tucker, in particular, took aim at those who, he thought, should have been vocal critics of medical tyranny.

He wrote: “But also you can imagine my own sadness when two personal heroes of mine, the two most brilliant living scholars I know, somehow bought the baloney being served up by Fauci and company. I’ve been hesitant to mention this because it is deeply embarrassing to me…”

And he named names – Deirdre McCloskey and Tyler Cowen. Eminent economists, public intellectuals of considerable heft and classical liberals to boot.

Tom Woods has also been on the case. He and the British rabbit-holer extraordinaire, James Delingpole, discussed the question in 2021.

They spoke of “blue pilled libertarians”. And those in the pay of COVID Statist corporates. Like so many others, these libertarians believed the “experts”.

They had faith in the essential goodness of government in relation to the virus. (Really, libertarians?). Woods called out the Cato Institute.

These organisations are now pretty much part of the establishment (like the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, for God’s sake), despite their supposed classical liberalism.

Woods also called out (American) Republican governors who went along with pandemic tyranny. The rare Republican politicians that opposed mandates became pariahs in their own Party, very quickly.

Opposing COVID tyranny often had dire consequences for dissenters who spoke up. Delingpole suggested that libertarian/conservative public figures and pundits simply didn’t want to go beyond what was deemed respectable and sayable.

So, why are a goodly number of libertarians such avid supporters of the massively illiberal lockdowns and vaccine mandates?

SUCCUMBED

Neither Woods nor Tucker have fully explained this, though Tucker has some suggestions as to why the academic class generally has succumbed to what he terms medical “suppressionism”.

Interestingly, Scott Adams, and, to an extent, Tucker, seem to see the COVID failures of gurus and previously much-admired scholars as primarily a question of stupidity and not of illiberalism.

Their problem is seen as having been one of perception. Clearly, for those who claimed to be libertarian or similar, their ideologies were malleable in the face of a new Statist narrative.

On libertarians, Woods and Tucker have simply been gobsmacked, and continue to shake their heads in disbelief.

Which begs the question. Why have libertarians been missing in action, and, worse, in some cases abusive of those who have shown real courage in standing for liberty?

There are several possibilities here:

• The so-called libertarians aren’t really that libertarian, after all;
• They seek to square off their COVID lapse through Jesuitical casuistry, or, in layman’s terms, they are slithering;
• Their libertarianism turns out to be contingent, and they draw the line at perceived public health crises;
• They simply have odd libertarian priorities;
• They actually believe that being unvaccinated and out and about in “the community” poses a mortal danger to other people, and so, on libertarian grounds of safeguarding life against the threatening actions of others, making people get the jab is quite okay;
• Like everyone, libertarians like to be hip and popular with their illiberal peers and betters, hence their long history of social liberalism that so often coalesces with positions taken by the neo-Left (witness their almost universal and inevitable championing of abortion, homosexual marriage and euthanasia);
• Just like so many people during COVID, libertarians, especially academics, might well be in the pay of corporate funders of their work, and so may simply be putting career before principles.