Portraits of the Resistance | Introduction
Introducing | Portraits of the Resistance
When the first Covid lockdown started on the 26th March 2020, I can’t deny my shock. There had been rumours for a month or so about a coming UK lockdown, strong ones, though to my mind, perhaps naively, I just didn’t think it was either imminent or feasible. I’d recently returned from a business trip to Singapore, where I had witnessed the building curiosity and panic concerning this virus being called SARS-COV-2 aka Covid-19. Splashed across the mainstream news were terrifying images of men in white suits walking the streets, people confined to their residences, bodybags on the ground and so (sooooo) many masks. Before I left Singapore in February 2020, there was clearly a consensus that Covid was heading that direction. Sure enough, a few days after my arrival back in the UK the country went into ‘Lockdown’.
‘Lockdown’. A term, without definition, but nevertheless, one which managed to weave its way overnight into our everyday lexicon. This alien term, this buzzword which hadn’t yet come close to being understood was being defined by its use to encompass any and all conditions or restrictions which could be justified to ‘flatten’ the supposed ‘curve’. The very idea that we would be instructed to stay in our homes on pain of fines, arrest or worse, seemed utterly ludicrous. Surely the public would never accept being robbed of virtually everything that makes life liveable. Family, friends, travel, relationships, even work. All were virtually cancelled because of the deadly virus.
The Chinese went into full on dystopia mode with their hazmat suits, decontamination regimes and imagery of children, obediently masked, often in queues and in some cases enrobed in these same white biohazard outfits. Most, I think at this time had just accepted this idea of a lockdown as being a wacky ‘China’ thing as opposed to something about to become reality on our own doorsteps. We’d seen the priming for years over SARS and MERS and all the other next big things. Even now I remember the footage and the worrying red flags of the ‘dead’ puffing on cigarettes from right out of the body bags.
I watched in total disbelief at the announcement of the inaugural UK ‘Lockdown’. Disbelief that such a thing could ever be contemplated on these shores and that, even if attempted, no-one would ever actually go along with it. To my astonishment and enduring disappointment, I was quite wrong...
The first couple of weeks were expectedly bleak and pitiful, yet remarkably unforgettable. Waking each morning, as many did following that fateful announcement, believeing for a split second that nothing was different, the world unchanged; this awful dream merely a night terror, soon to dissolve along with the veil of sleep. I remember that sinking feeling in those initial waking moments, the sobering realisation that this was no nocturnal trick of the mind, but rather a waking nightmare, in which it seemed the whole world was experiencing in unison.
Acceptance was impossible. How could this happen? How was it legal? What evidence was there? And, why was everyone going along with it?!
Like millions of others across the world, to me these were elemental questions left hanging in the balance, unanswered. It was never, what do I need to do to protect myself and my family from the deadly Virus™, or which new regulations I should abide? How could any of us accept this so called ‘new normal’, this utter dystopia unfolding before us. Overnight it seemed the world had willingly gifted the soverignty of every human soul away.
Life during those seemingly endless months of lockdown was a strange combination of disbelief, anger and sheer frustration at the world. Enduring the constant proclamations of new variants and frightening case numbers by sombre ‘experts’ being called upon to give daily sermon to the national congregation. Our movements and activities rationed, meted out in dosages of who and how many can gather together. How much exercise can be taken, or how many hours of outside time is allowed. Who can shop when and what for... Mothers separated from children, grandparents denied the most fundamental of dignities of human touch. The very basics of a normal existence, a normal life, had been taken from us all overnight. How could it be that the entire world was being brought to its knees over a flu? And where were those asking the questions?
I did what so many of us did during those weeks and months. I read, I researched, I listened and educated myself, consuming as much information as possible about the most dangerous disease in the world in order to make sense of the apparently nonsensical. Hoping, somehow, to stumble upon the right candle of thought to illuminate the truth, the real truth, and explain everything.
The fact of it, however, was that for anything to remotely make sense, I like so many have had to accept that, the reality really is stranger than fiction. That those charged with healing us are, in fact, harming us; those elected to serve us in high office, actually would much rather have us serve them. These inverted patterns of behaviour replicated far and wide across the world. Tyranny dressed as virtue. The wolf (or wolves), as it were, dressed in sheep's clothing.
It wasn’t just the contradictory explanations of origin, or the impossibility of the data as it was presented to us, or the sCieNcE™ which had the alarm bells ringing. For many, including myself it was our more divine senses tipping us off. Those not based in the temporal, but rather in the ether, the metaphysical, the spiritual. The alarm bells ringing out from intuition as well as intellect.
I watched on as a seemingly hypnotised and fearful nation embraced the new ‘normal’ with vigour. Relishing the opportunity for a bit of home working. A couple of weeks to take the foot off the gas. A break from the prosaic life of the 9-5 and something more exciting to get behind. What better cause than saving the world from a deadly virus?
It was conjecture and guesswork, which became the hallmarks of the so called ‘science’ being endlessly foisted on the public through a complicit global mainstream media machine. None of the anticipated, and logical questions about it’s origin or veracity, it’s isolation or testing protocol, stages of the disease, a list of consistent symptoms, etc. None of these, and less besides, were being demanded in the public interest. Nor, as it became clear, would these lines of questioning be tolerated. Certianly not on social media where it became against the ‘rules’ to question anything not in line with the official Covid narrative. It was as if questioning this ‘pandemic’ in any way or the ‘facts’ as they were being paid to be broadcast through our television screens by strangers, was suddenly a global taboo. Worse, a heinous crime. A criminal offence. Dissenters were not to be tolerated and would go on to be ridiculed and labelled as ‘dangerous’, crazy ‘conspiracy theorists’, and heretic ‘anti-vaxxers’ in television and online media. SuperSpreaders™, not only of the deadly virus but of malevolent mis-information. Information not in the interest of those, who themselves seek to direct public interest and curiosity away from anything questioning this ever more confluent global health narrative. Like any religion, the Church of Covid was complete with strict dogma and rituals, not to be disobeyed or questioned.
As lockdowns ramped up around the world and government rhetoric became more fearful and totalitarian in nature, I found a different tribe. A tribe of those who were resisting and moving to the beat of an altogether different drummer.
A community of the rebels, the dissidents, the revolutionaries and insurgents. Strong terms to describe those who I found simply speaking their minds. Nothing about the people I met would characterise them typically as any of these. Not in the way I would have normally thought. Now however, those bucking the edicts and proclamations, the sombre televised sermons of fire and brimstone, of fines and penalties (not to mention the ever present threat of THE VIRUS), to simply enquire, to question, to seek understanding were all suddenly outcasts. The unscientific, the unwise, the uneducated and sometimes simply just The Granny Killers™.
Many learned that there was more to discover than purely the roots of the Covid saga. I suspect many of us learned much more from that time. Riding the rabbit holes of thought and consciousness separately, yet somehow united. Learning of global power structures, unelected unilateral organisations and questionable histories along with assessing our own place in current world events.
Some of those that I met are those I had photographed while documenting protests or attending rally’s, some I watched or listened to from afar in an attempt to make it all make sense.
They’re those who were willing to put their heads above the parapet. Those ready to be heard…
Volume 1. Portraits of the Resistance | Louise May Creffield - COMING 3rd November!
Please leave a comment or a like below. Let me know what you think of the series and also please share if you do.
If you want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/kerrymurrayphoto
or
Kerry, a perfect description of those crazy fake pandemic times. Sadly the craziness has not gone away, just waiting in the wings to be pushed centre stage in the very near future.
I’m remain angry. I know it’s wrong. But I find it hilariously psychotic to see the so called ‘rebels’ who now voice their objection to that madness and indeed the ongoing madness, but who at the time remained silent. Rebels? Seriously? I don’t buy it.