During my morning read-through of The Unz Review on Thursday, I saw my own name in a headline: “Coronavirus: Greg Johnson Debates Andrew Anglin.” The piece, by one Brad Griffin, was a minute by minute response to my recent coronavirus discussion with Greg Johnson, where Greg took the position that the virus is very dangerous and that the government was right to lock us all down, and I took the position that the virus is very similar to the flu, and that the government lockdown doesn’t work and is a massive overreach which will lead to complete economic collapse and usher in a new form of totalitarian governance.

Griffin’s response was a histrionic gotcha manifesto, with the premise that everything I said was wrong, and needed to be aggressively corrected with vitriol and mainstream media talking points in defense of this brutal new safety regime.

Neither myself nor Brad Griffin are credentialed virologists or epidemiologists. Brad Griffin is saying that Dr. John Ioannidis, along with an army of other virologists and epidemiologists are wrong, and I’m saying that Anthony Fauci and Neil Ferguson are wrong. The bottom line is that there is no reason that either of us should be taken especially seriously when we talk of scientific data. We are effectively doing no more than pointing to experts. Unlike Brad Griffin, I do not condescendingly pretend to be an expert. The reason I agreed to “debate” Greg (it was really more of a friendly discussion of a disagreement) was primarily for entertainment purposes. We’re all locked in our houses, Greg and I are both infamous internet personalities, and I figured it would be fun for my audience and his to listen to us share our differing opinions on the situation dominating all of our lives. I certainly did not expect to change any minds.

While I felt it was appropriate to offer a response to Brad Griffin, I am a self-respecting adult and I have no interest in playing gotcha. People who are going to believe in Griffin’s new definition of case fatality rate (which he uses to claim coronavirus has a 19% mortality rate), that the case fatality rate is determined by lockdown measures, or that the flu has never caused complications for the heart, intestines, brain, liver or kidneys, are not going to stop believing because I posted a link, or called Brad Griffin a mean name, or posted an unflattering photo of him, or accused him of being mentally ill.

The decision of whether or not to embrace coronamania is not based on statistical analysis of the specific number of nursing home residents or obese black people that are likely to die. We are witnessing a mass hysteria. It is collective temporary insanity induced by the media. The gulf between skeptics and true believers is underlined by personal disposition; those who are inclined to prioritize personal responsibility, freedom and suspicion of authority are pushing back against the lockdown, while those who are prone to neuroticism, risk aversion, safety prioritization and trust in authority are embracing the hysteria. For most people, the data becomes simply a post-hoc rationalization for a position that was already determined by their psychological profile. Given the masculine/feminine dichotomy, it has also become a partisan political issue, which has poisoned any public debate over the merits of the various claims.

What is worth examination are the core concepts that true believer Brad Griffin is delivering behind his seething gotcha barrage. As some people hopefully remember, the initial stated purpose of this lockdown was to prevent the hospitals from being overwhelmed. That’s what “flatten the curve” meant. These were measures intended to draw out the number of cases over a longer period of time. That is to say, there was no plan to “save lives.” As it is now clear and admitted by all parties involved that the hospitals are not overwhelmed, and in fact the nurses from these hospitals have time to go out and protest against people who want their lives back and to do choreographed dance routines for TikTok. The narrative has now made a phoenixlike transformation into “we’re keeping you safe from yourselves.” That is the narrative Brad Griffin is promoting. He is saying that the utterly corrupt and criminal Zionist Occupation Government of the United States has a right to deprive Americans of our most basic freedoms in the name of protecting us from the theoretical consequences of our own decisions. This government, according to Brad Griffin, has a duty to destroy the livelihoods of the entirety of the middle class in America in the name of a safety mandate. The fact that the virus is not anything like what Imperial College London claimed it was or the fact that the lockdown has been an absolute joke, which began with the Surgeon General of the United States telling the public that they were more likely to be infected if they wore masks, are side issues in a much larger ideological divide.

It is my assertion that if Brad Griffin is as scared of this virus as he appears to be, he could have locked himself in his house. There was no one keeping him from doing so. There was no need for him and people like him to force the rest of us to go along with their neurosis. As a healthy and athletic 35-year-old, I am not at risk for dying. According to the CDC’s own numbers, I have less than a 1 in 1000 chance of dying, even if I get sick enough to go to the hospital. This is approximately the same risk I have of dying from drowning or burning to death in a fire. By CDC math, I am ten times more likely to die in a car crash than I am to die of the coronavirus. For me personally, the coronavirus falls squarely into the category of “acceptable risks.” I believe that I had a right to make that choice. However, here I sit, locked in my house, because people like Brad Griffin lobbied for this insane experiment.

This government that Brad Griffin demands we hand over total control of our lives to has overseen the mass import and distribution of opioid drugs, which are now killing 70,000 people a year. This government refuses virtually any regulation of the food industry, which leads to the deaths of 650,000 people every year from heart disease. This government sent thousands of young Americans to die in Iraq and Afghanistan for the purpose of forwarding the regional goals of Israel, based on a series of hoaxes. It’s very difficult for me to buy the idea that this government is particularly concerned about my health.

Ezekiel Emmanuel, a dual Democrat political operative and credentialed expert, has been a prime evangelist for this lockdown. He was at the forefront of changing the narrative from “prevent the hospitals from being overwhelmed” to “we must continue the lockdown until the virus is eradicated.” He is currently serving as Joe Biden’s chief advisor on medical issues. While developing Barack Obama’s healthcare plan, Emmanuel was the core proponent of what became known as “death panels,” a policy that would limit end of life care for the elderly in the name of prioritizing the greater good of society. And he is now concerned about old people dying of the flu?

Brad Griffin claimed in his gotcha manifesto that anyone who even dares ask questions about whether or not it is desirable to surrender all control of our lives to this government, all the way down to our ability to feed ourselves, is a “libertarian.” I assert that even if you actually believed that this coronavirus is a Biblical plague, that the only possible solution to it is to lock everyone in their houses (while also letting them gather whenever they want at supermarkets), including healthy young people whose chance of experiencing complications from the virus is statistically nonexistent, and you were fine with sacrificing the entire economy, putting what will probably amount to at least 50% of the population out of work, destroying virtually all small businesses, creating a massive new homeless population that is going to number in the millions and vastly inflating the suicide and drug abuse rates – even then, it would be appropriate to ask if this government is going to take advantage of this situation.

Brad Griffin’s position is that we all just need to shut up and do as we’re told.

While claiming that there is no chance whatsoever that the government will exploit this situation, Brad Griffin also takes the position that this will not collapse the economy. He’s the only person on the entire internet I’ve seen saying that. The fun part is, whereas we will never know if we would have had as easy of a time as Sweden if we did as they did and refused the lockdown, we are going to know very soon whether the government is going to agree to give us all of our Constitutional rights back and whether or not the economy has collapsed. You will all be able to come back here and see my position in contrast with Brad Griffin’s position, and decide who was right and who was wrong.

I have no idea why Brad Griffin and the rest of the costumed neo-Nazi community is promoting a total surrender to the government in the name of safety. Some people might say, “the COINTELPRO chief should be fired, because this has gotten ridiculous.”

I won’t say that. I’ll just say this: Brad Griffin, you are not my mommy. I already have a mommy. In fact, we all have mommies. We all love our mommies, but none of us are looking for a second mommy.