A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic

by Laura Dodsworth

  So, did he think the public ought not to believe the government about the epidemic? ‘They’ve made all sorts of errors,’ he said, ‘but, worse, we know they have behaved in ways which are inappropriate, such as giving contracts out to their mates and to Tory donors. There’s no doubt in my mind we’ve wasted money on mates to the government.’

  As I said in Chapter 14, ‘Cults, conspiracy and psychic epidemics’, we must be aware that ‘disaster capitalism’ – a complex series of networks and influence employed by private companies and governments that allows them to profit from disasters – happens during shock and fear. Governments create fear, then cultivate and exploit it. We won’t understand the convergent agendas, the lean to authoritarianism, or how chaos translated to cash until later, and certainly not until we can assess rationally. To think rationally we need to be less frightened. I put this to Baker and he concurred, saying that he believed people had suspended their ‘analytic powers because they are worried about dying’ and felt ‘powerless’. It is at this point more than ever he believes people need to ask the difficult questions.

  5. THE USE OF FEAR IS ANTI-DEMOCRATIC

  ‘The use of fear is anti-democratic,’ sociologist Dr Ashley Frawley told me. ‘There is a lack of belief in the human subject, a subject that is seen as animalistic, incapable of understanding risk, and weak. The behavioural psychologists saw people’s proportionate responses to risk as a problem that needed to be overcome. The use of fear assumes you could never deal with this epidemic by using democratic means. And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because fear affects our ability to assess risk.’

  The weaponisation of fear is a particularly destabilising tactic in the behavioural psychology toolbox because it clouds our judgement, which in turn increases reliance on government, which then creates more fear, which paralyses us further, creating a self-perpetuating doom-loop. William Sargant said that successful brainwashing demands ‘the rousing of strong emotions’. Your pliability is exaggerated by your fears.

  Governments understand that fear is an unarguable fact of human psychology. History shows us that they will leverage fear, supposedly in our interests, ‘for our own good’, at the same time as advancing other interests which might not suit us so well. A government that nudges does not trust the people. A government that nudges has given up on debate and transparency and opted for covert manipulation – that is something to be wary of, if not frightened.

  During the Covid epidemic, the UK government threatened us with longer lockdowns or tougher restrictions if we misbehaved, and rewards such as the return of the ‘rule of six’ or garden meetings were dangled in front of us if all went well. The relationship between government and citizen was reminiscent of a strict parent and child relationship, with alternating use of the naughty step and then offering sweets for good behaviour. Citizens were not treated like adults. We were told frightening ‘bedtime stories’ every day via the news and Downing Street briefings to ensure compliance with a set of ever-changing and sometimes bizarre rules.

  There is something intrinsically infantilising about nudge. The behavioural scientists sometimes let the paternalism show through the chinks with their references to locking up the biscuit tin, or comparing us to children who don’t need to be asked if we want to learn to read, as though whatever they plan for us is exactly the same as reading.

  Claire Fox, Director of the Academy of Ideas, has crossed swords with the behavioural psychologists in the past and is also concerned about the impact on democracy. ‘Libertarians have argued in favour of nudge because it avoids state regulation and rules and outright coercion. Instead nudge theories are used to get the outcomes the government wants,’ she said. ‘It’s not a surprise that this government consider themselves to be libertarians and use nudge. And then the political left likes nudge because the left has also lost faith in ordinary people’s decisions. Nudge is worse than the nanny state. The nanny state tells you what it is doing, you can push back against it.’

  I agreed with her. You know where you are with a clear regulation, you can debate and dispute and change it, but often we can’t detect the use of nudges. Did she think of nudge as a sneaky way to manipulate people? ‘Yes. You should be free to make decisions about your lifestyle regardless of the outcome. A scientist can tell you not to smoke because it is a killer. That is the right thing to do. They should tell you that and then walk away. You decide whether to smoke or not. But today’s public health scientists have decided how the model citizen lives and, for them, the model citizen is not drinking excessively or eating the wrong food or smoking or all kinds of things. But who agrees that that is the best way to live? The ‘Good Life’ is disputed all the time. It is humanity’s struggle to discover the Good Life.’

  In Propaganda, Edward Bernays said: ‘The systematic study of mass psychology revealed the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation… the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose: If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?’

  His work built on Freud’s belief that there is a divorce between a person’s conscious thoughts and their suppressed feelings. According to Bernays, it is this which makes human beings manipulable. Governments can therefore design propaganda or psychological operations that go beneath the conscious and rational mind of the individual, targeting suppressed emotions and desires instead, making it possible to manipulate people without them being aware of the underlying motivations.

  The suppressed fear of death is supremely powerful combined with the rationally imposed ideas of solidarity and conformity and protecting others. The unconscious mind is manipulable using the most morally virtuous rational reasons, rendering people pliable. And thus, ‘three weeks to flatten the curve’ morphed into living under a year of emergency laws, to hundreds of statutory instruments passed by ministerial diktat, to the proposal of a potential new medical digital ID. If you believe in democracy you must be suspicious of the use of psychology to manipulate you against your will. Nudge is anti-democratic. The use of fear is a sinister form of control.

  18. HAPPY ENDINGS ARE NOT WRITTEN IN THE LANGUAGE OF COERCIVE CONTROL

  The vaccine programme appears to be the Happy Ending to the Horrible Story of the Covid-19 pandemic. But I am cautious. Not because I am ‘anti-vax’, but because I have observed that this stage of the story is also being written in the language of emotional manipulation and coercive control.

  Some of the vaccine messaging is optimistic, proud and forward-looking. Some is straight from the behavioural science handbook. The message ‘Impfen = Freiheit’ which translates as ‘Vaccination = Freedom’ was projected on a TV tower in Düsseldorf, Germany. Proud optimism or blatant propaganda?

  The term ‘vaccine hesitancy’ is now used to describe the attitude of people who have decided not to get vaccinated. It implies a slight pathologisation, that those reluctant to have a vaccine may have some sort of mental condition, rather than be making an individual choice based on risk analysis and rational preferences. It is designed to denigrate the vaccine sceptic, to make them look a bit silly. It also implies the ‘hesitation’ is just a step towards the inevitable, part of the process – come on dear, we’ll get you over that hump and you’ll have your vaccination in the end. Surely an ad hominem attack is less ethical and robustly persuasive than evidence would be?

  Some of the language around Covid vaccines ticks the boxes of Biderman’s ‘Chart of Coercion’ (p142–3). In December 2020, the NHS published a document for health professionals called Optimising Vaccination Roll Out – Dos and Don’ts for all messaging, documents and “communications” in the widest sense.1 Although I talked about the possible propaganda aimed at encouraging vaccine take up in BAME co
mmunities in Chapter 8, ‘Controlled spontaneity and propaganda’, this messaging is a broader departure from the public health language for the wider population. Certain recommended phrases are emotionally manipulative in a way that would affect informed consent. For instance, ‘normality can only return for you and others, with your vaccination’ and ‘if you want to be able to do what you want, then having the vaccine is the fastest and safest way to achieving this’. Why can normality only return after vaccination? If you do not get vaccinated is the message that you prevent everyone else getting back to normality?

  I discussed it with psychologist Gary Sidley, who said this ‘fits the definition of blackmail’ although ‘the blatant nature of it is a little surprising’. Public health expert and doctor Jackie Cassell agreed that the document contains ‘pretty extreme language’ and that ‘the whole approach is very much from the SPI-B playbook’.

  Cassell was deeply uncomfortable about this extreme language. ‘I can’t imagine how a doctor could use these arguments,’ she said. ‘Using peer norms as a direct form of persuasion is not something that comes readily to doctors and we don’t speak that language. It goes against our professional training. A vaccine is a medical intervention and people have to consent to it. I wouldn’t use the arguments in this document in these ways.’ I wondered why the language was so at odds with how doctors are trained to work, and she responded that ‘it brings up some interesting disciplinary perspectives, if not fault lines. The behavioural scientists and nudgers occupy a very different space. They are thinking like psychology-trained advertisers, like they are trying to get us to buy fashion or whatever. Asking health professionals to use this kind of language could be profoundly damaging to the trust in government and health services.’

  The coercive language in this NHS document shows how integral the behavioural psychology approach now is. This is also apparent in the recruitment of new behavioural science roles in the NHS, Public Health England and various government departments in recent months and years. And not everyone in public health agrees with it. If behavioural psychology is here to stay then it’s clear that, at the very least, the different disciplines need greater synergy to ensure that reflective thought about ethics and informed consent is not a thing of the past.

  On the world stage, politicians as well as representatives of the WHO, United Nations, Gavi (the Vaccine Alliance) and the World Economic Forum have all parroted the same phrase: ‘No one is safe until everyone is safe’. Language is being coordinated – but by whom? The phrase is literally not true: if you have the vaccine, you have the protection it confers.

  Boris Johnson announced on 25 March 2021 that ‘there is going to be a role for vaccine certification’.2 He justified the imposition of Covid certificates that might allow businesses to bar unvaccinated customers by saying that the public ‘want me as prime minister to take all the action I can to protect them’.3 The Sun duly ran the headline ‘No Jab, No Pint’.

  There’s a feeling after a year of restrictions that people will do anything to ‘get back to normal’. But declaring your health status to use businesses and services has never been normal. The introduction of a health status ID to access products and services will cross a rubicon.

  Some people are now overly anxious about other people’s immune status. In fact, the constant requirement for reassurance, through certificates and checkpoints, could actually ‘end up promoting fear and anxiety that are not proportionate to the perils involved’, according to Robert Dingwall, sociologist and government advisor.

  Once the over-50s and vulnerable categories have been vaccinated, 98% of the risk of death and 80 to 85% of the risk of serious illness will have been eliminated.4 On that basis, the vaccine programme is a success for at-risk individuals and for society as a whole. So, what would the point of Covid certificates be? After all, the only thing that matters is your own immune status. If you are vaccinated, you are protected. If someone is not vaccinated next to you at the bar, it will not matter because you are vaccinated.

  The push for certification is reminiscent of yet another behavioural science strategy. The kinds of people who populate the advisory panels close to government are very risk-averse. They are focused on the importance of vaccination, and ‘forcing’ their view of good health on to us, and perhaps dismissive of ethical and social considerations. Allowing private businesses to discriminate against the unvaccinated allows the government to avoid mandating vaccinations, but at the same time makes it impossible for people to go about their normal lives without vaccination. It is a form of coercion.

  I asked Dingwall if he thought this push for vaccine certificates is a behavioural psychology ‘nudge’. ‘It’s a nudge for low-risk groups, once the high-risk groups have been vaccinated’, he said. ‘Perhaps the worry is about vaccination uptake among younger people. But why not cross that bridge if we come to it? Public health should not be about bullying people, it should be about advising them.’ Jackie Cassell also had reservations about certification: ‘Vaccines tap into our relationships with personhood and state. I hate the idea of biosecurity. We don’t have a passport for measles because, by and large, we have a fantastic vaccination scheme and uptake. Biosecurity won’t make people get vaccinated, feel safe, or have confidence in government and the NHS.’

  Is this a case of the government capitalising on disaster? Matt Hancock said in September 2019 that the government was ‘looking very seriously’5 at making vaccinations mandatory for school pupils. Is Covid-19 being used as the excuse to usher in a change that the government already wanted? He said at the time that ‘when the state provides services to people then it’s a two-way street – you’ve got to take your responsibilities, too’. But this is autocratic thinking in disguise, where ‘responsibility’ means doing what you are told. He said he thought that ‘the public would back us’. I think that would have been unlikely at the time, as it would have been a huge change for the British socially, ethically and legally. But there’s nothing like a pandemic for shifting the dial on mandatory vaccines. Indeed, in March 2021, Hancock announced that the government was looking at making Covid-19 vaccines mandatory for care workers, to the consternation of unions who attacked the plans as ‘heavy-handed’ and ‘authoritarian’.6

  During the epidemic, public opinion polls functioned like crystal balls, allowing us to gaze at the plans of politicians. While polls are ostensibly supposed to tell the government what we think, they are quite useful for telling us what the government wants us to think and what it wants to do next. And when the results are revealed to us they guide us, through social conformity and the herding instinct, into a preference we never knew we held. As Peter Hitchens said, ‘Opinion polls are a device for influencing public opinion, not a device for measuring it. Crack that, and it all makes sense.’7 In an IPSOS MORI report, David Halpern made a similar comment: ‘In a world of behavioural economics, public opinion surveys are themselves a “nudge” – a signal to both policymakers and our fellow citizens about what’s acceptable and what’s not.’8

  On 30 September 2020 YouGov asked, ‘Once a vaccine has been found, would you support or oppose the government making it compulsory for everyone to receive a vaccination against the coronavirus?’ The options allowed you to support, oppose or select ‘don’t know’. That question was a fairly clear indication of the government’s direction of travel at a time when emergency authorisation of a vaccine had not even been granted in the UK. The next question hinted harder at the desired destination: ‘And once a vaccine has been found, would you support or oppose the government prosecuting and fining people who do not get a vaccination against the coronavirus?’ Before the vaccine had been authorised, long before we would know whether the vaccine interrupted transmission of the virus (that is still not certain at the time of writing) the government was checking to see whether the public would support fines for not having the vaccine.

  Just as Hancock’s pre-epidemic enthusiasm for mandating vaccines mirrors his post-epide
mic interest, might the government’s flip-flopping on vaccine passports also align with a previous inclination for such schemes? The European Union published a Roadmap For The Implementation Of Actions By The European Commission Based On The Commission Communication And The Council Recommendation On Strengthening Cooperation Against Vaccine Preventable Diseases9 which proposed countering vaccine hesitancy, and the development of a common EU vaccination card between 2019 and 2021, to be followed by a ‘vaccination card/passport for EU citizens’ that is ‘compatible with electronic immunisation information systems and recognised for use across borders’ by 2022. Well, that seems to be remarkably on schedule.

  Fear has created a morality play where heavy-handed discussions about society-wide vaccine mandates and Covid certificates, or vaccine passports, are privileged over personal responsibility and risk. Does your Happy Ending involve personal responsibility or state mandates? In the desperate desire to end the Horrible Story of the Covid-19 pandemic we are rushing towards a conclusion without being certain enough of our values.

  The minister entrusted with reviewing the use of Covid certificates is Michael Gove. As he once said, ‘Once powers are yielded to the state at moments of crisis or emergency, it’s very rarely the case that the state hands them back.’10 It will be interesting to see whether the spirit of those words influences the review.

  19. MAKING SURE IT NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN

  The argument in favour of using fear to command and coerce people during a crisis cannot be justified when we consider the ethics, the collateral damage, and the impact on recovery. How did it work so well? Could fear have taken such a hold if the terrain was not fertile?

  In a prescient 2007 article,1 sociologist, author and fear expert Frank Furedi wrote:

  ‘Fear plays a key role in twenty-first century consciousness. Increasingly, we seem to engage with various issues through a narrative of fear. You could see this trend emerging and taking hold in the last century, which was frequently described as an “Age of Anxiety”. But in recent decades, it has become more and better defined, as specific fears have been cultivated.