The Science of Submission

There Was No Tin-Foil Hat

The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped global life in a matter of weeks. But while the virus was real, so was something deeper and more enduring: a coordinated rehearsal for a new kind of governance. In the hands of the managerial class, the crisis became a tool, not just to manage public health, but to redraw the boundary between citizen and state. What unfolded in 2020 wasn’t just an emergency. It was the opening act of a political experiment in compliance, censorship, and soft authoritarianism, one that left deep marks on the culture, and deeper footprints for future crises to follow.

Power Through Paternalism

It was liberal-led governments and institutions that most aggressively embraced coercive pandemic policy. In cities like San Francisco, New York, Toronto, London, and Melbourne, unelected health czars issued sweeping mandates with little transparency or debate. Stay-at-home orders, prolonged school closures, digital vaccine passes, curfews, and the outright suppression of dissenting voices were enforced under a doctrine of safety, but rarely subject to scrutiny.

In California, church services were banned while liquor stores remained open. In Canada, peaceful protesters saw their bank accounts frozen. In the U.S., public health officials coordinated with tech platforms to censor “misinformation,” a label often slapped on views later proven correct. All of this was championed by a professional class that has grown comfortable with ruling by recommendation that carries the force of law.

A New Moral Order

COVID revealed not just institutional power, but cultural alignment. In progressive strongholds, pandemic restrictions took on the flavor of ritual. Masking became moral performance. Lockdowns were not merely policies, but badges of belonging. Those who questioned the prevailing orthodoxy were cast not as dissenters, but as threats to the social body.

This was not a public health strategy. It was a purity test, administered not by physicians, but by journalists, celebrities, university administrators, and HR departments. In a bitter twist, the same circles that once opposed the War on Terror’s surveillance and secrecy became its stewards under a biomedical banner.

The Machinery That Remains

It is no accident that this new model of governance emerged under progressive leadership. The urban elite consensus, having drifted from its classical liberal roots, now favors a vision of the state not as protector of rights, but as custodian of behavior. COVID did not distort their agenda, it clarified it. The idea of a state that manages belief, not just conduct, gained both speed and legitimacy.

And though the emergency has receded, the architecture of control remains: emergency powers, censorship pipelines, social compliance mechanisms.

I remember sitting on the edge of my seat, staring at the email. Get the shot, or lose your job. I didn’t want the vaccine. Not because I was reckless or conspiratorial, but because I knew what it meant to be forced. I didn’t want the job, either, but I needed it to survive in a system that leaves no margin for dissent. That wasn’t public health. That was economic compulsion in a lab coat.

Multiply that by millions and you begin to understand the scale of submission, not loud, not violent, just tired people nodding along, hoping to keep their place in the machine.

It’s important to note that authoritarian impulses are not unique to the left. There were heavy-handed policies under conservative leadership as well. But the cultural fusion of progressive politics with media, tech, and academia meant that left-leaning regimes had far greater success at normalizing surveillance and moralizing obedience. The seamless coordination between government health directives, social media enforcement, and curated news cycles would have made Goebbels proud, not for the cruelty, but for the sheer efficiency of message control. No camps, no jackboots, just algorithms, warnings, and the quiet deletion of dissent. The result was no less chilling: a generation taught to view censorship as safety and obedience as virtue.

A Familiar Pattern, A New Frontier

History teaches that freedom recedes during crisis. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Wilson jailed dissenters. Bush gave us the Patriot Act. But what makes COVID unique is how smoothly institutional liberalism adapted to, and even celebrated, its role in that old pattern.

The lessons were clear. A frightened population will surrender its freedoms if given a compelling enough narrative. A class of bureaucrats will eagerly enforce new rules if it flatters their moral self-image. And the digital infrastructure of the 21st century makes it easier than ever to silence dissent at scale.

What Comes Next

This wasn’t just a health crisis. It was a simulation, of what happens when fear becomes law and law becomes habit. Climate emergencies, AI panic, future pandemics, any of these may be used to resurrect the template. The only firewall left is memory, and they are counting on it to fade.

COVID revealed a truth many are still unwilling to face: liberalism, once the shield of liberty, has become, at its highest levels, something else entirely. Freedom was the promise. Order, the price. What once questioned power now clings to it with priestly devotion. It is no longer skeptical of authority, but enamored with it. And unless we say no, clearly, forcefully, and without apology, there will not just be a next time. The question is no longer whether it could happen again. It’s how quietly we’ll obey when it does.

#CovidAuthoritarianism, #ProgressiveControl, #MassCompliance, #TechnocraticState, #CivilLiberties