Mass media

"You gave them 15 days, they took 18 months of your life. You complied w/ masks—they wanted a shot. You complied w/ shots—they wanted a booster. What you didn’t know was every time you complied w/ tyranny you gave away part of your soul, & this won’t end until you say it does." Ali Beck Zeck

"The German is like a slave who obeys his master without chains, without a whip, by the mere word, even by a glance. Servitude is within him, in his soul; spiritual slavery is worse than material slavery. The Germans must be liberated from within; nothing from without will help." Heinrich Heine

"However, the coronavirus seems to have provided the perfect whip to turn responsible citizens into fearful people who allow themselves to be beaten into a climate-friendly future as ‘human material’, as the communists and National Socialists called it." Vera Lengsfeld

"[...] As a result, these normative changes mean that a group of members of society is gradually excluded from the ‘universe of general obligation’, which continues to apply to the others, those belonging to the majority society, but now becomes exclusive. As I said, this process is the central prerequisite for the emergence of genocidal processes. For exclusion proceeds from the definition that the group to be excluded, and that means each of its members, is a threat to the well-being and ultimately to the existence of the majority society—which then logically sees its salvation in rendering this group, perceived as threatening, harmless and, in the final analysis, destroying it. That is why all known processes of extermination are preceded by a definition of the threatening group, and this definition is followed by an accelerating social, psychological, material, and legal declassification, which increasingly transforms the initially only claimed otherness of the excluded group into a reality shaped and felt by contemporaries. [...]" Harald Welzer

"We must not really give those who do not get vaccinated the chance to circumvent the vaccination, for example by letting themselves be tested free." Lothar Wieler

"In times of war, there is a level of information control in reporting that is abhorrent in the case of traditional wars. In the case of a pandemic, however, one must take less democratic measures from one moment to the next [...] Over the past two years, with the outbreak of the pandemic, we have seen that the way our world is organized is outdated. Two aspects are affected by this: communication and global governance. In terms of communication, we immediately used the term “war” because it is a war, but we have not implemented a communication policy in any country that is appropriate for a war [...] I believe that in this pandemic, or at least in future global health disasters, we need to find a system that preserves freedom of expression but reconciles it with information rationed from above." Mario Monti

"Spreading fear seems to have become a common means of advancing political interests." Wolfgang Kubicki

"Das ist schrecklich in Österreich. Das ist ein europäisches Problem. Wie sie sich mit Orbans Verrücktheiten rund um die Menschenrechte befasst haben. Wo sind diese Brüsseler Bürokraten jetzt? Den Menschen verbieten auf die Straße zu gehen, das ist Faschismus" Zoran Milanovic

"The corona measures, including those in Croatia, are not scientifically justified and terrorize the people" Zoran Milanovic

"The media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly." Noam Chomsky

"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter’s definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority." Stanley Milgram

"Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all of the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense — the sheerest mockery. If the press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammeled; if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live, you are a subject and not a citizen" William E. Borah

"To become informed and hold government accountable, the general public needs to obtain news that is comprehensive yet interesting and understandable, that conveys facts and outcomes, not cosmetic images and airy promises. But that is not what the public demands." Eric Alterman

"The purpose of commercial [media] is to induce mass sales. For mass sales there must be a mass norm … By suppressing the individual, the unique, the industry … assures itself a standard product for mass consumption." John Whiting