In this episode, Laura Dodsworth, author, journalist, photographer and filmmaker, discusses her latest book, A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, addressing how SPI-B (the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour), a team of behavioural scientists working inside Whitehall that advise SAGE and ministers, has worked to create a climate of fear amongst the British population in order to encourage compliance with lockdown. Criticising the totalitarian tactics of terror that suppress rational thinking across the population, Dodsworth analyses the government’s use of behavioural psychology and the weaponisation of fear in order to treat people as if we were systems to “manage” noting how this form of fear mongering raises serious questions about the society being created and the government that thinks using fear as a form of social control is acceptable. Giving copious examples as to how the British government has used the pandemic to divide society along the lines of compliance where masks are used to signal obedience, Dodsworth notes the misleading use of statistic, bad science and the media complicity in spreading misinformation.

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