Topher Field, political commentator and Australian documentary filmmaker, discusses the politics and public health decisions that led him to make his latest documentary, Battleground Melbourne (2020). Historicising what happened during Melbourne’s lockdown and the ensuing mask mandates, vaccines and vaccine mandates, Field criticises the propaganda and theatre that has been elaborately disseminated by mainstream media and curated by Big Tech such that no discussion or democratic protest can take place. Noting how in many western nations and Australia alike people have expressed quite reasonable concerns about the effectiveness and the safety of the vaccines being rolled out, Field details that the cost-benefit analysis we were promised is not supported by the data. Explaining how he and others took to the streets of Melbourne to stand up to Daniel Andrews (Premier of Victoria) demanding the human rights that many western democracies have denied their citizens, Field notes the irony of how lockdown became Andrews’ Machiavellian tool for pitting the police and the “laptop class” against the working class where all groups are simply trying to survive and do their jobs. Criticising how evil is represented in popular entertainment, Field vituperates the propaganda created by governments and media the world over that pushed immoral laws and mandates that conditioned people towards fear and away from critical thinking, observing, “People who do evil things are people who do what they are told for the most part and the worst evils in history…have been done by people who were acting in accordance with the law and doing what they were told.”

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