You can be a world-champion cyclist, and even that will not protect you from being eviscerated by your sponsor if you as much as like on social media posts by mainstream conservative figures:

Apparel manufacturer Rapha has slammed world time trial champion Chloé Dygert over her social media conduct, saying the apology issued by Dygert for liking offensive and divisive posts on Twitter did not go far enough.

The statement was sent to Rapha customers via an email on Friday morning, and the apparel brand pulled no punches on Dygert, who recently inked a four-year deal with the Canyon-SRAM professional women’s team, which is sponsored by Rapha.

“We are writing to you today to clarify our position on the actions of new Canyon//SRAM Racing rider Chloé Dygert who, back in June, endorsed racist and transphobic views on social media. Rapha wholeheartedly condemns these actions as they were offensive, divisive and have no place in cycling or society. Since we became aware of this incident, we have taken time to fully investigate what happened, consulting with the rider, Canyon//SRAM Racing and other partners in order to take informed action in response,” the statement said. “Having undergone that process, we believe that Chloé has made very serious errors of judgment, which were compounded by an apology she issued that was not sufficient.”

They compelled her to apologize, but for some reason, the self-abasing apology was not sufficient. These people are tyrants. You know what her “racist” views were? Liking a tweet by black conservative Candace Owens questioning the bona fides of Colin Kaepernick, and liking one by Charlie Kirk saying hard work, not the color of your skin, determines how you are treated in America. In other words, simply questioning the BLM narrative, or one of its sacred figures, is “racist,” according to Dygert’s employer. The “transphobic” tweet simply questioned the trans narrative. You are not even allowed to publicly doubt.

By the way, there’s a new add-on to your browser, Shinigami Eyes, that will identify transphobic and transphilic social media accounts by color, so you will know whom to hate without having to read what they actually said. But no sir, the social justice Left is not taking us to a kind of totalitarianism. How dare you say that?!

Meanwhile, social science brings us a new reason to hate white conservative Christians. It’s a new academic paper that finds that “racist” opinions related to Covid are held disproportionately by “white Christian nationalists,” proving that they are really bad people. The study’s authors put the following “racially coded” statements to subjects, to test their level of agreement:

• It is racist to refer to COVID-19 as “the Chinese virus”.

• The fact that poor, minority communities are more likely to be infected with COVID-19 is a symptom of our unjust society.

• Black Americans are being infected with COVID-19 at higher rates largely because they are not behaving responsibly.

• Some racial minority groups may have a biological susceptibility to COVID-19.

• Our lax immigration laws are partly to blame for the COVID-19 crisis.

• All immigration should be halted at least temporarily to protect American jobs during this time.

• One way to prevent further pandemics in the United States would be to build the wall along our Southern border.

• The fact that COVID-19 is spreading rapidly among prison inmates should be the least of our concerns.

• If prison inmates are being infected with COVID-19 at higher rates, that could be a form of divine justice.

If you answer the wrong way, that proves you are racist and/or xenophobic. The study is obviously crap. For example, in a time when blue-collar workers are being hit disproportionately hard by Covid-related job loss, it makes rational sense to halt immigration to protect jobs. It might be the case that any American demographic group — racial or otherwise — is hit harder because of cultural practices of its members. This belief could be demonstrably false, in which case to hold the view after it has been shown to be false is a form of bigotry. But in a state like mine, where the overall population is disproportionately obese, black residents are 38 percent more likely to be diabetic. Diabetes in Louisiana correlates to income and educational level; Louisiana is a relatively poor state, with a disproportionately large percentage of black people who lack higher education and a higher income. We also know that people with diabetes are likely to be hit much harder by Covid.

Now, my uncle is white, but he is obese and diabetic. Knowing these risk factors, if he were to carry on a normal life, and contract Covid by exposing himself to greater risk, would it be fair to blame him for his behavior? What if he was black? Listen, I have no idea how black people in Louisiana or anywhere else are behaving, in general, regarding Covid precautions. My only claim is that it is not racist on its face to say that cultural and behavioral norms among certain demographic groups make them more or less likely to catch Covid.

But let’s not worry about that. What we really need in this country is Science™ to justify hating white conservative Christians. And Science™ is coming through! Maybe someone will invent an app that will color-code any social media content produced by a white conservative Christian, so it will be pre-hated and pre-dismissed for your convenience. We must stop at nothing to identify these threats to Health and Safety, neutralize them, and move them to a place, literally or figuratively, where they cannot threaten us with their hateful opinions. You disagree, maybe? Why are you soft on racism and transphobia?! Maybe you’re one of the bigots too!

If we can have software that identifies transphobic people, why not software that identifies racist people? Maybe making the world safer and healthier requires putting this kind of digital warning on social media accounts of problematic people — Deplorables and so forth. Linking Covid to its country of origin in one’s speech patterns is racist, according to social science. Better protect the community from racists who talk like that by flagging their social media accounts, and threatening their jobs and livelihoods. You see where this is going.

Moving on to more evidence for our soft totalitarian future, in Australia, the state will use the data generated by your card purchases to find out where you have been in case you have been diagnosed with Covid:

And why not? The data are already there. It is arguably a legitimate public health reason for the authorities to know this, to fight the spread of disease. The interviewer asks the data expert if the state has to get permission from the individual before accessing that data. He says it’s not clear, but it shouldn’t be required. Safety, you know.

It makes sense. And yet, I hear the voice of Czech dissident Kamila Bendova every time I read something like this. From Live Not By Lies:

Kamila Bendova sits in her armchair in the Prague apartment where she and her late husband, Václav, used to hold underground seminars to build up the anti-communist dissident movement. It has been thirty years since the fall of communism, but Bendova is not about to lessen her vigilance about threats to freedom. I mention to her that tens of millions of Americans have installed in their houses so-called “smart speakers” that monitor conversations for the sake of making domestic life more convenient. Kamila visibly recoils. The appalled look on her face telegraphs a clear message: How can Americans be so gullible?

To stay free to speak the truth, she tells me, you have to create for yourself a zone of privacy that is inviolate. She reminded me that the secret police had bugged her apartment, and that she and her family had to live with the constant awareness that the government was listening to every sound they made. The idea that anybody would welcome into their home a commercial device that records conversations and transmits them to a third party is horrifying to her. No consumer convenience is worth that risk.

“Information means power,” Kamila says. “We know from our life under the totalitarian regime that if you know something about someone, you can manipulate him or her. You can use it against them. The secret police have evidence of everything like that. They could use it all against you. Anything!”

I am not one of those people who believe that Covid is a hoax. I know it’s real. But I also know that Covid gives powerful people who do not have our best interests at heart a rationale for extending control. I am not sure what to make of “The Future Shape Of Things,” a document that has been going around the Internet for a week or two. It purports to be from a former adviser to the Bundestag, the German parliament. I post it here with caution, but I also observe that the author, Sebastian Friebel, footnotes his claims. This is the part of the report that leaps out at me:

Digital companies and governments worldwide

…are instrumentalising the fear of the virus to achieve social acceptance for comprehensive digital surveillance and control systems. These systems, which include contact tracing, digital identities, biometric face recognition and digital immunity certificates, are designed for totalitarian control of the entire population. In China, the full range of these inhuman technologies is already in use, which means that the most basic rights of citizens can be restricted by AI-based systems. The combination of a ‘Corona app’ and a preliminary stage of digital immunity certificates is being used to automatically deprive citizens of their freedom of movement if their ‘health status’, as detected by the machine, does not meet the specifications.⁹ Cameras with facial recognition additionally record and identify every person in public space. The 5G mobile phone standard enables this form of mass monitoring in real time. So in China digital technology determines who is still allowed to leave their home. Such a society can hardly be described as anything but a technocratic tyranny. I am sorry to say that similar plans are also being pursued by our own federal government. It, too, is already seeking to introduce a so-called ‘vaccination or immunity documentation system’, depriving people in our country of basic rights such as freedom of travel and freedom of assembly, or allowing them such rights only if they can prove immunity, e.g. through vaccination.¹⁰ These intentions are no different from those of the Chinese dictatorship, and it is only thanks to public protest in Germany that the government has not yet been able to pass this legislation in its original form.

Financial and digital groups set up global surveillance architecture

This year, the World Economic Forum will introduce the ‘CommonPass’, a system for international travel, likewise aimed at surveillance and control of access to public life and freedom of travel worldwide. This system requires people to have a kind of ‘digital identity’, as well as uploading their vaccination status and/or Corona test results to a database, in order to be able to travel at all.¹¹

The project is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, Google, the major bank J.P. Morgan, the financial group BlackRock and representatives of the United Nations.¹² The aim of the institutions and companies involved is to encourage all governments worldwide to use the system. This again shows (besides the above-mentioned ‘Great Reset’) the global ambition of the corporations behind the project, and again the UN is being instrumentalised for their purposes. The question arises as to why the financial groups in particular have such a strong interest in monitoring and controlling people, and why they are willing to invest such a lot of money in the development of these technologies.

Return to normality only with digital surveillance?

Taking into account the current data situation on coronavirus, the German Ethics Council still advises against the introduction of such systems, but does not entirely exclude them for the future.¹³ It can therefore be assumed that digital immunity certificates or something like the CommonPass will be presented to us in the course of the coming months by the media and the government, as a prerequisite for a return to normality. Several German companies already offer digital surveillance systems, which automatically check whether a person has normal body temperature and is wearing a mask. Some of these systems are already being combined with facial recognition, and manufacturers advertise them as providing ‘effective real-time monitoring of faces with or without masks’.¹⁴ Should these technologies be introduced in Germany, it would be a first step towards the Chinese social credit system. I do not want to accustom myself to the idea that such technology will soon be capable of determining our freedom of movement. My concern, however, is that some people would give up their individual freedom for a deceptive sense of security. But are such massive surveillance measures really a proportionate response to the coronavirus situation?

And notice this as well:

Corona helps banks achieve their goal of abolishing cash worldwide

In addition to the political aspects, the financial sector is abusing the crisis to continue to push ahead with the drive to global cash abolition. Unfortunately, many people are not aware of the impact of the switch to digital currencies and the enormous potential for abuse associated with this. At this point, I would urge everyone to consider the real consequences of a cashless society and in particular to reflect on the control that the operators of a global digital payment infrastructure would have over the entire population. It should also be recognised that if cash were abolished these companies would make money from every payment transaction worldwide without exception, which I for one would have no wish to see happening.

Influential forces, which even before Corona were already intensively lobbying for global cash abolition, are now exploiting the crisis to achieve their goals. Let us just mention in passing that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is also involved in the project.²⁶ In view of the enormous economic potential in this sector, it is in any case unlikely that such players in this sector will ultimately be concerned with anything other than money and political influence, even if they conceal their aims behind high-profile ‘fund-raising campaigns’. So when we are told that because of Corona we should give up using cash, we should not ignore the strong economic interests behind it. In this context, it is worth mentioning that the UN is also using its name to promote this global campaign by the banking sector.²⁷

It really is true. It sounds like conspiracy theory nonsense, but here is a link to the Better Than Cash Alliance, the United Nations website promoting the end to cash in the global economy, in the name of efficiency and — of course — “inclusivity.” The big foundations are involved, and also national governments, big charities, and USAID. It’s not a conspiracy if it’s out in the open. And they have good reasons for wanting to go cashless. But doing so would mean that anyone marked out as a dissenter by governments or corporations would not be able to buy or sell without government approval. Excluding someone from a cashless economy would be as easy as pushing a button. Is this really the kind of world we want?

The Great Reset is not “communism,” as some on the Right have said. As Ben Sixsmith points out in The Spectator US, it is globalist corporatism. Take a look at this blog post from the World Economic Forum that says “The Great Reset Must Place Social Justice At Its Centre.”In it, these titans of industry say that the next economic system must merge capitalism with socialism. They aren’t wrong to point to the destabilizing effects of severe economic inequality. But if you read on, you’ll see that they intend their redistributionist schemes to follow the model put forth by elites we on the Right deride as Social Justice Warriors. This is why I started this long post with the item about how a champion cyclist is facing cancellation simply for having liked politically problematic (from a SJW point of view) social media posts, and why SJWs are using technology to identify electronically problematic social media posters, and why social scientists are developing a bullshit rationale for discriminating against Deplorables, and doing so for the sake of fighting Covid.

Imagine the globe’s biggest economic players, as well as national governments, working together to digitize the world and extend control over politically and culturally problematic people — all for the stated goal of making the world safer, fairer, more just, and more inclusive in the post-Covid era. Whether the “Future Shape of Things” document is the product of paranoia or not, at least some of what its author is talking about is real, and serious, and as sinister as he says. Live Not By Lies was completed at the very beginning of Covid. In a future paperback edition, I will need to add a chapter about Covid and the Great Reset.

The clothing company threatening to cancel the athlete, the academics writing that nonsense paper demonizing white Christian nationalists, the tech people identifying (without accountability) certain people on social media as “transphobic” — none of those people will ever be invited to Davos to talk about the Great Reset. But they’re part of it. There’s a coalescing of economic, political, and cultural elite opinion around Pink Police State ideas and rhetoric. The Covid crisis is real, but they are not allowing it to go to waste.

UPDATE: A reader points out:

A Shinigami is a Japanese death demon, something like a psychopomp, and in a recent piece of anime/manga that was important and influential, a Shinigami was an agent of death who could look at someone and see the hour and mechanism of his death. Shinigami Eyes can be understood as seeing who needs to be marked for death.