Posted on by Californiacontrarian

The “Nudge”


As I was reading the other morning an old saying came to mind:

“All’s fair in love and war … and pandemics.”

I added “pandemics” to that hackneyed phrase because of something I read from Epoch Share:

“The United Kingdom and other governments around the world used covert psychological methods during the COVID-19 pandemic to manipulate and control the public,” says filmmaker and author Laura Dodsworth.

In the course of the investigation for her book, “A State of Fear: How the UK Government Weaponized Fear During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Upon investigating, Dodsworth said she found that the UK government’s ‘nudge’ unit purposefully deployed fear to make the public comply with things such as extended lockdowns and vaccinations.”

From my perspective in the U.S., the “nudge” was consistently employed throughout the Covid pandemic, and, make no mistake about it, this was not by accident!

As Dodsworth pointed out:

“Fear of an infection in a pandemic is natural. … But it was put on steroids by the government’s handling of it. Right from the beginning, it struck me as completely immoral to say to people who are healthy—and no reason to be thought infectious—that they can’t leave the house to work, to earn a living, to provide for their family, let alone to do all the other normal things that we consider to be basic human rights, like have relationships, go to a place of education, a place of worship. The lockdown was such a tough and authoritarian measure, and so unprecedented.”

To me, throughout the pandemic in my local “newspaper,” there seemed to be a specific, almost as if designated, fear-monger writer. It seemed that his job was to stoke fear in his readers even if the Covid trend was hopeful. For instance, if the case numbers were going down, he would focus on the potential for hospital overload even if hospital overload was not occurring. His motto appeared to be … “Always stoke fear, as that is what sells newspapers.” He certainly was a firm believer in the “nudge” philosophy.

Again from Dodsworth who lives in the U.K.:

“It’s about understanding how human beings behave and exploiting those mechanisms to encourage people to make the ‘right’ decisions, and this is where I think it’s tricky, that policymakers and the behavioral scientists advising them decide what being a model citizen is—they decide what being ‘good’ is, and they ‘nudge’ you.

“Don’t Kill Granny” is one example of strong emotional messaging that the government use to get people to comply with the rules. ‘Don’t Kill Granny’ was never explicitly used in advertisements, but the phrase was pushed by media and government officials.

“British health secretary, Matt Hancock, actually used the term ‘Don’t Kill Granny.’ So, imagine that pressure, that burden that’s put onto young people.

“The thing is that behavioral science is incredibly useful to governments. It avoids the awkward debate, the persuasion that’s needed. It avoids enacting legislation. You just nudge people subtly into doing what you want. I think it’s a very cheap and reasonably effective and quite sneaky way to get people to do what they want.”

My question to all of you … “During the pandemic, how far were you nudged? And more importantly will you be more cognizant of the government’s nudging manipulation the next time?”

3/29/22

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