Hello and welcome to Empirical , a Substack safe heaven created in response to online censorship and a growing frustration with cancel culture. In the past, I’ve written about fashion, travel, art and lifestyle for Vogue Australia online and my blog myempiricallife.com and frankly, loved my life sampling perfumes in gifted outfits whilst getting a foot massage in comped five star resort before Australia shut down to the rest of the world. I never wanted to be here peddling “dangerous” ideas to you like some side street hustler, inviting you to peer closer at the contrafeit gold “wrongthink” hanging on the inside of my tattered mink coat under a faint streetlight. Nope, this was never my idea of fun - after all I’m an athletic nerd, an anxious depressant with a social streak, an ex party girl obsessed with health, a deeply spiritual realist, a procrastinating obsessive - a seeming number of contradictions that I do not like to advertise too much lest it destroys the “nice” two dimensional facade it took years to form. My livelihood depends on everyone liking me and yet here I am, a creep opening my trench to you in a dark alley, my eyes fixated on yours, whispering all my deepest secrets straight into your ear. You will either love me or you’ll hate me but I care more about how I feel about myself than about how anyone else feels about me now -the only reason why I’m here writing these words is because I need to be able to look at myself in the mirror in the future with a knowing that when the world burned, I spoke no matter what it cost me or how small my two cent contribution was in the bigger picture.
The last two years have been a whirlpool of change and upheaval, something that could be new to some but is a well worn routine for me - I lived through communism, a civil war in ex Yugoslavia, September 11th in NYC, decades long international modelling career, Balkan parents, a sister with schizophrenia symptoms, a difficult divorce, followed by a relationship with a person who was physically and emotionally abusive resulting in a loss of a much wanted foetus, a nervous breakdown and a difficult rebuild utilising many forms of therapy, whilst juggling being a freelancer and a single mum. Due to my personal and family history I’m eye rollingly suspicious of governments and institutions with a healthy disdain for politicians and a sensitive propaganda bullshit meter, wary of agendas pushing polarisation and division. Most of us know this world ain’t perfect and corruption weaves it’s way through the system like water veins it’s way through land, but we also believe we live in a democracy, countries with laws and regulations in place to protect human rights and keep our governments and media accountable. Instead, it seems we are increasingly finding ourselves on a planet which has gone from “two weeks to flatten the curve” 19 months ago to “show me your papers” in order to simply exist in society, while CNN tells us we are never going back to “Before Times” and media and Big Tech unleash unprecedented censorship of doctors, scientists, concerned citizens, reporters and whistleblowers.
How bad has the censorship gotten? Well, you be the judge - I shared this post on my Instagram account a week ago and after 24 hours it was pulled down for “violence and dangerous organisations”, whilst posts on the crimes of the KKK or benefits of communism, an ideology that killed millions still stand :
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“My grandfather Djuro was only 16, and grandmother Radojka 19 when they left their villages and joined the Resistance against the Nazis in 1941. They didn’t go to war because they held political, ideological or religious beliefs urging them to put their lives on the line- they were kids who wanted to dance, roll in the hay and listen to Doris Day (grandpa’s celebrity crush). No one voluntarily leaves their home for an icy forest in a bitter Balkan winter unless they are desperate and there is no one else left to stand up to evil on a maniacal quest for violence and power.
Many people cannot understand how it is that Nazis even took off with their crazy extremist ideas because they aren’t clued into how convincing propaganda is or how hard it is to spot it. We want to think we are independent, critical thinkers that can’t be fooled but time after time a majority of people fails spectacularly on psychological exams measuring such things as individuals bending their will to peer pressure (Asch test) or obeying authority’s orders to harm people even when it goes against our own morals (Milgram experiment). Couple this with our ingrained tendency for getting swept away by beautiful words, national pride and hopes for a more utopian society with our fear of being shamed, coercion and isolation and you can see how easily we are manipulated.
To be fair Nazis had lots of good ideas they roped people in with - they were seen as modern, progressive and empathetic at first, caring for nature and animals,revolutionising industrial production, lowering unemployment in Germany from 6 million to 330k - in fact, they were deemed such superheroes in the public’s eye, they counted international celebrities and royals as fans, Hitler appearing on the cover of Time magazine multiple times, in 1939 even winning the title of Man Of The Year and a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. Unfortunately for the world, they also held fervent eugenic ideas of creating a “better” society which could only come about by first killing vulnerable, mentally impaired and sick people and then Jews, minorities and dissidents.
To this day, it’s inconceivable doctors and nurses went on a voluntary killing spree, first in hospitals, then in concentration camps, inflicting cruel medical experiments,torture and murder of children and adults whilst “good” people idly watched their friends, neighbours and colleagues’ human rights being stripped away in lockstep with media programming. Some members of the public claimed they didn’t even know anything bad was happening because every news outlet parroted the same government lies, meaningful opposition long censored, slandered or killed. Others said they desperately watched workmates getting fired, law changes and segregation of society into two tiers but couldn’t do anything because it was too dangerous to go against the weight of public opinion.
Every totalitarian society needs an emergency and a scapegoat because if a government manages to convince people one portion of society is dangerous, the division serves to insulate itself from an uprising - public won’t attack officials who appear to be doing things for “everyone’s safety”. As we ascertained previously; psychologically most humans are pliable and eager to fit in, with a tendency to obey authority no matter how unjust, but even a strong person would find it hard to discern truth when the lie is backed by a 13 year long campaign of fear pushed by prestigious universities, top scientists and respected academics. First, an outbreak of typhus became tinder to incite hysteria serving as cover for medical apartheid on both healthy and sick people deemed unclean, but once dehumanisation worked, it was sufficient to simply treat “them” as vermin.
Mussolini said : “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Human ideas, whether religion, politics or idealism are drivers of public support for societal change, yet behind the scenes money and power are the real engines. An impoverished Germany didn’t have funds to start a war before its international investments and business deals. Rhetoric and propaganda are tools for the creation of useful idiots, persons who fervently buy into and further demented agendas through sheer ignorance and illogical biases. Funny how those who deem themselves the most good often do the most harm. I wonder if WW2 would’ve happened if more people disobeyed unjust laws than allowed intolerance and hatred to take hold in their souls?
Horseshoe theory states fascism and communism are extremist ends of the right and left, more similar to each other than to the tolerant centre. Both are tyrannical because their aim is to control every aspect of humanity absolutely : from our freedoms to our bodies and minds, without respect for individual autonomy and expression. This is why censorship and discrimination are the first thing authoritarians move to install - thinking freely is too dangerous to a system that can only rise to power if everyone thinks alike. There is nothing more important for democracy than human rights, freedom of speech, regulated corporations and government, honest press, bodily autonomy, and individualism - all things hated by tyrants.
People seem to think evil and good are energies that exist externally, because it’s so difficult for us to acknowledge there exists a line within our own hearts too - a space in which we choose to either unconsciously or consciously feed shadow or light. Animosity cannot do anything on its own because it’s not material, it requires human participants, vessels in which to grow, fester and act.
Perhaps it exists only as a test for the quality of human consciousness, after all, if none of us gave it a home and nourishment, it would have long disappeared from Earth. In a world raising many historic red flags, the most important question for each of us becomes: how conscious am I of where the line in my own heart stands?”
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To me, the above isn’t in any way controversial,( how could it be when it is accepted history easily gleaned from mainstream websites?), yet Instagram banned my post and branded me a Nazi sympathiser. Ask any descendant of annihilation events if they would like to re-write a more sanitised story to pass onto their offspring and they’ll look at you as if you’re an alien. We know that personal responsibility for wrongdoings and an acknowledgment of injury is a necessary guarantee those actions will not be repeated. Vera Sharav, a surviving Holocaust victim who is also a passionate medical activist said recently : “I have come to the conclusion that when doctors become aligned with government – [and] corporations for that matter – they discard their moral and professional responsibility to the individual patient”. Sharav said it is “nonsense” for doctors to suggest the right thing to do is sacrifice the rights of individuals in pursuit of a so-called greater good ( in reference to lockdowns ) - “As public officials, they talk about the greater good. Who has the authority to decide what is the greater good?” said Sharav. “If the individuals are oppressed or relegated to third-class citizens … what kind of society is it?”
The craziest thing is the biggest opposition in the comments of my now censored post came from a woman whose grandmother was marched to a labour camp in WW2. She was livid I dared to say a lot of the early signs and red flags from that time were happening now. “What does this have to do with public health orders?” and “How dare you make Holocaust parallels?” - she attacked, not knowing the entire other side of my family was sent to a concentration camp - my great grandmother Mica jumped off a rolling train on its way to Jasenovac while her husband and relatives languished and died there. The only reason why Mica lived to tell the tale is because she didn’t comply “for her and everybody’s safety”, choosing to listen to her intuition instead. Haters gonna hate but this lady attacked me without knowing enough about her own family history - she seemingly had no idea her grandmother was once a healthy girl seen as an impure disease carrier, segregated and isolated through pseudo health concerns.
Another , more measured debater , ridiculed the correlation between those times and current events because Jews couldn’t help being Jewish, but the unvaccinated can choose to get vaccinated, completely missing the entire point of the human rights , bodily autonomy and freedom from unwanted medical intervention my grandparents so fervently fought for precisely because they saw how wrong it was to mark healthy people as second rate citizens or treat them like they were perpetually infective . I would like to address how misguided the premise that racial or ethnic division is the only historic reason for segregation or genocide- after all under Stalin, it was the kulaks, the middle-class farmers who owned private property that became the hated scapegoats thrown into gulags before the elimination of any other opposition too. Less well known: “For most of the nineteenth century, immunity to yellow fever divided people in New Orleans, USA between the ‘acclimated’ who survived yellow fever and the ‘unacclimated’, who hadn’t had the disease. Lack of immunity dictated whom people could marry, where they could work, and, for those forced into slavery, how much they were worth. Presumed immunity concentrated political and economic power in the hands of the wealthy elite, and was weaponized to justify white supremacy”. Scapegoats are always persons who irritate an agenda- each time the motive is different.
Many scientific experts are admitting Covid19 herd immunity is unlikely to be reached with a leaky vaccine. Since these vaccines are now at under 50% efficacy for the Delta strain, reducing to 20% efficacy within 6 months and we already know that they do not infer immunity or prevent disease transmission because all the new studies are showing an equal amount of the virus in noses of the diseased vaccinated or unvaccinated, it means the protection is personal only - so why are our governments utilising fear mongering bordering on hate speech to instil health policies that make no sense whilst firing people from their jobs, including the 70 thousand hero doctors and nurses in NYC who battled to get people through the thicks of the pandemic last year without a vaccine and most probably have robust natural immunity? Is it because pharmaceutical companies have whole armies of lobbyists and hundreds of billions of dollars lining their pockets whilst natural immunity has zero of each?
Can we sit at a table and just discuss facts? It seems censorship quickly morphs from a safety net to a noose alongside which the most unhinged and unintelligent voices gather emboldened and goaded into outrage by their newfound importance within a controlling system, swooping like flying monkeys upon any divergent thought that triggers cognitive dissonance or worse, offends fragile self perception. Robert Heinlein said censorship is “like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t have steak” and to that I say, I don’t like anything that isn’t full fat, deep in the bones, toe curlingly real, blowing my mind into smithereens of new questions and perceptions.
Even my own mother found it hard to get me to shut up - as a 5 year old bracing for the painful impact of her unforgiving wooden spoon on my butt, I still wouldn’t stop talking back. It wasn’t the physical pain that hurt but the burning sense of injustice at not being able to express myself and be heard. The ability to speak freely isn’t about validating verbal abuse, porn or crime, it’s about preserving the ability to call a spade a spade, to address nuances within complicated issues, think laterally, as well as question authority and parties that benefit from ruling ideologies. Ordinary citizens with such liberties endanger fruitful outcomes of hidden corruption and collusion, whilst uncovering power structures benefiting from lies and status quo. Whether it’s heretics, witches or conspiracy theorists , an off-putting moniker is invented to smear truth tellers and throw masses off unscrupulous operations - a trick as old as time and yet it still works like a charm - citizens will rather shame individuals bravely standing up to a greater power than believe their rulers are doing something shady.
Some haven’t discovered sweetness that comes after we push through pain and discomfort to arrive at resilience and knowledge. Attempting to avoid distress whilst dodging truth is simply a refusal to do shadow work. Whether individually or as a society, this work is a necessary and extremely important maturation hurdle to go through for our psychological and emotional evolution. By minimising painful events as well as our own and others’ role within a situation, we distort history and limit our grasp on truth. Humans unfortunately learn from pain, often so much more than comfort. We cannot shield people from hurt by erasing atrocious people and events out of history since we’d simultaneously destroy their remembrance and with it the sadness and anger that trigger our empathy - an emotional journey serving to cement our resolve to never repeat such horrible injustices again.
Turning away from darkness doesn’t make it disappear, it makes it distort, fester and mutate into new forms. I argue we must feel disgusted, confronted and shocked on a visceral level in order to deeply understand different points of view and stop repeating mistakes of the past. I posit humanity needs to go through, not around pain to grow - we have kept our blinkers on for long enough. It is the very idealisation of people whose unacceptable behaviour and cruelties we emulated that led us down every dark path in history and now we want to abolish this knowledge? Why? So we can forget our errors and repeat them? So we can craft an idealised picture of a world that never existed and further divorce ourselves from reality? More avoidance is not a path to healing, neither is denial of the fact it wasn’t the leaders that carried out murders, it was their followers. That line in our hearts is real but we don’t seem to wish to be responsible for it.
Have we turned into vulnerable narcissists ?
It’s like a portion of society is so stuck in their trauma body they are unable to see themselves haemorrhaging unprocessed pain onto others, emotions that have become weaponised to the extreme through a lens skewed by old triggers. Often, the trap of victimhood is what keeps people blind to their own hypocrisy, one sidedness, hatreds and dysfunction. Emotionally immature people think the extent of their outrage equals the weight of their opinion but all it really shows is the size of their ego, revealing an inability to present a more lucid or logical argument. I want to remind the world that government led monopinions within echo chambers have been responsible for 262 million deaths in the last century, not that dissident risking it all to speak with a shaking voice in the middle of the town hall, naked amongst the pointing, laughing masses. Society and media are still slandering people under the guise of morality and skewed ethics– inquisition hasn’t gone away, it morphed into cancel culture.
Feelings are less important than facts because feelings simply aren’t facts. Emotions are a subjective and biased perception of the world based on incomplete information our brain created through the lens of our lived experience. Facts on the other hand are objective information, if we can arrive to them through unbiased observation and debate. Emotion without reason is an overwrought illusion, reason without emotion is cold, practical and at times cruel. True wisdom requires an integration of the heart and the mind but in order to get there we need to be able to speak without fear of persecution.
Social justice warriors have become helicopter parents of human evolution - by softening edges of a sometime sharp and disturbing world, burying facts in cotton wool, silencing opposition and pretending the world is /was different than it has been is producing personas too coddled, spoilt and unequipped for harsh worldly realities and difficult discourse, incapable of managing own feelings and expectations. Cancelling people who disagree with our opinions doesn’t make us right ,it makes us authoritarian.
Life is never as simple as headlines imply but we won’t know that if we blindly trust people who keep embedding our already entrenched beliefs. By opening our hearts and moving out of ego state which perceives others as inferior and their opinions as insignificant, we lower walls of separation our amygdala built and give our higher reasoning centre the chance to comprehend the world with clarity and depth. In ego we don’t listen, we fight, flee or freeze and aren’t able to process information that doesn’t align with our preconceived notions. In higher reasoning, we become free of limitations so we can see the world as a complicated and intricate web to detangle with care, patience and kindness.
Both approaches are available to us at all times, but only one leads to peace, knowledge and growth and the other to painful lessons and atrocities. Denying others’ voices elicits anger and disappointment due to our chimp like ingrained sense of unfairness when faced with inequality. Seems like our only choice perhaps is to work on expanding our nervous system capability while firing up our rusty debating skills since the alternatives are way too bleak. In China these days, people my age don’t even know Tiananmen square happened because it was scrubbed from the internet. Outsiders looking in at a totalitarian regime may feel ignorance is bliss but that’s only because they’ve never known what imposed cluelessness feels like.
If there was one message I’d like to send to the western world with this essay, it would be to wake up and start fighting for fast diminishing freedoms worthy of much more gratitude and reverence than you comprehend because they came default all your life. If you don’t we may sleepwalk into a social credit system already operational in China, teased to the rest of the world in the guise of Green Passes and Digital Identity. No matter what your stance is on the vaccine issue, no one wants this kind of control over life. The Nosedive episode of Black Mirror was a warning for a dystopian tech system utilising behavioural modification through positive and negative reinforcement in order to shape everything from public opinion to our private preferences and habits - so pervasive and omnipresent it would’ve made Goebbels salivate.
My ancestors fought fascism so we could all live free from medical apartheid, coercion and unneeded medical intervention, a world where all humans are equal. I will always be their granddaughter and uphold the ethical principles of what is just, fair and right for all of humanity. To the newly minted statists , who feel they’ve invented a progressive wheel instead of continuing a long and disgraceful tradition of the inquisition, defective ideologies and petty tyrants : my pen is poised - your words and actions aren’t going unnoticed. As history shows : corpocracies are temporary, people are forever.
A long read but well worth it. Thank you. Though we are a generation apart, we share many similar experiences - experiences and understanding that elude Americans, Canadians and Australians. That makes it very difficult to make yourself TRULY understood. I appreciate your insight and your writing