Remember when they used to use that meme with the Nazis saying “papers please?”
It was like this big anti-German meme when I was a child that the Nazis were evil because, among other things, they made you show papers to travel.
Of course, that was in the middle of a gigantic war. And they didn’t make you show papers to travel to the grocery store.
French police stepped up controls in Paris over the weekend to ensure residents were complying with strict lockdown rules imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19, amid signs that some people were breaching them.
Prime Minister Jean Castex has said people are not abiding by the rules as strictly as during the first lockdown back in the spring.
Police had to break up an illegal party hosting up to 400 people at Joinville-Le-Pont near Paris early on Saturday.
Under the lockdown, in force since the end of October, people must stay indoors apart from trips to buy food or other essential goods, or for a brief hour of exercise. They must also carry signed documents to justify why they are outside.
Police were checking motorists travelling through the Bois de Boulogne in western Paris to make sure they had the necessary signed documents and were wearing masks, as required by the law.
A French landscape gardener who gave his name as Jules said he had noticed a pick-up in police controls.
“I find there were a lot of checks during the first lockdown, while it has been light in terms of checks in the beginning of this one, to be honest,” said Jules, who was checked while out on his moped.
“However, I did notice that checks have been tightened over the past three days.”
Jules had his papers in order but construction worker Stephane was not so lucky. He had forgotten to download the necessary form onto his mobile phone to explain why he was out on his moped and so was handed a 135 euro ($169) fine.
Obviously, fewer and fewer people are going to believe in this as the hoax goes on. In Paris, virtually everyone has already had the disease, so it just isn’t believable that it is as deadly as they’re trying to claim. No one who has had it and barely got a sniffle is going to believe this nonsense.
Furthermore, the longer it goes without anyone you know dying from it, the less believable it becomes. And at this point, most people know someone who died of cancer or a heart attack or whatever who was recorded by the government as having died from coronavirus.
Point being: although there will always be a core of true believers that will just slavishly follow every order of the government, as this goes on, the government is going to require more and more brutal tactics to get people to comply. Obviously, however, that is all part of the plan. This is all just psychological training to get you to accept absurd, cartoonish levels of tyranny.