“There seems to be a global trend away from democratic republics and toward a system of government run by a permanent bureaucracy and administrative state, or a deep state if you want to use the term that sort of applies to military intelligence apparatus of the administrative state, while we still have elections, while we still have the facade or the appearane of a free society,” Dr. Aaron Kheriaty says, painting a somewhat dark picture of current conditions and the state of society. He explains that in such a system people who are really in control and are operating behind the scenes, do not have to be subjected to the will of the people or face elections – the ordinary pressures that can be placed on the political actors, legislators, executives, or judges. “I think basically Covid was a massive acceleration of trends that have been developing probably for several decades. It's not exactly clear what is emerging in the wake of liberal democracies, but it is becoming increasingly clear to more and more people that what we think were the liberal democracies are actually not functioning that way any more,” Kheriaty says and adds it is not exactly sure what is going to emerge from this. “But it is clear to me that Covid was an accelerant. Covid was an opportunity for things like censorship and propaganda to manifest and advance in ways that would have probably taken several decades if they hadn't occurred during a crisis like that,” he states.
Aaron Kheriaty, MD, is a physician specialising in psychiatry. Currently he is a Fellow and Director of the Program in Bioethics and American Democracy at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
For many years he was Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California Irvine (UCI) School of Medicine and Director of the Medical Ethics Program at UCI Health, where he chaired the ethics committee. He also chaired the ethics committee at the California Department of State Hospitals for several years. He was fired from the UCI after challenging the University's Covid vaccine mandate in federal court.
Due to his rational positions during the Covid crisis, he experienced the social media censorship that the United States government used to silence the critics of its Covid policies first hand and he is now one of the plaintiffs in the landmark free speech case Missouri v. Biden (Murthy v Missouri).
Besides the particular censorship case, Dr. Kheriaty discusses why this kind of censorship was developed during the Covid era. He also explains how, in his opinion, money and power were the drivers pushing the pandemic and how all the mechanisms that triggered such irrational societal behaviour are still in place, while international public health agencies would welcome their use again. He also explains why he thinks that instead of a traditional political divide of being left or right, the division today is between people who accept the technocratic biosecurity surveillance regime for our future and those who will resist it.
Dr. Kheriaty has authored books and articles for professional and lay audiences on bioethics, public health, civil liberties, political theory, social science, psychiatry, philosophy, religion, and culture. His most recent book is The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State (2022). You can also find more information about Dr. Kheriaty and his work through his web page and by following his Substack publication Human Flourishing.
