It is rather intimidating that in Italy in order to enter many public places a temperature gun is pointed at your head as you are forced to wear a face mask. We asked them to point it at our wrist instead. There is an intimidating dimension to this that seems to be lost on many.

What is interesting though is that I have received many apologies from those made to enforce the law, from hotel staff to military police, while those most keen to have no dissent or deviation are the self policing media consuming citizens. Conformism is rampant, little dissent.

My son made a poignant and painful observation linking what is happening now to another epoch of rampant conformism in Italy, I am afraid he may be onto something there, it's the conformism that allows all of this to happen with no real opposition to the symbolic dimensions.

Nabokov on conformists: https://twitter.com/robinmonotti/status/1036540905719824386?s=19

Social distancing in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist occurs within a mental asylum..

There is a degree of Stockholm syndrome going on: those who may not be fearful inevitably start to develop the angle of those who are after a long enough time of having to abide by the laws of fear by force: guns to the head & face masks *even outdoors* after 6pm is forced fear.

Kidnapped by the fear of others: irony being that Europe is caught in the grip of a widespread Stockholm syndrome in practically every city but Stockholm itself..