This is a quote from Emiliano Zapata, leader of the Mexican revolution of 1910-20. Peasant communities stood up to having land & water resources monopolised by the small-landowning class, leading to a scorched-earth policy by the govt & army. They burnt villages and forcibly https://twitter.com/frankbuglioni/status/1308483466632331264

removed the inhabitants, drafting many men into the Army or sending them into forced labour camps in southern Mexico.
Conspiracy theorists have, of late, taken inspiration from these genuinely awful periods of suffering in human history to object to wearing a face mask &

socially distancing, even using quotes & historical figures from the Holocaust to drum up support.
Aside from how grotesque this is, what’s interesting is that the largest swell of anti-science/data/fact reactions come from the most privileged of countries. And from a generation

of people lucky enough to have been vaccinated against a host of life threatening diseases.
Yesterday I took a walk through Nunhead cemetery & was struck by the number of infant graves. Children struck down by smallpox, consumption, scarlet fever & measles. And I immediately

thought about how the conspiracy theorists would have reacted back then. Whether their lack of privilege would have made them more likely to accept scientific fact.
There is no doubt that the birth of the internet, rather than sparking a educational revolution, has instead

mutated into a host for all manner of quackery. It *really* worries me how many people seem to be seduced by this whole world.
So how does science & reason win this one? I’m fucked if I know, but I at least hope that people see these quotes, realise just how hysterical & vacuous

they are in the context of being asked to wear a face mask in Tesco & to not kiss your nan, & start to throw as much cynicism at Nigel-down-chip-shop’s Flat Earth blog as they do epidemiology.