Why talk about Covid. It is clear that no proper investigation will ever be held into the unnecessary but deliberate removal of our freedoms, right to choice, right to free speech, and economy-wrecking lock downs borrowed from Communist China. There will be no investigation by the people responsible for the atrocious behaviour - because they are still in charge: the politicians and their advisors, the bureaucrats: many of whom would have to put themselves behind bars for what they did if they allowed the truth to be discussed publicly.

And, they are still there because they've got voters too frightened to take a chance, and replace them.

The protests were ignored at the time, and telling war stories in 2025 won't change that. If something like Covid happened again, everything would be the same as it was then; particularly now that Albanese has sold out Australia to the WHO.

There are no Spartans in Australia.

Three hundred stand in defiance… of basic public health measures, with utter disregard for anyone but themselves.

This article reads less like history and more like COVID-era, anti-science fan fiction. Melbourne protesters are Spartans and Daniel Andrews was Xerxes - because apparently resisting lockdowns is now the moral equivalent of holding the pass at Thermopylae.

Get real.

Spartans faced spears, arrows, and certain death. Melbourne protesters faced fines, restrictions, and the discomfort of not going to Bunnings.

Nobody was enslaved. Nobody was dragged off for dissent.

And let's not pretend the protesters "saved the city," it was vaccines, contact tracing, and the cooperation of millions who made sacrifices without shouting about it on Facebook Live.

Yes, the arrest of Zoe Buhler was jarring, and overreach in hindsight, but turning her into some Rosa Parks of the anti-lockdown movement is revisionism at best. It was one of many missteps during a complex and evolving emergency, not proof of tyranny.

Viljoen leans hard on symbolism - Shrine of Remembrance, ancient Greece, Topher Field speeches - but the actual outcomes? The lockdown continued. The roadmap was delivered. Life moved on. And most Melburnians, while exhausted, understood the stakes.

You don’t need to mythologise a fringe protest to have a legitimate conversation about government overreach or the psychological toll of lockdowns.

I’ve got time for honest critiques of lockdown policy. But this kind of hero cosplay just cheapens the real suffering of that period - on all sides. There were no warriors here. Just citizens - some scared, some angry, most doing their best in an unprecedented mess.

History deserves a lot better than this.

Yep, sick reading, this is more of that Sovereign Citizens nonsense. At the moment an anti-vaxxer/Sovereign Citizen is hiding out in Victoria, accused of shooting dead two coppers dead, and wounding another. Another one of their folk hero's, Thomas Sewell has been remanded in custody on serious assault charges. ttbn are you a Sovereign Citizen?

The lockdowns saga was a revelation as to the timidity of the average Australian. Hit them with a little fear and they are prepared to surrender all their liberties in a trice. ...

"those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Franklin (Ben not Buddy).

At the time I found it shocking just how compliant the Australian people were when confronted with what turned out to be false fears.

It was heartening to see some people stand against the authoritarians of the left, but the way the majority of the polity succumb was revealing as to how fragile democratic freedoms truly are, in the face of government disinformation.

Its not the slightest bit surprising to see Chairman Dan hob-knobbing it with fellow authoritarians in Peking this week.

As to the history of the 300...

The author writes..."I recommend Zack Snyder's 2006 epic film 300."

Nup. That's the last place to go to see the truth of Thermopylae. I once managed to sit through the entirety of this piece of fiction, noting every historical error I found. I ended up with 5 closely written pages of errors.

If you want a proper historic understanding then read Peter Green's "The Greco-Persian Wars" or better yet Herodotus's History.

The author wrote..."buying precious time for the Greek city-states to prepare-culminating in the Hellenic victory at Plataea the following year."

The real victory was at Salamis in the same year. Plataea was the coup de grâce.

BTW, although we always talk of the 300, there were also 700 Thespians ( and a smaller number of Thebans) who fought an died alongside the Spartans.

mhaze,

Franklin’s quote is brought up every time someone’s asked to wear a mask or queue for toilet paper. But quoting 18th-century revolutionaries during a 21st-century pandemic is just posturing.

Franklin wasn’t talking about airborne viruses. He was talking about the right to govern oneself under an unelected monarchy, not the right to wander around Bunnings mid-outbreak.

You frame compliance as cowardice. I see it as cooperation. Millions of Australians didn’t panic. They didn’t hoard ivermectin or start Facebook livestreams about tyranny. They stayed home, wore masks, looked out for their neighbours, and got us through a once-in-a-century crisis.

As for “false fears,” 20,000 Australians did die from COVID, even with restrictions. Globally, the number's over 7 million. We weren’t scared of shadows - we were responding to real risk.

And no one “surrendered all liberties.” We voted. We criticised. We held inquiries. We had protests. Some of them made global headlines. Others, like the 5 September protest, were so poorly attended they had to be mythologised into a Thermopylae cosplay to seem important.

As for the history lesson, you’re not wrong about Salamis or the Thespians. But it’s telling that you engage more seriously with the film critique than with the actual comparison being made.

The author of the piece turned a lockdown protest into the birth of Western freedom. That deserved mockery, not footnotes.