Novak Djokovic 1, Australian sanitary regime 0

Novak Djokovic 1, Australian sanitary regime 0

By: Rachel Marsden

PARIS — The Australian regime should think twice before persisting in their persecution of tennis player Novak Djokovic. They just might make him a martyr against sanitary tyranny — if they haven’t already.

History shows that every revolution was ultimately preceded by a series of smaller events. Whether or not the world’s number one tennis player is yet aware, his recent confrontation with the foot soldiers of the Australian sanitary regime just may end up making a giant chip in the wall currently being constructed between all of us and our basic freedoms.

Last week, the tennis champion arrived at a Melbourne airport to compete in the Australian Open.

Djokovic has been quoted as saying of the COVID-19 vaccination that he’d “choose what’s best for my body,” and “wouldn’t want to be forced by someone to take a vaccine.” He isn’t taking a political position beyond defending his basic freedom of medical choice.

When he arrived in Australia, Djokovic was grilled for six hours by border guards of one of the strictest COVID regimes on the planet, before being banned from entry and taken to a motel known for housing refugees, who are held in limbo for months. There, Djokovic was quarantined in a room pending judicial appeal or deportation. In an Australian federal circuit court hearing on Monday, it emerged that Djokovic was denied time to confer with his lawyers and authorities had canceled his visa.

Djokovic had reportedly provided a PCR test confirming a COVID-19 infection last December in lieu of the two-jab minimum required for entry to Australia. The paperwork was accepted by Tennis Australia for a medical exemption to the jab requirement and a visa was issued on that basis. The government says that natural immunity alone was never sufficient to enter the country and claimed that Tennis Australia knew this.

The judge — sounding annoyed — asked what more Djokovic could have personally done. His judgment in the athlete’s favor was based on the fact that Djokovic wasn’t provided adequate time to respond to authorities’ requests before the visa cancellation.

Not surprisingly, Djokovic’s legal win against the Aussie state in front of a refreshingly impartial judge has angered those who have made different COVID-related health choices. Social media has been rife with pro-jabbers upset by the optics of someone being able to travel without the same jabs that they were told they needed to travel or participate in society — even, ridiculously, those like Djokovic with evidence of acquired immunity from catching and recovering from the virus.

With a federal election looming in Australia, Australian officials were quick to react to angry locals who feel that Djokovic has gotten away with maintaining personal choice with respect to his health decisions and has managed to beat the system under which they’ve suffered. Federal officials are now reportedly taking a microscope to him, with CNN reporting that “Djokovic declared he had not traveled and would not do so in the 14 days leading up to his arrival in Australia on Wednesday January 5” but that “various pictures taken during that two-week period appear to show Djokovic in both Spain and Serbia.”

Keep going, Aussies. You’re on the verge of turning an international tennis player into a global symbol of resistance to sanitary totalitarianism.

For the past two years, citizens of western “democracies” have been living under regimes that have cracked down on our daily lives — on everything from our freedom of movement to our right to work and earn a living. All in the interests of illusory control over a single virus. Military grade rhetoric was rolled out by governments to peddle their so-called “truths” that were ultimately revealed as fallacies as time progressed. One current rhetorical fad consists of scapegoating the unjabbed for the government’s continued insistence on restrictions.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that Canadians are angry with the unvaccinated. French President Emmanuel Macron told Le Parisien newspaper that he wanted to “piss off” the unjabbed by making their lives miserable. His government is set to do exactly that with the implementation of a vaccine passport that requires keeping up with a government-mandated number of jabs (three doses, to date) to maintain employment in some professions, or to access various venues from gyms and restaurants to planes and trains. And while U.S. President Joe Biden’s grandfatherly demeanor departs from the venomous tone of his younger counterparts, his insistence on pushing vaccine mandates onto public and private enterprise is no less violent.

But cracks are beginning to accumulate. If only because people are wondering why their life isn’t yet back to normal when they did everything “right” in the authorities’ eyes. Some are shocked at coming down with (or transmitting) the very virus that they took two or three jabs to avoid.

As their manipulated conception starts to crumble, more of them will find inspiration in people like Djokovic who resist and fight for freedom of choice when the opportunity presents. Regardless of the outcome of the Australian Open, Djokovic has already won a much more significant battle – to save democracies from themselves.