There’s a delightful story going around about the mayor of New York City getting badly bitten on the arse by one of his own authoritarian ideas. The mayor, Mr Bill DeBlasio, in an effort to try to crack down on those failing to obey his social distancing and isolation rules in the face of a Covid19 outbreak that, as in the UK, is most devastating in overcrowded, heavily ‘enriched’ areas, set up a phone and web portal where busybodies could report those who they believed were not obeying Mr DeBlasio’s rules. This has not turned out well for the current New York Mayor.

What happened, according to the YouTube commentator Styxhexenhammer, is that as soon as the existence of this ‘grass line’ became known to the public, was that liberty minded Americans and others trolled it mercilessly. This is absolutely hilarious. A facility that the state devised to be used by nasty little busybodies and those using the current emergency to settle scores with businesses and individuals that they were in dispute with, has because of the trolling become utterly discredited.

Here’s the video from Styx about Mr DeBlasio’s attempt to get New Yorker’s grassing on one another Stasi style.

Maybe this is how the citizens and subjects of other countries should behave when confronted with authoritarians and not just at the present time? Maybe this could be a useful and effective tool to use against those who believe they have the right to shut us up with ‘hate speech’ laws, lock us up for venturing into our own front gardens or for going for a walk or shut down our businesses because we won’t go along with the demands of the political Left?

Personally I’m amazed that Mr DeBlasio and the rest of the government of New York City didn’t see this trolling coming. They should have known that setting up something like this would enrage freedom and liberty minded individuals who would then respond with mockery.