Shawshank Redemption actor Tim Robbins says demonizing the unvaccinated was ‘incredibly dangerous
(LifeSiteNews) — An Academy Award-winning actor denounced the demonization of the unvaccinated during the COVID-19 outbreak and regrets his own anger toward those resisting standard anti-COVID policies such as masking.
Tim Robbins, famous for his leading role in the beloved film The Shawshank Redemption, decried the effect that COVID health “doctrine” “had on us as human beings” on British comedian Russell Brand’s December 18 podcast.
“We turned into tribal, angry, vengeful people,” Robbins said. “I don’t think that is something that is sustainable for the earth. That we start demonizing someone who doesn’t agree with our particular health policies and turn them into monsters. Turn them into pariahs. Say that they don’t deserve a hospital bed.”
He suggested that such a stance from someone who considers vax refusal unwise is hypocritical considering that we still “take care of” people who have made “bad mistakes,” like those who overdose on drugs.
“Because we’re compassionate. Because we want to make sure that people live. And this turned into ‘You should f—ing die because you have not complied.’ That’s incredibly dangerous.”
Robbins, however, said he himself used to have this vengeful mindset, explaining to Brand how he initially accepted the prevailing COVID narrative to the hilt and without question.
“I bought into it. … I was masking everywhere. I was keeping my social distance. I was adhering to the requests made of me, and I felt angry at people that didn’t do that,” the liberal actor told Brand.
It was not until he traveled to the United Kingdom, where he said he saw many people defying health protocols, that Robbins began to question government health policies.
“When I saw that there wasn’t a huge death rate [in Britain], after I witnessed personally what was happening, I started to wonder more and more about what we were being told and whether it was true or not,” Robbins told Brand.
His perspective further shifted when he walked amid an anti-lockdown protest in London out of curiosity.
“I saw the way that they were being described in the press, and it wasn’t true,” he said. “These were not, you know, National Front Nazis. These were liberals and lefties and people who believed in personal freedom.”
Robbins cited two incidents that were particularly “disturbing” to him.
“One was when the CDC … changed the definition of a vaccine on their website,” Robbins said. In September 2021, the CDC changed its definition of vaccine from “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease” to “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”
Robbins also found health authorities’ denial of the sufficiency of “natural immunity” to be troubling.
“My alarm bells went off,” Robbins said.
When Brand proposed that “there is a lot more political ideology at play than is perhaps wise,” and more than is being admitted, Robbins pointed out, “At first, if you were a Democrat, when Trump was president, well, you weren’t going to take that vaccine because it was Trump’s vaccine, and then that seemed to somehow change.”
“It was kind of Orwellian. It was like we are no longer at war with East Asia,” said Robbins, alluding to George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, in which government propaganda required that history be erased in order to promote the state’s latest objectives.
Robbins went on, “However after the political winds shifted and Democrats assumed power during the pandemic, if you didn’t take the vaccine, you were a Republican.”
Robbins’ interview with Brand echoed previous statements he made to reporter Matt Taibbi.
“You go from someone that is inclusive, altruistic, generous, empathetic, to a monster. Where you want to freeze people’s bank accounts because they disagree with you,” he said, appearing to refer to the Canadian government’s freeze on the assets of Freedom Convoy demonstrators for protesting government COVID measures.
“That’s a dangerous thing. That’s a dangerous world that we’ve created. And I say ‘we,’ because I was part of that. I bought into that whole idea early on.”
