Denormalisation

Via DK, I come across a concept that is new to me - the idea that the government, and their preferred (and funded) pressure groups, are looking to denormalise smokers. What is denormalising I hear you ask? Here's description from The Free Society:

Denormalisation is about shaming adults into changing their behaviour. It is about stigmatising them and placing them apart from the rest of society until they learn to behave in a manner which is approved of. So when a smoker has to ask for his packet of cigarettes to be pulled from its hiding place beneath the counter, the government hopes he will experience shame and social embarrassment, as if he was asking for a pornographic magazine or a treatment for a sexually transmitted disease.

And:

Meanwhile publicly funded information films tell us ‘If You Smoke, You Stink’ as if somehow it is the government’s job to lecture us about our personal odour. The agenda is clear: smokers must be portrayed as ugly, ignorant, even immoral.

The above descriptions look, for all the world, like good old-fashioned naming and shaming combined with bullying. Hopefully smokers will respond with an equally good old-fashioned "fuck you" to the government and their funded, pet operations. 

But it is more than just a crude campaign to get people to stop smoking through shaming them. This shows the attitude of the government towards the people they are meant to be serving. If you choose to do something that they do not agree with - even if it is a minor lifestyle choice like smoking - then they will come down and do everything in their power to make you stop. Including crude psychological warfare. You have to comply with what they think is normal. Otherwise they're going to stigmatise you.

Sure, you might be a non-smoker thinking that this doesn't affect you. However, this prudish government - one of the most puritanical since Olly Cromwell strutted on the national stage - will move onto others once they have finished with the smoker. Drinkers are certainly on the radar, and who knows where they will go next. Maybe to those who write anti-government blogs. Or those whose sex lives consist of more than three minutes in the missionary position. Or those who use porn. It is difficult to tell who will be denormalised next - not least because it comes down to the deeply subjective view of what the government deems to be normal. 

It is a symptom both of a government that has been in power for too long and a government system that is too biased towards the rulers over the ruled that the government would even consider an idea like denormalisation. Government has no right to intrude in the lives of its people in such a terrible, crass way. It certainly has no right to make value judgments on what is normal what is not when it comes to the private conduct of individuals.

Back in the Soviet Union, there used to be a mental "illness" dubbed sluggishly progressing schizophrenia. It was used in part as a control device - those who didn't obey the state could be classified as schizophrenic and locked up in institutions. It is a distant but instantly recognisable cousin of denormalisation. If you don't do what the government wants you do, then they will shame you. They will do their level best to make you abnormal.