Meditations on Covid Denialism - Part 3
Projecting Authoritarianism
Note: this essay is long. If you want a quick summary of it, just scroll to the end.
For a solid month now I have been grappling with the aftermath of seeing men I respected and admired adopt views critical of the mainstream narrative on the Covid pandemic. I am referring to Charles Eisenstein and Paul Kingsnorth mainly. (Lately you can add Jem Bendell to the list).
After struggling for weeks and writing thousands of words, I have chosen to make the only point *I* can make, one that I hope will prove informative and not add more fire to a hopelessly polarised conversation.
What I want to do is map out what led Charles and Paul, both of them long time environmentalists, to suddenly question government action.
The Crack in their Ideological Foundation
There is a crack in the ideological foundations of just about every Western thinker. Charles Eisenstein and Paul Kingsnorth are no exception. I have always known of this crack in their thinking, but I ignored it because they were talking about environmentalist or spiritual matters, not politics.
Americans and Britons live inside a world inside a world, a reality entirely different to that experienced by most of humanity. It’s a world of comfort and plenty; the extreme poverty experienced by their ancestors long forgotten and the origin for their nation’s wealth never discussed in the open. They grow up immersed in a deeply biased version of history that either excuses or omits the crimes of their nations.
The reason why this bias is particularly pernicious for Americans and Britons is because they either belong to the nation that runs the current empire, or the nation that ran the previous one.
You probably know all this already; Charles and Paul certainly do. They know it, but not really, because growing up immersed in propaganda does things to one’s psyche that are not easy to escape. American and British exceptionalism are tricky to counter, and the layers and layers of propaganda built to excuse the crimes of their nations are insidious.
No nation ever blames itself. Even though the US and Britain have backed every conceivable horror in the 20th century, they won’t hold themselves accountable for any of it, instead choosing to blame smaller countries for smaller horrors.
Listen to Charles and Paul as often as I have and count the number of times I’ve heard them hold their own nations responsible for anything. Charles has done it a handful of times. Paul never has.
This is what warps and twists their thinking. Theirs and every Western thinker out there.
We need to understand where Americans and Britons got this idea that “there is no such thing as society” (Margaret Thatcher), or that government intervention is always suspect, or that restricting civilians’ personal freedoms to protect the community is somehow deviant. Because this is what lies at the root of their thinking that Covid restrictions are fascist, or authoritarian, or linked in any way to China.
How They Arrived at this Line of Thinking
It’s American and British exceptionalism. It’s the demonisation of every country that isn’t allied to American interests. It’s believing that other nations are to be pitied for being poor or be feared and invaded.
It’s the warpped narratives about why their nations fought in WWII, what Fascism means, what Communism was, what really happened in the Soviet Union. It’s the anti-Communist propaganda that ran rampant in their nations from the start of the 20th century to this day.
The crack in the ideological foundations of just about every Western thinker is, to put plainly, anti-Communism1. The persistent belief that even though Capitalism is obviously bad, Communism was inherently “worse”, and, conveniently, we can never look to it for answers.
Which means that, conveniently, we can never look to actual existing alternatives to the current socio-politico-economic system.
Also very convenient is how we cannot support any systemic changes to force governments to improve people’s lives, since this would amount to “Socialism”.
Communism was not “worse”, it was not even close to “worse”, and the only people in the world who believe so are those who have benefited the most from Capitalism, the recipients of wealth resulting from centuries of colonialism, slavery, famines, wars. None of that wealth happened by magic, and none of it happened under “Communism”.
Once you introduce the “Third World” or the “Global South” in the picture, it’s obvious that Capitalism is a much bigger enemy.
The Authoritarianism That Isn’t
The main argument, such as there is one, by Charles and Paul with regards to the measures taken by the government to handle the Covid pandemic is that they are “authoritarian” or “totalitarian”.
There’s only one problem, though: these concepts aren’t “real”; they are wishy-washy, undefinable, bogus nonsense created to present “Communism” and “Fascism” under the same light.
They are used by the US and the “Western imperial core” to delegitimise whichever government they happen to not like, which tends to be whichever government is acting against the corporate interests of US, UK or EU corporations.
But let’s call a spade a spade and entertain the possibility that the Covid pandemic response is showing signs of “Fascistic tendencies”.
First of all, there are people who study Fascism, and their verdict on the state of the US was not good even before the pandemic.
Second of all, Fascism is never defined as “having to show passports” or “enforced medical procedures” or “discrimination against the unvaxxed”. Sorry to say that this is not part of the definition. (See actual definitions here2)
Covid critics want to make believe that this “discrimination” against the unvaccinated is an unheard of form of tyranny, but this simply isn’t so. There is discrimination daily and for far less benevolent reasons, most of it towards people who cannot “choose out” of the racism, or homelessness, or poverty, or disability by taking a vaccine.
When people don’t understand what “Fascism” is they don’t understand how to end it either. One cannot take a cursory look at the Government mandates in Nazi Germany and cry “Fascism”. That is not serious analysis.
But this serves the interests of those who don’t want Really Existing Fascism to end. And here is how you know that the faux concern about “authoritarianism” or “totalitarianism” is not real.
If you truly believed your country had succumbed under Fascism, you would study how it came about before and how it ended.3
History shows things in black and white: Fascism is orchestrated by the capitalists and anti-Fascism by the anti-capitalists. Another word for anti-capitalist is “Socialist” or “Communist”.
Yet this is not the preferred ideology of the Covid critics.
This could be because:
A) They don’t actually think their country has succumbed to Fascism
B) They aren’t actually all that afraid of Fascism, since it doesn’t bother them that much
C) Socialism, Communism or any anti-capitalist ideology is considerably more unacceptable to them
Historically, there have been people in all three categories.
Government Intervention
It isn’t “authoritarianism” that Covid critics object to, it’s government intervention. Decades of associating one with the other, in the form of deep anti-Communist propaganda, will do that to people.
The government is limiting people’s freedoms and dictating what they can and cannot do, which proves too much for them.
But the only possible response to this is… when has the government NOT dictated what people can and cannot do?
Underneath all the commentary from Eisenstein and Kingsnorth lies a liberal framework and ONLY a liberal framework. A kind of “live and let live”, “why can’t we all get along”, “let’s find a way to make everyone happy”, “neither left nor right” pablum that never solves any problems at the root, but sure keeps the middle-classes entertained.
It’s a convenient ideology if, of course, you happen to be living well, and so does everyone you care about. It’s less appealing when you or your loved ones are dying.
What is really being threatened here is the “(neo)liberal world order”, this ruling ideology of liberal democracies that says the government should do as little as possible and not get involved in how individuals (with money)4 live their lives.5
They are, in essence, against “government intervention” because all government action is suspect and authoritarian until proven otherwise.
Ok, so governments cannot act much to change things. What about people? Can they direct change?
Revolutions
Both Charles and Paul have spoken out against Revolutions. They believe *all* Revolutions are bad in principle, in their words, because everything that comes after is the same or worse than everything that was in place before.
This position isn’t just ignorant, it’s offensive. People don’t have revolutions out of boredom. They don’t rise up with pitchforks because they failed to achieve a balanced, peaceful, loving mindset. People carry out revolutions because their governments refused time and again to change things through peaceful means. Nobody chooses violence for fun.
How insulting is it for men from imperial nations to proclaim that people who have been driven near madness from violence, exploitation and abuse should have had the right mindset and not retaliate against their oppressors?
This ideological position considers violence as a matter of having “the wrong attitude”.
Attitude, or “the look of the thing”, is what’s at stake here, because their ideologies are rooted in centrism. It just “sounds” revolutionary when you use poetic language and spiritual concepts.
Covid passports “look bad”, but pieces of paper proving home ownership are fine. (Not once have I heard either Charles or Paul speak out against private property).
Communism is When Caring for People
The horrors that Covid critics fear are almost to the letter the very horrors people claimed to be taking place under Soviet Communism.
Some 4 decades later, the media has copy-pasted the same propaganda and this time blames China for identical horrors.
Charles and Paul would say “it’s because they’re all the same”. No. It’s because these are projections from the same Western psyche, an infantile, undeveloped bundle of neurosis incapable of self-sacrifice for the benefit of the community, caught up forever in the adolescent stage of “you don’t tell me what to do”. It’s all “me, me, me”.
This is not freedom, it’s teenage angst.
It’s hard not to see the parallels between this thinking and the “Karen phenomenon”. Middle-class white women screeching because something doesn’t look right in their manicured lawn. Meanwhile countless millions suffer unnecessarily from preventable causes, but that doesn’t raise eyebrows in the Karen universe. Or the New Age…
If there is one narrative that emerges clearly is that in the US people are so emotionally broken that they are unable to consider other people’s needs. This is a level of psychological trauma virtually unheard of outside of extreme circumstances. Even during war people are known to “pull together” and think about the community.
There would be no need for “vaccine passports” or “discrimination towards the unvaccinated” if people behaved in a caring way towards the community. The fact that they don’t should concern us. It shows people are damaged in a deep way, and we don’t have the knowledge for healing entire societies.
Conclusion
As we have seen Charles and Paul’s critique of governments’ response to the Covid pandemic is deeply flawed. On the one hand, they consider it “Fascist-like”, yet on the other, they oppose the very ideologies that defeated Fascism in the past.
What we have here are Centrists with strong feelings, who seem to think they have stumbled upon a truth that has escaped the rest of humanity: how to fight “authoritarianism” but without actually supporting an alternative. How to stop violence but without discomfiting those meting out the violence. How to make us all “get along”, those doing the killing and those being killed.
They think it a virtue that their ideas do not map neatly into “Left” or “Right”. I think them a waste of time and energy.
What happened to Charles and Paul is what happens when people oppose the current system without supporting an alternative.
It leaves people intellectually inert, politically neutered, incapable of taking any meaningful action other than shrug their shoulders in frustration.
It also leaves them unable to distinguish between different kinds of political action, since all of it is suspect.
Freedom does not exist in an abstract sense; you must always ask for whom.
“Vaccine passports” appear to be impinging on people’s freedoms… but whose? And whose freedom is being impinged by not having vaccine passports?
These questions are never raised because the answers are deemed obvious: freedom is what we currently have, and tyranny is anything that deviates from it.
It’s convenient cul-de-sac of the intellect for people who have no need to invest themselves into building a political alternative.
We deserve so much better. We deserve revolutions.
SUMMARY
There are crack in the ideological foundations of just about every Western thinker (including Charles Eisenstein and Paul Kingsnorth) is that “both Capitalism and Communism are equally bad”, and that “both the left and the right are bad”.
Charles and Paul have grown up steeped in anti-Communist propaganda, free market fundamentalism, American and British exceptionalism, etc. This is why they think the way they do.
Because of this ideological background they tend to have warped ideas about what Fascism is, and what “authoritarianism” and “totalitarianism” mean.
Conveniently, the Fascism is always in “some other country”. And even though they think their own countries are falling to Fascism, they remain uninterested in how Fascism was fought around the world.
They aren’t opposing “authoritarianism”, they are really just Centrists opposed to government intervention, because they believe “government action is Communist”.
This leads them to think they will be breaking ground and coming up with fantastic ideas, but instead they come up with hot air that changes nothing.
Thanks for reading and making it to the end! If you liked my post, please help me build an audience by sharing it with people who might appreciate it.
If you have thoughts to share, click below to leave a comment.
Do subscribe if you want to keep up to date with all my writing by clicking “subscribe now”.
And you wold like to contribute to support my work, you can do so by clicking “subscribe now” and choosing a plan.
Why was anti-Communist propaganda so important? 2 main reasons.
The first one, obviously, is to disarm the entire world, literally put off everyone from attempting Communism or Socialism, the only proven political ideologies to succeed at redistributing wealth and fighting back against imperialism.
The second reason is to make the crimes committed by the imperial core appear “mild” in comparison. Literally leading both Charles Eisenstein and Paul Kingsnorth to say Capitalism and Communism are “equally bad” or even that Communism was “worse”.
“Geographically speaking, on its own soil fascism is imperialist repression turned inward”
Cope, Zak
“Fascism is the application of colonial violence to the imperial core”
Robert Paxton, from The Anatomy of Fascism
“Nothing more than a final solution to the class struggle, the totalistic submergence and exploitation of democratic forces for the benefit and profit of higher financial circles. Fascism is a false revolution.”
Michael Parenti
Not read “Hannah Arendt”, who left Germany to move to the US and never visited another Fascist country in her life, though that didn’t stop her from bitching about the USSR and making false analogies that have warped people’s understanding of history to this day
The seasoned political analyst would surely raise an eyebrow at this statement, because the government gets involved in just about every aspect of our lives, nes pas? Yes. It does. IF YOU ARE POOR.
The inconvenient truth is that one can escape government regulation when one is wealthy. How much? Extremely much. Billionaires with private planes never have to show a passport, or undergo an airport security inspection. Work “visas” only apply to the poor. The infinitude of red tape one must go through to access vital benefits? Not for the rich. Taxes? Only the poor pay taxes.
This is essentially what is going on here. Covid is a crisis unlike any other in recent times because it-affects-everyone. Not only does the virus infect everyone, but the solutions needed to control it must also apply to everyone. The rich also need tests and “passports”, and they have to limit their numbers at parties.
The ultimate thread running through Trump and Corbyn Derangement Syndrome, and the Covid Denialist response and even Brexit is this sense amongst the liberal middle-class that the government should stay away from “their” business.
Covid denialism says denialist of Soviet atrocities. You are a moron and a fanatic.