The Coming Authoritarianism.

Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
thirdform said:
So what is your argument then? That people believe silly shit? That's been the case since time immemorial.

I don't go for the authoritarian/anti-authoritarian binary, but I would agree with yyaldrin that the left (or radicals at least) should have adopted a more critical position towards the state, whilst emphasising the danger of the virus. What we have is a real denying of reality rn (as in, a denying of reality that is actually grounded in the real) something which you seem to say is just the preserve of far right cranks. OK, it may be that, but then merely tells us that the right is winning given the liberal/left response has been to side with the state reducing most human intercourse to bare life and little else. Now you can go on about tory/republican incompetence if you want to play that game, but what is your response after that? That we are going to work to a hypothetically zero-covid scenario, a scenario that moreover will not come?

The problem with the anti-vaccers is not this, it's that they think that we can go back to normal. There is no new normal. A better way to think about this is covid is the first premonition of the impending climate catastrophe.
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Being critical of the state where it does things that impact on people's wellbeing and freedom is one thing - as I've said, I'm not convinced vaccine passports are a good thing, precisely because I don't trust the state to act in everyone's best interests. That's clear to anyone who wasn't born yesterday. But the state has also provided me with, for example, vaccination against covid-19, which is unequivocally a good thing according to the objective data on the risks involved.

But I certainly don't buy that the anti-vaxx movement is only "accidentally" right-wing, or that this is just a result of some failure on the left's part, because while clearly nobody is a priori immune to the disease, it does pose a far greater risk to the very old or people who are disabled or already ill with something else. The stats for covid deaths of mentally disabled people in this country are incredibly depressing, for example. So somebody who thinks (rightly or wrongly), "I'm healthy so I'll just shrug it off, fuck vaccines" - that it's only for the Untermenschen to worry about, in other words - yeah, that's pretty right wing. And whether or not herd immunity is ever really achievable, it's clear that vaccination strongly reduces your risk of catching it and therefore of passing it on, so your own vaccination status has an impact on those around you.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
thirdform said:
The problem with the anti-vaccers is not this, it's that they think that we can go back to normal. There is no new normal. A better way to think about this is covid is the first premonition of the impending climate catastrophe.
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There's certainly something in this - and it's no coincidence there's a huge overlap between the anti-vaxx and climate-denialist camps.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

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I don't remember seeing the Left making much of a noise about the changed DNR instructions for the vulnerable, including the disabled...

Where Left and Right might meet is in the argument, "Take the vaccine as otherwise you have a higher chance of taking up NHS resources" because guess who takes up more than average NHS resources...the disabled, the elderly, the vulnerable...
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Mr. Tea said:
There's certainly something in this - and it's no coincidence there's a huge overlap between the anti-vaxx and climate-denialist camps.
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well, their main problem is for all their chit chat about state authoritarianism, they fail to ground the state as the political manager of wider forms of production within capitalist social relations, and hence see the state as a failed rational actor, an actor that with the right denial mechanisms in place can grant liberty to the individual. It is a misunderstanding of how the state prior to the pandemic has systematically been antagonistic to collective forms of solidarity.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
thirdform said:
well, their main problem is for all their chit chat about state authoritarianism, they fail to ground the state as the political manager of wider forms of production within capitalist social relations, and hence see the state as a failed rational actor, an actor that with the right denial mechanisms in place can grant liberty to the individual. It is a misunderstanding of how the state prior to the pandemic has systematically been antagonistic to collective forms of solidarity.
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It's actually pathetic in this sense, because the exaltation of individual life vis-a-vis the state indicates narcissism, and narcissism is not an increased sense of self-love, but the loss of the self, hence the need to defend it against all further attacks. It's the end point of the nihilism towards any form of collective struggle.

If you really wanted to take this argument to its ultimate conclusion you simply would not use the ambiguous concept of freedom, which in the end merely legitimises market and law, and ends up with you involuntarily approving of the management of the pandemic by market forces (and their highest consolidation in the state, I.E: politically motivated lockdowns.)
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Mr. Tea said:
See: reality, passim.
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I doubt you've ever been on any corona demos but if you had been you would realise this broad brushstroke take is untenable (in the UK, at least).

The gvt/media tag them 'far-right' to put off the normies and to forestall accusations that they inhabit that part of the political spectrum.

I think the main reason the gvt has used lockdowns is to leave very little room for Labour's natural performative empathy-overreaction-restriction tendencies.
 
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